Peepshow Read Online Free PDF Page A

very flash.
    No images of big-haired bikini-clad babes or guys called Pablo sprang to mind. I leaned on the high wire fence and watched him.
    ‘Hi,’ I said.
    ‘Hello.’ The man straightened up to talk to me. ‘Can I help you with anything?’ He wore khaki shorts, deck shoes and a navy polo shirt.
    ‘A couple of things actually. Do you teach the sailing school?’
    ‘I certainly do.’
    ‘Good, because I jog past here a few times a week and I keep meaning to ask about sailing lessons.’
    ‘I can give you information about that.’
    ‘I also wanted some information about tides.’
    ‘Tides?’
    ‘That’s right.’ I smiled encouragingly. So far this inquiry agent business was a piece of piss.
    ‘Hang on a sec.’ He put down his bucket and climbed off the boat onto the wooden decking, let himself out of a gate in the fence, and offered his hand.
    ‘Reg Bannister.’
    ‘Simone Kirsch.’
    ‘You have a pink tongue, Simone.’
    ‘Red icy-pole, Reg,’ I said. ‘Can’t be helped.’
    He laughed and I followed him to the school headquarters, a prefab shed that shook when we walked inside. The walls were covered with posters of sailing boats and complicated looking marine charts.
    ‘Do you have any sailing experience?’ Reg asked.
    ‘I worked on a prawn trawler when I was seventeen,’
    I said. ‘Does that count?’
    ‘’Fraid not. What you’d need is the beginners’ course.’
    ‘How much?’
    ‘Private lessons or group?’
    ‘Group. That would be cheaper, right?’
    Reg picked up a brochure from a stack on his desk.
    ‘We run group lessons for beginners at ten am Saturday and Sunday right through the summer. It’s thirty dollars for an hour and a half and you need to book. The information’s all there.’ He handed me the leaflet. ‘Now what was it you wanted to know about tides?’
    ‘Say something washed up on St Kilda beach,’ I said, ‘right in front of Donovan’s, at about seven in the morning on the third of November this year. What direction would it have come from?’
    ‘What are we talking about? A plastic cup? A life raft? A boat?’
    ‘A dead body.’
    It dawned on him. ‘You’re talking about that bloke, Mafia guy, with the strippers, some Italian name . . .’
    ‘Parisi.’
    ‘That’s the one. Cops were all over here a week ago, checking out boats, talking to people. Didn’t ask about tides though. Guess they got their own people for that.’
    He looked at me intently. ‘What’s it to you? You know the bloke?’
    ‘I’m a private detective, assigned to the case.’
    ‘Bullshit.’ Reg had a good old chuckle. ‘You’re not a private detective.’
    ‘Yes I am.’ I took out my wallet and showed him my license. Reg examined it, still chuckling, and handed it back. Wait till he told the boys at the sailing club. He tapped some keys on his laptop and connected to the Internet. ‘I’m just going to the VCA Victorian tide tables site,’ he said. ‘Let’s see, tide had been coming in for about an hour . . .’
    ‘He was in the water for about two hours,’ I said.
    Reg rubbed his chin. ‘I’d say he’d have come from somewhere near the lighthouse.’
    ‘What about from the sand or the pier?’
    ‘Doubt it. The way the currents move, it was most likely the lighthouse or a boat near there. If he’d been chucked off the pier he would have ended up at West St Kilda beach.’
    I wrote the information in my notebook, along with Reg’s name and the date and time.
    ‘Thanks, Reg, you’ve been very helpful. I’ll give you a call about the sailing.’
    He showed me out the door. ‘How long have you been a private detective?’ he asked.
    ‘Eighteen hours,’ I said, and walked back to the headland to have another look.
    I stood on the rocks and gazed down. More rocks and dirty water. I turned to Marine Parade and noticed a car park. I’d read the papers and watched the news and knew the cops hadn’t found blood or other evidence, so maybe Frank was killed