The Bat(8)

Harry elbowed his way to the bar and ordered.

‘Coming up right away, blondie,’ said the barmaid in the Roman helmet with a deep voice and a mischievous smile.

‘Tell me, are you and I the only straight guys in this town?’ Harry asked, returning with a beer and a glass of juice.

‘After San Francisco Sydney has the biggest gay population in the world,’ Andrew said. ‘The Australian outback is not exactly known for its tolerance of sexual diversity, so it’s not surprising that all the queer farmer boys in Australia want to come to Sydney. Not just from Australia, by the way, there are gay people from all over the world pouring into town every day.’

They went to another bar at the back of the room where Andrew called a girl behind the counter. She was standing with her back to them and had the reddest hair Harry had ever seen. It hung down to the rear pocket of her tight blue jeans, but was unable to conceal the willowy back and pleasingly rounded hips. She turned and a row of pearly-white teeth smiled from a slim, radiant face with two azure eyes and innumerable freckles. What a waste, if this isn’t a woman, Harry thought.

‘Remember me?’ Andrew shouted above the noise of seventies disco music. ‘I was here asking about Inger. Can we have a word?’

The redhead became serious. She nodded, passed on a message to one of the other girls and led the way to a little smoking room behind the kitchen.

‘Any news?’ she asked, and Harry needed no more to be able to determine with some certainty that she spoke better Swedish than English.

‘I met an old man once,’ Harry said in Norwegian. She glanced at him in surprise. ‘He was the captain of a boat on the Amazon River. Three words from him in Portuguese and I knew he was Swedish. He had lived there for thirty years. And I can’t speak a word of Portuguese.’

At first the redhead looked perplexed, but then she laughed. A trill of cheery laughter that reminded Harry of some rare forest bird.

‘Is it really so obvious?’ she said in Swedish. She had a deep, calm voice and softly rolled rrrs.

‘Intonation,’ Harry said. ‘You never completely get rid of intonation.’

‘Do you know each other?’ Andrew scrutinised them sceptically.

Harry looked at the redhead.

‘Nope,’ she answered.

And isn’t that a pity, Harry thought to himself.

The redhead’s name was Birgitta Enquist. She had been in Australia for four years and working at the Albury for one.

‘Of course we talked when we were working, but I didn’t really have any close contact with Inger. She kept herself to herself mostly. There’s a gang of us who go out together and she occasionally tagged along, but I didn’t know her that well. She had just left some guy in Newtown when she started here. The most personal detail I know about her is that the relationship became too intense for her in the long run. I suppose she needed a fresh start.’

‘Do you know who she hung out with?’ Andrew asked.

‘Not really. As I said, we talked, but she never gave me a full rundown of her life. Not that I asked her to. In October she went up north to Queensland and apparently fell in with a crowd from Sydney there who she stayed in contact with afterwards. I think she met a guy up there – he came by here one night. I’ve told you all this before though, haven’t I?’ she said with an enquiring glance.

‘I know, my dear Miss Enquist, I just wanted my Norwegian colleague here to have a first-hand report and see where Inger worked. Harry Holy is regarded as Norway’s best investigator after all and he may be able to put his finger on things we Sydney police have overlooked.’

Harry was overcome by a sudden fit of coughing.

‘Who’s Mr Bean?’ he asked in a strange, constricted voice.

‘Mr Bean?’ Birgitta eyed them in bewilderment.

‘Someone who looked like the English comedian . . . er, Rowan Atkinson, isn’t that his name?’

‘Oh, him!’ Birgitta said with the same forest-bird laughter.

I like it, Harry thought. More.

‘That’s Alex, the bar manager. He won’t be here till later.’

‘We have reason to believe he was interested in Inger.’

‘Alex had his eye on Inger, yes, he did. And not just Inger, most girls in this bar have at one time or another been subjected to his desperate efforts. Or Fiddler Ray, as we call him. It was Inger who came up with Mr Bean. He doesn’t have an easy time of it, poor thing. Over thirty, lives at home with his mum and doesn’t seem to be going anywhere. But he’s perfectly OK as a boss. And quite harmless, if that’s what you’re thinking.’

‘How do you know?’