by Peter Corris
‘Yeah, I saw him out at Avonlea the other day. He’s still got it, I’d say.’
‘What’s he doing out there?’
I shrugged. ‘Why not?’
‘Like everything else, it’s just a bit strange. Look, Hardy, I have to go. Hope I’ve been some help.’
We shook hands, both standing up. ‘You have. Thanks. Just one thing. Why’ve you been so… open?’
He smiled and gave the first camp gesture I’d seen, a flick of the wrist as he consulted his watch. ‘My partner’s a cop as well. How do think they’ve treated him medically and professionally? I don’t give a shit!’
When I was younger the sort of interview I had with Knopf would have left me empty and depressed, and even now I found it sobering. But the world’s full of stories like that and it does no good to cry over them. Knopf struck me as basically tough. He’d recover from his loss and just maybe I’d learn something from this case that’d interest him. For now, I had something to report to Lorraine Master before I started going through large amounts of her money. Always best to appear busy before clocking up the big ticket items.
It was raining steadily when I left the Prince Regent and I got soaked walking to the car. It was welcome after the dry spell but probably not enough to break it. Still, I kept my eyes open for any interested parties. No sign. Rain’s never mattered to Sydney’s Friday nightlife and the roads and streets were busy. Normally, I like that kind of bustle, but maybe Knopf’s misfortunes were working on me because I was disinclined to go back to an empty house. I hadn’t had a companion there for some time and there was no one on the horizon. I headed for the office where I could construct an encouraging email for my client with a few questions thrown in. At the office you don’t expect cheery company.
The building was empty the way it mostly is after six o’clock and I turned on the stairwell lights’ timer switches as I went up the two flights. I took off my wet jacket, dried my hair and face on a hand towel, made the obligatory cup of instant, settled down at the computer and tapped out my message with two fingers for the keys and my right thumb for the space bar. Works for me. I filled her in on the anomalies of the trial, told her when I was off to Noumea and that I’d received the authority for the money.
I sent the message and hit the ‘Get message’ button, not expecting anything. But there was a message: You are interfering in matters best left alone. Be advised.
My first threatening email. I printed it out and stored it. I imagined there were ways of tracking it to its source but I had no idea what they were and a strong suspicion that nothing would be learned anyway. I turned off the computer and the lights and left the office. Rain was spitting on the roof or I might have heard something. I didn’t. The timer switch didn’t work. They sometimes don’t. In the dark I tripped on an obstacle placed at the top of the stairs and fell the full length of the flight.
I know how to fall, the army taught me-protect your head, roll when you hit. It works more or less, but not as well on stairs as on grass. I tumbled a bit and my head bounced off the wall once. I managed not to grab at things, which can dislocate a shoulder or an elbow. I hit the landing on my back and felt the wind rush out. The fall had loosened the dust and I coughed and spluttered but didn’t black out so I heard the voice from below.
‘Get the message, Hardy?’
7
There was no reply to my email when I limped into the spare room to check the computer. Limped because as well as a bump on the head and a bruised back I’d slightly twisted my ankle coming down the stairs the night before. Nothing a big scotch and three paracetamols hadn’t coped with, but not the very best preparation for an international flight.
The questions that had sat in my sore head the night before were still there-who and why? And I still had no answers. It was hard to judge how serious the threat had been. A fall downstairs isn’t so much, compared to the bashing I could’ve got in that dark space. But then again, I might’ve broken my neck.
I showered and soaked the ankle first in hot water and then in cold and rubbed it with goanna oil until the bathroom smelt like a changing room after a hard League game on a warm afternoon. They say rubbing does nothing useful except perhaps stimulate a bit of blood flow, but it felt better and I could walk without the limp. At least for now.
The brief rain had gone and the morning was clear. I’m not usually worried about flying, but I prefer the sky to be blue so the pilot can see where he or she is going. I tested the ankle by walking up to the travel agency to collect my tickets. No problems.
‘Your flight’s at 12.30 this afternoon, Mr Hardy,’ the young woman who’d handled the matter said. ‘Are you sure you’ve got everything in order?’
‘Yep.’
‘Have you hurt yourself? I thought I saw you limping.’
Back home, I packed. Tricky when you’re not sure how long you’re going to be away, but I travel light anyway and I figured that in New Caledonia underpants and shirts would dry overnight. I couldn’t travel in my usual style because if I was meeting the white shoe brigade, which was what some of Stewie’s mates sounded like, I’d have to tog up a bit. On a visit to Brisbane with a woman I’d spent some time with until she decided her time could be better spent, I’d bought a linen suit. It was ‘unstructured,’ which meant it didn’t have shoulder pads and had a minimum of lining. Smart until it crumpled and still smart for a while after that. With old but classy Italian loafers and a black silk shirt, I reckoned I’d pass as someone who knew how to dress but only cared about it so far.
I hadn’t opened the guide to New Caledonia or the French phrase book. I packed them into the overnight bag I use for travelling however long I’m away and put the sections of the Saturday papers I’d want to read into the snazzy carry-on bag the airline had provided along with a volume of Somerset Maugham’s short stories. I was pretty sure there were some about New Caledonia. My only approach to a weapon, a Swiss army knife, went into the overnight bag.
Viv Garner, my long-suffering lawyer, had lost his wife six months earlier to a runaway cancer. They’d been very close and had no children so Viv was taking it hard, although he kept working and was as effective as ever. Saturday mornings, when he and Ros had done the shopping and played tennis, were bound to be desolate and he picked up the phone quickly when I rang.
‘It’s Cliff Hardy, Viv.’
‘Cliff, good to hear from you. What’s up?’ The note of cheerfulness in his voice was forced, but maybe in time it would become natural again.
‘Well, I want to pump you for information of course, but I thought I’d do you a favour and let you drive me out to the airport this arvo. I’m off to New Caledonia. Occurred to me you might like to share in the glamour and excitement, vicariously, like.’
He laughed. ‘You bastard. Okay, you’ll shout the drinks.’
‘My client will gladly pay. How’s an hour from now for you?’
I checked in and was told the plane would be leaving on time. Viv and I went to the bar and I ordered two double scotches. We hadn’t spoken much on the drive, mainly about Ros and how Viv was coping. He seemed to be stronger than the last time and a lot better than the time before that. He told a few stories about times they’d spent together and his smiles were genuine.
He added a measure of water to his scotch and we clinked glasses. ‘Okay,’ Viv said. ‘You’ve got about half an hour before you wing off to paradise. What gives?’
I filled him in, trying to give him a sense of the ways things had worked out at Master’s trial. Viv is a solicitor but he’s spent a good bit of time in the courts and he asked a few questions I could have answered better if I’d had the transcript, but he got my drift.
‘Sounds funny,’ he said. ‘But trials are funny things anyway. What did you want to ask me?’
‘What do you know about John L’Estrange?’
Viv drank some scotch and fiddled with a coaster. I noticed that his hands were shaking slightly and I wondered if he was on some med
ication. Maybe bringing him out here and putting scotch into him wasn’t a good idea. ‘John L’Estrange,’ he said. ‘Universally known as Jack the Odd. Successful barrister. Not in the top flight, as they say, but doing well. Said to have very strong political ambitions.’
‘Jesus, that’s all I need-state and federal police and politics thrown in.’
‘You live in interesting times. But then, you always did, Cliff…’
‘Yeah. Which party?’
‘Oh, I think that would all depend.’
‘Any rumours? Boys, girls, gerbils?’
‘I’m a bit out of touch, but I don’t think so. Just the politics.’ Viv ran his hand over his bald head. ‘He’s got the looks-the figure, the hair and all that.’
That was enough for me to think about. We had another drink and chatted about nothing much until it was time for me to go. He gripped my hand and shook it solidly. No tremors. ‘I’m glad you did this, mate. I love planes. I’m going to sit and watch them land and take off for a while.’
I browsed through the tourist guide as the Air Calin jet spent the usual waiting time on the tarmac and then seemed to taxi interminably to its take-off point. Courtesy of my client, I was in business class with leg room. Economy, where I sit when I’m paying myself, looked to have the usual cattle-truck crowding. I spared them some pity as I leafed through the guide.
It seemed ridiculous for the islands to be named after Scotland by Captain Cook, but I suppose if we colonise Mars we’ll do much the same. The French got hold of the place in the middle of the nineteenth century and have never really let go. A useful dumping ground for convicts, like Australia, it seems to have later become a source of timber and minerals for the home country, like Australia, and has ended up a tourist destination, like Australia. Without making the comparison, the guide told me that the Melanesians, the Kanaks, like the Aborigines, have battled for their rights against the French and made some headway.
I couldn’t be bothered following the politics. There were accords and votes and plebiscites, which means money was spent and lies were told. It sounded like a tricky place to find your feet in but full of possibilities when you did. The same names kept cropping up and there was talk of ‘development’. You could sniff yacht deals, silent business partnerships and no-questions-asked investment opportunities. I turned over the leaflets and maps the airline provided without great interest. A restaurant named Le Gaugin sounded intriguing but I was pretty sure I could bypass Palm Beach Curios.
The flight took nearly three hours and they served a good lunch with as much free wine as you could drink. French, too. I gave it a judicious sampling. Read the papers and a couple of the Maugham stories. The weather in Noumea, mild when I checked it in the paper a day or so before, had become hot and sticky in the interim. I had only one bag and nothing to declare other than the scotch I bought at the duty free, and I was through the bureaucracy pretty quickly. No language problems so far, although ‘passport?’ is much the same anywhere.
Peter Corris
CH26 — Master's Mates
The Kanak woman at the car rental desk spoke good English and if she had doubts about my battered, non-gold American Express card she didn’t let them show. Before very long I was in an air-conditioned Peugeot 307 with my jacket off and my T-shirt was starting to detach itself from my back. The rental had set Lorrie Master back quite a few thousand Pacific francs but I wasn’t worried. For the moment, I concentrated on re-learning to drive on the wrong side of the road. I’d done it before in Europe and the US but not for some time and it’s a freaky feeling reserved for Brits and colonials, as if the world has suddenly turned itself inside out. Noumea was fifty kilometres away, with other drivers to contend with, hills to climb, roundabouts to negotiate and crossings to survive. I reckoned that I’d have it programmed in by the time I arrived.
The drive wasn’t bad once I’d relaxed into the road rules. The flat country gave way to hills which looked green in the distance and dry up close. Trees are trees to me, but most of these had a familiar look. I could’ve been in Australia except that every second car was a Renault, and those that weren’t were Citroens, Peugeots and Fiats. A toll gate extracted some of the change I’d got by tending miserable Aussie dollars for the scotch, and when you start parting with money you know you’re on the way to the big smoke. At a guess, an ugly structure in the near distance was the nickel smelter. The guide book had told me that the island was solid iron with lots of nickel. Good for them.
The city streets, with their roundabouts and intersections, were a test, particularly as I didn’t really know where I was going, although the woman at the rental desk had tried to explain things to me. Not to worry. My plan in new places is to give myself plenty of time and basically get lost and get found and get lost again and so on. Eventually you get a sense of what’s where. I knew that the hotel was at Ansa Vata and that was beachside. I found it by following half-understood road signs and by sniffing the air. Australians are mostly coast dwellers and have a feel for it. A few tourists with towels in hand helped to point the way.
The hotel was a big sprawling affair just across the road from the beach. The people at the desk spoke enough English for us to get by. No porters, which I like. Palm trees galore as you’d expect, good pool, ‘fitness gym’, and my room had a glimpse of the water. It was air-conditioned and perfectly okay. No mini-bar, which isn’t always a bad thing, temptation-wise. Besides, I had the duty free scotch. I unpacked my few belongings, had a quick instant coffee with ‘creamer’, made a mental note to buy some milk, and headed straight for the pool.
After the swim and a short lie in the sun, I went back to the room, cracked the scotch and inspected my list of the names and locations Master had mentioned in his letters. Rory McCloud and Gabriel Rosito lived at something called the Costa del Sol and Reg Penny and Jarrod Montefiore at the Ile de France, apartment complexes of some sort. Penny had a yacht, the You Beaut, moored at one of the two marinas. The Mocambo, the Ibis and the Park Royal hotel bars were favourite drinking places along with Le Saint Hubert brasserie and something called the Bout du Monde, which even my rudimentary French was up to-the End of the World. Master had also mentioned a place called Le Salon de Fun where there was lap dancing and a striptease. Master had stayed for ten days at the Meridien hotel where my guide put the tariff at the equivalent of four hundred bucks a day minimum, without breakfast. He’d rented a Saab and taken a plane trip to the Isle of Pines, paying for McCloud and Montefiore as well as himself. Stewie had been making a splash and wanted to tell Lorraine all about it.
I inspected my map and located the two residential tower blocks that housed Rosito and McCloud and Penny and Montefiore. The lie de France was hard up against the Hippodrome Henri Milliard, a racetrack, which sounded about right for a couple of Aussie punters, if that’s what they were. The only Noumea local Master had named was Pascal Rivages, who sounded like the front man for the property deal the Australians were trying to put together. No detail on that.
There was nothing subtle about my plan. I intended to find all four men or as many of them as were still around and talk to them, singly or together, to see if they had any ideas about how Master came to be carrying the heroin. Then it was a matter of playing it by ear and if any cracks opened, trying to prise them wider with what is usually a good lever-money.
I’d worn a T-shirt under the suit on the plane and I put on a silk shirt now. It and the suit were a bit crumpled but I thought I still had the right look. I chose the Costa del Sol to try first because the guide said the Baie des Citrons which it overlooked was the place to go on a Saturday night. Maybe I could catch Gabriel or Rory before they hit the town and they could take me along. Lunch was a memory and the small scotch had put an edge on my appetite. I’d packed shorts and sneakers and promised myself a visit to the ‘fitness gym’ tomorrow.
It was well after 7 pm local time, an hour ahead of Sydney time, and the Baie des Citrons was starting to attract its customers. I w
alked the half kilometre to the tower as I could and forced myself to look left first and then right crossing the road. The place was solid cafes and brasseries for over a hundred metres and there were small boutiques and other shops tucked away here and there. The beautiful people were starting to congregate. The white ones, that is. The only black people I saw were serving the food and drink and most of them were on the beautiful side as well. I saw good examples of something you see all over the world-overweight, homely men accompanied by slender elegant women. Unusually for me, I was overdressed in my suit-light shirts, slacks and sandals were the order of the day.
Security at the Costa del Sol amounted to buzzing the tenant from the entrance lobby. Now that I thought about it, I hadn’t seen any bars on windows, or security grills. It looked as if Noumea was a law-abiding town. Suited me. I was about to go in when I got the feeling that someone was watching me. I looked around but couldn’t spot anyone. Paranoia goes with the job. I buzzed for McCloud and got no answer. Try Rosito.
‘Yeah? Oui?’
‘Mr Rosito, my name’s Hardy. I’m a private detective from Sydney. Stewart Master’s wife has hired me to look into things regarding her husband s drug conviction. Could I have a word with you?’
‘Sure. Come on up and I’ll give you a beer. It’s good to hear an Aussie voice. Tenth floor, mate.’
As easy as that. I got in the lift and it went express to the tenth. The entrance had been neat and well appointed and the lift was functional without being flash. I wondered what it cost to stay at the Costa. To judge by the hotel tariff, where Lorrie was paying just under three hundred bucks a night, it wouldn’t be cheap. One thing was for sure, the higher up, the dearer it’d be, and Gabriel Rosito was near the top.
He was standing at the open door with a Crown Lager in his hand. One-eighty centimetres maybe, 90 kilos-mostly muscle-shown off to good advantage in a tight white T-shirt and baggy shorts. Dark hair, deep tan. A heavy duty watch suggesting water sports or something involving impact. He looked to be about thirty and somehow I’d imagined Masters mates would be older.