Saving Billie Read Free

called it a night as the party was winding down around 1.30 am. I’d had my three drinks and managed a couple of sandwiches and chunks of cheese as blotter so I reckoned I was all right to drive home.
    Back in my place at Glebe, I took off the dinner suit and went through the pockets. I’d shoved the card the woman had given me in with my keys and it was crumpled. I smoothed it out. It identified her as Louise Kramer, feature writer on the Sydney News, a paper I’d never heard of. It carried her work and mobile phone numbers, and her email address. I put the card aside and made a mental note to check on her with Harry Tickener, who knows everything worth knowing about journalism and journalists in Sydney. She’d shown a lot of courage fronting Clement like that and I liked her feistiness. I thought I might give her a call and ask how her arm was. She was on my mind as I went up to bed—thirty-five or thereabouts, no wedding ring, black Irish looking with the pale skin, dark hair and blue eyes. Why not?
    As it turned out she paid me a visit in my Newtown office later that morning, making her one of the earliest clients in my new set-up. When the renovators moved in on St Peters Lane, Darlinghurst, where I’d had my office since I’d got my PEA licence, all us low rent types moved out. I worked from home for a while, didn’t like it, and took over an office in Newtown at the St Peters end of King Street. St Peters cropping up again was a coincidence but I liked it and took it as a good omen. Gentrification hadn’t reached there, at least as far as commercial space was concerned, and the office was one floor up at the front overlooking the street. The stairs were sound, if narrow, and not well lit, and the windows facing King Street were grimy. But who needed to watch cars and buses and trucks go by?
    My office had room enough for a desk, a chair each for me and the client, a couple of filing cabinets and a bookcase. There was a small alcove off it where a coffee maker sat on top of a bar fridge, sharing a double adaptor. A phone-fax and computer and printer needed a power board to run from the single power point in the office. I’d been there for three quiet months. Parking was a problem. So far the government’s terror alerts hadn’t brought me any business.
    There were two other offices on this level. One unoccupied and the other bearing a stencilled sign that read ‘ MIDNIGHT RECORDS ’. So far I hadn’t seen anyone go in or out, but maybe that figured. Toilet at the end of the hall with washbasin and tap. Pretty basic. Some clients like it, thinking that low overheads mean low fees; others take fright. Louise Kramer wouldn’t have taken fright in Pamplona running the bulls. She plonked her backpack down on the floor and sat in the clients’ chair. My coffee maker was emitting the croak it does when the brew is ready.
    â€˜Is that drinkable?’ she said.
    â€˜Usually. Want some?’
    I fixed her a mug with long-life milk and no sugar, like mine, and watched her try it. The spiked hair of last night was flattened down and she wore jeans and a V-necked, long-sleeved cotton top, sneakers. All business. The earrings and necklace had gone, of course, but her makeup was carefully applied and she was bright-eyed, close to hyper.
    â€˜That’s good, thanks. I live on this stuff. You?’
    I shrugged. ‘Plus alcohol, adrenalin, carbohydrates.’
    â€˜I did some quick research on you, Mr Hardy, and I’m puzzled by your presence at that party.’
    â€˜I told you, I was filling in for a friend.’
    â€˜Mmm, I wonder if I believe that.’
    â€˜Look, Ms Kramer—’ I waved the card I’d put on my desk to get the phone number—‘I’m pleased to see you looking so up, but I’m puzzled by your presence here. How’s the arm, by the way?’
    She touched her upper arm. ‘Bloody sore, but it