Helga's Web (32 page)

Puzzled, she said, “Who is it?” Then her face flushed. “It’s not her, is it?”

He shook his head. “Some man.” He took his hand away from the mouthpiece. “I’m not interested in what you have. You can tell Miss Brand to—”

“To go to hell?” The voice chuckled. “She’s gone back to Germany, sport. She ain’t innarested in you any more.”

“Then why did she leave you her diary?” Helidon saw his wife’s head jerk up.

“She owed me a favour I done her. But don’t let’s get into any long natter over the blower. You have a boat, Mr. Helidon, it’s moored off the Yacht Club. Wuddia say I meet you on her tomorra morning, say ten o’clock? And don’t bring

anyone with you.” The voice hardened. “You couldn’t prove anything right now against me. But I got a lot here might worry you. See you at ten.”

The phone went dead in Helidon’s ear. Slowly he put the instrument back on the bed table, stared at his wife sitting naked and middle-aged on the bed beside him. “More blackmail,” he said, and wanted to weep. “It’s not over at all. A long way from over, indeed.”

Saturday , December 7

Bixby saw the blue Mercedes come down the narrow street and swing into the parking lot of the Yacht Club. He walked across as Walter Helidon, in dark glasses, blazer and linen slacks, impeccably dressed even as a victim, got out of the car.

“G’day, Mr. Helidon. Right on time.”

Helidon looked at the big, rough-looking character in the red checked shirt, blue trousers and fancy-banded straw hat. A race-course urger, he thought: what would Helga have been doing with a man like this? “What’s your name? That’s the first thing I want to know before we start talking.”

“I don’t think you need to know that—”

“That’s where you’re wrong.” The dark glasses hid the anxiety he felt; this man looked capable of physical violence and Helidon had alwavs been afraid of violence. But he was in control of his voice and he did his best to get into control

of the situation. “If this thing goes as far as you seem to think it’s going to—”

“How’s that?”

“Blackmail. That’s what you’re after, isn’t it? I’m not going to pay out money to someone whose name I don’t know.”

“You’ve decided to come good with the cash, then?”

“I didn’t say that—” Helidon’s voice rose a little.

“Don’t get excited, sport. Let’s go out to your boat. We wanna keep this calm, you know what I mean? That’s the shot, eh?”

The club house and moorings were as busy as a cormorants’ nest site. Weekend sailors were preparing their boats; some yachts were already nosing out towards the broader waters of the harbour. No one took any notice of Helidon and the tough-looking man with him as the two of them went out in one of the club’s runabouts; everyone, even a Cabinet Minister, lost rank here at the weekend and became no more than someone indulging his favourite sport. The man in the red shirt, if he was noticed at all, was taken for a tradesman going to do some work on Helidon’s yacht. Helidon was known as a soft-hands sailor: he had never been known to scrub a deck or wind a rope.

“Nice craft you got here.” Bixby clambered aboard the yacht. She was an ocean cruiser-racer based upon a successful Sydney yacht, Freya: a 39-foot craft with an 11-foot beam that Helidon had bought with the vague idea of entering her in the annual Sydney-Hobart race, but so far he had taken her no more than ten miles out to sea and had been sick most of the time. But a gale would have made him no sicker than he was now on this smooth backwater of the harbour. “Must of set you back a fair packet.”

“We didn’t come out here to talk about the price of my boat.” Helidon took off his blazer and sat down. The sun, criss-crossed by gulls, blazed down and he was wishing he had brought a hat with him; if this talk went on too long he

was going to get badly burnt from the glare off the water. He should have cut the talk short back at the parking lot, got into his car and driven off. He had already lost a tactical point by coming out here; it conceded that he was willing to listen to this man’s proposition. He tried for some authority: “Get to the point. But first, what’s your name?”

Bixby hesitated, then gave his name. He had never pulled a job like this before and he wondered if other jokers who went in for blackmail kept their names out of it. But if he played his cards carefully this bloke Helidon would have nothing on him. “Helga told me you’d already paid her some cash.”

Helidon remembered the check for a thousand dollars which Helga had torn up and thrown in his face. His bank had not called him this week to query him on the deposit of a pieced-together check. And if Helga had already gone back to Germany, as this chap had said last night on the phone, then it was pretty obvious she was not going to try to cash the check. “You’re wrong there. I paid her nothing.”

Bixby sensed the assurance in the other man’s voice. For just a moment he lost his own confidence; then he remembered the diary in his hip pocket. The entries were straight enough: a bloke couldn’t misunderstand them. “I told you, sport, Helga left me her diary.”

“Why did she do that? How well did you know her?”

“Ah, we were old friends, sorta.”

“Were you the pimp who ran her?” Helidon realized his mistake at once.

“Oh, you admit you knew what game she was in? No, I wasn’t her ponce. Like I said, I was just a friend. Not even one of her customers. But you were, weren’t you? Pretty regular, too. Every Monday and Thursday.” Bixby had been looking carefully at Helidon in his dark glasses and now he remembered the man he had seen going into Helga’s flat last

Monday afternoon. “Did you say goodbye to her last Monday?”

Helidon said nothing, wondering how much this man knew. He could not see Bixby as a friend of Helga’s, she had been so fastidious and highly critical of certain types of Australian men; but then he had read that whores often sought as friends men entirely different from their clients, and maybe Helga’s kink had run to having someone like this lout. He was as big and crude as a bull and maybe that was what she had wanted. He felt a sudden angry embarrassment, as if he had proved sexually inadequate. Knowing his own fastidiousness and, yes, his lack of stamina, it could have been part of her bitchy revenge that she should have exposed him to a man like this. But why had she so suddenly decided to leave for Europe?

Bixby grinned. “Never mind what you said to her. I seen you going into her flat last Monday. I was gunna call on her m’self, but when I seen you I went away and give you your time. What did you say to her? She made up her mind pretty quick to go back to Germany.”

A yacht slid by, its auxiliary engine ticking over, its crew freeing the sails for quick raising as soon as they were out far enough to catch what breeze there was on the water. The skipper of the yacht waved to Helidon. “Don’t look so glum, Walter! There’ll be a nor’-easter this afternoon—plenty of good sailing!”

Helidon forced a smile and waved back. He rubbed the top of his scalp, feeling the sun biting in through his thinning hair, and looked back at Bixby. “I didn’t say anything to her, nothing that would have caused her to hare off to Europe the way she appears to have done. Are you sure you didn’t say something to her?”

Bixby spread his hands. “Why me? Her and I got on very well. We were always doing favours for each other.” He took a match from his shirt pocket, began to chew on it. “No, all

she said was that you were coming back with some cash for her/’ He had memorized everything in the diary that had anything to do with Helidon, beginning with the name, address and phone number among the list of other names, addresses and phone numbers at the beginning of the small book. His mind was not subtle, but like the minds of many habitual liars he could turn fiction into fact in his own imagination. Her diary had said: Walter came this afternoon. Is coming back with the money. That was as good as talking to her, wasn’t it? He kept her alive in his mind till she would have told him all about Helidon that he would want to know. “Did you go back and see her?”

“Yes, but—When did she tell you all this?”

“She rung me Monday evening, after you’d been there the first time.” He had caught Helidon’s slip; the bastard had given himself away. He’d just have to watch he didn’t do the same thing himself; watch out for the old tongue. “I picked her up, took her out for a drink. She said then she was gunna go back to Germany. Then she gimme the diary, said I oughta get in touch with you. I rung her the next morning when I’d read the diary, but she’d gone. Did you give her the money she asked for?”

“I did,” Helidon said abruptly, taking a chance that Helga had not confided too much in this brute. “It was probably what she used to go back to Europe.”

“How much was it?”

Then she hadn’t told him. “That’s between me and her, I think.”

Bixby chewed on his match, then dropped it between his feet. “Yeah, I guess so. What we’re really talking about is what’s between you and me. I think it’d be worth a fair bit to you to keep your name outa the papers, wouldn’t it?”

“One question,” said Helidon. “Did you and Helga have a fight about anything?”

Bixby managed a look of surprise. “Me? Fight with her?

Why?”

“Nothing.” Then who had wrecked Helga’s flat? That is, if this chap was telling the truth; and Helidon could not be sure whether he was or wasn’t. He had always prided himself on being able to read other men: the salesman who sells himself, as he had been doing all his life, has to know his market. But upset and frightened as he had been this past week, his perception had lost its edge: suspicion was a cracked prism through which to view anything, let alone the truth.

Bixby watched him for a moment, then looked about the yacht. “How much you say this set you back?”

Helidon had recovered. “I didn’t.”

Bixby grinned, feeling more confident every minute. “No, you didn’t. Well, I got a fair idea of boat prices. About fifty thousand dollars, I reckon. This your main pleasure, sport? I mean, besides girls?” He grinned again as he saw Helidon flush. “I’ll let you off light. How about ten thousand? You pay up and I’ll let you have Helga’s diary and you won’t hear another word from her or me.”

“Did she tell you to speak for her, too?”

Ah, you ain’t going to catch me that way, sport. But watch the tongue, Phil, watch the tongue. “No, she didn’t, come to think of it. But you think she’s gunna bother to come all the way back from Germany to bite you for a few more bucks? Not Helga, sport.”

Helidon took out his handkerchief, spread it over his burning scalp. He sat there like some placid red-faced old woman, only the dark glasses, like empty sockets, suggesting the death’s-head beneath the smooth plump skin. “How do I know I can trust you?”

“You don’t,” said Bixby, grinning cheerfully now. “But you’re a politician, you know nobody trusts anybody these days. You just gotta take the chances. If I give you the diary, what else will I have on you, see what I mean?”

Helidon thought quickly. He had never written Helga even a note, never put his name to any present he had given her, always paid her in cash each week. The only time he had ever signed his name—“I gave her a check for a thousand dollars. She tore it up. Where’s that?”

“I wouldn’t know about that.”

There had been just a moment’s pause before Bixby had answered: Helidon couldn’t be sure whether he was telling the truth or not. “What would you know about the other man who visited her on Monday? Didn’t she mention him, too?”

Bixby felt his nerve-ends beginning to tighten. “What bloke was that?”

“The one who wrecked her flat. Didn’t she mention him?”

“No, sport. If anyone wrecked her flat, it must of been after she left it.”

“But it was wrecked on Monday night!” Then Helidon realized his second mistake.

“Look, Helidon, let’s quit buggerizing about.” Bixby decided the only thing to do was ride right over this bastard and get out of here quick; the last thing he wanted to do was end up discussing last Monday night. “Helga didn’t mention anyone else but you. If someone else was there in her place and done it over, maybe it was another one of her customers working dirty water off his chest when he found out she wasn’t there. Some blokes are like that—they get very shirty when they don’t get their bit right when they’re expecting it.” He had been like that himself on one or two occasions; but he’d done over the trolls themselves rather than their flats. “Let’s get that ten thousand, I’ll give you the diary and we’ll call it quits.”

“I can’t get it for you this morning. You’ll have to wait till Monday, till the banks are open.”

Bixby ground his teeth, as if he still had a match between them. Jesus, Monday was going to be a bloody busy day for

him at the bank: cashing old Grafter’s check, cashing—no, wait a minute. “I don’t want a check, sport. I want it in cash.” “You’ll get it by check or nothing. As you said, why should I trust you? If I turned up with the cash I wouldn’t put it past you to knock me over the head and make off with the money and the diary. And then you’d be back for more. It’ll be a check, made out to cash if you like, but that’s as far as

rn g o.”

“You know, Helidon, you ain’t in a position to lay down the law about anything. I could finish you off, you know that?”

“I could finish you off, too, have you thought of that? I could call your bluff and turn up with the police on Monday. How would you like that?”

They sat there in the bright blue glare hurling threats at each other; but they were like two duellists, each of whom was not sure how many bullets were in the other’s gun. Bixby resorted to the weapon he knew best: “You do that, sport, and some time, sooner or later, you’ll get your head kicked in.”

Helidon recognized the real menace in Bixby’s voice. Suddenly he was afraid; sweat broke on him and streamed down his face. He took the handkerchief from his head and wiped his face with it; and as he did so he knew he had lost what little advantage he had, for the moment, gained over this thug. “All right. No police. It will still have to be made out to cash, though. I’ve got several appointments Monday. Come to my office at four-thirty.”