The Greenwich Apartments (2 page)

The window in the front room was covered with an old Holland blind. Suddenly, the light bulb hanging from the ceiling blew and the room went dark. I lifted the blind and felt the dry, old fabric crack and tear as it moved. It hadn't been lifted for a long time. Light from the courtyard where Carmel Wise had died seeped into the room.

I went into the bathroom, removed the bulb from the light fitting there and replaced the blown one in the front room. I took the boxes off the director's chair and sat down facing the TV. I sniffed the air. Dry, the flat didn't have any problems with damp which was no doubt good for the videos. No recent cooking or smoking but no recently opened windows either. No radio, no stereo, no old-time dance records. It looked as if all anyone had ever done in this place was watch the box, drink China tea and instant coffee and maybe talk on the telephone. It made no sense, there had to be more.

I got up and checked the rooms again. It was the cassettes that had thrown me off. Bright covers and dull; Gothic script and computer print; VHS, Super, Stereo 2000. They took all the attention. They made the mind wander off onto thoughts of Hollywood and J. Arthur Rank. But under the bed, down there with the dust and fluff, were three large, strapped-up and locked-tight suitcases. I dragged them out.

‘If you're full of videos,' I said to them, ‘I'm off the case.' It was a joke of a sort, better than no joke at all and I sniggered. The place was getting to me;
the plastic jumble offended my orderly mind. I liked the suitcases a lot better. I even liked them being locked. Professional skills to be called into play. Hardy earns his dough again.

Two of the suitcases were matched, the third was the odd man out—similar in size, good quality leather, slightly different in style. I started with that. The lock yielded easily to a small blade on my pocket knife. In Beirut you'd have to think about booby traps. This wasn't Beirut. I flipped open the lid and the mass of clothes and papers and books lifted as the pressure came off. I put the clothes—a man's jacket, several pairs of trousers, a couple of sweaters and shirts, socks, underwear, sandals and shoes—aside and looked at the other stuff. There were a couple of paper-back novels, some magazines, a pocket-sized spiral-bound notebook like my own, bills and receipts, bus and train tickets, the stubs of movie tickets, supermarket checkout dockets. The detritus of a modern city life but, as far as I could tell from a quick look, nothing with a name on it. There were also two fat manila envelopes, quarto size, filled with black and white photographs and negatives. Another manila envelope bulged with toothpaste, a toothbrush, shaving cream and a couple of disposable razors.

I examined the clothing. It would have fitted a man two inches smaller than me, say around five foot ten, and about a stone lighter, around eleven stone. It was all off the rack stuff, medium quality, worn but not worn out. There were no name tags, no laundry marks, and there was nothing in any of the pockets.

The matched cases would have been tougher to open; the locks were better made, with tricky sliding covers on them. But the keys were tied to the handles with light string. The first one I opened was full of women's clothes and shoes; the second contained
more clothes plus a couple of handbags and purses. There were toilet articles, makeup, tampons, hairpins and all the other things that make a woman's bathroom cupboard different from a man's. The clothes were better quality than the man's; they had been worn less frequently and were better cared for. They were also more exotic.

I called them Mr and Mrs Greenwich in my imagination. Mr G. had nothing you couldn't buy and wear in Sydney; Mrs G. had some Thai silk scarves, some embroidered and beaded things that looked foreign, and a pale blue sari.

I got cramped squatting on the floor in the bedroom so I carried the handbags and purses and all the man's personal things out to the kitchen and put them on the table. The water was running and the gas was connected. Instant coffee, Cliff? Why not? Black? Fine. I sipped the coffee and dumped the contents of the purses out on the table. The woman was Mrs Greenwich no longer. She was Tania Hester Bourke, born Sydney, 6 May 1950,168 centimetres tall, 55 kilos, brown hair, brown eyes, no visible scars. She had been licensed to drive in the state of New South Wales in 1980, had a Bankcard and an American Express card as befitted an Air Pacific hostess, and went to a dentist in Macquarie Street. All this came from the first and most obvious things I poked through. If I'd really dug I could probably have got to her HSC results and her first
Cosmo
subscription. There was a passport, cheque books, bank statements, parking tickets, the lot.

The coffee was foul. I emptied it into the sink and spread out a batch of the photographs. About half of the selection showed houses, boats and beaches without people—empty, deserted scenes probably caught in the early morning. The others were the exact opposite—people in rooms and on the same boats and beaches. People playing games, drinking,
talking. Nothing indiscreet. Maybe some of the cigarettes were more Griffith than Virginia but that's hardly a crime nowadays. One photograph showed a familiar face circled in red by a felt-tip pen. A woman's face, turned to the camera, one among a smiling group around a table. I turned the picture over; sure enough, that name again—‘Tania', printed in block capitals with the same pen.

All this needed leisurely inspection. I could get Helen Broadway's opinion on the woman's things and perhaps get a lead on the man. I could try to identify the houses, boats and beaches. Lots to do, clues to follow, lives to construct. What I do best. I realised that it was getting late and that a drink would be welcome. Promising start, time to go. I could take some of the stuff with me and come back for the rest later. I found a green plastic garbage bag in the kitchen and dumped the handbags, a selection of the makeup, the photographs and Mr G.'s bits and pieces into it; folded up, I could easily carry it under one arm. I tossed in a pair of gold sandals with high heels and thin straps just for luck and went through to the front room.

It occurred to me that nothing I'd done so far had any obvious connection with the video girl. Evidence about her was scattered all over the room. I put my bundle down and took a closer look at the videos. Among the pre-recorded cassettes, European, British, American and Australian, were a lot of tapes for home recording. The names of movies presumably taped from TV were printed on the boxes—
The Left Hand of God, Marked Woman, The Running Man
—none of my favourites. I'd seen
The Running Man
way back, at a drive-in with my soon-to-be wife (later to be my ex-wife), Cyn. I saw it again on TV by accident. In it Laurence Harvey does the worst Australian accent in the history of the cinema. I couldn't understand why anyone
would want to tape it. For the hell of it, maybe to get a laugh at the accent, I put the cassette into the recorder and hit Play. It was worse than I'd thought—a long, boring sequence with some people seen on a boat at a distance. Barely focused. Arty. I hit Stop and picked up my bundle.

I was tired of the place, depressed by it and wanted to leave, but something was nagging at me, holding me back. I looked around noticing nothing new. Then the telephone rang, or rather emitted some of those electronic beaps that make you think you're out there with Spock on the
Enterprise.
I lifted the receiver and waited.

‘Who's there?' a voice said—female, not young.

That's what I should be saying,
I thought, but I said nothing.

‘Who are you?' the voice said.

Hard to come up with an answer to that. What would someone good and comforting say? What would Phillip Adams say?

‘Are you crazy? Lifting the blind and turning on the light in there? Do you want to be killed too?'

‘You're talking about Carmel Wise,' I said, trying to sound like Phillip Adams.

‘Yes. Don't you know they're watching the place most of the time? They're probably watching it now?'

‘Who's they, Madam?'

‘Who …?'

Press a bit harder, Cliff.
‘I work for the owner of the Greenwich Apartments, Madam. Would you mind telling me who you are.'

‘I don't want to get involved.'

You are involved,
I thought. That's what everyone always says and it's true. Doesn't do to say so, though. Back to Phillip Adams. ‘Please tell me …'

‘No, nothing! Just be careful!' She slammed the
phone down so hard I winced and pulled the receiver from my ear. Then I dropped the envelopes and other things. I realised that I was standing opposite the window, in the middle of a frame like a TV news reader. I dropped to my knees and gathered up the papers. Then it seemed like a good idea to stay down there while I thought of a next move. Through the door, gun up, eyes blazing? The problem with that was I didn't have a gun with me. It made more sense to crawl across the floor to the window, knocking aside video cassettes as I went, and to sneak a look out into the courtyard.

Nothing had changed out there. Could be gunmen in the adjacent buildings, could be someone small crouched down behind the pedestal with an Uzi. I didn't think so. What I
did
know was that there was someone around who knew the telephone number of flat one and was concerned enough to ring it when she saw a light. From how many windows could that be done? That sort of inquiry would have to wait. The job now was to get home with my goodies.

I turned off the lights, pulled down the broken blind and opened the door. No-one lurking in the lobby. I patted my pocket. Yep, still got the key. Out into the courtyard, out into a cool night with the leaves of the plane trees rustling in a light breeze. Traffic noise from a distance and music somewhat closer. No shots, loud or silenced. I started across the courtyard to the lane and jumped a foot in the air as there was a rushing sound behind me. I almost dropped the envelopes again but it was just a jogger—a tall, thin jogger with headband, singlet and shorts and light, slapping feet.

‘Hi,' he said. ‘Sorry to startle you.' For an awful moment I thought he was going to be one of those who jog on the spot while they talk to you. Mustn't lose the aerobic effect whatever you do. But he just lifted
his hand and loped off down the lane.

I said, ‘That's okay, have a nice run,' and followed him unaerobically. I stopped at the wine bar in Bayswater Road and had a drink. I had no trouble getting a place at the bar—the place must have been number three on the ‘spots to be seen at' list.

N
EXT
morning I watched Helen while she made the coffee. She wore a red kimono-style dressing gown and looked terrific. She didn't feel terrific though—I could tell from the emphasis she gave to her movements. The cups hit the bench like sharp left jabs.

‘You don't want me here, Cliff,' she said.

‘You're wrong. I do want you.'

The percolator hissed and she went to the fridge for milk. ‘Didn't feel like it last night. You hardly spoke and that was a perfunctory fuck.'

‘I'm sorry.'

‘Don't be sorry. Explain to me.'

‘Explain what?'

She filled the cups and we sat down side by side at the bench. I put my arm around her and she let it stay there. She liked physical contact at the worst of times, so do I. It doesn't deflect her from her purpose though. ‘When I come down from the bush to start the six months with you it's fine at first. Lovely for the first day, terrific for the next couple of days. You know why?'

I sipped. ‘Tell me.'

‘You're on holiday. When you go back to work it all changes. You close down. You go somewhere else. I get the fag-end of you.' She lit a Gitane. She smoked one a day, sometimes after lunch, sometimes after dinner; rarely first thing in the morning.

‘It's difficult,' I said. ‘The work's so shitty in some ways. Other parts of it I like more than anything else I've ever done.'

‘Mm.' She smoked and drank coffee. ‘I know all about men liking what they do.' Helen's husband, Michael Broadway, ran a vineyard and farm up on the north coast. According to Helen, he worked all through the daylight hours and fixed machinery and did laboratory tests at night. Seven days a week. They had a twelve-year-old daughter and a two-year-old arrangement—Helen spent six months on the farm and six months with me.

‘I must meet up with Michael,' I said. ‘We seem to be getting more alike all the time. Maybe that's a function of the arrangement. We should do an article for
Forum
.'

She touched my hand and I could feel her wedding ring. ‘Don't get bitter, Cliff. We're talking, okay?'

‘Okay.'

‘Tell me about what you're doing.'

‘Yes, Well, maybe you'll see what I mean. This girl got shot a week or so ago. I'm looking into it for her father. There's all kinds of strange angles.'

‘Shot?'

‘Shot dead. See? It's hard to come home and be … normal with that in the background. I have to think about it and …'

‘I understand. Well, I've been thinking about it since you rolled off last night.'

‘Come on, Helen …'

‘It's all right. I'm going to get a place of my own.'

‘Jesus!'

‘Don't carry on. In this street if I can. Close by, anyway. I'll butt right into whatever you're doing and it can go to bloody hell if need be. I'll have that right. Otherwise you can be with me when you want to be and need to be. It'll be better. Not domestic. You'll like it.'

Like it?
I thought. Like another failed relationship? But maybe she was right. ‘You're incredible.' I kissed her and she turned her face and kissed me
back, hard. She smelled of coffee and tobacco and what two things ever went together better than those?

‘I love Sydney and I love you. I'll have both. It'll work.'