The Coast Road

by Peter Corris

  ‘Hard to say, but a man named Larry Buckingham is not at arm’s length from it.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘You haven’t heard of Larry Buckingham?’

  ‘Come on, Aaron, I haven’t heard of lots of people. Who is he?’

  ‘Well, he’s a few things, past and present. Nowadays a highly successful publican. Spend any time down here and you’re likely to drink in one of his many establishments. Owns a few places in Sydney as well. One-time footballer, charged with but not convicted of supplying amphetamines to players and others. Bit of a bikie in his time . . . and ex-lover of Wendy Jones.’

  23

  De Witt had asked around but couldn’t get a line on what might be planned for the Wombarra acres.

  ‘I hope your enquiries were discreet,’ I said. ‘I’ve got an idea that finding that out was what got Frederick Farmer killed.’

  ‘Very discreet. Always. Anything solid?’

  ‘Just a feeling, but it fits. It looks as if the two goes at knocking me off were because they thought I’d find it out, or already had. I haven’t.’

  ‘But you’re going to try.’

  ‘Yeah. I’m getting interested in this Sydney connection. Might be worth paying Matilda a visit and bringing her up to date with things. Might panic her. Say she knows Wendy and say I tell her how close Wendy is to a shotgun killing.’

  ‘Is she?’

  ‘Could be. Farrow found the shotgun that could’ve killed MacPherson. Who knows where Wendy fits in? But it wouldn’t hurt to try it on Matilda for size. No word about Wendy down here, is there? The cops don’t know where she is.’

  De Witt drained his mineral water and shook his head.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘She could be in Sydney still. No one better placed to hide people than a real estate agent.’

  ‘You’re reaching.’

  ‘True. Can you give me a list of the places in Sydney this Buckingham character owns?’

  ‘Sure. I’ll email it. So you’re heading back to the smoke?’

  ‘Have to. A matter of a stolen car to sort out.’

  De Witt looked blank.

  ‘Don’t worry. It’s a sideshow. I’ll get this, or rather my client will.’

  I’d drunk half of the bottle; I got the cork back and took the rest with me. I went to the toilet again and examined my face. The bruises were coming along nicely and the scratches were scabbing up. Quick healers, the Hardys.

  The Falcon was where I’d left it close to Marisha’s building. I pulled the Hyundai, which hadn’t suffered any damage beyond wear and tear on the tyres and picking up a lot of dust, into one of the parking slots. I went to her door and rang the bell. I had the keys dangling from my index finger. The door opened and she looked at me as if I was wearing a fright mask. She retreated a step.

  ‘Cliff. Oh, Cliff, I’m so sorry.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘For reporting the car stolen. I didn’t see your note and when the car wasn’t there I got angry.’

  ‘I left the note in plain view.’

  ‘It fell down. I found it later and tried to . . . withdraw the report, but . . .’

  ‘You didn’t see my car in the street and think about it?’

  ‘No, oh God, don’t look so fierce.’

  Was she acting again? I just couldn’t tell. I stuck my finger out so she could take the keys but she wasn’t looking at it.

  ‘Your face! What’s happened to your face? Is it my fault? Did the police . . . ?’

  She had the knack. The things she said and the way she said them made me laugh. I leaned against the doorway clumsily and dropped the keys. I grunted as I bent to pick them up, something I’d pledged not to do. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘One cop tried to kill me and another saved my life.’

  Her hands went up to her hair in a gesture that lifted her small breasts under the T-shirt and emphasised her slimness and flexibility. ‘Jesus. Was this because I reported it?’

  ‘Yes and no. They would have found me anyway, sooner or later. Can I come in?’

  ‘Of course.’ She reached for my hands and I let her pull me inside. There was a smell of incense in the apartment and I could hear some kind of classical music playing softly. Also voices speaking a foreign language. She saw me noticing and shook her head. ‘I haven’t got visitors. I’m working on a film translation.’

  ‘What language?’

  ‘Russian.’

  ‘Lucky it isn’t Arabic, you’d have ASIO after you.’

  She stared at me and then the strain and doubt fell away from her face as she smiled. ‘A joke. You are beaten up again and still joking. Are we going to make love again?’

  ‘If I can,’ I said.

  ‘So, how is what you call your other matter going?’

  We’d made love, but my doubts about her story and my reluctance to question her further hadn’t helped. I’d slept while Marisha worked and now we were sitting over glasses of wine before deciding what to do about an evening meal. A long, hot shower had eased my aches and pains but my face still looked as if I’d played eighty minutes of State of Origin. I remembered being clobbered by a runaway surfboard once, and my face felt a bit like it had then. It hurt to frown and to laugh and I’d chipped a tooth. To my tongue it felt like a serrated edge but Marisha said she couldn’t see it. I’d put off thinking about the Farmer case, but the respite was temporary.

  ‘It’s taking some sort of shape,’ I said. ‘But there’s a fair way to go.’

  ‘So you’ll be running off again soon?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Will it be dangerous? As dangerous as it has been up to now?’

  ‘I hope not. If I can find out how things tie together that should satisfy my client. Then it’ll be a matter for the police.’

  ‘Who is he, your client?’

  ‘She. An academic at Sydney University.’

  ‘Beautiful?’

  ‘Handsome.’

  ‘Sexy?’

  ‘A lesbian.’

  She laughed and drew closer to me on the couch.

  ‘I didn’t pay you for finding Kristina.’

  ‘I found her but I didn’t catch her. You don’t have to pay me.’

  ‘She phoned me as she said she would.’

  ‘How’s she going to manage with that bastard of a pimp?’

  ‘I think she’ll manage.’

  I remembered how she’d tricked me into taking her to Paddington and how she’d coped with that situation and I thought that perhaps Marisha was right—if the story was true. My mind switched to Wendy Jones and Matilda and Larry Buckingham.

  ‘You’ve gone away already,’ Marisha said.

  I shook my head and was pleased to feel no pain. ‘Not yet.’

  I brought Elizabeth Farmer up to date by telephoning her in the morning. I omitted the rough stuff but let her know there were two more possible victims of a conspiracy behind her father’s death.

  ‘And you think Dad got wind of it?’

  ‘It’s a possibility. Trouble is, it’s all tissue thin. Matilda’s got some sort of connection to this Kembla Holdings mob that has a dodgy smell to it. If they’re involved in the purchase of Sue Holland’s land it would all firm up a bit, but I don’t know if it’s possible to tease that out.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Sue said she got the offer through a solicitor and tried to track back to the source of the money but didn’t get very far.’

  A disparaging noise came over the line. ‘One, she’d be a rank amateur at that sort of thing and, two, she has an interest in not knowing.’

  ‘I suppose that’s true.’

  ‘Now my Tania works for this massive accounting firm that’s got databases and all that stuff. Maybe she could see if there’s a connection between . . . what was it?’

  ‘Kembla Holdings. Everything all right on that front, is it?’

  ‘Yes. Kembla Holdings and the solicitor. What’s his name?’

  ‘I don’t know. You’d have to a
sk Sue, and along the lines of what you said before, she probably won’t tell you.’

  ‘I’ll spin her a story. She’ll tell me. So what are you going to do, Cliff?’

  ‘I’d like to find Wendy Jones and her pals, and I’m wondering if you’re in any danger.’

  ‘I can take care of myself, and if Matilda’s behind all this she knows that I don’t have a clue about it.’

  ‘She might know—through the bent cops—that I was hired by you.’

  ‘You said he was in custody, that policeman.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘I should pay you some money,’ she said.

  ‘It wouldn’t hurt. I’ll email you an account.’

  We left it there. Mention of email prompted me to boot up the laptop. De Witt had listed three hotels—one in Marrickville, one in Erskineville and one in Balmain—owned by Larry Buckingham. Buckingham had played for Balmain so it was natural that his property would be in the inner west. I didn’t remember him, but I’ve never followed League all that closely. It was a place to start. I closed up the computer and went into the room where Marisha was working.

  ‘I have to go.’

  She didn’t turn around from the screen. ‘Okay. Bye.’

  ‘Something wrong?’

  ‘No. Just me not being clingy.’

  ‘I’ll ring you, Marisha, but I don’t know when.’

  She swivelled the chair around to face me. She was wearing white silk pyjamas with most of the buttons undone. I could see the tops of her breasts with a thin gold chain dropping down between them. She blew me a kiss and went back to work.

  A quick look told me that the Marrickville pub wasn’t a goer because it was immediately across the road from the police station. The Erskineville place was more a wine bar than a pub. The upper level was occupied by offices of some sort; there was no easy parking and no easy getaway routes. It was mid-morning on a warm day so I had a drink there anyway. Plenty of football photos about. When the barman brought my beer I asked him if Larry Buckingham was in any of the photos.

  ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘There he is. And there.’

  The first photo was of a player running with the ball under his arm and fending off an opponent. His face was a grimace of determination and aggression and it was hard to tell from the picture what he’d look like off the field. The group photo of the team sometime in the eighties showed him to be big, dark and handsome with a face still relatively undamaged. He had muscles everywhere they were needed but there was a look about his build that suggested he would put on weight when he stopped training. But then, don’t we all?

  I drove to Balmain and found the pub, more or less on the border of Rozelle, a few blocks down from Darling Street towards the water. The Soldiers Arms was shut up tight with that sad look a pub gets when it goes out of business. But that wasn’t what interested me most. The place was for sale, and the people to contact were the Matilda S-T Farmer Agency.

  24

  I drove past the hotel and parked a hundred metres along the street. The Soldiers Arms occupied a corner and I circled around behind it and approached down the side street, keeping to the footpath furthest away. Tall trees blocked some of the view and the sun was in my eyes so I couldn’t get much of an idea whether there was anyone inside the place or not. Both streets were narrow and quiet with the usual gentrified terraces and semis that characterise Balmain. There might even be a glimpse of the water from the top level of the tallest houses. Money in the bank. There appeared to be a sizeable yard at the back of the pub, enclosed by a high fence with three strands of barbed wire on top.

  I kept moving, trying to register everything without drawing attention to myself. A narrow lane ran behind the yard and there was a driveway beside the building leading out onto the front street. Three possible exits. Hard to imagine a better place to hide, especially if the beer was still on.

  This needed thinking about. If I was right about the pub being the hideout, there was no way I was going to charge in there up against Lonsdale and his mate and possibly Wendy and others. I was in the information business, not the crime-busting one. I wanted to know what was planned for the Wombarra properties and who was behind it. That’s all Elizabeth Farmer could expect me to do. Anything else would be a bonus.

  First thing would be to find out if they were there. Then to isolate someone and get him or her to talk. If Lonsdale had killed MacPherson then he was potentially in bigger trouble than his associates. Might be some leverage there. A patient and cautious person would see it as a watch and wait situation, something I’m not good at. I had to stir the possum somehow. I went back to the car and called Marisha on my mobile.

  ‘So soon,’ she said.

  ‘Can you do something for me?’

  ‘Of course.’

  I asked her to phone Matilda’s agency and express an interest in buying the Soldiers Arms. She should be insistent to the point of rudeness. I told her she could expect to be put off. When that happened, she should say that she and her husband would drive by anyway and take a good look.

  ‘Acting,’ she said. ‘Fun.’

  ‘Yeah, but do it from a public phone, not from your place or a mobile. When you’ve done it, call me and let me know how it went.’

  She called back in a few minutes. ‘I was put on to the boss, a Ms —’ ‘Hyphen, hyphen. What did she say?’

  ‘She was very discouraging, and the more insistent I became the more discouraging she got. In the end I did as you said.’

  ‘That’s great, Marisha. Thanks.’

  ‘That’s all?’

  ‘That’s a whole lot. I’ll tell you about it later.’

  I positioned myself with a pair of quality field glasses at a high point back from the hotel. Under a tree, not too conspicuous, could almost have been birdwatching. After a few minutes the big gate to the yard slid open and a figure emerged. He wore a cap and shades and I couldn’t identify him. Not Lonsdale, I’d have expected him still to be limping. Maybe his mate, maybe not. He grabbed the handles of the wheelie bin standing a few metres from the gate and pulled it back inside. The gate stood open while he positioned the bin. Long enough for me to see a car parked in the yard. I made a quick adjustment of the focus and got a fix on the numberplate. BMWs look much the same as a lot of other makes, especially at a distance, but this car was fire engine red and bore the registration number De Witt had given me for Wendy’s new toy. The gate slid closed smoothly.

  First point established. I put the glasses away and leaned back against the tree to ease my still slightly aching bones. I ran the personnel through my mind—Wendy, Lonsdale, the guy with the wheelie bin, Matilda, Buckingham—where was the weakest link? Only one answer to that. I drove to my place, stowed my bag, checked on the mail and sat down with a pot of coffee to think. I ran various scenarios through my head, speculating on their likely outcomes and rejected one after another. It was well on in the afternoon before I’d sorted it out to my satisfaction. I picked out a piece of equipment and headed for Newtown.

  I parked as close as I could get to the agency and went up the steps and through the door. The front office was as busy as it had been the time I called wearing my best suit and almost polite manner. Different now.

  ‘Matilda in?’ I snapped at one of the women who lifted her head to look at me.

  ‘Yes, but —’

  I stepped around the desk and made for the stairs.

  ‘You can’t —’

  ‘I can and she’ll tell you so in a couple of minutes.’

  I went up the stairs and into Matilda S-T Farmer’s office without knocking. She looked up as I slammed the door behind me. In drill trousers, boots, army shirt and with my face chopped up she didn’t recognise me.

  ‘What do you think you’re —’

  I strode to her desk and slapped it hard with my hand centimetres away from hers. ‘Wendy Jones, Matthew Lonsdale, the Soldiers Arms, the murder of your husband, Larry Buckingham—we’ve got things to talk about, M
atilda. Ring down and tell them no interruptions. Otherwise, it’s the police right here and now and they’ll be keen to hear what I have to tell them.’

  Her perfect makeup and studied composure seemed to crumble at the same time. ‘I don’t —’

  I slammed the desk again. ‘Do it! Do it now or someone down there’ll get the cops and believe me, you’ll be deep in the shit.’

  She sucked in air and touched a button on her desk with a perfectly manicured but trembling finger. ‘Yes, yes,’ she said. ‘It’s all right, Phoebe. It’s all right, really. No calls please, and no interruptions.’

  No coffee on a silver tray this time, but issuing orders restored some measure of her authority, in her own eyes at least. She sat straight in her chair and looked at me. She wore a dark, high-necked blouse with a silver brooch at the throat. She passed a hand over her hair although it was immaculate. ‘Who the hell are you?’

  ‘You don’t recognise me?’

  ‘Should I?’

  ‘Didn’t you wonder why Mr Gerard Lees, the security consultant, didn’t get back to you about renting office property?’

  Her big blue eyes narrowed. ‘Jesus Christ. I thought there was something fishy.’

  ‘Doesn’t matter now. Shut up and listen.’

  I told her who I was and who I was working for, why I’d come to see her initially, and most of what happened subsequently. She blinked a bit at the murder bits but otherwise took it without flinching. I told her that I knew a man wanted by the police for a shotgun killing was holed up in a property owned by Larry Buckingham that was in some sense under her care.

  ‘No, I —’

  ‘Don’t bother. A phone call from an associate of mine to you here set things humming at the place. I was watching.’

  She shook her head. ‘A stupid mistake.’

  ‘I think you’ve made a few.’

  ‘Possibly. So you’re a private detective. You work for money. Perhaps we could come to an arrangement.’

  ‘No, I work for people. Don’t even think about it. But there could be a way out of this for you. I’m not sure. It’ll depend on what you tell me now.’

  She nodded.

  ‘Your firm is connected in some way to Kembla Holdings. Kembla Holdings’ principal is Larry Buckingham. His ex-lover is Wendy Jones who’s running around with a guy who tried to kill me and did kill someone connected to your husband’s Wombarra land.’