The Bat(47)

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.