Man in the Shadows

by Peter Corris

  ‘I can divorce him,’ she said fiercely, ‘and pull the political plug on him.’

  ‘Do it,’ I said. ‘Please.’

  A month later the Winslow divorce was in the papers. A little after that, Winslow was sacked from Cabinet for misleading the Parliament. An election was coming up and one of the party bright boys, a favourite of the Premier’s, was nominated for preselection in Winslow’s seat. The rain had stopped and the patches of mould that had begun to sprout and spread on my walls retreated and dried out. My suspension period expired and I went back to work.

  High Integrity

  GEORGE Marr was the Credit Comptroller at Partner Bros which, if it wasn’t the biggest department store chain in Sydney, was rapidly getting that way. To me, he looked absurdly young for his job, but that might have been because I was feeling a fraction too old for mine. He was a slightly built, fair character with a fresh complexion. His hair was cut short and I suspected that he put something on it to keep it as neat as it was. His white shirt was as crisp and fresh as if he’d just put it on a few minutes before, although it was 11 am.

  ‘Mr Hardy,’ Marr said, ‘have you got a Partner Card?’

  ‘No. I’ve got a Medicare card and MasterCard. I was hoping to limit my card-holding to them.’

  Marr raised one fair eyebrow and looked younger still. ‘You don’t approve of cards?’

  ‘These days I might have a couple I don’t even know about, the way things are going.’

  ‘Cards are the future.’

  ‘They’re all right for poker.’

  He digested that while I looked around his office. It was neat, stocked with everything he’d need. His secretary was holding his calls and the boldly written entry in the appointments diary open on the desk in front of him showed that I had twenty minutes.

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I suppose that attitude will help keep you objective.’

  ‘What is the objective, Mr Marr?’

  His expression showed that he didn’t like jokes that early in the day; perhaps he didn’t like them at all. ‘The Partner Card enables you to credit shop in any of our stores with a minimum of fuss. The system is completely computerised—high integrity, the most sophisticated data base and . . . ’

  ‘Hold it. You’ve lost me.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter. There are more than 20,000 card-holders, state-wide.’

  ‘That’s more than members of the Liberal Party. It sounds wonderful for your . . . merchandising. What’s the problem?’

  ‘The card is being forged. The system is being used fraudulently.’

  ‘Ah.’ I sat back in the comfortable seat and thought about what I’d seen on the way to Marr’s office. I’d passed several million dollars worth of electronic junk on the way to a lift which had flashed by three floors crammed with ‘Home’, ‘Fashion’, ‘Style’ and ‘Recreational’ junk. Partners was organised in ‘Lifestyle Themes’; you set out to buy a box of matches and you ended up with a barbecue.

  ‘It’s serious,’ Marr said. ‘We’ve lost close to a hundred thousand dollars at last count.’

  ‘When did you notice it?’

  ‘At a credit audit a week ago. It was plain to see. The stock balance and credit account ratios . . . but I wouldn’t expect you to understand the technical details.’

  ‘You’d be right. We private detectives don’t understand much. The whole of life is a voyage of discovery for us.’

  ‘Are you trying to be funny, Mr Hardy? I was told you were capable and close-mouthed, not that you were a humorist.’

  ‘I’m not trying hard. Give me the details you think I’ll understand, Mr Marr, and I’ll try to help you.’

  I’m computer-illiterate, but Marr filled me in as best he could. The phony cards had been used mostly in the electronic sub-section of ‘Home’ but also in some luxury ‘Fashion’ sections and in ‘Out-of-doors’ which had lost a prefabricated garage. A lot of liquor had been liberated too but I couldn’t work out whether it came from ‘Style’ or ‘Recreation’.

  I scribbled notes while Marr talked. When he stopped I tried to show how sharp I was. ‘I can see how they could walk out with the booze and the VCRs, but not a garage.’

  ‘No, that was odd.’ He consulted a file on his desk. ‘The garage was delivered to an address where the home owner had no knowledge of it. The home owner didn’t even shop in Partners.’ Marr said this as if it was a matter for deep regret.

  ‘I’ll need that address,’ I said. ‘Also all the names and addresses on the phony cards and details on the people who could have helped from the inside. You know it has to be something like that, don’t you?’

  He sighed, ‘Unhappily, yes. It’s a terrible thing—Partners has the best employee record in the industry, bar none. Well, I’ve anticipated you.’ He slid a sheet of paper across the desk. About a dozen names were listed along with addresses and jobs—Electronics Manager; Credit 2IC; Sales & Stock (Liquor); Accounts etc. The names were in two columns, one headed hardware, the other software. I tapped the headings. ‘What’s this?’

  Marr’s smile made him look schoolboyish. ‘Our little joke—the “hardware” is the selling staff, who interface with the customers; the “software” is the computing staff, who . . . ’

  ‘Don’t say it. All right, this is the address of the home owner, is it? And let me guess, this is your private phone number at the top. You’ve got an efficient secretary, Mr Marr.’

  ‘Top computing facilities.’

  ‘Yeah, well that could be your problem. In the old days you just looked and waited until you could slam the till on the hand in it.’

  ‘Times have changed. At first we hoped it was just someone manipulating the programs, but it became clear that false cards were involved. That made it a hands-on situation. That’s why you’re here.’

  I couldn’t have taken any more of that kind of language but my time was up anyway. Marr handed me over to Kelvin Lean, the internal security officer, who grudgingly took me on a tour so I could get a sly look at the ‘hardware’. After that I went to the Personnel section where Lean showed me photographs of the others.

  ‘This is a smooth operation,’ he said. ‘I’ll be blunt, Hardy. I can’t see why I can’t handle it myself.’

  I didn’t say anything. What Lean didn’t know was that his name appeared on my list and it was entered under both headings.

  My strategy was pretty simple—investigate the people on the list looking for changes in the patterns of their lives. Few people who suddenly come into money can resist displaying it, particularly when the money has been acquired dishonestly. And criminal association is not just limited to inarticulate phone calls between nicknames; it involves time and travel, changes in routines and rendezvous. It makes sense—if you suddenly came into a fortune would you keep on buying your fish fingers at Franklins? The hell you would.

  Just to get started, I picked on Morris Guest, the fat, florid manager of the electronics section, as a subject. I followed him out of the store on his lunch hour. He went along George Street and took the underpass to the Queen Victoria Building. It was early February; the kids had just gone back to school and it was a little too early for the shops to be pushing Easter. A quiet time. Guest took the escalator to the top floor. From the close inspection he gave everything—the fancy paving, the polished brass, the stained glass—you’d have thought it was his money they’d used to fix it up.

  On the Albert Walk he stood opposite a shop that sold imported rugs and wall hangings. He nodded with approval as customers entered and exited; then he went to the coffee shop and took a seat. I watched from fifty metres away. A large woman, almost as high-coloured as Guest himself, came from the shop. She joined Guest in the eatery; he rose from his chair and pecked her cheek the way a husband does when he’s hit the same spot five thousand times before. I left when they started on their lunch—double serves of frankfurts and sauerkraut, iced chocolates with whipped cream and a bushel of bread rolls. I’d check Morris Guest o
ut a little further in Epping where he lived, but my tentative assessment was that he was too soft and comfortable to steal.

  Over the next few days I plied my trade. I followed people home and watched them at night. I picked them up in the morning and went to work and lunch with them. I went to laundromats and the movies, McDonald’s and wine bars. I walked a lot, stood around a lot and didn’t get much sleep. After a week and a bit I’d eliminated all but three of the suspects for various reasons—some too timid, others too family-oriented, some too lazy, some too sporting and so on. The weekend was tough: I watched Kent Hayward (‘Software’) play golf at Royal Eastern; Colin McKemmish (‘Hardware’) went to the races and the dogs but didn’t bet much; Daphne Lewis went straight from her accounts department job at Partners into her role as freelance caterer. She worked non-stop through the weekend and looked more tired on Monday morning than she had on Friday night.

  The garage had been delivered to an elderly widow who lived in a flat in Bondi, three floors up. She found it very funny.

  ‘Why didn’t they send me something useful?’ she said. ‘Like a waterbed? Tell ’em I wanna waterbed next time.’

  The break came when I was talking with Kelvin Lean in the Partners canteen the following week. Lean I’d eliminated early in the piece. He was obsessed with machismo and self-improvement—went horse-riding, pistol-shooting, took karate lessons, read Ayn Rand. If he’d caught himself being dishonest he’d have handcuffed himself and called the cops. Lean seemed better disposed towards me because I wasn’t making progress. I remarked that Kent Hayward seemed like an indoor type—he was tall and thin with a manner something like an art gallery director, part aesthete, part party-goer—and wasn’t much of a golfer despite the expensive equipment and membership of a club where the fees were steep.

  ‘Golf?’ Lean said. ‘That’s new for Hayward.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  Lean fidgeted and made a train with the sugar cubes. I stared at him with my I’ve-got-my-teeth-in-your-ankle-and-I’m-not-letting-go look.

  ‘Staff file,’ he mumbled.

  ‘I saw them. They had work experience, references, financial stuff. That’s all.’

  ‘Private/Staff.’

  ‘Jesus! Look, Kelvin, I was supposed to have access to everything. Do I have to talk to Marr again about this?’

  ‘I don’t even know what this is. That’s my gripe.’

  ‘Okay. Maybe you’ll be flattered. Marr kept you in the dark because you were a suspect.’ I explained the way of it to him while he turned his sugar cube train into Stonehenge. When I finished he cracked his knuckles.

  ‘Maybe I can help.’

  ‘You can help by showing me these private files.’

  ‘Right.’

  We went to his office and Lean transformed himself from ‘hardware’ to ‘software’ by switching on his desk computer and dancing his fingers over the keyboard. In a couple of seconds Kent Hayward’s private life was on screen. There was a lot of it. Hayward was divorced and paying maintenance and child support for three. According to the file he had no sporting interests.

  ‘Look at this,’ Lean said. ‘He goes on a pricy holiday last September. First time ever.’

  Hayward had used the firm’s holiday service to book himself into the Tropicana Hotel at Surfers Paradise for six days. The holiday had upped his indebtedness to Partners Holiday Club but he seemed to be coping with the extra monthly instalments. ‘Could be,’ I said. ‘But people change. Take stock of themselves. Slow down.’

  ‘Come into money?’

  ‘Win it on the horses.’

  Lean smiled and the grooves in his over-trained, gaunt face deepened into ruts. ‘This is it. I can smell it.’

  I had to think quickly. The last thing I needed was Lean sneaking around cracking his knuckles and smelling things. I must have looked doubtful because he held up one hand placatingly while he punched keys with the other. ‘Don’t worry. I won’t interfere. I just wanted to be asked. You might give me a favourable citation in your report if it works out.’

  If you can’t beat them, join them. ‘You’ve got it,’ I said.

  The ‘Private/Staff’ files revealed nothing of interest about the other suspects and Hayward firmed as favourite. It was a bit like shooting with a telescopic sight; when the lines intersected you were in focus and on target. I went home and caught up on some sleep which was easy to do because I was living alone, apart from a cat, and visitors were rare and getting rarer. I told myself that I was lying fallow socially and sexually, rejuvenating. I told this to the cat too, but the cat didn’t believe it any more than I did.

  My first move was to check on Hayward’s golf partners. My lawyer of many years standing and suffering, Cy Sackville, was a member at Royal Eastern. I called him and began by asking what his handicap was.

  ‘Scruples,’ he said. ‘When did you start playing straight man, Cliff?’

  ‘I’m working on it. What kind of people do you play golf with at Royal Eastern?’

  ‘Oh, judges, lawyers, doctors, stockbrokers, embezzlers, all kinds, why?’

  ‘I’d like to find out who a member by the name of Kent Hayward played with last weekend. Could you get the names?’

  ‘Nothing easier. From the book. You want the scores?’

  ‘No, thanks. When?’

  Cy supposed he could fit in nine holes the following morning to relax him for his afternoon in court. He proposed a drink in the club bar at noon.

  By then I’d had too much sleep and too much of my own company. I was refreshed, showered and shampooed and taking an interest in every woman I saw between seventeen and seventy. The waitress in the Royal Eastern bar was about thirty and moderately good looking. When she served me my Swan Light my blood raced. Sackville wandered in and ordered Perrier.

  ‘How’d you do?’ I said.

  ‘Forty-one, double bogeyed the eighth, bugger it. Here’s what you want.’

  He handed me a slip of paper. The bar was almost empty but I kept my voice low. ‘Clyde Teasdale, Reginald Broderick, Montague Porter. That wouldn’t be Monty Porter, would it?’

  Sackville sipped Perrier. ‘Believe so. Any help?’

  ‘Could be. Thanks a lot. What’s the case this afternoon?’

  He yawned. ‘One of the doctors claims one of the lawyers was embezzling from him.’

  ‘Was he?’

  ‘Probably, but we’ll sort it out.’

  Monty Porter, if he wasn’t actually Mr Big, was Mr Big Enough. If he’d been responsible for half the things that were alleged against him he’d never have had time to wash his socks. Gambling, pimping and drugs were his mainstays, but he probably financed some heavier stuff as well. Monty was married to Marjorie Legge who had a high profile in the fashion industry and the right-wing media, so for every allegation against him there was a champagne glass raised as well.

  A trip to Surfers would have been welcome but I couldn’t justify it. I phoned Roger Wallace who operates several detective agencies in the eastern states. When he reached fifty, he picked his Southport agency as the one that most needed his personal touch. I asked him to run a check on the guests in the Tropicana over the period of Hayward’s stay. We exchanged pleasantries, agreed on terms and he phoned back towards evening.

  ‘Subject didn’t get much of the sun,’ Roger said. ‘Seems he spent most of his time in smoky rooms.’

  ‘Who with?’

  ‘Hard to say, but it could easily have been Monty Porter.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Yeah. Monty was in the Honeymoon Suite at the Tropicana for some of the time. I’ll send you a list of the other names if you like.’

  ‘Don’t bother. Thanks, Roger.’

  ‘Not working for Marjorie Legge, are you?’

  ‘No, why?’

  ‘Monty was honeymooning without her.’

  That was intriguing, but I was more interested in the clear focus I was getting on Kent Hayward. I enlisted Lean’s help and took a closer l
ook at Hayward professionally and personally. He was manager in the section of the computer operation that despatched and made up accounts and upgraded the data base as required.

  ‘Box seat,’ Lean said.

  ‘What about for forging the cards?’

  ‘That too. He’d know the codes, the cut-outs, everything. Of course, he’d have to know some physics and electronics to make much of it.’

  ‘He does,’ I said. ‘I’ve followed him to the library and into bookshops. He’d rather read electronics textbooks than Wilbur Smith.’

  ‘I’m a Ludlum man myself,’ Lean said. ‘So what next? You going to collar him?’

  ‘There’s no direct proof. If he’s been careful all the way through he could show up clean.’

  ‘Yeah. I’ve been doing a little quiet snooping myself. Don’t worry, not on the ground. Through the computer—there’s something a bit funny about this fraud.’

  ‘Struck me they could’ve got away with a hell of a lot more if they’d wanted to,’ I said.

  ‘There’s that. But it looks as if all kinds of things have been tried out, all parts of the program.’

  ‘Don’t follow.’

  ‘Goods sent to addresses, goods returned and exchanged, items queried, lots of checking of the data base. You’d have thought they’d run the phony cards through the easiest channels but it hasn’t been like that at all. They’ve gone the tough route most times.’

  ‘As if they were checking that it all worked?’

  ‘That’s what it looks like. What d’you make of it?’

  ‘All I can think of is that something bigger is on the way. Thanks Kelvin, you’ve been a big help.’

  ‘As I say, put it in the report.’

  They were the last words I ever heard from Kelvin Lean. A little later, after I’d done some more surveillance of Hayward without result, Marr telephoned to tell me that Lean had killed himself.

  ‘It was a great shock. He was a good man, or so we thought.’

  ‘Me too. Why?’

  ‘He left a note to say that he was afraid he had AIDS.’