The Bat Read Free

bottle of Chardonnay Rose-mount, “quite wrong for this meal, but it’s white, it’s good and it’s smack on budget,” and looked mildly surprised when Harry said he didn’t drink.
    “Quaker?”
    “No, nothing like that,” Harry said.
    Doyle’s was an old family-run restaurant and considered one of Sydney’s best, Andrew informed Harry. It was peak season and packed to the rafters and Harry presumed that was why it was so difficult to gain eye contact with the waiters.
    “The waiters here are like the planet Pluto,” Andrew said. “They orbit on the periphery, only making an appearance every twentieth year, and even then are impossible to glimpse with the naked eye.”
    Harry couldn’t work up any indignation and leaned back in his chair with a contented sigh. “But they have excellent food,” he said. “So that explains the suit.”
    “Yes and no. As you can see, it’s not exactly formal here. But it’s better for me
not
to wear jeans and a T-shirt in places like this. Because of my appearance I have to make an effort.”
    “What do you mean?”
    Andrew stared at Harry. “Aboriginal people don’t have very high status in this country, as you may perhaps appreciate. Years ago the English wrote home that the natives had a weakness for alcohol and property crime.”
    Harry listened with interest.
    “They thought it was in our genes. ‘All they were good for was making a hell of a racket blowing through long pieces of hollow wood, which they call didgeridoos,’ one of them wrote. Well, this country boasts that it’s managed to integrate several cultures into one cohesive society. But cohesive for who? The problem, or the advantage, according to your perspective, is that the natives aren’t seen anymore.
    “Aboriginal folks are as good as totally absent from social life in Australia, apart from political debates that affect Indigenous interests and culture. Australians pay lip-service by having Aboriginal art hanging on the walls of their houses. However, we Blackfellas are well represented in the dole queues, suicide statistics and prisons. If you’reAboriginal the chances of ending up in prison are twenty-six times greater than for any other Australian. Chew on that, Harry Holy.”
    Andrew drank the rest of his wine while Harry chewed on that. And the fact that he’d probably just eaten the best fish dish in his thirty-two years.
    “And yet Australia’s no more racist than any other country. After all, we’re a multicultural nation with people from all over the world living here. It just means that dressing in a suit whenever you go to a restaurant is worth the trouble.”
    Harry nodded again. There was no more to say on that subject.
    “Inger Holter worked in a bar, didn’t she?”
    “Yes, she did. The Albury in Oxford Street, Paddington. I thought we could wander up there this evening.”
    “Why not now?” Harry was beginning to be impatient with all this leisure.
    “Because first we have to say hello to her landlord.”
    Pluto appeared unbidden in the firmament.

3

A Tasmanian Devil
    Glebe Point Road turned out to be a cozy, not too frenetic street where small, plain and, for the most part, ethnic restaurants from various parts of the world stood cheek by jowl.
    “This used to be Sydney’s bohemian quarter,” Andrew explained. “I lived here as a student in the seventies. You can still find typical veggie restaurants for people with conservation on the brain and alternative lifestyles, bookshops for lesbians and so on. But the old hippies and acidheads have gone. As Glebe became an ‘in’ place rent went up—I doubt if I’d be able to live here now, even on my police salary.”
    They turned right, up Hereford Street and went through the gate to number 54. A small furry black animal came toward them, barking, and revealing a row of tiny, sharp teeth. The mini-monster looked seriously angry and bore a striking similarity to the picture in the tourist brochure of the Tasmanian