The Bat(35)

‘Sandra’ll be here any moment. Sure you don’t want anything else? Apart from a chat, I mean.’

‘No thanks, Teddy. We’ll be at the Palladium. Can you tell her to drop by?’

Outside the Palladium there was a doorman encouraging the crowd to enter with salacious enticements. He brightened up when he saw Andrew, who exchanged two words with the doorman and they were waved past the ticket office. A narrow staircase led down into the cellar of the dimly lit strip club where a handful of men sat round tables waiting for the next performance. They found a table some way back in the room.

‘Seems like you know everyone round here,’ Harry said.

‘Everyone who needs to know me. And I need to know. Surely you have this weird symbiosis between police and the underworld in Oslo, too, don’t you?’

‘Course. But you seem to have a warmer relationship with your contacts than we do.’

Andrew laughed. ‘I guess I feel a certain affinity. If I hadn’t been in the police force I might have been in this business, who knows.’

A black miniskirt teetered down the stairs on high stilettos. Beneath the short fringe she peered around with heavy, glazed eyes. Then she came over to their table. Andrew pushed out a chair for her.

‘Sandra, this is Harry Holy.’

‘Really?’ she said, with broad, red lips held in a crooked smile. One canine was missing. Harry shook a cold, corpse-like hand. There was something familiar about her. Had he seen her in Darlinghurst Road one night? Perhaps she had been wearing different make-up or different clothes?

‘So what’s this about? Are you after some villains, Kensington?’

‘We’re looking for one villain in particular, Sandra. He likes to choke girls. Using his hands. Ring a bell?’

‘A bell? Sounds like fifty per cent of our customers. Has he hurt anyone?’

‘Probably only those who were able to identify him,’ Harry said. ‘Have you seen this guy?’ He held up the photo of Evans White.

‘No,’ she answered without looking, and turned to Andrew. ‘Who’s this then, Kensington?’

‘He’s from Norway,’ Andrew said. ‘He’s a policeman and his sister was working at the Albury. She was raped and murdered last week. Twenty-three years old. Harry’s taken compassionate leave and come here to find the man who did it.’

‘I’m sorry.’ Sandra looked at the photo. ‘Yes,’ she said. Nothing else.

Harry got excited. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean, yes, I’ve seen him.’

‘Have you, er . . . met him?’

‘No, but he’s been in Darlinghurst Road several times. I have no idea what he was doing here, but his face is familiar. I can ask around a bit.’

‘Thank you . . . Sandra,’ Harry said. She sent him a quick smile.

‘I have to go to work now, boys. See you, I guess.’ With that, the miniskirt went the same way it had come.

‘Yes!’ Harry shouted.

‘Yes? Because someone’s seen the bloke in King’s Cross? Making an appearance in Darlinghurst Road is not forbidden. Nor is shagging prostitutes, if that’s what he did. Not very forbidden, anyway.’

‘Don’t you feel it, Andrew? There are four million inhabitants in Sydney, and she’s seen the one person we’re looking for. Of course, it doesn’t prove anything, but it’s a sign, isn’t it? Can’t you feel we’re getting warmer?’

The muzak was switched off and the lights were lowered. The customers in the establishment directed their attention to the stage.

‘You’re pretty sure about this Evans White, aren’t you.’

Harry nodded. ‘Every fibre in my body tells me it’s Evans White. I’ve got a gut instinct, yes.’

‘Gut instinct?’

‘Intuition isn’t hocus-pocus when you think about it, Andrew.’

‘I’m thinking about it now, Harry. And I can’t feel anything in my gut. Explain to me how this gut of yours works, if you wouldn’t mind.’

‘Well . . .’ Harry looked at Andrew to check he wasn’t pulling his leg. Andrew returned the gaze with a genuinely interested expression. ‘Intuition is just the sum of all your experience. The way I see it, everything you’ve experienced, everything you know, you think you know and didn’t know you knew is there in your subconscious lying dormant, as it were. As a rule you don’t notice the sleeping creature, it’s just there, snoring and absorbing new things, right. But now and then it blinks, stretches and tells you, hey, I’ve seen this picture before. And tells you where in the picture things belong.’