Free The Greenwich Apartments by Peter Corris Page B

worse. It doesn’t seem worth it.’
    â€˜I think you made a mistake coming here, Hardy.’
    â€˜I don’t think so. I enjoyed the show downstairs and the half Scotch. I enjoyed meeting Connelly. Hasn’t been a total loss. Let me tell you, Darcy, you’ve got a lot of admirers.’
    That
did
alarm him. ‘What does that mean?’
    â€˜Goodnight, Jackie,’ I said. I left them looking at each other as I crossed the room and opened the door. It wasn’t much of an exit line but it would have to do. At least I’d discomfited Darcy and made Jackie move her eyes. And I’d had a drink. I felt like an under-achiever, but the coat and bag suggested to me that Jackie wasn’t staying and therein lay possibilities.
    No sign of Connelly in the hall or on the stairs. A few spots of blood though. The glass had been cleaned up. I went through the club, where the dancers and drinkers had taken control again, and up the stairs to the street. Exits and extrances are a little hard to find in that part of the city. Buildings can lead from one into another and you can come out half a block from where you went in. Not so with the Champagne Cabaret though. I prowled around the block, checking lights and doors, and couldn’t see any cunning variations on in-at-the-front and out-through-the-back. I lurked in my car in the laneway behind the building and when Ricky Gay, wearing a leather jacket and jeans, was picked up by a fat man in a Mercedes sometime around 1 a.m., I was sure I was in the right place.
    They came out about half an hour later—Jackieand Connelly. She was wearing her trench coat and she trotted along as far away from Connelly as she could get. He looked around, stared at doorways or the steering wheels of cars. What he didn’t know was that if you want to watch a place from a car and you don’t want to be seen, you watch from the passenger seat or the back—where I was. They got into a white Volvo and headed east, Connelly driving.
    He drove cars better than he intimidated and I had trouble keeping in touch in the back streets as he wove through the light traffic and caught the amber lights. I managed it though and was nicely positioned behind a couple of other cars as he turned off on the Darling Point side of Rushcutters Bay Park. It’s top dollar country—big, well-maintained places crowding each other to compete for the fine view across the water to the city, and for the harbour breezes. And you could bet that any apartments would have security systems that’d hold up the SAS. More worrying were the cul-de-sacs which are common around there. Try following someone down a dead-end street and not look conspicuous and see how far you get. But the Volvo didn’t get into the short streets with the blank endings; it turned into the heartland of the Point where the streets twist and turn but all go somewhere. It stopped in front of a big apartment block positioned between two mansions which were hidden behind palm trees and other luxuriant growth.
    I drove past, made a tight turn and came back quickly along a high road that ran parallel to the other. From there I could see over the mansions to where the Volvo was parked, and the steep steps up to the apartment block. I stopped the car and focused my professional snooper’s night glasses. Connelly escorted Jackie to the spotlit doorway of the apartments, where she used a key and went in without a nod or a thank you. There were eightstoreys to the building, perhaps 30 apartments. A few lights were showing but it was clear where Jackie had come to rest—lights blazed in a couple of fourth-floor rooms suddenly and I thought I could see the movement of a curtain as she went out onto the balcony.
    The Volvo moved off and I didn’t try to keep it in sight. What I was looking for was a public telephone, hard to find in that high-rent, high-mortage district. When I did find one, at a crossroad that