Helga's Web (35 page)

“I don’t know. But whatever it does to her, it’ll be the last hurt I’ll ever give her. There’s Margaret, you see. I think I’ve already lost her. I’m not sure, but I think so. She never writes to me, only to her mother. You can sometimes get over losing your wife—” Sometimes, but not always: not the wife you would love till the day you died. But Silver was not Margaret’s mother; and he knew now, had finally accepted it, that Silver was gone forever. From now on there had to be only Josie. “You don’t get over losing a daughter. Or a son, I guess. I’m standing up on my hind legs again—for Margaret, I suppose, as much as anything. If ever she comes back to Sydney and she sees that her mother and I are trying to make a go of it, that I’m only half the bastard I used to be—well—” He turned his hands over on the wheel in a gesture of supplication to a God in whom he didn’t believe; but there was some fate, something, in which you finally had to place your faith. “You never know. In time she may regret losing me as much as I’ve regretted losing her.”

The two men sat there in a silence that had nothing to do with the quietness of the street outside the car. They were like explorers who had come across each other in an alien country: their discovery of each other was made suspicious by the surface familiarity. Each knew he had found more in the other than he had been looking for and they were embarrassed by it: one did not look for bonuses in a relationship that had been closer to enmity than friendship. A car came slowly down the street, the two youths and two girls in it peering out at the names of the flats: Ideal Haven, Beauview Hall—“There it is!” The car jerked to a halt and the four young people fell out and ran into Paradise (the rest of the name, Court or Hall, had fallen off the front of the flats: even Paradise was jerry-built). A dog chased a cat across the road, suddenly lost interest in the pursuit, came back, raised a leg against the front wheel of the Jaguar, then trotted on down the street. A man and a woman came out of the flats where Bixby lived and went down towards the beach, carrying a low-voiced argument between them like something of which they were ashamed. A television set suddenly blared somewhere—“Thirteen people died today in bushfires”—and at once the street seemed to come alive. The evening meal was over: time for television, for argument, for going out. People came out, got into cars, roared off down the street, racing to God knew what destinations. Children came out to escape the heat of their homes, ran around in the only slightly less stuffy heat of the evening. It’s another country, thought Gibson; not snobbishly but only because he was suddenly lonely for Glenda.

“Let’s go home, Jack/’

They rode home without any talk between them; yet each man felt that at last there was some communication between them. Neither of them might ever admit it and the tenuous contact might die for want of further understanding; but each man rode back to Point Piper nursing his own small discovery of the other. Explorers of wider continents than a single man had returned home with less.

Just before he got out of the car Gibson said, “Can you have lunch with me tomorrow?”

Savanna hid his surprise: Gibson had never before invited him even to have a drink. “What time?”

“One o’clock. The Union Club.” Gibson had achieved membership of the citadel of the Establishment during the war years when, as a wounded hero and a pioneer from New Guinea, he had been admitted because the club committee had thought it would be unpatriotic not to do so. By the time they had realized the true side of him, his vulgarity, his don’t-give-a-damn-for-anyone and his financial skulduggery, he was too rich and powerful to be disbarred without causing a scandal. But if his connection with the murder of Helga Brand ever came out into the open, he would certainly be asked to resign. He wouldn’t miss the club, since he had no friends there, had no friends anywhere; but he might as well get as much as he could out of his membership subscription while it lasted. “You ever been there?”

“My father used to belong to it.”

Gibson raised an eyebrow, then grinned. “Your point, Jack. He probably belonged there more than I do. Goodnight. Don’t lose any sleep over Bixby.”

I shan’t sleep, Savanna thought: that’s asking too much. But it won’t be Bixby who’ll keep me awake. There are too many other figures in my nightmares. Including myself.

Friday,December 13

Walter Helidon saw the calendar as soon as he opened his eyes in the morning. It was a small day-by-day calendar in a silver-plated frame, a Christmas present from Norma; the frame also held a small notepad and a silver pencil. He raised his head from the pillow and saw his nervous scrawl on the pad: Bixby will call office at 4:30.

Norma came into the bedroom carrying a breakfast tray. She was in her dressing gown and had done her hair, but he noticed she wore no make-up. Normally she put on powder and lipstick as soon as she got up in the morning; in one of their more acrimonious moments he had once told her that a woman’s unmade-up face at breakfast was less appetizing than cold soggy toast. But this morning it did not trouble him and he was just glad she was there.

‘Tve had mine. Did you want something more than toast and coffee?”

He shook his head, took the glass of apple juice she handed  him and gulped it down like a man dying of thirst. He drank the juice every morning, not really liking it, because he had read in the Medical pages of Time that it acted as an anticoagulant against the previous day’s intake of cholesterol. He had never bothered to check with a doctor if the claim was true; like most men who hated strenuous exercise he was prepared to accept any easy way to health. This morning he would have gulped down hemlock with the same thirst. He had woken from the worst night he had ever spent, lost in nightmare country, to a day that, if superstition meant anything, promised no better.

“You haven’t eaten a proper meal for two days. You can’t go on like this, darling.”

“I’d just get the heaves if I tried anything solid.” He spread his toast with honey straight from the comb, another health food: he couldn’t remember what it was supposed to do. “It’s no use, dark I won’t be able to eat a good meal till all this is over.”

“When will that be?” She sounded resigned, as if she knew what his answer would be.

“God knows.”

“Do you think Bixby was the one who killed—her?” She couldn’t bring herself to say Helga: it sounded too familiar, as if she had accepted the girl as part of her own and Walter’s life.

“I don’t know,” he said despairingly. “He could have. He probably did. But what do we do? Ring up the police and put them on to him?”

“Why not?”

But there was no hope in her voice and he recognized it. “Darl, all we can do is pray he’ll be satisfied with the money he wants this afternoon.”

“I haven’t prayed in years. I’ve forgotten how to.”

“Well, hope, then. I don’t know how to pray, either. Unless they’re the same thing.”

“Do you think he might not call this afternoon? I mean, he didn’t call you on Monday when he was supposed to—”

“He’ll call, all right.” He put down the toast and honey after taking one mouthful.

He had waited all day Monday for Bixby to call; then all day Tuesday and still no call. He had begun to believe that Bixby had lost his nerve and decided not to go through with the blackmail threat; but, just in case, he had brought home the ten thousand dollars and put them in the safe behind the big wall mirror. There had still been no call from Bixby by the time he had left the Assembly on Wednesday and by then he had been convinced he had nothing more to fear from the man.

He had come home Wednesday evening with an almost jaunty relief; he had even been looking forward to taking Norma to the police widows’ charity dinner, the sort of function he normally abhorred. They could decently escape from it at ten o’clock, then go on to the Silver Spade, where he had had his secretary book a table. Tony Bennett was singing there and he was Norma’s favourite; he would request Tony to sing C’est Si Bon, which was her favourite song. It would be like old times, the sort of times middle-aged married couples so rarely recaptured.

Then he had reached home and the two detectives, Malone and Clements, had been there.

When they had gone he had sunk into the leather chair. Norma came back into the room, sat down in the red empress chair, looked down at her hands clasped in her lap and said without looking up, “Did you know she was dead?”

“How would I have known? God, darl, do you think I could have kept that from you?”

“You kept it from me about you and her being—” She shook her head. Then she looked up. “Wally-?”

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“No, not nothing,” he said more harshly than he had intended; he could feel himself trembling, coming apart inside. “What were you going to ask me?”

“No, you couldn’t have—” Her hands writhed in her lap like snakes’ heads battling each other to death.

“You were going to ask me if I had killed her. Jesus Christ, darl, do you think I’m capable of murder?” He dropped his pipe into the ashtray beside him. His hand clawed at the arm of the chair, his nails scraping against the leather. He stared across at his wife sitting in the chair where Helga, his mistress, had sat only—how long ago was it? It could have been only last night or it could have been a year ago; the image of her came and went in his mind like a tide, sometimes so close he could feel and smell her, other times so distant as to be no more than a ghost. And as he gazed now at his wife she, too, seemed to retreat, became a ghost. He leaned forward, reached out a hand to her: she came back, became real again. “Darl, I couldn’t have killed her! No matter what she was going to do to us—I couldn’t have killed her!”

Norma got up from her chair, crossed to him, took his head in her arms and pressed his face against her bosom. He leaned forward into her, putting his arms round her waist, and began to weep. She, too, began to cry. They were locked together like that in an agony of despair when they heard the footsteps of the maid on the tiles of the entrance hall.

“Signora? Oh, scusi—”

“No, it’s all right, Rosa.” Norma moved away from her husband, wiped her eyes with a handkerchief. “Mr. Helidon and I—we just heard of the death of an—an old friend.”

“Oh, signora, I am so sorry—” The maid had lost her embarrassment at once; she had the Italian affinity for grief, understood the emotional release of tears. “You will not be going out, then?”

“Yes.” Helidon’s voice was again unintentionally harsh. He stood up and felt his legs ready to collapse beneath him;

he held on to the back of his chair like an old man. “We’ll be going, Rosa. We have to—” The last sentence was addressed to Norma. Her face was blank for a moment, then she understood and nodded.

“Lay out my things, Rosa. Mr. Helidon and I will go to the dinner.”

The maid uttered more condolences on the death of their old friend, then went through into the bedroom. As she did so the phone rang in the study. Helidon walked stiff-legged through into the smaller room and picked up the phone. Norma followed him to the doorway, stood there waiting as if she expected every phone call from now on to concern both of them, to be important to them.

This one was: “Helidon? It’s your mate here. Sorry I ain’t been on to you before. I hadda go outa town Monday unexpectedly.”

“What sent you?” The rasp in Helidon’s voice was intentional this time; he felt the gathering of an unexpected strength. He motioned to Norma to come into the study and close the door. “You read about Helga’s murder?”

There was just a moment’s silence on the line: “Don’t start talking like that, sport. How would I know about that? It ain’t even in the papers tonight. It’s just come over on the news. That’s the first I heard of it.”

“It was in the papers on Monday, when they found her down at the Opera House.” The clipping of her death had been lying on his desk for two days and he had not known it was Helga. Again there was the feeling of sadness, of something lost forever. Then he saw Norma looking at him with pain and fear in her eyes, and he tasted his treachery like bile.

“I read that bit, but I never connected it with Helga. It didn’t mention her name, like. Not till tonight’s news on the radio and TV.” There was another short silence; then Bixby

said, “I was coming to see you tonight. Got as far as your front gate. Then I seen you had visitors.”

“Where are you now?”

“It don’t matter. I’m not gunna come and see you now, not tonight, anyway. Did you get the money on Monday?”

“Yes.” Helidon’s legs were still weak; he sat down at the desk. But there was nothing wrong with his voice now: “You don’t sound very upset about—about Helga’s murder. Not for an old friend.”

“I ain’t laughing about it, sport, you know what I mean? I ain’t the weepy sort, but I’m gunna miss her.” Again there was the silence. Then: “I’d just like five minutes alone with the bastard who done her in. Wouldn’t you?”

Helidon looked at his wife standing with her back pressed against the door: aged, afraid and all he had left in the world.

“No,” he said. “Now what do you want? Are you still thinking of blackmail?”

“What’s to change my mind?”

“Well— this. What’s happened to Helga.”

Something that could have been a chuckle or a bad connection came over the wire. “I don’t think she’d want me to back out now. Someone will have to buy a headstone for her. You wouldn’t want her buried in a pauper’s grave, would you?”

“You bastard,” said Helidon, and almost wept again. Norma crossed from the door and put her hand on his shoulder; he could feel the clutch of her fingers through his jacket. He looked up at her and shook his head; but, thankfully, he saw she misunderstood the reason for the pain in his face.

“I’ll call you tomorrow, Helidon. At your office, sometime after lunch. If you’ve got the money, hang on to it, don’t take it back to the bank. It’ll be safe enough till I come for it. Hooroo, sport. It’s a shame about Helga, but I wouldn’t lose too much sleep about it. You still got your missus.”