A duck can’t stick its bill up its arse.’
I couldn’t believe it. Was this my old friend Carol, who sits outside in her car rather than wait for me in the bar where she might actually have to talk to someone, telling lawyer jokes to a group of suits?
She twiddled the olive in her martini, waiting for the laughter to die down before starting on the next one: ‘What’s the difference between a spermatazoan and a lawyer? At least the spermatazoan has one chance in a million of becoming a human being.’
She wasn’t even drunk, it was only 6 p.m. After work and before dinner, a busy time for the pub. For the full-time locals it could have been any time of the day. They were sitting on stools, elbows squarely on the bar, minding their own business, thinking about Life and Death, reviewing their pasts, thinking about something they said to someone in 1953 and wished they hadn’t.
I nodded to a few of them as I came into the bar and managed to slip by without George noticing me. He was the fullest-time local. He sat here day and night. Every pub has a patron like George. Like the verandah and the beach, the pub is an intermediate zone, the place between the inside and outside. Before he stepped outside altogether, my father would have been a patron like George. Despite the obvious similarities I felt no overwhelming urge to make a father figure of him. He was amiable enough but I didn’t want him sidling up to me any more than he did already, whispering confidentialities that sprayed all over your cheek.
‘Claudia!’ Carol seemed pleased to see me. ‘Excuse me,’ she said to her audience. ‘Game of pool?’ she suggested to me.
Did she see my eyebrows raise or not? Telling jokes in pubs, playing pool, what had come over her? Carol never played pool, she didn’t even like watching. She’d never learnt and wasn’t about to, even though lots of her buddies, including me, played.
‘Why not?’ I grinned. I got a Tooheys Lite from Jack and we installed ourselves up at the pool area.
Those satisfying preliminary sounds—the coin going in, the clunk, the balls tumbling along and coming out into the catchment area.
‘Mugs away, is it?’
I was choosing my cue from the rack. Mugs away? Just what had Carol been doing the last few days? She’d suggested a game of pool, she was using the jargon. Not appropriately, but at least she knew the words.
‘When there’s no-one holding the table we have to decide who the mug is. Heads or tails?’
‘Heads,’ she said. It came up heads.
‘So how’s life?’ I asked.
‘Good,’ she said. ‘Very good.’
The balls were ready for the break. She came to the table and methodically chalked her cue. Then spent a long time placing the white ball directly over the dot and measuring up the angle. The break was OK, nothing went in but the balls were spread around the table nicely.
‘Have you been away?’
‘In Melbourne,’ she said, leaning against the wall.
‘Anything exciting?’
‘A matter related to Sweetie’s Icecream Parlours. A member of state parliament has been pushing for an investigation for years. It’s finally happening.’
I’d read about the planned investigation on the plane back from Melbourne. Sweetie’s went bust in the mid-eighties amid allegations of ‘drugs, murder and corruption’. Allegedly, the franchise was a front for an elaborate network that involved most of the big names of the time—crims, cops, businessmen, many of whom were now dead, discredited, in jail or living in countries with lax extradition laws.
‘So I’ve been gathering information. Asking questions, getting bullshit answers. Asking the questions again. And again.’
I’d been present when Carol asked questions. She has a mind like a steel trap. One little anomaly, one little flaw in your argument and she feeds it back to you with a ‘please explain’ note. But that’s just the technique for the smaller skirmishes. When Carol’s on the job she goes into a different frame of mind. She looks at you, sits completely still. Interested but neutral, like a cat watching a skink. You get the feeling that anything you say to her will never be repeated or have repercussions. That her compassion and understanding are infinite. You could be talking to a therapist or a priest. Except that when it’s over, Carol becomes once again Detective Inspector Rawlins.
‘I was in Melbourne myself recently,’ I said, hearing the satisfying sound of the ball making its way into the inner recesses of the table.
‘Business or pleasure?’
‘Oh, you know, I always try and combine the two.’
I missed my next shot. Carol came to the table. She walked around it like a teacher inspecting a classroom, placed the cue between the white ball and hers, measured angles. F’or a moment there I thought she was going to construct a bridge.
‘Parking’s good in Melbourne compared to Sydney,’ I said, making conversation.
Carol came round behind the white and brought her eye down to table level. ‘So you park. Then what do you do?’
‘Play pool for a start. Looks like that’s what you’ve been doing.’
‘I had to frequent some unsavoury places. I thought I’d take a few lessons.’
When Carol says take a few lessons she doesn’t mean hanging around the table and watching what’s going on, or having some local stand behind her positioning her arm, breathing over her shoulder or, more to the point, breathing down her designer jacket. She means professional lessons. I don’t know what they taught her but her shot seemed to take forever. And she still hadn’t taken a poke at the ball.
‘Didn’t think Melbourne had unsavoury places.’
‘Sure they do, they just keep them out of sight. One of the three most liveable cities in the world.’
‘So I heard,’ I said.
Finally, finally she did it. And unfortunately for me, the ball went in. Which meant a repeat of the long slow process of bridge building. To compensate for her lack of speed, when my turn came I took a run up to the table and shot, without taking aim. Eventually I lost, worn down by Carol’s slow hand.
We’d taken so long to play the one game that there were three sets of initials chalked up on the board—players waiting for a game.
‘Doubles?’ one of the blokes invited us.
‘It’s all yours, Darren,’ I said. ‘We’re drinking.’
Back in the bar we found a quiet table to sit at and I bought Carol a winning martini.
‘I met someone in Melbourne,’ Carol said.
‘A pool player?’ I ventured.
‘As a matter of fact, yes.’
‘Good for you. I hope that doesn’t mean you’re going to move down there.’
I’d said it jokingly but it looked as though Carol was seriously considering the possibility. ‘It’s early days yet, we’ll see how it goes.’
What was happening? My mother, my best friend, everyone I knew was coupling. The closest personal contact I’d had lately was getting my car scratched.
‘Heard from Steve?’ she asked casually.
‘No.’
Carol sat there, not saying anything. She was doing it to me, the interrogation technique, the tone of voice, the look, the silence going on forever. Underneath that casual comment she wanted to know why, how I felt, what had happened.
Resisting the urge to confess to Carol was relatively easy because I didn’t have anything to tell her. I’d stuck the whole break-up with Steve in the too-hard basket. It wasn’t a break-up as such, just a slow dwindling away. ‘I saw Russell Hindley today.’
‘Now that’s a name I’ve heard recently. He’s just started at Parramatta, hasn’t he?’
‘That’s where I saw him,’ I told Carol.
‘I wonder how he’s liking it?’ Carol mused. ‘He used to be with the Drug Enforcement Agency. Those boys don’t like being shifted back. Bit of a glamour job the DEA—big cars, big money, high profile.’
‘Plus anything they make on the side.’
Carol gave me a withering look. She hated it whenever I brought up the subject of police corruption. The DEA was the agency that confiscated and evaluated the worth of drug hauls. Seemed an opportunity too good to pass up by someone with connections.
‘So why did they move him?’
‘It wasn’t him in particular. New policy. To avoid the kind of corruption you’re implying, Claudia. Restructuring, decentralising, breaking the power bases up. No more than five years in the same position. Based on the idea that flowing water does not stagnate, become a cesspool. Less opportunity to build up contacts. It has its down side—what does it mean for your career if you’re moved every five years? That’s how some people are viewing it anyhow.’
‘You, Carol?’
She slid the olive off the stick and closed her mouth around it. ‘We’ll see,’ she said philosophically. ‘Another drink?’
‘Sure,’ I said.
She got Jack’s attention and indicated another round. ‘What did you go and see Hindley about?’
Instead of answering directly, I asked her a question. ‘Have you ever taken charge of a dead body?’
‘You mean, fill in the forms, get in touch with the relatives? Lots of times.’
‘How much detail do you remember?’
‘It varies. You might remember if there’s something unusual.’
‘If I gave you a name, would you remember a body from eight, ten years ago?’
Carol looked doubtful. ‘If I had the paperwork to prompt me, perhaps. Or, as I said, if there was a particular reason to remember. Where’s all this leading?’
I told her.
‘Maybe old Russo’s got a photographic memory,’ Carol suggested. She said she was sorry to hear about my father and expressed surprise at the fact that he drowned.
‘It was during the 1985 floods. Apparently he hit his head and fell into a stormwater channel. He drowned in the middle of the city.’
‘Well, maybe that’s why Hindley remembers it. Simple.’
‘I think he remembers because he stuffed up in some way. He didn’t seem too fond of “dole bludgers” as he called them. Guy had a fractured skull, he could have been bashed. Maybe Hindley saved himself the trouble of investigating that possibility because Guy was a dero and who cares? The only thing that concerned Hindley was getting in out of the rain and keeping the paperwork to a minimum.’
‘Nearly ten years ago, Claudia. You’re going to have a hard time proving it. Believe me, I know what it’s like trying to get the facts straight on events that happened years ago. Everyone’s memory suddenly gets very selective. Why don’t we go and get something to eat? Winning always gives me a healthy appetite.’
We didn’t have to go far, there’s a restaurant attached to the pub which is where I get most of my sustenance. It changes hands every year or so, partly because Jack likes to give battlers a break, people just out of prison, others who’ve just arrived in the country, rehabilitating drunks. He reckons the way things are going, someone has to remind people that Balmain was once a community-minded suburb.
At the moment it was being managed by a young couple who’d met at a drug rehab place up the country. They were still getting used to things-service was sometimes slow, even when it wasn’t busy; things they ordered didn’t arrive in time, or they got to the market too late. But they were excellent cooks. They could make a meal taste good even without balsamic vinegar and shaved Parmesan all over it.
The male half of the couple was called Luis. He had black hair tied back in a long ponytail. Arms skinny as poles and a face like an Aztec. Nicole, the female partner, had tight skin and an expression in her eyes as if she’d been on a long journey somewhere and didn’t like the scenery.
We’d been sitting there five minutes and still hadn’t received a menu. Though Carol didn’t say anything, you could see she was having a hard time restraining herself from going into the kitchen and telling them how they should run the place. When Luis finally brought the menu over, she ordered antipasto. For two.
‘A side salad? Garlic bread?’ said Luis pleasantly.
‘Yes, OK. Green salad and plain bread.’ Talking quickly as if that would make them hurry up. The way she plays pool I didn’t think she’d care how slow it was. ‘The antipasto in Melbourne is so wonderful,’ Carol said, suddenly an authority on the matter.
Thing is with Carol, she was usually just one step behind the fashion. She didn’t have a nose for it like the trendsetters, she had to read about it like the trend followers. She did know her wines though. And fortunately here the selection was fine.
Luis came back with the bottle she ordered, showed it to her, uncorked it and poured a taste portion in her glass. Carol went through the ritual of tasting. It passed the test. ‘Carry on,’ she instructed him.
The antipasto was huge-marinated artichokes, bocconcini, grilled red peppers, salami, raw ham, eggplant, olives, the lot. Carol tucked heartily into the vegetarian portions of the meal. She didn’t even refer to me as a carnivore when I ate the salami and raw ham. Which was just as well because actually I’m an omnivore. Like most humans, I have the teeth to prove it.
Carol used the fresh crusty bread to soak up the oil left on the plate. ‘The best part,’ she explained, dipping the bread. ‘A meal in itself—good bread, fresh-pressed olive oil. Delicious!’ For someone who’d spent only a few days in Melbourne she’d certainly gone a long way.
‘You’re running yourself round in circles, you realise that?’ she said suddenly. ‘This thing with your father,’ she gestured, waving a piece of bread, ‘you’ve got to get some perspective on it.’ She stopped eating and looked at me with concern. ‘Is that really the problem? Is everything else OK with you?’
‘Sure. Why shouldn’t it be?’
‘I just thought, you know, breaking up with Steve and all …’
She was getting to me. ‘Look,’ I said defensively, ‘will people stop calling it a break-up? Nothing cracked, nothing needs mending, it just fizzled out. End of story.’
She was gazing at me steadily. I felt the need to push on. ‘What’s your perspective on it then?’
She took a sip of wine. ‘Well, I don’t know. He was great looking but he seemed a bit, you know, boring.’
‘Carol, I meant perspective on this business with my father. How do I stop going round in circles?’
She put the glass back down on the table. ‘There are several options,’ she began in the businesslike voice I knew and loved so well. ‘Some of them you can do something about, some of them you can’t. One,’ she counted on her fingers, ‘you can accept that your father’s dead and get on with the rest of your life. But by the look on your face, I’d say that’s out of the question. Let’s review what we have here. You haven’t seen your father since you were five. No attempt at contact has been made by either party.’ I started to protest. ‘No contact has been made,’ she corrected herself. ‘The assumption is that Guy Valentine spent the greater part of his life as a derelict. This has been confirmed by street sightings of him by ex-colleague Brian Collier. Also, the circumstances of his death seem to suggest same.’ Again I started to protest. ‘But the postmortem report …’ she went on, reminding me she hadn’t forgotten, ‘the postmortem report, while revealing alcohol content in the blood shows little or no damage to organs characteristically associated with long--term alcoholism. And that’s the rub, is it not?’
‘That, plus Hindley’s attitude.’
‘Let’s leave Hindley out of it for the moment, shall we? You can’t prove attitude in court. Although, yes, I agree, he’s not one of the finer examples of the species,’ she confirmed. A rare acknowledgement from Carol. She never openly criticised her colleagues, whatever she thought of them. She may have met someone in Melbourne but she was married to the New South Wales Police Force. ‘He tried one on, did he?’ she added casually.
‘For a while it looked like he might but I think I talked him out of it.’
The dead rarely leave deliberate clues but clues are left nevertheless. It seemed to me what we had with my father’s death was anomalies. What the police call ‘suspicious circumstances’. ‘OK’, I went on, ‘let’s assume Guy was a reformed alcoholic. But he had been drinking the night of his death. Perhaps someone with a long-term grudge set him up then took advantage of his state, bashed him unconscious and pushed him into the storm-water canal.’
Carol was shaking her head. ‘It’s just the business you’re in. We’re in,’ she said. ‘No-one ever dies “accidentally”, they’re always murdered. No-one crosses the road because they want to get to the other side, they’re going over there to do a drug deal.’ She finished off the wine in her glass. ‘You don’t know any of that. And besides,’ she said darkly, ‘if on the remote chance any of it were true, how are you going to prove it?’
‘Cases can always be reopened. At any time,’ I reminded her. ‘Yes,’ she sighed, ‘technically they can. But it’s a long time ago. Memories and bloodstains fade. He was cremated, wasn’t he?’
‘Yes.’
‘You haven’t even got a body to exhume.’
The bottle of wine was empty and Carol didn’t want another. She was going home to do boring things like iron some shirts for the office. I signalled Luis to bring the bill. Carol said to give her a ring, if I wanted to talk. About anything. She meant about Steve, I could tell. I’m sure she thought I was pursuing this matter with my father to take my mind off other things. She was wrong. When I want to take my mind off my personal problems I drink.
I walked her to the door, waved her goodbye and watched her drive off in her smart red car. Then I went to the bar and ordered a bottle of Scotch from Jack. The one I keep under my bed for special occasions was almost empty.
Back in my room I got out a red marker pen and drew a horizontal line about a third of the way down the new bottle. Enough to let my mind deviate from its usual pathways but still able to think productively.
There’s nothing so pleasing as breaking the seal of a new bottle, seeing the glow of honey-coloured liquid. The first shot I had neat so I could feel the fire. In my mouth, down my throat, all the way down to the intestines. Then I poured a modest amount in a glass and topped it up with soda and a slice of lime. I opened the French doors to let in some air and lay there on the floor, propped up on my elbows. Laughter wafted up from downstairs, crickets pulsed out the sound of summer.
I had the door open but no messages were coming through. I took out the postmortem report and leafed through it. I’d read it so many times I almost knew the thing off by heart. It was a pity there were no photos. When a body comes into the morgue now it is videoed, so you have three-dimensional shots of it. But they weren’t doing that back in 1985.
Cremated, nothing left. A box of ashes at Rookwood and some specimens in the morgue. I couldn’t really stick that on the mantelpiece. This was morbid. I put the drink aside and went out onto the balcony. Maybe a pet would take my mind off things. A low-maintenance pet such as a bird or a fish. I didn’t like being cooped up, what made me think a fish would enjoy swimming round and round in circles? That’s what Carol thought I was doing—swimming round and round in circles, not even recognising my own reflection in the glass.
I could hear a car horn honking. It was Mrs Fields from across the road. Someone was parked outside her house, in the place she considered her parking spot. It happened at fairly regular intervals, not surprising seeing she lived opposite a pub. She slammed the car door and marched into the bar. I couldn’t see it or hear it but I knew what was happening. She’d give Jack the rego number and make him get the owner to move the car. ‘And next time I’ll call the police!’ she’d announce with a menacing twirl of her umbrella. From somewhere or other she’d managed to obtain a No Parking sign which usually stood outside her house, but someone must have moved it. One of these days she was going to get really fed up and smash a window with that umbrella, do some real damage.
Damage. Maybe the damage had repaired itself … the liver is one of the few organs in the body that can regenerate itself. I sifted back through my conversations with everyone involved. With Lucy, with Kirby, with Brian, Hindley and Carol.
Mrs Fields marched down the street. There was her No Parking sign, in front of someone else’s house, doing what it was supposed to do. The whole street was parked out except for this space. She picked up the sign and moved it back outside her house. As far as anyone else was concerned, if the sign said No Parking then it was no parking. But the sign had been moved, and though it had been short-lived, a different place had become the No Parking zone.
I sifted through all the conversations to come back to the thing that had caught my attention in the first place. The state of the body. Too healthy for the life my father was supposed to have led. I had gone from that anomaly to thinking there were suspicious circumstances. Then it struck me. As I watched Mrs Fields moving the parking sign it all fell into place.
The only ID was a Social Security form in the name of Guy Francis Valentine. There was nothing else—no wallet, no personal items, nothing. All the time I’d taken it for granted. Like the No Parking sign. Because a piece of paper found on the body had Guy Francis Valentine printed on it, I assumed that the body was Guy Francis Valentine. But what if it wasn’t? Like the No Parking sign, that piece of paper could be moved. Perhaps for some reason my father couldn’t return the form that day and a friend was doing it for him. Perhaps my father had lent the deceased his coat and the form happened to be in it.
Mistaken identity. If only the morgue had kept photographic records back in 1985 the problem could be solved instantly. But they had kept something. They had kept something. I went to the report and flipped through the pages.
Specimens retained: Tissue for histology. Blood retained for storage.
They’d kept blood. And some of that blood ran through my veins.
I dialled Dr Kirby’s number so quickly the first time that I misdialled and had to do it again. I told him what I wanted to try. He said he was sure it could be done but perhaps I should speak to his wife. He called her to the phone. I asked her how long specimens were retained.
‘Indefinitely.’
‘Even ones taken in 1985?’
‘Yes,’ she said. I told her what I wanted to do. She said there was no problem with that. All I needed to do was to bring a sample of my blood. She offered to take the sample for me if I wanted. Could I come to the morgue tomorrow morning? The earlier the better, the more the day wore on the busier she got. I said yes, that would be fine. I would be there when the doors opened.
I stopped drinking, put the bottle of Scotch away for the night. Tomorrow my blood was going to be scrutinised and I wanted it to look as good as possible.