by Peter Corris
‘Afternoon, doctor. Good of you to see me.’
He wore a double-breasted business suit, grey with a muted pinstripe, a white shirt and burgundy silk tie. His appearance said, ‘I’m wealthy and successful.’ I wondered what sort of patients responded to that. He bent at the knees to support his weight and lowered himself into a chair.
‘Not a medical matter, I believe.’
‘It is and it isn’t. I’m a private detective as I told your…’
‘Secretary. Yes.’
‘Right and I’m looking for information about one of your patients.’
‘Damien Talbot. Most unfortunate. I’ve heard of the trouble he’s in.’
‘It seems he’s seldom been out of trouble. I’m working for the mother of the young woman who’s with him. Naturally, she’s concerned about her daughter. I want to find Talbot and get the girl away from him.’
‘Anticipating the police, I take it?’
He was probing. It suggested that the police hadn’t yet made the connection to him. A marginal advantage to me, possibly. ‘That wouldn’t hurt.’
‘I see. And what d’you want from me, Mr Hardy?’
He was a smooth number, self-assured, confident – almost arrogant. Not a guy to threaten, maybe a guy to flatter. ‘First,’ I said, ‘your professional assessment of Talbot. How dangerous is he? How serious is his physical impairment? Anything you can tell me along those lines. I know there’ll be limitations to what you can reveal.’
He frowned and tented his fat fingers. ‘Very severe limitations I’m afraid. And secondly?’
‘Can you help me to find him?’
‘Help how?’
‘Can you get in touch with him?’
He smiled, revealing expertly capped teeth. It struck me that he was vain, despite his bulk. In fact he gave the impression of being proud of every kilo and their arrangement. ‘Help you to trap him in other words.’
‘I wouldn’t put it quite like that.’
‘I daresay you wouldn’t. I’m afraid I’ll have to think this over, Mr Hardy.’
‘Why’s that?’
He frowned. ‘As you suggested, there’s a serious matter of confidentiality involved.’
‘There’s also the public interest.’
‘And your own.’
‘You’re being offensive.’
I recognised the technique. This guy was a master at putting you on the defensive. I struggled to get back into the action, considered mentioning the police, but he didn’t give me the chance. He was levering himself up and he was just a touch short of breath when he gained his feet. ‘As I say, Mr Hardy. I’ll consider what you’ve put to me. It’s not something to be undertaken lightly. I take it my secretary can get in touch with you?’
He glided out on what I suddenly realised were very small feet. Twinkle toes. I stayed where I was and waited for the announcement. It came a few seconds later. ‘Please leave the waiting room.’ I sat still and looked around. The camera could’ve been anywhere but I made guess at the ventilator high in the wall opposite me. From there a swivel mounted camera could survey the whole room. I poured the cold coffee into a vase of flowers, put up two fingers and left the room.
Once outside the building I expected to be escorted to the gate but no-one appeared so I drifted around to the back to see what else the doctor had on the premises. A four-berth carport with two 4WDs at home, several small Besser-block buildings and another drive-in entrance. Back here grass gave way altogether to concrete and the whole area gave off an air of high security. As I stood there in the weak sunshine with the breeze cutting into me, a man emerged from the main building. He was stocky and looked uncomfortable in his suit as if his natural uniform was more like mine – something allowing quick movement and travel over rough ground.
‘Help you, sir?’
From the nicely balanced way he stood, he looked more ready to hit than help.
‘Not really. I’ve just seen the doctor…’
‘And now you’re leaving. The gate’s that way.’
He pointed but not the way an untrained person points, not so as to disturb that precise balance. He was about my size but a good deal younger and I didn’t fancy a physical contest with him even if there’d been something to gain from it. I wondered if I could get the edge in other ways.
‘Right,’ I said. ‘Just off. What goes on there?’ I pointed to one of the small buildings and let my jacket come open so he could see the . 38. He did, but it didn’t faze him.
‘That’s the doctor’s library. The other building is a pathology laboratory.’
‘Uh huh. Well, I’m on my way.’
He said nothing but I could feel his eyes on my spine as I walked away, around the main building towards the front. A button released the gate and I went out to where the air was free to breathe and there was no-one watching your every move. Or so I thought.
I was irritated and dissatisfied. I had questions: how often did Talbot see the doctor; when did he last see him; what was the nature of their relationship? Macleod wasn’t going to tell me and neither was the well-balanced attendant. I looked along the street. The clinic occupied at least two frontages with a vacant block on one side and a paved car park serving a small electronics factory on the other. Privacy. Opposite, it was a different story. The houses on large blocks had deep gardens. Some were double-storeyed behind high hedges; some were set close to the street and some further back. I wondered if there were any sticky-beaks, nosey-parkers, snoops behind those hedges and gates. You never know.
I decided to try my luck at the houses and started at the end of the street, a hundred metres or so from the clinic. I took a risk, saying that I was from the sheriffs office with a warrant to serve. The ID card I carried to that effect was legitimate but specific to the warrant it related to and long out of date, but it opened some doors. I asked several women, one man and an adolescent with a heavy cold if they’d ever seen Talbot’s van and learned nothing. At a house almost opposite the clinic, the door was opened by a small, elderly woman of the kind that used to be called a little old lady.
Standing on the doorstep she barely reached to my chest which made her not much over five feet in the old measure. She had white hair but her blue eyes still had a lot of colour and were bright. Her hands were well worn and the skin on her face was finely lined rather than wrinkled. She held her thin body very straight. I guessed her age at about eighty but judged there was still plenty of mileage left in her.
The path up to the house was flanked by lines of tall pines and other trees dominated in the garden and the temperature was several degrees lower than out in the street – nice in summer, a bit chilly for now. The woman was dressed for it in slacks and a heavy cable-knit sweater. I gave her my spiel and she looked at me as if she was considering calling the dog. Another miss, I thought, and put the card away.
‘I’m sorry to bother you,’ I said.
‘It’s all right, I’m not bothered. I’m thinking.’
More promising. I stayed put.
‘You’re not a policeman, are you?’
‘No.’
She pointed at the clinic. ‘If you’re working for that man I’ll say good day to you, but I have a feeling you’re not.’
‘I’m sorry. I don’t know what you have in mind but…’
‘You’re not working for that man?’
She really had my interest now. It’s rare for people to deny doctors their title and it generally means something when they do. I more or less followed suit by stating that I wasn’t working for Macleod.
‘I thought not when I saw you in there. I can tell you things about him if you’re interested.’
Batty, I thought, but possibly useful. ‘You saw me in there?’
‘I can see into the place from my second-floor window.’ She touched the spectacles she wore. ‘I can see very well with these. I saw you with one of his thugs and I could tell that you weren’t getting on from the way you both moved.’
> ‘Could you? And why are you so interested in what goes on over there?’ I thought it was time to produce the card again. ‘You are?’
‘Miss Mirabelle Cartwright. I’ve seen that van you asked about, too.’
Bingo. ‘Perhaps we could talk inside.’
‘Yes, you see, that man murdered my sister.’
16
I stared at her.
‘You think I’m mad, don’t you?’
‘Not at all’
Her look was shrewd. ‘You’re not what you say you are, I believe. Your behaviour over there was quite odd. I must say you put that card you showed me away very quickly and it looked rather old. Would you care to show it to me again? I’d like to check the date on it.’
I was looking for a watcher and I’d found one, mad or not. I admitted that I wasn’t serving warrants and showed her my credentials.
‘Let’s talk,’ she said.
Two minutes later I was inside her house and the jug was on for tea. There are certain very rare circumstances when I’ll drink tea and this was one of them. Miss Cartwright’s house was an old weatherboard, something like a Queenslander, except much narrower and with a high loft room in the front. She took me up the steep staircase and showed me how the window of the loft afforded a view between the trees into the Macleod compound. I hadn’t doubted her but she seemed to want to establish her bona fides.
Her house was well-kept but not fussy. Surfaces were clean rather than polished, and in the kitchen where we were going to drink the tea, gardening gloves, books and a pair of Wellington boots lay around where they could be got at rather than where they could’ve been more tidily placed. She took off her glasses and put them on a table. ‘I don’t need them inside and I’ve got other ones for reading.’
I nodded. I didn’t need any more convincing that her vision was okay. A grey tabby wandered through and went on its way without comment from its owner. At least Miss Cartwright wasn’t a dotty or obsessive cat fancier. So far, so good.
Mirabelle Cartwright told me that she and her sister, Beatrix, had lived all their lives in this house which had belonged to their parents. Neither had married and both had retired from jobs in the public service on small but adequate pensions. Beatrix had gone to Macleod for treatment for her arthritis and had, according to her sister, ‘fallen under his evil spell’.
‘That man seduced her. I don’t mean in the nasty sense. I mean that he took her over, body and soul. She altered her will without my knowledge and left her half of the house to him and not to me, breaking our agreement of thirty years’ standing.
‘He prescribed steam baths and ice baths and I don’t know what else for the poor soul. She was dead within a year of first seeing him. At first I thought it was just, you know, fate. Beatrix had never been as healthy as me. I would’ve expected her to live well beyond seventy-three all the same. Our parents both lived into their nineties and our brothers…’ She broke off.
I sipped my tea and didn’t say anything.
‘They were fine young men, athletes. They could swim like fish and run like the wind. They were both killed in the war. Both.’
I was becoming more sceptical by the minute. The Cartwrights seemed to have run into more than their share of bad luck. Australian casualties in World War II weren’t that high. For two brothers to be killed must have been a rarity, whereas in the Great War it was commonplace. And doctors have a peculiar appeal for some single women. The scepticism must have shown on my face because she put down her cup sharply so that it rattled in the saucer. ‘You don’t believe me.’
‘I don’t know.’
‘You think that because I live here under that man’s sufferance… Oh, yes he could compel me to sell up at any time… my mind is poisoned against him.’
She was a very acute person, something like that was exactly what I’d been thinking.
‘Well, you’re wrong, Mr Hardy. I’m not the only one, you see. I asked around down at the elderly citizens’ club and much the same thing had happened to several other people. They’d lost people after that man had started treating them and for some of them it was worse.’
She really had me now. ‘In what way, Miss Cartwright?’
She leaned forward and hissed the words. ‘They disappeared.’
I was doubtful again. I needed something stronger than tea to cope with all this. I sat back in my chair and gave her a hard look. You notified the police of course.’
She shook her neat head. Her still thick, silvery hair fell forward and she brushed it back impatiently. It occurred to me that she would have been attractive when young and she still had vitality. I wondered what had caused her life to run on the track it had. In a very short space of time I’d heard about long-living parents, athletic brothers and a sick sister. Who was it said that a dysfunctional family is any with more than one member?
‘No, I didn’t go to the police about Beatrix,’ she said. ‘What could I prove? I thought about going when those people told me about the disappearances but I thought too long. Two were quite old and they died not that long after I spoke with them. That left only Mrs Barnes and I have to admit that she’s not quite all there any more.’
‘I see.’
She looked at her wristwatch. ‘I generally have a whisky about now. Would you care for one, Mr Hardy?’
Recipe for a long life, I thought, and said that I’d like a whisky. She had a decanter on a tray on a drinks trolley along with some glasses. She went to the kitchen and came back with a soda siphon and a bowl of ice. Working on the top of the trolley, she dropped one cube into a glass, poured a single finger and filled the glass with soda. She pushed the makings towards me. ‘Make yourself a decent one,’ she said. ‘My father used to say that drowning good whisky was a crime. Mind you, he was talking about Scotch and this is Irish whisky. I haven’t been able to abide Scots things since…’
I made a solid drink and took a good slug of it. I rolled the liquor around in my mouth and let it slide down. Whatever the top of the line Irish whisky might be, this was it. In the old days I would’ve rolled a cigarette, had another drink and hoped for the chemical stimulus to produce an insight. Now, the alcohol had to do it alone. Sometimes it felt like flying with one wing.
‘Miss Cartwright,’ I said. ‘I’m still not sure why you’ve told me all this.’
She pecked at her drink like a hummingbird. ‘But you’re interested?’
‘Yes.’
‘I thought you would be. When I saw a resourceful-looking person go in and come out so quickly I guessed that you and that man hadn’t seen eye to eye. And when I saw what happened between you and the thug I felt convinced of it.’
‘I think he has some involvement with the man I’m looking for. But it’s just a suspicion. You have to be very careful with doctors, they…’
‘I’m sure he has a lot of things to hide. Who is this person?’
‘Do you watch the news on television or listen to the radio news?’
‘Sometimes, not lately.’
I told her about the death of the guard at Tadpole Creek and my interest in the matter without mentioning any names. I mentioned Talbot’s van again.
‘I’ve certainly seen that van over there. It goes in through that back entrance.’
‘How often have you seen it?’
She tapped her fingers on the table. ‘Oh, my memory for something like that is so bad. More than once or twice is all I could be sure of.’
I thought back quickly. There’d been two vehicles in the carport. Neither was a van. ‘Have you seen it recently?’
She sipped her pale drink. ‘I really couldn’t say. Of course I don’t keep a watch on the place all the time. I’ve got a garden to attend to and shopping to do and so on.’
I finished the drink and stood up. ‘This has all been very interesting, Miss Cartwright and I think you’ve been of some help. If Macleod’s involved in the matter I’m looking into I’ll try to see that he gets into serious trouble. You can g
et me on these numbers pretty well any time. Let me know if you see the van or the young man who drives it. The one with the limp.’
She took the card that I held out. ‘And the young woman I’ve seen. Who is she exactly?’
‘I wish I knew.’
She shook her head. ‘I think you do know.’
‘She may be my daughter.’
Her nod was wise, compassionate, concerned – all that.
17
I was sitting in the car wondering what to do next when my mobile bleated.
‘Hardy.’
‘This is Tess Hewitt, Cliff. I’m sorry about what happened the other night. I over-reacted.’
‘It’s okay, Tess. I’m glad you called. I didn’t mean to upset you but this bloody business I’m in requires it sometimes. Anyway, what’s new?’
‘Well, you were right. Bill Damelian didn’t have any trouble getting bail for Ramsay and he doesn’t think the charge’ll proceed. So I should’ve listened to you.’
‘That’s good. Where’s Ramsay now? I’d like to talk to him.’
‘God, you do stick at it, don’t you? He’s doing something for one of the television stations about the protest. He said he feels terrible about the guard but…’
‘The publicity’s good.’
‘He’s young, Cliff. I sort of hoped you might want to talk to me .’
She hadn’t really answered the question about Ramsay’s whereabouts and I wanted to put the same question I’d put to her, to him: who was the Tadpole Creek protest’s benefactor? She misinterpreted my pause.
‘All right, then. You don’t want to see me again. I…’
‘Tess, Tess, don’t get me wrong. I do want to see you. Right now. Where are you?’
I was hoping she wasn’t at the protest. The last thing I wanted to do was crowd Geoff.
‘I’m at home,’ she said. ‘Please come, and you can ask me anything you want. I promise I won’t fly off the handle.’
There’s nothing like resolving a conflict to bring people closer. Tess said hello and touched my arm. I walked into the house with a companionable feeling that was rapidly becoming something more than that. We had a drink and more or less repeated our phone conversation. But we were standing closely together, almost leaning towards each other. I abandoned my glass and put my arms around her.