The Bat Read online

  ‘Do you want to buy my jacket?’

  He studied the man’s jacket, which was a kind of windcheater made of thin material in vibrant red and black.

  ‘The Aboriginal flag,’ he explained to Harry, showing him the back of the jacket. ‘My cousin makes them.’

  Harry politely refused the offer.

  ‘What’s your name?’ the Aboriginal man asked.

  ‘Harry.’

  ‘That’s an English name. I’ve got an English name, too. It’s Joseph. With a “p” and an “h”. In fact, it’s a Jewish name. The father of Jesus, dig? Joseph Walter Roderigue. My tribal name’s Ngardagha. N-gar-dag-ha.’

  ‘Spend a lot of time in the park, do you, Joseph?’

  ‘Yes, a lot.’ Joseph clicked back into his middle-distance look and was gone. He pulled a large juice bottle from his jacket, offered Harry a drink and took a swig himself before screwing on the top. His jacket slid open and Harry saw the tattoos on his chest. ‘Jerry’ was written above a large cross.

  ‘Fine tattoo you’ve got, Joseph. May I ask who Jerry is?’

  ‘Jerry’s my son. My son. He’s four.’ Joseph splayed his fingers as he counted up to four.

  ‘Four. I understand. Where’s Jerry now?’

  ‘Home.’ Joseph waved his hand in a way to suggest a direction where home was. ‘Home with his mother.’

  ‘Listen, Joseph. I’m after a man. His name’s Hunter Robertson. He’s white, quite small and doesn’t have much hair. Sometimes he comes to the park. Sometimes he exposes . . . himself. Do you know who I mean? Have you seen him, Joseph?’

  ‘Yeah, yeah. He’s coming,’ Joseph said, rubbing his nose, as if he considered Harry was talking about an everyday event. ‘Just wait. He’s coming.’

  22

  Two Flashers

  A CHURCH BELL rang in the distance as Harry lit his eighth cigarette and inhaled deep into his lungs. Sis had said he should stop smoking the last time he took her to the cinema. They had seen Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves with the worst cast Harry had seen this side of Plan 9 from Outer Space. But it didn’t bother Sis that Kevin Costner’s Robin Hood answered the Sheriff of Nottingham in broad American. In general there was very little that bothered Sis; she squealed with delight when Costner cleaned up Sherwood Forest and sniffled when Marian and Robin finally found each other.

  Afterwards they had gone to a cafe where he had bought her a hot chocolate. She had told him how good she felt in her new flat in the Sogn Residential Centre, even though a couple of those living in her corridor were ‘daft in the head’. And she wanted Harry to stop smoking. ‘Ernst says it’s dangerous.’ You can die from it.’

  ‘Who’s Ernst?’ Harry had asked, but was met with a fit of giggles. Then she turned serious again. ‘You mustn’t smoke, Harald. You mustn’t die, do you hear?’ She had the ‘Harald’ and the ‘do you hear?’ from her mother.

  The Christian name Harry was a result of his father getting his way. Olav Hole, a man who usually ceded to his wife in all things, had raised his voice and insisted that the boy should be called after his grandfather who had been a seaman and apparently a fine fellow. His mother had yielded in a moment of weakness, to use her words, which she had regretted bitterly afterwards.

  ‘Has anyone ever heard of anyone called Harry ever making it in anything?’ she had said. (When Harry’s father was in a teasing mood he had quoted her because of all the anys and evers.)

  Anyway, Harry’s mother called him Harald after her uncle but everyone else called him Harry. And, after she had died, Sis had started to call him Harald. Perhaps it was Sis’s way of trying to fill the gap left by her. Harry didn’t know; so many strange things went on in the girl’s head. For example, she had smiled with tears in her eyes and cream on her nose when Harry had promised her he would stop, if not immediately then at least in time.

  Now he was sitting and imagining the smoke curling upwards like a huge snake into his body. Bubbur.

  Joseph twitched. He had been asleep.

  ‘My forefathers were Crow people,’ he said without preamble and straightened up. ‘They could fly.’ The sleep seemed to have sobered him up. He rubbed his face with both hands.

  ‘Wonderful thing, being able to fly. Have you got a tenner?’

  Harry had only a twenty-dollar note.

  ‘That’ll do,’ Joseph said, snaffling it.

  As though it had been a temporary break in the weather, the clouds drifted in again across Joseph’s brain and he mumbled on in some unintelligible language redolent of what Andrew had been speaking to Toowoomba. Hadn’t Andrew called it Creole? In the end, the drunken man’s chin had fallen back onto his chest.

  Harry had just decided to finish his cigarette and leave when Robertson turned up. Harry had half expected him to appear in a coat, which he imagined was standard issue for a flasher, but Robertson was wearing only jeans and a T-shirt. He peered left and right and walked with a strange bouncing gait as if he were singing inside and adapting his movement to the rhythm. He didn’t recognise Harry until he had reached the benches, and there was little in Robertson’s face to suggest he was overly pleased about the reunion.

  ‘Evening, Robertson. We’ve been trying to get hold of you. Sit down.’

  Robertson glanced around and shifted weight from one foot to the other. He looked as if he most wanted to make a break for it, but in the end sat down with a sigh of despair.

  ‘I’ve told you everything I know,’ he said. ‘Why are you harassing me?’

  ‘Because you have a track record of harassing others.’

  ‘Harassing others? I haven’t bloody harassed anyone!’

  Harry studied him. Robertson was a hard man to like, but with the best – or worst – will in the world Harry couldn’t make himself believe he was sitting next to a serial killer. A fact that served to make him quite grumpy, because it meant he was wasting his time.

  ‘Do you know how many girls can’t sleep because of you?’ Harry said, trying to put as much contempt into his tone as he was able. ‘How many cannot forget and have to live with the image of a depraved wanker mentally raping them? You’ve got into their minds, made them feel vulnerable and frightened to go out in the dark; you’ve humiliated them and made them feel used.’

  Robertson had to laugh. ‘Is that the best you can come up with, Officer? What about all the sex lives I’ve ruined? And the fears they have, reducing them to a life on tranquillisers? By the way, I reckon your colleague should watch out. The one who said I could be sentenced to six years for being an accessory if I didn’t stand up straight and make a statement to you yobbos. I’ve spoken to my solicitor now, and he’s going to take the matter up with your boss, just so you know. So don’t you try and pull the wool over my eyes again.’

  ‘OK, we can do this in two ways, Robertson,’ Harry said, noticing that he didn’t have the same authority in the role of brutish policeman that Andrew would have had. ‘You can tell me what I want to know here and now or—’

  ‘—or we can go down to the station. Thank you, I’ve heard that one before. Please, haul me in, then my solicitor can come and get me within the hour, and you and your colleague will be reported for hounding civilians into the bargain. Be my guest!’

  ‘That wasn’t quite what I had in mind,’ Harry answered quietly. ‘I imagined more a discreet leak, impossible to uncover naturally, to one of Sydney’s news-hungry, out-and-out sensationalist Sunday papers. Can you visualise it? Inger Holter’s landlord, see picture, previous indecent exposure conviction, in police spotlight—’

  ‘Conviction! I was fined. Forty dollars!’ Hunter Robertson’s voice had gone falsetto.

  ‘Yes, I know, Robertson, it was a minor misdemeanour,’ Harry said with feigned sympathy. ‘So minor that it’s been easy to keep it hidden from the local community. Such a shame they read Sunday newspapers where you live, isn’t it? And at work . . . What about your parents? Can they read?’

  Robertson crumpled. The air went out of him like
a punctured beach ball, reminding Harry of a beanbag, and he knew he’d obviously touched a sore spot when he mentioned the parents.

  ‘You heartless bastard,’ Robertson whispered in a hoarse, pained voice. ‘Where do they make people like you?’ and after a while: ‘What do you want to know?’

  ‘First of all I want to know where you were the evening before Inger was found.’

  ‘I’ve already told the police I was at home alone and—’

  ‘This conversation is over. I hope the editors find a nice picture of you.’

  He got up.

  ‘OK, OK. I wasn’t at home!’ Robertson screeched. He leaned back and closed his eyes.

  Harry sat down again.

  ‘When I was a student and lived in a bedsit in one of the town’s finer areas a widow lived across the street,’ Harry said. ‘At seven o’clock, seven on the dot, every Friday evening she opened the curtains. I lived on the same floor and my bedsit looked straight into her living room. Especially on Fridays, when she turned on the enormous chandelier. If you saw her on any other day of the week she was a greying old lady with glasses and a cardigan, the type of lady you see on the tram and queuing at the chemist’s all the time.

  ‘But on Fridays at seven, when the performance started, you would have anything on your mind but grumpy, coughing old ladies with a stick. She wore a silk dressing gown with a Japanese pattern and black high-heeled shoes. At half past seven she received a male visitor. At a quarter to eight she had taken off the dressing gown and was sporting her black corset. At eight she was half out of the corset and humping away on the chesterfield. At half past eight the visitor had gone, the curtains were drawn and the performance was over.’

  ‘Interesting,’ said Robertson, flatly.

  ‘What was interesting was that there was never any trouble. If you lived on my side of the street, you couldn’t avoid seeing what went on, and lots of people in the block must have been following the performances. But it was never talked about, as far as I know, it was never reported to the police and there were no complaints. The other interesting thing was the regularity of it. At first I thought that had something to do with the partner, when he was available, he might have been working, or married, or something like that. But soon I realised she changed partners without changing the timetable. And then it dawned on me: she obviously knew what any TV programmer knows: once you have attracted an audience with a fixed slot it’s very damaging if you change the time of broadcasting. And it was the audience that spiced up her sex life. Understand?’

  ‘I understand,’ Robertson answered.

  ‘A superfluous question, of course. Now, why did I tell this story? It struck me that our comatose friend here, Joseph, was so sure you would come tonight I checked my calendar and most dates fitted. Tonight’s a Wednesday, the night Inger went missing was a Wednesday and the two times you were caught flashing were Wednesdays as well. You have fixed slots, don’t you.’

  Robertson didn’t answer.

  ‘Therefore my next question is: why haven’t you been reported recently? After all, it’s four years since the last incident. And men exposing themselves to small girls in the park is not something people generally appreciate.’

  ‘Who said it was small girls?’ Robertson snapped. ‘And who said it wasn’t appreciated?’

  If Harry had been able to whistle he would have done so under his breath. He suddenly remembered the couple arguing nearby earlier in the evening.

  ‘So you do it for men,’ he said, almost to himself. ‘For the gays in the district. That explains why you have to keep it quiet. Have you got a crowd of regulars as well?’

  Robertson shrugged. ‘They come and go. But they certainly know when and where they can see me.’

  ‘And when you were reported?’

  ‘Just casual passers-by. We’re more careful now.’

  ‘So I could find a witness willing to state you were here the night Inger disappeared?’

  Robertson nodded.

  They sat in silence listening to Joseph’s light snoring.

  ‘There’s something else that doesn’t quite fit,’ Harry said at length. ‘It’s been at the back of my mind, but I couldn’t put my finger on it until I heard that every Wednesday your neighbour feeds your dog and lets it out.’

  Two men walked past slowly and stopped on the edge of the light cast by the street lamp.

  ‘So I asked myself: why’s he feeding it when Inger’s on her way back from the Albury with some meat leftovers? At first I dismissed the idea, thinking you’d probably talked about it. Perhaps the meat was for the day after. But then I recalled something that should have struck me straight away: your dog doesn’t eat . . . at least isn’t allowed to eat meat. In which case, what was Inger doing with it? She’d told people at the bar it was for the dog. Why would she lie?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Harry noticed Robertson checking his watch. Must be show time soon.

  ‘One last thing. What do you know about Evans White?’

  Robertson turned and looked at him with watery, light blue eyes. Was that a tiny glint of fear?

  ‘Very little,’ he said.

  Harry gave up. He hadn’t made much progress. Bubbling away inside, he could feel an urge to hunt, to give chase and to arrest, but this scenario kept slipping further away all the time. In a few bloody days he would be on his way back to Norway. Strangely enough, though, this thought didn’t make him feel any better.

  ‘About the witnesses,’ Robertson said. ‘I would appreciate it if you’d . . .’

  ‘I don’t want to ruin your show, Robertson. I know that those coming will derive some benefit.’ He peered into his cigarette packet, took out one, and put the rest in Joseph’s jacket pocket as he got up to go. ‘I certainly appreciated the widow’s weekly performance.’

  23

  Black Snake

  AS USUAL THE Albury was in full swing. They were blasting out ‘It’s Raining Men’. On the stage three of the boys were wearing knee-high boots and not much else, and the audience was cheering and singing along. Harry watched more of the show before going to Birgitta’s bar.

  ‘Why don’t you sing along, Handsome?’ said a familiar voice. Harry turned. Otto wasn’t in drag tonight; however, a pink, open-neck silk shirt and a hint of mascara and lipstick showed that he had still taken pains with his appearance.

  ‘I haven’t got the voice for it, Otto. Sorry.’

  ‘Bah, you Scandinavians are all alike. Can’t let go until you’ve poured so much booze down you you’re useless for . . . yeah, you know what I mean.’

  Harry smiled at the lowered eyelids. ‘Don’t flirt with me, Otto. I’m a lost cause.’

  ‘Hopeless hetero, eh?’

  Harry nodded.

  ‘Let me buy you a drink anyway, Handsome. What d’you fancy?’ He ordered a grapefruit juice for Harry and a Bloody Mary for himself. They toasted and Otto downed half the cocktail in one go.

  ‘The only thing that helps with love’s sorrows,’ he said, draining the rest, shivering, ordering another and eyeing Harry. ‘So, you’ve never had sex with a man? Perhaps we’ll have to do something about that one day.’

  Harry could feel his earlobes getting hot. How could this gay clown make him, a fully grown man, so embarrassed that he looked like a Brit after six hours on a Spanish beach?

  ‘Let’s make a tasteless and wonderfully vulgar wager,’ Otto said, his eyes glinting with amusement. ‘I bet one hundred dollars that this soft, slim hand of yours will have felt my vitals before you return to Norway. Do you dare to accept the bet?’

  Otto clapped his hands at the sight of Harry’s scarlet face.

  ‘If you insist on handing out money, fine by me,’ Harry said. ‘But my understanding, Otto, was that you were suffering from love’s sorrows. Shouldn’t you be at home thinking about other things rather than tempting straight men?’ He regretted what he had said at once. He had never liked being teased.

  Otto withdrew his
hand and shot him a wounded glare.

  ‘Sorry, I was just blabbing. I didn’t mean it,’ Harry said.

  Otto shrugged. ‘Anything new in the murder case?’ he asked.

  ‘No,’ Harry said, relieved they had changed the subject. ‘Looks as if we may have to search beyond her circle of acquaintances. Did you know her, by the way?’

  ‘Everyone who hangs out here knew Inger.’

  ‘Did you ever talk to her?’

  ‘Well, I suppose I must have exchanged a few words with her. She was a bit complicated for my taste.’

  ‘Complicated?’

  ‘She turned the heads of quite a few hetero customers. Dressed provocatively, sent long stares and smiled a bit too long if that could get her extra tips. That kind of thing can be dangerous.’

  ‘Do you think any of the customers might have . . .?’

  ‘I just mean you might not have to look too far, Officer.’

  ‘What are you implying?’

  Otto cast his eyes around and finished his drink. ‘I’m all mouth, Handsome.’ He made to go. ‘Now I’ll do what you suggested. Go home and think about other things. Wasn’t that what the doctor prescribed?’

  He waved to one of the stole-clad boys behind the bar, who brought him a brown paper bag.

  ‘Don’t forget the show!’ Otto called over his shoulder as he left.

  Harry was sitting on a stool at Birgitta’s bar discreetly watching her work. He followed her quick hands pulling pints, changing money and mixing drinks, the way she moved behind the bar because all the distances were second nature: from the beer tap to the counter to the till. He saw her hair slide in front of her face, the quick flick to remove it and her occasional gaze across the customers to spot new orders – and Harry.

  The freckled face lit up, and he felt his heart throbbing in his chest, heavy, wonderful.

  ‘Friend of Andrew’s came in a while ago,’ she said, walking over to Harry. ‘He visited him in hospital and wanted to say hello. He asked for you. Think he’s still sitting here somewhere. Yes, there he is.’