Whistle Down The Wire

by Robert Engwerda

  ‘Not yet,’ Cole answered. ‘He’s got some information I want first. See what you can find out about his runners though, especially Jennings and …’

  ‘Jan?’

  ‘Him.’

  ‘What’s this about Harry Colston? Is Fry anything to do with him?’

  ‘I’m not sure, but Fry and Colston might have been mixed up in something,’ Cole answered. ‘I don’t want this going outside of the station, either.’

  ‘I think you missed the bus then senior, because everyone already knows you think someone popped Harry off,’ Forrest said.

  ‘Great,’ Cole said ironically. ‘Why am I wasting my breath telling you blokes to keep your traps shut?’

  Forrest raised his hands in mock surrender. ‘It wasn’t me. It’s the new girlie annoying everyone about those tyres, and her and Ben seen scrounging around at the tip and asking questions. That’s how they know. People put two and two together and start talking. I didn’t say anything.’

  I bet, Cole thought. If he knew anything about Forrest it was that he’d never miss an opportunity to puff himself up in front of others after a few beers, tell everyone what important work he was doing even if it meant stretching the truth to breaking point.

  ‘No one outside of the station needs to know what goes on in here, so make an effort,’ Cole said sternly. ‘And just on something else. What do you know about the Kinross family? There was a bit of trouble up the street this morning with the daughter.’

  ‘The Kinross’s out at Camden?’ Forrest said. ‘They’re one of the oldest families in the district. Scottish tightarses. Had a huge run going way back they’ve made a bomb out of. The story goes they bought up a lot of land in town and tripled or quadrupled their dough selling it later. They’re not short of a quid, that mob.’

  ‘And Robyn Kinross? What do you make of her?’

  Forrest grunted. ‘She’s a snob. I could use other words, too, but they wouldn’t be nice. Drives that sports car. Went to a private school in Melbourne because the school here wasn’t good enough for her old man. Nothing around here’s good enough for them. I had to go out there the other day when the father reported some missing stock. The little miss opened the door and talked down to me like I was a dumb schoolkid. Then the old man showed me where the stock had gone missing from and looked at me like it was him doing me a favour. The mother’s locked up somewhere, went totally nuts they reckon. Who wouldn’t with a family like that?’

  ‘Do you know the Kinross boys?’

  ‘You see them around from time to time, but they don’t mix. Probably they get a good flogging from the old man every time they open their gobs.’

  ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘Just my opinion,’ Forrest shrugged.

  ‘Alright, keep your eye on them, then. Anything you can find out about the family, let me know, okay?’

  ‘Sure.’ Out of nowhere Forrest asked, ‘Do you know when the new gazette is coming in?’

  ‘No, why?’

  ‘The new pay rates are supposed to be in it,’ he said.

  Cole gathered his papers from the table to let Forrest know their meeting was over.

  ‘I’ll let you know when it arrives,’ he said.

  Back at his desk, Cole sat flicking through the photographs from the crash scene. The tread on the wheels dumped at the tip looked a match with his photograph of the muddy impression left near the crash intersection, all but confirming that Harry Colston’s car had been parked beside the road before being taken into the train’s path. Someone had been watching in the rain, with two dead people in the car, waiting for that train to arrive. Was the choice of night – cold, wet, dark – deliberate, or a happy coincidence for the killer or killers?

  And as he dwelt on it, it seemed money owed might not be such a likely reason for the Colstons’ deaths. After all, how did you extract money from dead people, except through being a beneficiary of their will? And, presumably, whoever had killed them would already have known that they were in line to benefit from it. Someone in a hurry for their money, then?

  He told Janice, ‘I’m ducking out for a bit. I’m going to catch up with Laurie Heywood if anyone needs me. Tell Ben he’s off the hook, no need to see Heywood now I’m doing it, nor the solicitor for that matter.’

  ‘We need some milk, too, if you remember,’ she said. ‘Are you taking one of the cars?’

  ‘I’ll walk, Janice. I could do with the exercise.’

  ‘Good for you, then,’ she said.

  On his way to see Heywood, Cole walked by Linda Fantasio’s salon, seeing her and another hairdresser busy with two customers, while another two clients read magazines in the waiting chairs. No one in the salon noticed him walking by.

  Lawrence Heywood had his head buried deep in a ledger when Cole let himself into the accountant’s office, which had recently been redecorated in lively colours. The accountant himself looked as if he’d walked into it by mistake, as if he were bewildered at finding himself in an interior designer’s office instead.

  ‘How are the numbers going, Laurie?’ Cole inquired.

  ‘On the improve, I’m happy to say, Lloyd. On the improve,’ Heywood did his best to put on a brave face. ‘After, you know …’

  Cole knew. Just prior to Christmas, the accountant had separated very publicly from his wife. Humiliatingly for Heywood, his wife had left him, a well-off town identity, for a penniless carpenter. No one understood it.

  Cole settled himself in a chair with plush armrests.

  ‘How’s that horse of yours going?’ he asked.

  ‘Five starts for one placing, a third. She’s my weak link,’ the accountant said. ‘The trainer’s spelled her now, but I don’t know what for. On the face of things, she hasn’t exactly exhausted herself. After her third placing I had high hopes, but then we took her to Swan Hill, put her in a maiden there, and she ran stone motherless last. The vet said there was nothing wrong, to which I could only disagree.’

  ‘That’s racing unfortunately,’ Cole sympathised. ‘But I’m hoping you can help me with something. Harry Colston.’

  ‘Oh God, Harry Colston,’ Heywood’s face dropped again. ‘You know, Lloyd, it was almost a blessed relief when I heard about the accident. The fellow was driving me mad.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘The number of times I had to change my books, the number of times he came to me with new scraps of dog-eared paper claiming one thing and another.’

  ‘This was to do with his tax, I gather?’

  ‘Yes, it was a hell of a mess. He was a hell of a mess. Colston hadn’t done anything about his taxes from the time old John fell sick. Then he comes to me in a panic because for the first time in his life he seems to have heard about this thing they call tax, and by then the tax department is chasing him and threatening penalties. That was when I realised how bad his situation was. When I told him there was nothing to be done about it, that he had to pay the first year’s back taxes straight away, give the tax department at least something to chew on, he went right off his rocker.’ Heywood shook his head. ‘I should’ve dropped him then and there, but I knew old John and I just couldn’t.’

  ‘So Harry couldn’t even pay the first year of his backdated taxes, never mind the following years, too?’

  ‘No. It gave me sleepless nights.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘We negotiated with the tax department and bought some time. Harry conjured up some money from somewhere and we set up a program where certain amounts would be paid at certain times. But it wasn’t very long before the wheels started falling off that arrangement as well. He wouldn’t answer my phone calls. He didn’t respond to letters.’

  ‘When was this?’

  ‘End of last year.’

  ‘What did you do then?’

  Heywood shrugged helplessly. ‘What could I do? If h
e didn’t want to talk to me I couldn’t force him to. Lloyd, I even tried getting to him through his wife, but she didn’t want to know about it either. In the end, I just thought, well, it’s his funeral, why should I keep getting so upset about it? But I couldn’t help it. Because of his father. I just kept banging my head against the brick wall. I suppose it was what they call professional pride. I didn’t want to see any client of mine going down the gurgler.’

  ‘What happened when the tax department came after him? I suppose they did?’

  The accountant fell back in his chair, defeated.

  ‘They did alright. Imposed a fine that Harry didn’t pay. Started pestering me day after day. Harry’s debt was growing like a patch of prickly pear; new bills were sprouting up everywhere and no one wanted to do anything about it.’

  ‘Except you.’

  ‘Except me, for my sins. And presumably the people who were chasing him for money, too, though he didn’t say anything to me about that. Now I suppose it’ll have to be me sort out his financial affairs. Even in death the poor bugger won’t leave me alone,’ Heywood said. ‘But Harry had been doing curious things, too, Lloyd. Paying out money to two bank accounts regularly after old John died. He’d never say who to. He just fobbed me off by saying it was for the care of his cattle and horses.’

  ‘Which it might have been. Have you seen his will yet?’

  ‘No. Grimes will have it. Are you going to have a look at it, too? I hope you don’t think I’ve done anything wrong?’

  ‘No, Laurie. That’d be the last thing on my mind. I think Harry was in all sorts of trouble with all sorts of people, and not just the tax department. I’m only just starting to get a handle on it.’

  ‘Well, if I can help, just tell me, Lloyd. I want this cleared up and off my plate as well. You know, too many other things going on with ....’

  He was stumped for words so Cole finished it for him. ‘I know. The wife. I hope that ends up the way you want it to, Laurie. For all of you.’

  *

  Cole’s next port of call was the solicitor, Albert Grimes. He was kept waiting half an hour while Grimes attended to another client, who eventually emerged from the solicitor’s office looking downcast and humbled, as if he’d just delivered his confession to a priest and been suitably chastised for it.

  Dour, humourless and habitually dressed in a crumpled black suit, Grimes sported battered horn-rimmed spectacles and carried himself like a portly, gout-suffering shadow with an imaginary Bible tucked beneath his arm. His office was cold and bleak, and little changed in the decades Grimes had occupied it. The solitary, narrow window was high on the wall, so high it couldn’t be peered out of. A rickety, cracked skylight might never have been opened in all the years the building had stood. The room smelt fustily of rising damp.

  ‘Sit down.’ He wafted a hand airily at his surroundings. ‘This used to be a mortuary, you know.’

  ‘I’d believe it,’ Cole answered. ‘I know you’re busy, Albert, as am I, so I’ll make my case.’

  The solicitor’s eyebrows moved almost imperceptibly.

  ‘And what case might that be?’ he inquired, a reptilian puff on his lips.

  ‘Harry Colston. I hear you’re his solicitor and that you drew up his will. I’ve got a few questions about that will.’

  The solicitor didn’t immediately answer, instead lacing his fingers together in an act of contemplation. After a minute, he said, ‘And what might they be?’

  It was going to be like drawing blood from a stone, Cole saw. Grimes, no doubt, charged his customers by the hour.

  ‘The Colstons’ beneficiaries. Who they are. What they get.’

  There was another eternal pause.

  ‘You are assuming …’ Grimes said slowly over his laced fingers, ‘… that there is a will.’

  ‘Well, is there?’

  Again the imperceptible movement of the solicitor’s eyebrows.

  ‘There is,’ he finally conceded.

  Cole drew out his notebook.

  ‘I’m investigating a possible crime, Albert,’ he said. ‘I need those details. No mucking around.’

  Grimes gently unlaced his fingers and eased back creakily in his chair.

  ‘You aren’t the first to want to see the will, you know,’ he said slyly. ‘You’re a little slow off the mark, aren’t you, Mr Cole?’

  ‘Albert, I don’t have all day. Who else wanted to view the will?’

  ‘Let me see now,’ Grimes thought. ‘Very well. Yes. There was Mrs Fantasio, just this morning. She was an interested party. And as she is a beneficiary of the will, I thought it only fair that she should see it. Then there was, let me think, … the Bramley gentleman …’ He pronounced the word sneeringly. ‘He also came here to seek me out.’

  ‘Bramley? Ken Bramley? What makes him think he’s going to inherit something?’

  ‘My dear chap,’ Grimes said patronisingly. ‘Not only does he think he is going to claim an inheritance, the terms of Mr Colston’s last will and testament make it plain that he will.’

  ‘And so? What does he get?’

  ‘Please don’t sound so surprised,’ he said. ‘After all, it’s not your will, or mine for that matter. A man is entitled to give what he wants to who he wants.’

  ‘What does Bramley get, Albert?’ Cole demanded, fed up with Grimes’ obstructions.

  ‘Now let me see, what does he get?’ Grimes thought.

  ‘Maybe you could just get the will out?’ Cole suggested.

  ‘It’s not here I’m afraid, but if you give me a minute it’ll come to me.’

  ‘I thought you said Linda Fantasio saw it here just this morning?’

  Grimes’ brow knitted as he stared hard into the space over Cole’s head. ‘I had it sent out to be copied. Ah yes,’ he continued, picking up the thread. ‘If my memory serves me well, Mr Bramley is to inherit the entire herd of beef cattle.’

  ‘Because, I’m taking it, Ken Bramley turns out to be an expert on Herefords?’

  ‘There is no need for facetiousness, Sergeant Cole. The law is the law and Mr Colston was completely within his rights to dispose of his assets to whomever he so wished.’

  ‘No doubt. Who else is lining up at the trough?’

  ‘A little patience, if you please. I haven’t finished telling you what else Mr Bramley – who is inheritor on behalf of the entire Bramley family, by the by – is to receive.’

  ‘You’re saying there’s more?’

  ‘I do, because of the circumstance of Mr Colston’s death …’ he answered glacially. ‘… Mr Colston made it clear that in the event of his death all his worldly goods and chattels, apart from the cattle, were to be passed on to his wife. In the event of his wife’s passing, all property, stock and goods were to be sold, and the proceeds divided equally between his sister and the Bramley family.’

  ‘And what mention is there of his son?’

  ‘There is no mention of the son.’

  ‘And no mention of Mr Colston’s brothers?’

  ‘None.’

  ‘You’re joking? When was the will written?’

  Grimes sat obstinately, everything about him resisting the opportunity to be helpful.

  ‘When?’ Cole demanded.

  The solicitor’s lips opened stickily. ‘That detail, I would need to check. But it wasn’t so long ago. Perhaps six months.’

  ‘Were there other beneficiaries then, too, besides Fantasio and Dianne’s family?’

  ‘No, there were not. The will is quite a simple document.’

  ‘Just so that I’m clear about this,’ Cole said, edging forward on his seat. ‘What you are telling me is that everything of Hilltop, or what’s left of it, is to be divided between Colston’s sister, and Dianne Bramley’s family?’

  ‘It’s written in his own hand. What is there to ques
tion?’

  ‘So what’s going to happen to the child, Albert, if there’s no mention of him in the will?’

  ‘As I just remarked, had you been listening, there is no mention of the child. I understand Mrs Fantasio is taking care of him in the interim, until it’s formally decided, and I have no quarrel with that.’

  As if it was your business to decide, Cole thought tetchily.

  ‘I’ll be back later,’ Cole rose and said. ‘I want to see that will for myself.’

  As Cole exited the solicitor’s office, he thought that one day someone would walk into Grimes’ office and find him dead, and be sorry it wasn’t they who had killed him he was that annoyingly pompous.

  He looked at his watch. If he was quick about his business back at the station, he’d just have time to make the TAB before it closed.

  And he wondered how Linda Fantasio was going to take the news that the Bramley clan were to inherit half of Hilltop. Not very well, he guessed.

  Cole was tired thinking about it as he ambled back into the station.

  ‘Did you remember to get the milk?’ was the first thing Janice said as he came in through the door.

  Chapter 16

  Sheridan telephoned Linda Fantasio asking for an appointment. All she needed was her hair washed, she explained, and perhaps her waves reset.

  ‘Hang on a minute …’ Fantasio said.

  The line went silent as the hairdresser rifled through her appointment book. They were pretty booked up, Fantasio said, there was a big wedding coming up on the weekend. But as a favour she would see her after hours if she wanted. What about tomorrow evening, say seven?

  ‘I think I can make that. If it’s not too much trouble for you,’ Sheridan ventured.

  ‘I’ll look forward to it,’ the other woman replied, but Sheridan couldn’t quite read her tone. It was faintly cool, yet she had put herself out for her when she hadn’t needed to.

  Sheridan thought about it a good while after she’d put down the phone. She’d been out to see the farmhouse property and after umm’ing and ahh’ing for several days decided she would take up the lease, if only because she couldn’t stand the thought of living in the hotel another day longer. She’d told the agent, and with the property vacant she could move in any time she liked. The following weekend, she decided.