The Washington Club Read Online Free PDF Page B

It was just bad luck the other cars were involved. My good luck.’
    Deakin didn’t seem to like the idea of my having any kind of luck at all. He walked over and inspected the Falcon from stem to stern. ‘A write-off,’ he said. ‘This might be some kind of clever insurance stunt by you.’
    I was over the shock by now although if there had been anything handy I would have broken my no grog before six rule on the spot.Somewhere along the line I’d finished the cigarette and dropped it. Now I wanted another and the urge made me angry. This little pipsqueak was pushing too hard. I crowded him against the fence, not exactly shouldering him but almost. ‘What about you, arsehole? You’re a copper, you’ve arrested wife-beaters and nutters. What if one of them comes along and fire-bombs your joint? It happens. I’ve fuckin’ seen it. Now back off me.’
    â€˜Easy, Cliff.’ I felt a hand on my shoulder and turned to shake it off or hit its owner. Ian Sangster, the medico who’s patched and pilled me for years and whose practice was a block or so up Glebe Point Road, was smiling at me and easing me away from the detective.
    â€˜I’m Dr Sangster, officer,’ he said to Deakin. ‘Mr Hardy is a friend and patient. Someone told me what happened and I came down just in case I was needed. The man’s in shock.’
    Deakin slid around me and pulled himself up to his full height. ‘All right, doctor. I’ll leave him in your care. When he’s making sense, tell him to come to the station and make a full statement. We’ll send a technical team down here to go over the car.’
    Sangster nodded and Deakin and the other detective and the uniformed men left. Sangster, an unrepentant smoker, pulled out a packet of cigarettes. I gestured for one and he obliged. We smoked for a few minutes before Ian took a close look at the car.
    â€˜That would’ve been the end of a steady bulk bill,’ he said. ‘Let’s go inside and I’ll look you over.’
    I took a draw on the cigarette, realised what I was doing and threw it away. Sangster grinned at me and I laughed. The tension I’d felt building up inside me broke. I gave the Falcon a pat and we went into the house. I heated up the breakfast coffee while Sangster tested my blood pressure.
    â€˜Bit high.’
    â€˜Two bloody cigarettes,’ I said. ‘I’m okay.’
    â€˜Dare I say it, you’re getting a bit old for this sort of thing.’
    I poured the coffee, black for me, white with three sugars for Ian. He had another cigarette going. ‘I haven’t had an attempt on my life for five or six years. Makes me feel young again.’
    â€˜Hopeless case.’ Sangster drank his coffee quickly and left, telling me that if I needed a medical certificate for anything or a commitment order he’d oblige for a consideration. I hurried him out and called a cab. I wanted to be away from the house before any media got there. The cab came quickly and I rode into the office.
    An idealist and deep thinker might have been concerned about how and when my presence in the Fleischman case came to be noted, but I was worrying about why someone would want to remove me from the matter so permanently.

5
    Three flights of stairs can have a significant effect on your thinking, particularly after you’ve received a bit of a shock. As I walked along the lifting lino to my office door I realised that I was concentrating my thinking on Haitch Henderson. A car bomb was his style. If that was true the questions followed: was Henderson involved as a principal, for example as the ‘other man’, or was he working for someone else? If so, who and why? I stood outside my office door with the key in my hand and hesitated. The filing card taped to the door with CLIFF HARDY PRIVATE ENQUIRIES printed on it in my best Clovelly Primary School letters, was undisturbed. There were