The Reward

by Peter Corris

  PETER CORRIS is known as the ‘godfather’ of Australian crime fiction through his Cliff Hardy detective stories. He has written in many other areas, including a co-authored autobiography of the late Professor Fred Hollows, a history of boxing in Australia, spy novels, historical novels and a collection of short stories about golf (see www.petercorris.net). In 2009, Peter Corris was awarded the Ned Kelly Award for Best Fiction by the Crime Writers Association of Australia. He is married to writer Jean Bedford and has lived in Sydney for most of his life. They have three daughters and six grandsons.

  The Cliff Hardy collection

  The Dying Trade (1980)

  White Meat (1981)

  The Marvellous Boy (1982)

  The Empty Beach (1983)

  Heroin Annie (1984)

  Make Me Rich (1985)

  The Big Drop (1985)

  Deal Me Out (1986)

  The Greenwich Apartments (1986)

  The January Zone (1987)

  Man in the Shadows (1988)

  O’Fear (1990)

  Wet Graves (1991)

  Aftershock (1991)

  Beware of the Dog (1992)

  Burn, and Other Stories (1993)

  Matrimonial Causes (1993)

  Casino (1994)

  The Washington Club (1997)

  Forget Me If You Can (1997)

  The Reward (1997)

  The Black Prince (1998)

  The Other Side of Sorrow (1999)

  Lugarno (2001)

  Salt and Blood (2002)

  Master’s Mates (2003)

  The Coast Road (2004)

  Taking Care of Business (2004)

  Saving Billie (2005)

  The Undertow (2006)

  Appeal Denied (2007)

  The Big Score (2007)

  Open File (2008)

  Deep Water (2009)

  Torn Apart (2010)

  Follow the Money (2011)

  Comeback (2012)

  The Dunbar Case (2013)

  Silent Kill (2014)

  PETER

  CORRIS

  THE REWARD

  This edition published by Allen & Unwin in 2014

  First published by Bantam Books, a division of Transworld Publishers, in 1997

  Copyright © Peter Corris 1997

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to the Copyright Agency (Australia) under the Act.

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  Cataloguing-in-Publication details are available from the National Library of Australia

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  ISBN 978 1 76011 025 3 (pbk)

  ISBN 978 1 74343 803 9 (ebook)

  Thanks to Paul Abraham, Jean Bedford, Rebekah Donaldson, Sofya Gollan, Tom Kelly, Tania Sourdin

  1

  ‘Do you remember Ramona Beckett, Hardy?’

  ‘I remember her,’ I said.

  ‘Perhaps you also remember that her family offered a reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of whoever was responsible for her death. This was about two years after she disappeared, and that’s fifteen fucking years ago.’

  I shrugged. ‘If you say so.’

  ‘Am I right in thinking that you had something to do with her?’

  The man who’d asked the question was Barry White, an ex-cop, ex-private detective, ex-nightclub bouncer, ex just about anything in that line you could think of. He was middle class, university educated and had made Detective Sergeant pretty quickly, but he’d resigned from the force just ahead of a corruption charge. Like me, he’d lost his PEA licence for breaches of the regulations. I’d regained mine fairly easily and quickly on the basis of a previously good record and the recommendations of police officers and others whose integrity was unquestioned at a time when a lot of questioning was going on.

  White hadn’t been so lucky. The only cops he knew were as corrupt as he was and were leaving the force under clouds or to go behind bars. He was a big, strong man, or had been, and he’d looked pretty formidable outside a nightclub for a while. But the booze softened and slowed him and people who like to start trouble in those places these days have learned martial arts tricks that can make an old thumper like Barry look silly. Me too, for that matter. So he’d slipped down a few more notches. When he turned up at my office that Monday morning I thought he might be scrounging for work. He wasn’t.

  ‘I knew her, yes.’

  Ramona was a rich, spoiled young woman who wanted to be the first female premier of New South Wales. She did a sociology degree at Sydney and, after blooding herself in university politics and local government, she decided that blackmail was the way to go. She set about seducing politicians and influential people with the aim of getting leverage on them to put her where she wanted to be in politics. One of her victims had had the guts to come to me professionally and I’d helped him.

  ‘We’ll get to that. The unusual thing about this reward,’ White said, ‘is that the money was well invested and has accrued interest. The amount on offer now stands at over one million dollars.’

  ‘I didn’t know that.’

  ‘It’s a long time ago. People forget. But no one was ever charged with Beckett’s murder and the reward is still available, although her father’s dead now. You might remember that her mother was much younger. Mrs Beckett is still very much alive and at last report was still keen to see justice done.’

  I didn’t much like the smell of this. ‘It’s nearly seventeen years ago, Barry,’ I said. ‘Sure, I was around when it all happened, where were you?’

  He grinned and as it changed expression the high-coloured face showed the marks of booze and fists and late nights. He wouldn’t have been much over forty and he looked sixty. He took out a packet of Drum tobacco and probed in it for the papers. ‘You mind?’

  I said I didn’t but I did, a bit. I used to roll them myself and I still missed the taste of the tobacco, especially the first three or four smokes on a clean palate, but I didn’t miss the cough and the short wind. Still, the smell was good and there was no law against me enjoying that. He rolled the smoke expertly and lit it with a match which he put in his jacket pocket. He wore a business shirt, not too clean, a tie likewise, a double-breasted blazer with one gold button missing, grey trousers and black shoes that had just had a shine. He sported a fresh haircut and shave and I could smell the lotions. I hadn’t seen him for a while but what I’d heard of him was that his marriage was washed up and that he was living in a room in Chippendale. Clearly, he’d spruced himself up to see me. I was suspicious rather than flattered.

  He blew smoke towards the window where a little more grime wouldn’t hurt. I had the office painted and the windows cleaned a year ago when I was given a two-year lease. It looked all right for a while but somehow lately it’d slipped back.

  ‘I was there, too,’ White said. ‘I was a probationary D at the ’Loo.’

  ‘What’s this about, Barry?’

  ‘Fuck, what d’you think? It’s about the money, of course. I’ve got a line on who knocked Beckett.’

&n
bsp; ‘Oh, yeah? And who was that?’

  He laughed through an exhalation of smoke and the cough caught him like a hard right to the ribs. He doubled over and his face turned purple as he fought the spasm.

  ‘Jesus, Barry,’ I said. ‘You’re holding a full hand for a heart attack.’

  ‘I know,’ he gasped, fighting for breath. When he finally sucked some air in he said, ‘I’m just about fucked if I don’t get this money. I’ve got high blood pressure, a touch of emphysema and a crook liver. They reckon I can pull out of it if I stop drinking and smoking, lose weight and eat lettuce. If I can get the money I’ll do it. I’ll go to one of those health farms in the fucking Blue Mountains and drink mineral water and be a good boy. It’ll be worth it. Kicking shit the way I am now, I’d just as soon be out at Rookwood.’

  I nodded. I could understand that. It’s easy to eat healthily if you can afford asparagus and chicken fillets. A good bottle of wine won’t do the damage of a slab of beer. Trouble was, that line of thought made me feel like a drink and it was only four o’clock in the afternoon—two hours before my self-imposed starting time. He went into a coughing fit again and while I waited for him to recover I tried to remember what dealings I’d had with him before. There wasn’t much, a bit of a brush when he was extorting from a madam named Ruby Thompson who was a friend and I asked him to lay off. He got even by verballing a client of mine who was probably guilty anyway but deserved a second chance.

  He got his breath back and looked at the cigarette he’d put in the ashtray. He reached over and snuffed it out. Maybe he could rehabilitate himself after all.

  ‘Okay, okay, I’d forgotten your sense of humour. Try not to make me laugh, Hardy. I could drop dead on you.’

  I was thinking he could drop dead for all I cared, but I knew that wasn’t quite true. I had ambivalent feelings about Ramona Beckett, but my feelings about a million dollars were pretty straightforward.

  ‘The way I heard it, you screwed her, literally and otherwise.’

  ‘No comment.’

  ‘Come on, Hardy. I’m lining up a hundred thousand fucking dollars for you. I need to know how close you got to her.’

  While I didn’t have White’s health problems, things weren’t getting easier. I was pushing fifty and the private detective business, like everything else, was rapidly being taken over by computers. Process-serving was being done by email and fax, money was moved electronically rather than in briefcases, and there were big agencies specialising in finding lost kids, de-bugging offices and protecting men in suits. I didn’t have any life insurance and the superannuation the government was obliging me to pay myself wouldn’t keep me in red wine and secondhand books if I stopped earning. I had to be interested in a hundred thousand bucks. There were a lot of questions in my head but it was best to play along, for now.

  ‘You knew what her line was, did you?’

  ‘Not really. Tell me.’

  I told him. ‘This bloke she was blackmailing came to me for help and we set her up. Sort of biter bit thing. I pretended to be a bigwig, a lawyer who controlled the preselection for a safe Liberal seat. She arranged her usual deal—the drinks, the fuck in her Potts Point flat, the video camera. Only she was a solo operator by necessity and couldn’t keep her finger on everything. I had help. I had someone swipe the video and substitute another one. I taped her when she came to me with the pitch. Then I turned the tables on her—told her I’d send the video to her dad and give the tape to the cops and the papers. She backed off after that, but she might have done it again, just being more careful. I don’t know. She went missing . . . oh, about a year after that, maybe less.’

  White nodded. ‘I get it.’

  I’d tried to tell it matter-of-factly, but it hadn’t been like that at all. Ramona Beckett was hell on wheels, tall, dark, thin with sexual energy in every gesture. She ate like a wharfie and was a junior gymnastics champion who ran fifteen kilometres every day. She had a fast metabolism but her touch was strangely cold. She got by on five or six hours’ sleep, she read a lot of books and liked to wear black leather, the way she had the night I turned the tables on her. She was a living, breathing contradiction—a feminist, a reactionary, a corrupter and an idealist. She genuinely believed that she could improve life in the state for everyone, if only she could acquire the power to do it. She ended up hating me, of course, but I couldn’t say I had the same feeling for her. I got a tissue from a pocket pack in the desk drawer and blew my nose. Clear the sinuses and you can clear a lot more besides. ‘Any number of people could have had reason to kill her,’ I said.

  ‘Including the guy you worked for?’

  I shrugged. ‘Who knows? Maybe. Maybe he didn’t tell me the whole story. But he’s definitely not a candidate to bring in the reward on because he’s dead.’

  Out came the tobacco again and the brown-stained fingers rolled the cigarette just as deftly as before. He looked at it, burred over the ends, smoothed out the wrinkles, tapped it on his thumbnail and didn’t light it. ‘Better not,’ he said. ‘You might make me laugh again.’

  ‘I’ll try not to. Why don’t you try not beating about the bush? You said you had a line.’

  White leaned forward across the desk. His teeth were bad and his breath was worse. He was sweating too and there was a stale odour coming from his clothes. ‘The word is, it was a kidnapping. There was a ransom note that got suppressed.’

  2

  That got my attention. Until very recently there were any number of cops and lawyers and magistrates and politicians in Sydney who acted as if none of the laws applied to them; seventeen years ago it was even worse. ‘That’s interesting, Barry,’ I said ‘Tell me more.’

  He eased back in his chair. ‘Are you in?’

  ‘Come on, I’d have to know a lot more than that. And in for what? You said a hundred grand.’

  ‘That’s right. Ten per cent. That’s generous. I’d have to split the reward with at least three other people.’

  ‘Who?’

  He shook his head. ‘I need a commitment.’

  ‘And I get a five hundred dollar retainer and two hundred a day plus expenses.’

  ‘Do I look like I’ve got that sort of money? You’d have to work on a contingency basis.’

  It’s a natural reaction to place some confidence in a person with a decent vocabulary and a reasonable command of grammar, but in Barry White’s case the impulse had to be fought against. As I say, he was well educated and no one ever called him dumb, but he was corrupt and devious, or had been, and I’ve never known adversity to straighten anyone out. ‘I don’t think so, Barry. No.’

  He gave that grin again which must have been appealing when he was in better condition. He squirmed bulkily in the chair and took a thin wallet from his hip pocket. ‘It was worth a try, Hardy.’ He took seven one hundred dollar notes from the wallet and laid them on the desk ‘This buys me one day, right? The retainer’s returnable if you back out.’

  His eyes were faintly bloodshot and it clearly hurt him to part with the money. That he was doing it meant something, but what? ‘That’s right, if I take you on. You’re not a good bet, Barry. You verballed blokes and planted drugs on women and took kickbacks till you forgot what job you were supposed to be doing.’

  ‘All that’s true,’ he said. ‘I was a fucking idiot. I thought I was too smart to get caught. Do you know what I did with all that money? I drank and ate and fucked it away. That’s how dumb I was. I’ve got nothing, Hardy. No wife, no kids, no house, no reputation, no pride. All I’ve got is this one chance. Have you ever been down to one chance?’

  ‘Not quite.’

  ‘But close?’

  I thought about how it had been when Cyn left me, coldly removing every single item she’d owned and breaking a lot of those we’d owned jointly. I thought about the alcoholic slide I’d gone into when Glen Withers married her policeman and the nice, structured life I’d had had fallen apart like a house of cards. And it was my fault. ‘Pretty close
.’

  His eyes darted around the room, taking in the dirty windows, the dust on the fax machine and the top of the filing cabinet, the peanut shells in the waste-paper basket. ‘You’re not exactly setting the world on fire yourself, are you?’

  If we’d been in a boxing ring, you’d have to have called the round about even. I was tired of sparring. I knew I wanted a crack at the hundred grand, I just didn’t want to do it completely on his terms. ‘Why d’you need me, Barry? You were a cop and a PEA. You know the ropes. You’ve got some information, some contacts, some leads. You know how to talk to people. Why’re you here?’

  If he knew he had me, he didn’t show it. He finally brought the rollie up to his mouth and lit it, again putting the match in his pocket. It made me wonder if he’d been inside where they do little things like saving matches to play cards with. He drew on the smoke judiciously. ‘I haven’t got the resources,’ he said. ‘I haven’t got a car or a mobile or an answering machine. I haven’t got any decent clothes and most of all I haven’t got the contacts. This is going to mean talking to cops and lawyers and journos. You can do it, I can’t. There’s a few things we can do together, but not much. That’s why I need someone. I’m not going to piss in your pocket, Hardy, but I know you don’t rip people off. That’s why I need you. What d’you say?’

  The lawyers are all doing it, so why not the PEAs? I negotiated a contract with Barry White on a contingency basis. I was to get 10 per cent of whatever reward money he recovered, my cut to come off the top. How he divided up the remainder was his business. I had the option to work on other matters simultaneously and to pull out of the arrangement at any time after the first week. This meant I was giving him six days’ credit. Give a little, take a little. He signed with a flourish.

  ‘Shit, I need a drink,’ he said.

  ‘I’ll shout you one in a minute. First things first. Where does the information about the ransom note come from?’

  White had finished his cigarette without choking and he made another one. ‘Does the name Leo Grogan mean anything to you?’