The Reward

by Peter Corris

  ‘Why won’t you talk?’ she said angrily. ‘Wait on, Max. I’ m trying to. . .’

  Everyone was getting shirty. ‘To tell you the truth, I find this method of communication bloody difficult. Let’s be up to date about this. Tell Max to fax me what he wants to tell me and I’ll do the same.’

  She hung, up in my ear.

  I felt shitty about it, but then, I felt shitty generally. I made a drink and wrote out a fax giving Max the gist of what I’d learned from Leo Grogan. I tried to be objective, listing the only two possible connections Claudia could have to the Becketts—that she was a former confidential employee of Cavendish or associated with the kidnappers. I favoured the first option and said so. I stressed that, in my opinion, working through her was the best way to progress. I didn’t say that I’d spent hours wandering around Glebe looking for her.

  I sent the fax and went up the street for some more wine and whisky and food which, for me, generally means fruit, bread, eggs and anything else my eye lights on. My mood improved on the walk and I exchanged greetings with a few of the shopkeepers and spent more money than I’d intended. I was contemplating replying to Max’s communication with an apology when I approached the house and saw something fluttering on my windscreen. Another carpet cleaner, I thought. I put the carry bags down on the hood and plucked the paper from under the wipers. I unfolded the sheet of yellow legal foolscap. The message, in bold, flowing felt tip, read: ‘Nice try, Cliff. Call you tonight at 9. C’

  It could have gone either way. I could have been furious at her arrogance and my incompetence or been amused at the cheekiness of it, the gall. The second way won, but my reaction was perverse. I realised that I was glad to have had her watching me. As far as I recalled I hadn’t picked my nose or spat on the pavement. I looked up and down the street, half expecting her to be there, laughing at me. She wasn’t, of course, but she could have been in any of the cars that had been on the road. Dark hair, dark glasses, the Laser was probably hired, so a different car. Why not?

  A taxi turned into the street, one of those taxis with a high roof. It pulled in behind my car and Max got out. He helped the driver run Penny’s wheelchair down the ramp and onto the pavement. Max gave the cabbie a card and as he was running it through, the wheelchair came purring towards me.

  ‘Hello, Penny.’

  ‘Cliff. We decided not to let this bullshit go any further.’

  ‘That’s good. I was mentally composing an apology fax.’

  Penny gestured at the paper in my hand. ‘What’s that you’ve got there?’

  ‘I’ll explain inside over a drink.’ The taxi drove away and Max came up to stand proprietorially behind the wheelchair. ‘Gidday, Max. I’ve just invited Penny in for a drink. You can come too if you like.’

  ‘Where she goes, I go.’

  I looked at Penny. ‘Ah,’ I said.

  Max frowned. ‘What’s the mean?’

  ‘Private joke,’ I said. ‘I thought you were only interested in widows.’

  ‘Max?’ Penny said.

  I opened the gate. ‘Another private joke. I win. After youse.’

  Terrace houses are not wheelchair-friendly, but we had no trouble getting Penny inside and installed in the living room with a glass of wine in her hand. Something had clearly happened between them, but for the moment Max, who accepted a small Scotch, was all business.

  ‘We’re got a lot of dope on Sean Beckett,’ he said. ‘Apparently, he’s a nutter.’

  ‘Max,’ Penny said. ‘That’s inaccurate.’

  ‘All right. A neurotic; unstable, disturbed, whatever you want to call it.’

  I drank some Scotch and wondered when Claudia would call and how to handle it. I tried to concentrate on what Max was saying but it was hard. ‘I’ve been called unstable and disturbed myself. Don’t know about neurotic. What’re the signs in his case?’

  ‘His marriage broke up—guess when? Immediately after the Beckett thing.’

  ‘Marriages break up,’ I said. ‘Mine for one.’

  ‘Sorry, I didn’t know that. How long ago?’

  ‘I forget. Long time. Okay. What else?’

  ‘He’s been in therapy ever since. He’s a raving hypochondriac, spends a fortune on doctors and health cures. He’s obese, really huge. I’ve got a picture of him, look.’

  Max took an envelope from his pocket and showed me a grainy photo of a very fat man. Two chins rested on his tie knot.

  ‘Could be genetic,’ I said. ‘We don’t know anything about his mum.’

  ‘Yes, we do. She was an accountant, helped old man Beckett get his start. She died not long after the divorce. Here she is, and the daughter.’

  Penny was looking around the room, maybe noting the cobwebs and frayed carpet, maybe wondering if the bookshelves could take much more of a load before collapsing. I’d wondered that myself.

  ‘You’ve been busy,’ I said.

  Max sipped his Scotch. ‘Penny has.’

  More photos. A pleasant-faced woman, kept from being attractive by close-set eyes that gave her an owlish look. Estelle Beckett favoured her father, who was a handsome man. The picture was a studio portrait and probably flattering. She had good bone structure and even features and knew how to use cosmetics and how to pose to make the best of them. She was good-looking but not a patch on Ramona which, as she projected vanity and self-absorption, must have been a problem for her. No suggestion of a weight problem, though.

  ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Sean’s a very troubled individual.’

  Penny glanced across at me. ‘That’s almost civilised.’

  Max took the photos back and tucked them away. ‘He’s on the board of this and that, as the mother told you, but he’s worse than useless. He was managing director of a couple of things for a while but people had to step in to prevent them from going bottom up. He rakes in more money than you and I can imagine, but for all that he’s a . . . what was it, Pen?’

  ‘A cipher,’ Penny said.

  22

  I made scrambled eggs on toast and we ate, drank wine and waited for Claudia’s call. I set the recording device to start taping the second she spoke and I brought the upstairs phone down and plugged it in at the kitchen so Penny and I could both listen. The phone rang at nine o’clock precisely.

  ‘Cliff, who’re those people you’ve got with you? And don’t lie to me.’

  ‘That’s a bad start, Claudia. Where are you?’

  ‘Not far away but you’d never find me. Oh, maybe you would if you had a week or so, but this is all going to be over well before that.’

  ‘What is?’

  ‘Come on, I answered your question and gave you some information. Give a little. If they’re technicians to trace the call I’m disappointed in you. That’s unimaginative.’

  I was standing in the doorway to the living room with the kitchen phone at full stretch. I could see Penny on the other phone mouthing the dialogue to Max. He was nodding. They were doing more than communicating, they were communing. Both disabled, but I envied them.

  ‘You know how to appeal to my vanity,’ I said. ‘They’re not technicians. The man is Max Savage, he’s a consultant to the police, investigating old cases. The woman is his assistant. They’re friends of mine.’

  ‘That’s interesting. I look forward to meeting them. Having a few drinks are you, something to nibble?’

  ‘Claudia, what the hell . . .?’

  ‘Humour me. I’ve been dieting for weeks. Oh, forget it. Look, Cliff, I want you to set up a meeting between Mrs Beckett, Wallace Cavendish and you and me. You can bring your friends along if you like.’

  ‘That might not be easy. Cavendish . . .’

  ‘Will be waiting for your call. He’ll agree, believe me.’

  ‘How many people can you manipulate all at once, Claudia?’

  ‘Plenty, if I have to. Arrange with Cavendish to meet tomorrow night out at that godawful place in Wollstonecraft. Nine o’clock, say.’

  ‘Are you sure you do
n’t want Sean Beckett there, and Estelle. How about I fly Peggy Hawkins down from the Gold Coast?’

  ‘Very funny.’

  I was tired of being the wall against which the ball was being bounced. ‘The working theory at this end, Claudia, is that you’re associated in some way with the people who kidnapped and killed Ramona Beckett. Anything to contribute?’

  ‘No, please just do as I say.’

  ‘It’s please, now, is it? Why don’t you come along to my place and meet Max and Penny? We don’t really like getting run around the block like this. Tell you what, you come here and we’ll tell you what you want to know—who suppressed the kidnapping note.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Cliff. It has to be this way. You can tell me that tomorrow night.’

  ‘Terrific. By the way, will I get the reward, too? The fucking pot of gold.’

  She hung up on me, the second woman to do it in one day. Great going, Cliff.

  Penny replaced the receiver and turned off the tape-recorder. I came back into the room with the whisky and wine and refreshed my drink and Max’s. Penny accepted some more wine.

  ‘Your telephone manner stinks,’ she said, addressing me but facing Max.

  ‘She got under my skin. I’m sick of being manipulated and all this mystery woman shit.’

  ‘Male ego challenged.’

  ‘If you like.’

  Max said, ‘I think I got most of it from Pen, but was there anything said that gives us a better idea of what’s going on?’

  Penny and I shook our heads. ‘Not even worth playing the tape,’ I said.

  Penny sipped her wine. ‘I’d say she’s an Australian who’s lived in the States for a while. What was that about dieting? Is she fat, Cliff?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Thin?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘In between.’

  ‘Jesus, men!’

  ‘Look, she’s a beautiful woman, but she’s forty or thereabouts. She’s not a girl or one of those anorexic models. She’s got a woman’s figure. I can’t see any reason why she’d want to diet. Anyway, she’s lying. She ate her share the night we had a meal together.’

  ‘I can’t see any reason why she’d want to do anything she’s done,’ Max said. ‘I’m completely in the dark. Did you do any digging on Cavendish? Turn up former employees and so on?’

  It was one of the things I’d been supposed to do and I hadn’t even thought about it. I shook my head.

  Max looked peeved. ‘We need to get some leverage on this woman. As it is, she’s making all the running.’

  ‘But she wants to know what we know,’ Penny said. ‘About the suppression of the note. That seems to be the one thing she doesn’t have. You don’t seem to be her favourite person, Cliff.’

  I knew what Penny was up to with that statement. She was going to get a read from my expression and body language. I tried to keep both as neutral as I could. ‘I’m nobody’s favourite person right now, including my own.’

  ‘On that bright note I think we might take our leave, Pen,’ Max said. ‘Thanks for the drinks and tucker, Cliff.’

  I called for a wheelchair-equipped taxi and we had a bit of a wait. The conversation was desultory but friendly. We’d healed the breach right enough and Max and Penny had done a whole lot more in that direction. We loaded the wheelchair into the taxi and Max and I shook hands.

  ‘I’ll ring you tomorrow afternoon,’ I said. ‘I might have something on Cavendish by then. And we can talk about what to do tomorrow night. That’s if she’s right—if Cavendish agrees to a meeting and can arrange it with Mrs Beckett.’

  Max nodded. ‘She seemed very sure it’d play like that. I wonder why she’s so confident?’

  I shrugged. ‘I’ve never seen her any other way, except maybe angry. She’s not a person with doubts.’

  Max glanced in to where Penny was sitting patiently. ‘A person without doubts has no imagination. Goodnight, Cliff.’

  The taxi drove off and I stood in the street for a while speculating about where Claudia might be. There were no high-rises overlooking my spot, nowhere for her to take up a position with binoculars. Then it hit me—the house for sale on the other side of the street, the one she’d ostensibly been interested in buying. I went inside, got a torch and my lock-picks and walked down towards the house. It was a double-fronted timber job that had been on the market for quite some time. Unusually for the area, it had a deep front garden and a driveway of sorts. To judge by the state of the weeds, the double gates to the drive, which was fringed by overgrown shrubs, had been opened recently and a car had been parked inside.

  The lock on the front door was an old Yale, easy to pick. I had it open inside a minute and stepped into the hallway. The house had a cloying, moist, musty smell indicating rising damp. If the vendors had put a high price on it, buyers would have been deterred by the smell. I went into the first room on the left. The street rose sharply beyond my place. From the front window of this house, which was set up on high foundations, the view back to my gate and the side of my house was clear. The room was devoid of furniture, but an old bentwood chair had been placed by the window. Two of the panes had been cleaned. Two styrofoam coffee cups sat on the dusty boards beside the chair. My respect for Claudia Vardon went up a few more notches.

  I went back, half hoping that she’d be there, standing in the doorway or sitting in a chair in the living room. She wasn’t, of course. I washed the glasses, plates and frying pan and made some coffee. I sat and played the tape through but learned nothing new from it. Great voice, I found myself thinking uselessly.

  It wasn’t late and I wasn’t tired. I went for a walk about the block and strolled down to the water below the big apartment complex at the end of the street. The grass had recently been cut and the fresh-mown smell was strong and pleasant as I sucked in deep breaths and did a mental review of the whole Ramona Beckett matter. The lights of the city skyline shone in the still water like a distorted duplicate of the real thing. The more I thought about the case the more it seemed that we hadn’t been grappling with reality but with some kind of shadow or mirage. Suddenly, I was tired, mentally and physically, and I tossed a couple of stones into the water to break up the image and went home.

  The light on the answering machine was blinking. I hit the play button, knowing for certain whose voice it would be.

  ‘Smart work, Cliff,’ she said. ‘I knew you were the right man for the job. See you tomorrow.’

  23

  Mrs Horsfield’s voice was still the same soothing instrument when she answered the phone at ten o’clock the following day. ‘Good morning, Mr Hardy,’ she intoned. ‘I was told to expect a call from you.’

  That was encouraging so I thought I’d take a punt. ‘Would you mind telling me how long you’ve worked for Mr Cavendish, Mrs Horsfield?’

  ‘Not at all. More than twenty years.’

  ‘In that time I suppose there would have been a good many associates, para-legals, secretaries arid so on in the office.’

  ‘Certainly.’

  ‘Do you recall a woman named Claudia? A qualified solicitor?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘I’m quite sure. Mr Cavendish has never employed females in responsible positions other than myself.’

  Couldn’t make it any more plain than that. I thanked her and waited to be put through to Wally the sexist. When he came on the line he sounded tired and worn, half the man he used to be.

  ‘Hardy,’ he said, as if even that was an effort.

  ‘You don’t sound well, Mr Cavendish. But then I expect you’re in better condition than Colin Sligo.’

  No response.

  ‘You do know Sligo, don’t you?’

  ‘You know perfectly well I do.’

  ‘He’s dying of cancer. He saw no reason not to tell me everything I wanted to know.’

  ‘Ah, I see. Yes, that makes some kind of sense.’

  ‘Have you be
en in touch with Sean Beckett recently?’

  ‘I have no intention of submitting to any interrogation by you. Certainly not at this time.’

  That appeared to leave the door wide open so I took the step. ‘I want to arrange a meeting

  His sigh came down the line like a gust of dry wind. ‘For tonight at nine o’clock at Wollstonecraft with Mrs Beckett and other parties whose identities I haven’t been given. I’ve had my instructions. It’s all arranged.’

  ‘Instructions? Who from?’

  ‘From whom? From Mrs Beckett, naturally.’ He hung up.

  Trouble at the ranch, I thought. Mrs Beckett now, not Gabriella. I wandered around the house in track pants, T-shirt and sneakers for a few minutes mulling this over. It had rained during the night and I went out onto the balcony off my bedroom to see if some fresh-washed air would help the thinking process. My thinking changed course abruptly when I saw the red 4WD with the silver mudflaps turn into the lane that runs off my street. I knew from my years of walking around the area that you could get a clear view of the back and front of my house from a point along that lane. I also knew where I’d seen that vehicle, or one like it, before—in Wollstonecraft, being exited by a man with an aluminium baseball bat in his hand.

  I took my .38 Smith & Wesson from its holster in the hall cupboard, checked it over and wrapped it in a plastic shopping bag so that I could carry it in my hand, ready to fire, but not alarm the neighbours. I went out the back door, hunched down behind my neighbour’s overgrown rubber tree and kicked out three palings in the fence. I went through the gap and across his yard. I couldn’t be seen from the high point of the lane there, and the neighbour’s back gate was never locked. I went through it and was now in a position to work through the streets and come out above where the Pajero would be parked if watching my place was his game.

  It was there, bullbars, silver mudflaps and all. The driver was standing in front of the vehicle, shading his eyes and looking down towards my house. I had no doubt it was the same guy—same height, same compact build. I hugged the fence, stayed in the shadows and came up behind him, dead quiet in sneakers on the bitumen. When I got closer I could see that his jaw was in constant movement as he chewed. I was beside the Pajero now and sneaked a glance inside. Cigarettes, a lighter and a mobile phone on the seat, no baseball bat. I was almost disappointed. I reached in, took the lighter and lobbed it over his head.