The royal correspondent, p.4
The Royal Correspondent, page 4
Hot, sour bile scalded her throat as she realised what had happened. While she’d been concentrating on getting Joe out of trouble, she’d failed to focus on her own actions.
Blaise let out an involuntary moan. The horror of Ryan’s death must have affected her more than she’d thought. She’d obviously been so shocked and confused that she’d put the murder weapon into her satchel without thinking. The fact the knife had been sitting there all through the night, and that – even worse – she’d actually brought the ghastly thing to work, hadn’t once entered her mind.
Blaise was appalled. She imagined policemen bursting into The Clarion, dragging her away in handcuffs. Ivy’s future would be grim and the shame – it would kill her parents. Under normal circumstances, Joe could plead self-defence. At least he’d be able to explain about the threats against his father. But if Superintendent O’Rourke and his men were in the Ryans’ back pocket, Joe was more than likely to be up for murder and she’d be facing an accessory charge.
After stuffing the incriminating evidence back into her satchel, she concentrated on steadying her nerves. The items must be made to disappear, but first she needed a good excuse for exiting The Clarion – preferably one that wouldn’t get her fired.
As if on cue, Blaise heard Kennedy’s voice. ‘D’you know if the copsh have identified that body they picked up in Enmore?’ He’d clearly topped up his whisky overgenerously during lunch.
‘Turns out it was Theo Ryan’s little brother, Paddy.’ That was Mike Morton, the police roundsman; he and Kennedy were mates. ‘Looks like illegal gambling’s not enough for the Ryan family these days. From what I hear, the murder was connected to a drug deal that went wrong.’
‘Christ!’ Kennedy muttered. The news seemed to have had a sobering effect. ‘I never thought a vicious killer like Paddy would be bumped off. I wonder how they did it.’
‘Stabbed him,’ Morton said, ‘though Homicide haven’t found the weapon.’
‘That’s hardly a surprise. Have they identified the assailant?’
‘Not yet. But the detectives tell me they’re expecting to make an arrest any day – that’s if Theo doesn’t get to him first.’
Blaise began to shake. She had to get rid of that knife.
When he wasn’t hurling abuse, Kennedy spent the afternoon giving orders to the copy boys, Blaise included. With no opportunity to leave, she answered telephones, collected stories, fetched documents, pictures, typewriter ribbons and cups of tea, all the time feeling increasingly distraught. Worry gnawed at her constantly. It was impossible to concentrate.
‘You away with the fairies today, Hill?’ Kennedy shouted.
Blaise looked at him vacantly.
‘You only forgot to tell the comps they shouldn’t set that budget preview yet. The chief sub’s furious – he told you himself the Treasury leak meant that copy had to be replaced.’
She hung her head. This was a horrendous mistake.
‘We got it sorted just in time, no thanks to you,’ Kennedy grumbled. He looked at her with a mixture of speculation and contempt. ‘I can see something’s on your mind. Well, I only hope for your sake you haven’t gone gaga over some fella. God only knows what anyone would see in you. You’re a bloody disgrace!’
Blaise felt sick. As a rule, Kev Kennedy’s belittlement didn’t bother her. It had become like radio static: irritating but, due to its very ubiquity, without the power to penetrate. This time, though, his jibe hit home. She had to pull herself together. Now was not the time to attract unwanted attention, not after last night.
‘Go down and find out if the report on the highway smash is underway. And for God’s sake, keep your mind on the job,’ Kennedy instructed.
When Blaise reached the comps’ room she had to dig her fingernails into the palms of her hands to stop them from shaking. Nobody who worked there ever did anything but make her life difficult. Mostly, they drew attention to the deficiencies of her figure, gleefully comparing her with the busty pin-ups stuck on the walls. As she walked towards the rows of men operating the linotype machines, she hoped today of all days would be different.
‘Hey, Hill!’ Ted, a greasy-haired printer in a knee-length, ink-spattered apron, called out from across the room. ‘Guess what one tiny tit said to the other?’
Jaw set, Blaise didn’t break her stride.
‘We’d better get some support before someone thinks we’re nuts! Geddit? Nuts!’
There were hoots of laughter. Blaise knew the men were watching for her reaction from the corners of their eyes. ‘Knock it off, you guys,’ she said, forcing herself to appear unconcerned. Despite the familiar hot outrage that made her stomach churn, she could not afford to lose control.
It was nearing six o’clock before, tense and fearful, Blaise was finally free to leave. By a stroke of luck, Ned had been rostered on to count the newsagents’ returns that night. She waved goodbye to him then quickly left the newsroom.
Hurrying out of The Clarion building, she headed down bustling Martin Place, passed the sepulchral bronze statues of the soldier and sailor that guarded the Cenotaph, and turned left in front of the GPO’s wide colonnade. In George Street, office workers poured from marble and granite banks, insurance companies, law firms and accountants’ offices, forming a rushing tide of anonymous humanity.
Blaise gladly joined the throng, reminding herself that she was just another inconspicuous commuter. Yet she couldn’t banish her alarm. She had the impression that each person she passed looked in the direction of her satchel, their eyes like X-rays, so that, with a single glance, they could see the evidence of her guilt.
Blaise rubbed away the film of perspiration above her upper lip. She saw a rubbish bin, thrust her hand inside her bag, but checked herself. What was she thinking? She could burn the handkerchief in a back alley gutter, but the knife presented a greater challenge. Somewhere obscure was needed, where she could make the evil thing disappear forever – and where there was no chance she’d be seen.
As she approached the sandstone clock tower of the Town Hall a plan began to form. Joe was due to finish up his conductor’s shift on the trams in thirty minutes. At this hour, catching the train would be faster than a tram. She’d be able to meet him at the Enmore terminus if she could run there from Newtown station fast enough. Then, once it was late, she’d make Joe go with her to some dark harbourside spot, where they could safely throw the knife into the water. Considering the mess he’d got her into, it was the least he could do.
Blaise hurtled down the steps that led to Town Hall station, flashing her pass at the ticket collector as she pushed her way through the turnstiles. Then she sprinted along the platform and flung herself inside the last carriage as the train began to pull away.
CHAPTER SEVEN
With her cardigan buttoned up against another cold night, Blaise scanned the darkening yard. She’d positioned herself at the same metal railing she and her father had leant against when they’d discussed her future just a few months before. It felt like years ago. Finding a job had seemed like the most important thing in the world then. Now, all she wanted to do was to avoid a prison sentence.
She watched keenly as a group of drivers and conductors strolled out of the corrugated-iron sheds. The men slapped one another on the back and laughed, but she couldn’t see Joe among them – he must have left for home. A chill ran through her. What if she was wrong? Someone might have seen something and tipped off O’Rourke. Joe had been in a bad way last night. He could well be with the detectives right now, confessing everything, including the part that she had played. The cops might be off to Fotheringham Street looking for her in no time.
A wave of relief swept through Blaise when she felt a hand grasping her shoulder.
‘Joe, you’re here!’ she cried. ‘I thought you’d been picked up by –’
‘The police?’
The voice was refined and had a cultivated English accent, nothing like the one she had expected.
Whirling around, she saw a tall, broad-shouldered man with thick black hair and eyes the colour of silver shillings.
‘Miss Hill, isn’t it? I think you had better follow me.’
‘Why should I?’ Fear made her brave; her temper flickered into life. ‘Who the hell are you?’
‘Not the police, that’s for sure.’ There was an unnerving hint of amusement in his voice. ‘Come on.’
‘Do I have a choice?’
‘No.’
‘I could scream.’
‘With what I suspect you’re hiding? I don’t think so.’
To Blaise’s consternation, one of the tram drivers approached them. The fellow nodded briefly, opened a side gate then hurried on, although not before saying, ‘Number 2041, over by the fence, is free.’ The man’s grip slid from her shoulder to her arm. He led her to the empty tram carriage, stepped inside and pulled her in after him.
As the metal door clanged shut, Blaise’s pulse began to race. What did he want? Girls were assaulted by men all the time; it was a fact of life. There’d been a report in The Clarion just this week about a kid from Redfern who’d been beaten and raped. Would she be the next victim? At least she had a weapon, Blaise thought grimly, but using it had to be the last resort – she was in enough trouble as it was.
‘Well, who the hell are you?’ Blaise demanded. Without waiting for an answer, she flew at the man, trying to claw at his face with her free hand, to stamp on his foot and wrench her trapped arm away.
‘Don’t even think about it,’ he said, deftly avoiding both her fingernails and her sturdy shoe while maintaining his grip. ‘Listen, I’m not going to hurt you. I’m close to Joe’s family, really close, all right? He told me you might come here looking for him after work.’
‘Why should I believe you?’
‘Because it would be in your own best interest.’ An edge of steel now inflected his cultured tones. ‘I know all about last night. Joe told me everything.’
She stayed silent. Whatever he had in mind, she wasn’t going to make it easy.
‘I also know what you did for him,’ the man said, his voice softening. ‘The Blacketts are grateful – which means I am, too. You could say I’m in your debt.
‘Joe thought you might still have the knife,’ the man continued. ‘He remembered you took it from him. If that’s true, give it to me now, along with anything else that will tie you to the scene. Then I promise you won’t have to worry about the police – or anyone else – coming after you. It’s as easy as that.’
He smiled for the first time, which made his striking face with its distinctive eyes appear more boyish. He was younger than she’d first thought – no more than twenty-six or twenty-seven.
‘In any case, no one’s ever going to believe that a couple of kids knocked off Theo Ryan’s brother – especially Theo. I’ll guarantee he’s working up a plan to take out his revenge on a rival gang right now.’
This mysterious boy-man in his well-cut grey suit was unlike anyone Blaise had ever met. It wasn’t just that he was uncommonly good-looking, or his disarming confidence. She sensed that something reckless lay hidden beneath his polished self-assurance. Perhaps this was what drew her to him: she recognised the same quality in herself.
Blaise put her hand in her satchel, grasped the knife, still wrapped in the stained handkerchief, and placed it in his outstretched hand.
‘That was wise,’ he said, regarding her intently with those silver-shilling eyes. ‘You won’t hear from me again – at least, not for a while. But one day some useful information might come my way. That’s when I’ll repay you.’
Two weeks had gone by since ‘the incident’. This was the way Blaise referred to the events of that cold and bloody night, and then only to herself. She didn’t want to dwell upon the man who’d approached her in the tram yard, yet his silken voice lingered in her ears. She could still feel the pressure of his fingers as he’d held her arm. Each time her thoughts wandered back to him she felt a disturbing thrill.
Blaise was even less inclined to ponder the circumstances that had brought him into her life, but every effort to cast them from her mind was stymied. At work there was still near-constant talk about The Enmore Killer, as the newspaper’s headline writers had dubbed the unknown murderer. The reporters seized upon every available detail – the make of car, the most likely type of knife, the precise nature of the victim’s fatal wound – yet still the identity of the crime’s perpetrator remained a mystery.
‘Looks like it was some hooligan from another mob of thugs,’ she overheard Morton say from her position on the bench outside Kennedy’s office. The obscure lines and swirls on the pages of shorthand she was staring at dissolved into a meaningless hieroglyphic haze. ‘At least, that’s what the cops are saying,’ the roundsman added.
Blaise was careful to keep her head down, though she strained to hear each word of the conversation.
‘So, nice and neat and tidy, eh? An outcome all tied up with a bow, just the way O’Rourke would like it.’ This came from her boss.
‘Yeah, but I don’t like it,’ Morton complained. ‘One of my sources reckons there were bundles of cash found on the front seat of Ryan’s Cadillac. I can’t exactly see a crim leaving rolls of twenties behind. Course, I’ll bet there were a fair fewer pound notes around once O’Rourke’s boys ran their sticky fingers over the crime scene.’
A mirthless laugh issued from Kennedy. ‘That’d be right.’
The two men moved off, leaving Blaise disconcerted, her nerves jangling.
Hoping for distraction from her troubled thoughts, Blaise was disappointed when she failed to catch sight of a single member of the Women’s Pages’ chic staff in the foyer on the following morning. The only evidence of their presence was the faintest trace of perfume that, she fancied, still lingered within the close confines of the elevator. The world of fashion and smart society that they occupied might be an alien realm, yet her nightly exchanges with Ivy had at least helped her to appreciate the ladies’ sleek elegance.
All thoughts of the glamorous trio vanished as soon as she encountered Kev Kennedy pacing up and down outside his office. ‘Here at last,’ he said. ‘Well, what are you waiting for?’ He stabbed his finger towards a gesticulating reporter. ‘Don’t leave Mr Penfold like a shag on a rock. Hop to it!’
Hours later, Kennedy poked his head out the door. ‘I’ve been keeping an eye on you, Hill, and you’re too damned slow.’ He rubbed his chin with disgruntled resignation. ‘I knew it would turn out like this.’
Blaise pursed her mouth. Kennedy was a fiend.
‘See if you can get this right, at least,’ he said. ‘Go down to despatch right away. There’s a delivery for up there.’ He jerked his head towards the ceiling.
Blaise felt a surge of anticipation. ‘You don’t mean –’
‘The fifth floor? Of course I do,’ Kennedy said witheringly. ‘What’s wrong with you?’
Blaise handed the box of pink roses she’d collected to a pretty girl with blonde curly hair worn parted down the middle and pinned to each side by two carefully positioned tortoiseshell clips in the shape of bows.
‘Aren’t they lovely?’ the girl said as she peered through the box’s cellophane lid. ‘I’m Angela, by the way, the editor’s secretary. Thanks so much.’ Then she disappeared around a corner, calling out, ‘Coming, Mrs Hawthorn, coming!’
Blaise tried to hide her surprise. She had envisaged that, in distinct contrast to the newsroom, the space occupied by the Women’s Pages would be clean and airy. She’d also guessed she would be inhaling that distinctive sweet and spicy fragrance that seemed to swirl around everyone who worked there. What she had not been expecting was the thrum of energy.
Up until now she’d had only a vague image of the way these women might pass their time. If pressed, she would have said that it was spent writing the odd caption – when they weren’t busy attending to their nails. Now, she realised her assumptions had been completely wrong. One was typing furiously, another was focused on laying out a sheaf of photographs, and a third – the girl whose hat Blaise had nearly knocked to the ground – was answering a constantly ringing phone while sorting frantically through dozens of pairs of shoes.
‘Honestly, Mrs Hawthorn will be furious,’ the girl said to the persistent caller. ‘I specifically asked Mark Foy’s to send around evening pumps for today’s shots. I wouldn’t say that tan suede brogues qualified, would you?’
Blaise tried to smooth her rumpled skirt. Normally, she gave little thought to the clothes she wore; her parents had never had enough money to allow for more than what was decent. This morning, just like every day this week, she’d washed her face, run a comb through her thick chestnut hair and then looked for a bit of ribbon to tie it back. As for her choice of attire, that had been easy. The clothes she wore for work came from St Vincent de Paul and amounted to just three plain white blouses and two pleated skirts. She’d worn the grey yesterday, so today she’d put on the blue.
Suddenly, she felt acutely self-conscious. Plenty of people might think she didn’t belong in the newsroom, but at least down there everyone looked almost as scruffy as she did. Here on the fifth floor, among the expensive shoes, the scented air and the sort of girls who wore tortoiseshell clips in their hair, she would never have a hope of fitting in.
The same journalist who had sent her out on the idiotic ‘compressed air’ errand had a job for Blaise that afternoon. ‘Go to the Premier’s Department and ask for the press secretary, Matt Jones,’ he said. ‘He’ll have a release for you.’ The chubby reporter drew his ginger eyebrows together. ‘Not that it will do me much good.’
‘What do you mean, Bill? What’s the problem?’
‘That’s Mr Sawyer to you,’ he said curtly. ‘The problem, since you’ve asked, is that the release will only say what the government wants us to know – as usual. We’re waiting to find out who’s won the big competition to design the Opera House they want to build at Bennelong Point, where the Fort Macquarie tram depot is now. I’m not expecting anything more than another boring statement about being down to the final thirty and the committee’s still considering, but you might as well pick it up anyway.’
