Helga's Web (30 page)

“If he’s gone away, as Grafter said he did, that might not be easy.”

“Has anything been easy on this since we started?”

When they got back to their office there was a message to ring Hawkins at the CIB.

“Scobie? About time—where’ve you been? Friday night’s my night up at the Leagues Club with the wife—”

“Sorry,” said Malone, losing some of his respect for the Fingerprint Section; crime for them evidently wasn’t a twenty-four-hour job as it was for some people. “What’s the news?”

“Well, we checked those prints on the pipe you sent up. They match the prints on the phone, the key and the pieces of that broken glass. It’s the same feller, all right. Any idea who he is?”

“No/’ Malone lied. “But we’re getting close.”

He hung up and told Clements the report on the fingerprints.

“You want to save some money tonight?”

“How?”

“Don’t go to the trots. Go out and check on Bixby. It might take a bit of running around, you’ll have to dig up the wages clerk at the trawler firm— someone should be there, a trawling outfit wouldn’t close down at night—” Then he shook his head. “No, it can wait till tomorrow. Forget it.”

“Tomorrow’s Saturday. I’ll still have to dig up someone to get that address. I’m as impatient as you, mate, to get this thing cleared up. I’m like you now—I think Helidon is the guy we want. But we want to be sure. And like you said, the only way we’re gunna do that is by elimination. It could be that there’s only Bixby to be eliminated. Let’s get him out of the way as soon as we can. Just one thing—” He blew his nose, wiped his streaming eyes. “While I’m tearing around tonight, what are you gunna be doing?”

“Thinking,” said Malone. “And taking Lisa to dinner.”

“One of these days,” said Clements, “I’m gunna be the senior bloke in a team. And I’m gunna run the junior joker right off his bloody feet.”

“I said exactly the same thing myself ten years ago,” said Malone. “What are you hanging around for? Start running.”

Friday, December 6

Bixby pressed the bell of the Gibson flat, heard the deep tone of the chimes behind the heavy oak door, nodded appre- ciatively and waited. The old bugger knew how to spend his money, all right; anyone living in this block didn’t have to worry about whether he had butter or margarine on his bread. Bixby wasn’t surprised when a maid opened the door, though he couldn’t remember ever having met one before. Some forgotten instinct prompted him to take off his straw hat.

“I’d like to see Mr. Gibson.” He saw the girl’s refusal in her face even before she spoke. “Tell him it’s important. I won’t keep him long. The name’s Phil Bixby.”

The girl looked him up and down, nodded, then closed the door in his face. He felt his temper rise, flushing his face, and his hand crushed the brim of his hat. The bitch, her with a touch of the tarbrush in her, putting on an act with him! Then he stiffened, striving hard to control himself. Hold it, Phil. That’s how you done in the other piece.

The door opened again and the maid said, “Mr. Gibson will see you.”

Bixby followed her across a small entrance hall and into a living room larger than anything he had ever seen before. He trod on carpet that felt as if it had six inches of rubber beneath it; when he looked around he took in nothing he could remember, but he knew he was in the middle of more luxury than he had expected. Possessions meant nothing to him, it would have taxed him to remember what he had in his own flat; yet he could sense the value of them, knew they were the labels of how much most people were worth. Old Grafter, or his missus, had thrown the money around like confetti furnishing this joint.

Gibson stood in front of the big window that looked out to the harbour. He waved the maid away, waited till she had gone, then said, “Nobody invited you here. So don’t plan on staying long. What d’you want?”

Bixby took a match from his pocket, began to chew on it. “I won’t keep you, Grafter. I just come for the air fare for that girl. I had a talk with her. She’s gone back to Germany.”

“Already?” Then Gibson turned as his wife, looking like a stout bon-bon in candy yellow, came into the room. “This is my wife. Mr. Bixby. He used to work for me on one of the trawlers.”

Bixby took the match out of his mouth, nodded. “Pleased to meetcha, Mrs. Gibson. Just a little business with your old— with the boss. Won’t take a minute.”

Glenda Gibson acknowledged his greeting, then looked at her husband. “Don’t be long, Les. We’re late for the party already—”

She went out, leaving behind her a whiff of expensive perfume that was lost on the two men.

Bixby glanced around the room. “Nice place you got here, Les. Must’ve set you back a packet.”

“How much did the fare cost?”

“Let’s say a round seven hundred dollars. I hadda do a bit of running around, get her on her way and things like that, you know what I mean?”

“When did she leave?”

“Day before yesterday.”

“You took your time coming for the money.”

“Look, I done the job, didn’t I? It wasn’t easy, you know, she’s like all them Huns, pretty bloody stubborn. They don’t give up easy. But in the end she saw reason. I got her on the plane and she oughta be in Germany by now. I’ve had other things to do, you know, that’s why I ain’t been for the money before. But I’m here now, Grafter. Seven hundred bucks, cash on the knocker.”

“It won’t be cash.” Gibson stared at him for a moment, then moved towards the door into his study. “It’ll be a check.”

“Make it to cash, then. I want the dough first thing in the morning. I might be going away.”

“The banks aren’t open Saturdays. You’ll have to wait till Monday. Something worrying you, Bixby? What made you forget that?”

Bixby chewed a little harder on the match. “I dunno. I guess it’s because I ain’t been working this week. You lose track of the days. Okay, it’ll have to be Monday, but make it cash.”

Gibson went into the study and Bixby, restless now, moved around the living room, finishing up at the big window that looked west towards the city and the Opera House. From here he could see almost the whole of the last part of his journey last Monday night. Like he’d told Grafter, it hadn’t been easy.

After he had checked that he could pick up a boat without any trouble in Rushcutters Bay, he had driven down to the Domain and along the road that led to the point. The Domain, like most parks, was deserted at night but for lovers in their cars. He had known that a man on his own in a car would be suspected as a Peeping Tom, it was a great place for creeps like that, and he had stayed only long enough to refresh his memory on how far he would have to go by water to get to the Opera House. He had parked above the path that led down to Fleet Steps. That’s where he’d have to take the dame’s body aboard the boat; that meant he’d have about three-quarters of a mile’s rowing, if he kept to the shoreline, before he got round to where he could slip in under the Opera House pilings. Well, that wouldn’t be so hard. But first he had to get the bloody boat around to Fleet Steps and that wasn’t going to be so easy. He’d have at least two miles’ rowing because he’d have to keep well clear of the naval depot at Garden Island; otherwise he’d have the Navy demons butting in, wanting to know what he was doing around there at night. Going out into deep water to skirt Garden Island might mean he’d run into a Water Police patrol boat and those bastards wouldn’t just wave to him and pass on; but that was something he’d have to risk. If he was going to get rid of the dame’s carcass so that no one would ever find her, then the Opera House was the only shot and he would have to take all the risks it meant getting there. Now, standing in Gibson’s living room, he knew he could have taken her up the bush somewhere, up to one of the thickly timbered valleys in the Blue Mountains,- and buried her there; he could even have taken her up to the outskirts of the city, left her in the scrub somewhere right in the path of the bushfires that were raging: she’d have been no more than a blackened skeleton in no time. But somehow those ideas had never occurred to him that night. He was a stranger to anything ten miles inland from the heart of the city; he had been a water man all his life and physically and mentally he stayed by the water. He guessed it was some sort of animal instinct.

It would have been a bloody sight easier burying her up in the bush. He had driven out to Alexandria, stopped in a street where there were only factories dark and silent for the night, transferred the body from the back of the car to the boot, then driven back to Rushcutters Bay. He’d gone looking for a small boat, found one and quietly sculled it away through the school of yachts moored in the small bay. That had been easy. The long row out round Garden Island and back inshore below the Domain had been the tough bit. He had sweated all the way, not from the rowing but because he had been dead scared the water demons would appear. But finally he had made it, moored the boat beneath the steps, climbed up to the road, walked back through the Domain and caught a cab down outside the Woolloomooloo wharves. A girl there, doing no good with the merchant sailors, had tried to pick him up; she was probably still wondering why he had so savagely knocked her back, probably thought he was a queer or something. By the time the cab had dropped him back at his car at Rushcutters Bay it was almost midnight. He waited there another hour, chewing matches, sitting in the dark and beginning to wonder what he was going to do for cash now he was out of a job. He might have to go back to the game, doing over factories for whatever he could get out of them. A new game had started up over the past few months, bank hold-ups, but that didn’t appeal to him. You had to carry a gun for that and if ever the demons landed you and you had a gun on you, they saw you copped the lot when they got you into court. The bank jobs might give you cash in a hurry, but sooner or later you got caught. Whereas a good factory man, if he was careful, could go on forever.

At one o’clock he drove back to the Domain. Most of the lovers had had enough for the night; those blokes who hadn’t made it had given up and gone home and those that had had probably run out of steam. Two or three cars still remained, but anyone who was still at it at this hour wouldn’t be looking up to see what was going on outside their own bedroom in the back seat. He got the body out of the boot, but she was harder to carry now than when he had brought her out of the flat. She wasn’t completely cold yet, but she’d started to go stiff; he noticed when he lifted her head that her lower jaw was completely locked. He lifted her on to his shoulder,

cursing the silk dressing gown; he wondered for a moment if he ought to throw it away, then decided against it. He wasn’t squeamish, but he didn’t fancy the idea of handling her naked. He knew there were creeps who did women when they were dead, but he knew he’d never come to that. Maybe he was being bloody stupid, a real wowser, but dead women should have something on them. It was what his first wife, the silly bitch, would have called decent.

It was another hour before he’d got her hidden down in the basement of the Opera House. There had been a few moments when he could have done with some help, when it had taken all his strength to handle her up from the boat. He’d been stopped by no one, but once he’d had to hold the boat steady in under the pilings when a security guard came to a spot right above him and flashed his torch around. It had not been easy, just like he’d told Grafter, but now she was buried there in the Opera House, in her own private tomb, the biggest bloody mausoleum in the world, and like as not she’d stay there forever. There had been nothing in the papers so far about her being missing and it looked like no one was going to care. For all the world and Grafter Gibson knew, she’d gone back to Germany.

Gibson came out of the study with the check. “That finishes it. We shouldn’t hear another word out of her. Unless—” He drew back the check as Bixby reached for it. “You didn’t rough her up at all?”

Bixby was all innocence. “Why would I wanna do that? I told you, I hadda argue with her, but what woman don’t argue? I admit I told her something might happen to her, but soon’s I said that, she got the point right away. You won’t have to worry about her again, Grafter. She’s gone and gone for good.”

Gibson handed over the check. “All right. Now you go and you be gone for good, too. If ever I hear you’re hanging

around any of my boats, I’ll have the police down on you before you know what hit you.”

Bixby was going to make some threatening retort, but he abruptly thought better of it. The old bastard didn’t know it, but he held the whip handle; if ever he found out the girl had been killed, Old Grafter wouldn’t think twice about cracking that whip. “I told you, I’m going away. I’ll be gone by Tuesday.”

“Where are you thinking of going?”

Bixby grinned, put on the straw hat, ran his hand round the brim. “That depends, you know what I mean? I got some other business to attend to. If that pays off, I might even take a trip overseas.” He was at the door now, but he paused and looked back and around the living room. “You got a real nice set-up here, Grafter. Just shows how far you can go when you’re smart, don’t it?”

“Yes,” said Gibson. “Just keep it in mind.”

“I’m working for the Aboriginals this Christmas,” said the young girl, clanking her gold bracelet, the lucky charm of the Darling Point tribe. “It’s my conscience, darling. And I want to learn to throw a boomerang.”

“A queer jockey?” said the Wahroonga matron. “But how do the poor horses like that?”

“Cost me seven thousand dollars,” said the grazier down from the country. “The wife thinks money is vulgar—until she wants some.”

“It’s just my bloody luck to be right-hand man to a left-handed boss,” said the young executive.

Walter Helidon moved among the shrapnel of the cocktail chatter. The Christmas charity party was being held at the Royal South Shore golf club and in those rare moments when he looked back to his beginnings he marvelled that he was a

member of the club. As a boy he had caddied here, but that had been over thirty years ago; the members he had caddied for were either dead or too old now to remember the tow-headed boy named Wally. In those days the club had had as many restrictions as any royal household; it revelled in its Royal title as if it had been made part of the King’s own domain. Applicants for membership were scanned as if they were to be honoured with a barony; the blackball was holed in one more frequently than the golf ball. Overnight-rich men were barred, as were professional turf men such as trainers and jockeys, foreigners who were not diplomats, and Jews: there had been several cases of apoplexy when a Jew had been named as Governor-General of the country and the club had had to entertain a Yid as the Royal representative. Restrictions had eased somewhat since those days, but election to membership was still difficult. Walter Helidon had been elected because someone on the committee had suggested that the club never knew when a member who was a Cabinet Minister might not be an asset. Helidon had been delighted to accept the nomination and was now doing his best to reduce his handicap from 30 to 28. As a youth, playing in a caddies’ competition, he had gone round the course in six over par, but he never boasted of that now and was only glad that his name had never figured among the prizewinners of the competition.