Free Open File by Peter Corris Page A

way back. I didn’t care—it seemed like a fitting sealer to a strange day that had started out well with Kathy and taken some strange twists and turns after that. Not that unusual. I dumped almost everything I’d been wearing for the past two days in the washing machine and set it running. I went to bed to read about the convicts and their masters, who’d probably built some of the houses at Rose Bay.
     
    I was showered but not shaved, wearing a threadbare terry towelling dressing gown I was fond of, buttering my toast, coffee in the mug, when a hammering came on the door and the bell rang. Toast in hand, I went to answer it. About the only people I know of who wear ties with business shirts and black leather jackets are cops.
    ‘Mr Hardy?’
    I nodded. He showed his warrant card. ‘Detective Sergeant Ian Watson, Northern Command. I have to ask you some questions.’
    ‘I hope I have the answers. Come on in.’ I said this quickly and turned away so that he had a choice—follow me in or call me back. His response would give me an idea of the seriousness of whatever was going on. I assumed it was to do with my shielding of Paul Hampshire. Serious, but not too serious.
    ‘Please come back, Mr Hardy. I don’t want to enter your home.’
    Uh-oh, serious then.
I came back—but Hardy’s rule is never give an inch.
    ‘House, Sergeant,’ I said. ‘Around here we have houses. Homes are on the North Shore and in the eastern suburbs.’
    He was about my size and age and holding together pretty well except that, like me, he showed signs of facial damage and some professional hard yards. He put his card away and gave me a look that told me my jibe hadn’t touched him.
    ‘I was told you were difficult. Right. I’ll see you in the detectives’ room at the Glebe station in half an hour. If you’re not there I’ll show you how difficult I can be.’
    ‘What’s it about?’
    But he’d turned away and was already at the gate. He hadn’t stumbled over the lifting tiles on the porch or the sagging cement blocks on the path. He left the gate open. I judged he’d won the first round on points.
    I ate the toast, drank some coffee, shaved and turned on Radio National to get the weather. It was going to be warm and stay that way until a late cool change. I put on drilltrousers, battered Italian loafers and a denim shirt worn to a comfortable thinness. Clothes maketh the man—relaxed, innocent. But I phoned Viv Garner, my solicitor, who lived in Lilyfield and spent very little time in his office, and asked him to stand by in case I needed him.
    ‘What now?’ Viv said.
    ‘I don’t know, I honestly don’t know.’
     
    I’ve been in the Glebe police station more times than I can count and much more often than I wanted to. I can only remember one time when it did me any good—when my car was stolen and the police got it back. Otherwise, it was an exercise in mutual distrust and antagonism. I walked there, presented myself more or less on time, and was taken upstairs to the detectives’ room. It smelled of cigarette smoke, hamburgers and take-out coffee. The Glebe boys had cleared a desk for Watson in a corner, giving him something like semi-privacy.
    I sat down while he flicked through a notepad. Then he shook a card out of a paper evidence bag and let it fall right-side-up on the desk between us.
    ‘This is yours,’ he said.
    I had to turn my head a little. ‘Yes.’
    He used a pen to slide it across the surface and back into the bag. ‘When did you last see Angela Pettigrew?’
    I shook my head. ‘No, Sergeant, I’m not going to come at that. You tell me why I’m here, why you have my card in an evidence bag, or I walk out and phone my solicitor.’
    ‘Worth a try,’ he said, and nodded to one of the Glebe detectives who’d been watching with some amusement. ‘Angela Pettigrew was murdered some time yesterday.’
    No matter how or when or how often it happens, learning that someone you know has died makes