Forget Me If You Can

by Peter Corris

There’s no way to insure against it and the allegation is difficult to defend. I rang my lawyer, Cy Sackville, to get the benefit of his encyclopaedic legal brain and the news wasn’t good. Most such cases were settled out of court to avoid the adverse publicity. To Tommy, a hefty out-of-court settlement would amount to the same thing as a judgment against him. I wished I’d taken the whole thing more seriously at the beginning and hadn’t let myself be diverted by the abusive caller. There were many ways Ms Richards could have found out about Tommy’s strategy and cooked up one of her own. Angrily, I drained the third glass and headed out into the late afternoon.

  I picked up Liz Richards when she left the office in Bondi Junction and followed her home. I was driving with three glasses of wine inside me on an empty stomach which was a stupid thing to do, but I did it. I ate slices of pizza as blotter as I drove. The flat was in a biggish block that overlooked the Showground and Moore Park. Nice view. I parked, ate and watched. The same two men the women had spent the previous night with arrived with bottles. It got dark. I could see shapes moving past the windows. They dimmed the lights. I left them to it, whatever it was.

  I locked the car, climbed out, pushed open the gate on its one good hinge, all done on automatic pilot. I was tired and frustrated, looking forward to a shower and drink. The key was in my hand, centimetres from the lock before I realised that the door was ajar. My hand dropped and I felt a splinter from the jemmied jamb stick deep into my palm. The surprise and sharp stinging pain brought me to full alertness. I eased my .38 out of its holster, crouched and pushed the door open enough to sidle through. Nothing happened, so I went in, keeping low and darting across into the open doorway of the front room on the right.

  The house was quiet. I waited for a full minute, then stepped out into the hall. The hall light was on and so was the light on the stair landing and the one above that. She was hanging from the top balustrade. The ivory coloured lace wedding dress she wore was stained and soiled. The angle of her neck was cruel and unnatural; her face was dark and swollen and her eyes and tongue protruded clownishly. But in the harsh light I recognised her. I knew who she was, or who she had been twenty years ago.

  Blood was still dripping from my hand when the police arrived and it was an edgy business for the next hour or so. I explained that I knew the dead woman as Susannah Morgan. I had met her long before when I was working as an insurance claims investigator. She had made a claim for a fire she’d clearly started herself. She’d also made a claim on me although I’d barely exchanged ten words with her. I’d forgotten her entirely—partly a matter of not thinking much about the things I’d done before I’d become a private detective. It was hard to believe that such a hatred and self-destructive force had festered for all that time, but when the cops entered her house they found news clippings about me, photos taken with a long lens, letters pinched from my mailbox. She had been receiving treatment for paranoiac schizophrenia for years and apparently had recently stopped taking her medication. They found my fax on her bed with blood, spittle and shit smeared over it.

  Liz Richards was successful in her action against Tommy Aarons. The settlement put him out of business and he now works as a security guard for wages. On reflection, I think he was railroaded and I never had the heart to send him an account. I think Ms Richards discovered that I was on the job and she and Ms Jacobi threw up a smokescreen for those two nights. A setup. All in all, it was one of those episodes you try to forget. But can’t.

  Close Enough

  ‘I’ve got to know, Mr Hardy.’

  ‘You remind me of that Clint Eastwood movie,’ I said. ‘Where Dirty Harry doesn’t remember whether there’s any bullets in his gun and the punk says, “I gots to know”. Did you see it?’

  ‘No,’ Sean Trumble said. ‘I …’

  ‘Harry pulls the trigger and the gun’s empty. Good scene. It always gets a laugh. You ought to see it.’

  ‘Why are you telling me this? I came here to hire you to do an investigation.’

  I fiddled with a paperclip on my desk. No need to worry about scratching the surface. The desk hasn’t got a surface. Trumble, a prosperous-looking type in his fifties, sat uncomfortably in my client chair. The chair was only partly to blame for his discomfort. He had a problem.

  ‘I’m trying to laugh you out of it,’ I said. ‘Don’t do it. From what you’ve told me I can guarantee you that it isn’t worth the grief.’

  ‘I’ve got to know. If you won’t do it I’ll go to someone who will. It’s just that I’ve been told you’re honest and capable.’

  Put it like that and what could I say? If I could have dissuaded him altogether I would have felt that I’d performed a service, but business wasn’t so good I could afford to turn away a client who’d just cross the road and get someone else to make him unhappy. I got him to sign the standard form and took a cheque from him. Then I took notes, trying to get the names straight and spell the addresses correctly. Basic efficiency. He’d been pretty efficient himself, coming equipped with photographs and documents. I assembled a considerable file on the matter before I’d put a foot through a door. Because physical resemblance was at the heart of the trouble, I studied Trumble closely as he got to his feet and reached for my hand. He was medium-tall, about 180 centimetres and a bit overweight at around 85 kilos. His suit was expensive and his curly grey hair was styled rather than just cut. Square jaw, slightly crooked nose, deep-set blue eyes with crow’s feet. He wore the air of a well-polished rough diamond.

  We shook hands, he lifted his smart trench coat from the back of the chair and went out. I settled back to look over the documents and consider what I’d let myself in for.

  Sean Trumble had served in Vietnam, two tours as a volunteer. He was a fervent anti-communist who loved soldiering and at that time there was plenty of work around for men of this persuasion. With his long-term mate, Lee North, also a Vietnam vet, he went off to Angola as a mercenary to fight against the Marxist MPLA. Just before leaving he married Clara Moon, his childhood sweetheart. North was best man.

  The two mercenaries had barely fired a shot in anger before, along with a dozen or so others, they were captured by Cubans fighting for the MPLA. They were given a swift trial for ‘crimes against humanity’. All were found guilty but the sentences were somewhat arbitrary. Trumble got twenty years, North was executed by firing squad. Trumble served three years in some Luandan hellhole and was released after a swap of prisoners was arranged between the contestants in the civil war. While in prison he learned of the birth of his son, David, and the boy and his mother were waiting for Trumble when he finally got home in the Eighties. He was cured of soldiering and settled down to become a manufacturer of barbecues which sold like crazy through the good times of the Eighties.

  Trumble had been lucky in Vietnam and Africa, but his luck ran out in 1987 when his wife died suddenly of cancer. They had no other children and David became the focus of his father’s life. Trumble sold his business at a massive profit in 1990 in order to give himself more time to devote to the boy. David shaped up to be a winner—very bright at school, an outstanding athlete, musically talented.

  ‘I can play the mouth organ a bit,’ Trumble had told me. ‘That’s about it, but David can pick up any musical instrument and get a tune out of it right away.’

  To add to all this, Trumble said that he and David got on well. Then he pulled a tortured face. ‘Like mates,’ he said.

  That was the problem. As he got older David began to resemble Trumble’s dead mate, Lee North, more and more until by now, at sixteen, he was the spitting image of him. I spread the photographs Trumble had left on the desk. One showed Trumble and North as ten-year-olds, in football kit. They were of similar size and build, but North was dark and had longer, leaner features. Trumble was fair-headed and had the blocky look he still retained. Another snap of them as teenagers, dressed up for a night on the town, emphasised the difference. Trumble had filled out and looked pugnacious; North was slim with an amused, sceptica
l cast to his face. There were three photographs of David, carefully annotated on the back—at two years, ten years and sixteen. The little boy’s fair hair had turned progressively darker and his initial chubbiness had given way to a wiry slimness and cleanly etched features.

  I stared at the pictures for a long time. They weren’t peas in a pod, Lee North and David Trumble. The hairlines were different, and North’s ears stuck out a bit whereas David’s were standard issue. But the resemblance was startlingly close.

  How the hell was I to set about this? Trumble had provided birth certificates for himself, Lee North and the son he suspected was not his son. Sean Trumble, son of Eric and May, née Douglas; Lee North, son of Percy and Rose, née Valletta; David Trumble, son of Sean and Clara, née Moon. Trumble’s parents were both dead and he had been an only child. Rose North was alive at the age of seventy-seven, having survived her husband by ten years. Lee North had a brother, Peter, and a sister, Maria. Trumble had provided addresses in Sydney for both but said he hadn’t spoken to either for many years.

  There were two more photographs. One a conventional studio-style portrait of Sean and Clara in their wedding outfits. He looked uncomfortable in the slightly too tight tuxedo, she cool and elegant in a white lace dress with her veil pushed back. She was a very attractive young woman with light hair and skin. There was a frailty about her, but that may have been my imagination, working backwards from the knowledge that she had died very young. The other picture was the one that must have given Trumble nightmares since his suspicions were aroused. It showed his bride in the arms of the best man. You could read it either way—a high-spirited kiss on an emotional day, or a passionate embrace that had nothing to do with the occasion.

  One of the great advantages of working for yourself is that you can choose how hard you want to work, how long and how little. I decided that I would do no more than go through the motions for Sean Trumble. It was highly unlikely that I’d be able to find anything out anyway and, I told myself, Trumble probably didn’t want to know anything, not really. The more I thought about it the more I convinced myself that he’d be satisfied with a non-result—nothing proven, forget it.

  I cooked up a thin cover story in my head and dialled the number he’d given me for Mrs Rose North.

  ‘Carlingford Nursing Home.’

  That was a surprise. ‘Ah, my name is Hardy. I’m a journalist. Do you have a Mrs Rose North with you there?’

  ‘Yes we do, Mr Hardy.’

  ‘Would it be possible for me to speak to her? I …’

  ‘Oh, would you?’ The woman at the other end of the phone sounded as if I’d offered her a holiday in Bali. ‘Mrs North is a most interesting woman, but very lonely. She seldom gets any visitors and that’s such a pity because her mind is very active and … What would you want to talk to her about, Mr Hardy?’

  ‘Her late son. I’m writing about the Angolan civil war. He fought there you see.’

  ‘Fascinating. I’m sure Rose would love to talk to you. When would you like to come?’

  ‘Where are you exactly? And who am I talking to, please?’

  ‘I’m sorry. My name is Mrs Saunders, I’m the supervisor here. We’re in Carlingford Road, Epping.’

  It was three-thirty and I had nothing pressing on hand. It would take me forty-five minutes to get there, half an hour with the old dear, back in the city by five-thirty, just in time for the first drink of the day. ‘How about today, Mrs Saunders, within the hour?’

  ‘Wonderful. I’ll send someone to tell her you’re coming and get her tidied up. She’ll be thrilled. Just drive in the gates. There’s plenty of parking space.’

  The nursing home was a Victorian mansion set in big grounds dominated by large trees. The early April afternoon was breezy and leaves were blowing over the gravel drive and the lawn and the flower beds. An old man was raking the leaves into piles and watching while the wind blew them away again. He didn’t seem to mind. I parked to one side of the building and walked up a set of deeply worn brick steps onto a wide verandah that swept around the whole structure. A gap had been made in the waist-high wall around the verandah and a ramp built down to ground level. There was another ramp beside the steps that led into a small lobby. I pushed open the door, stepped inside and was greeted by a woman who’d evidently been waiting for me.

  ‘You must be Mr Hardy? I’m Mavis Saunders.’

  She was a stout, motherly type in a blue dress vaguely reminiscent of a nurse’s uniform, with a white cardigan draped around her shoulders. We shook hands and she led me up the stairs and down a corridor to a corner room. She pushed the door open and beckoned me in.

  An old woman was sitting in a cane chair near the open window. The room smelled of flowers and medicines and tobacco. The woman was smoking a cigarette held in a long holder. She looked up at me with beautiful dark eyes sunk deep in a sallow, lined face and took a deep drag.

  ‘Rose is a terror,’ Mavis Saunders said. ‘We cannot stop her smoking no matter what we do, so we allow her to have two or three each day as long as she sits by the window and blows the smoke outside.’

  Rose North blew the smoke at Mrs Saunders.

  ‘Rose!’

  The old woman grinned and I couldn’t help grinning back. Mrs Saunders plumped a cushion behind the old woman’s back and pointed to a chair I could bring closer to the window. ‘She’s a little deaf but there’s nothing wrong with her brainbox, is there, Rose?’

  ‘No.’

  There was the hint of an accent even in that one syllable, along with a considerable amount of authority. Mavis Saunders stopped fussing as if she’d been reprimanded. ‘Well, I’ll just leave you with her. About half an hour, Mr Hardy.’

  ‘Fine.’ I pulled the chair across and sat down. The dark eyes bored into me as she drew on her cigarette again.

  ‘Would you like some tea?’ Mrs Saunders said.

  ‘Coffee,’ Rose North snapped.

  ‘You know you’re not allowed coffee.’

  ‘Perhaps just this once, Mrs Saunders,’ I said.

  Rose North grinned again and Mrs Saunders sighed and bustled out of the room.

  ‘I’ve got a million and one things wrong with me. Don’t get old, that’s my advice to you. I don’t suppose you’ve got any cigarettes on you?’

  ‘I’m sorry, Mrs North. I gave it up.’

  ‘Everyone has. Damn foolishness. Well, you wanted to talk about Lee, Mavis said. Poor boy. I never could understand why he wanted to go off and shoot black people, him and his brother.’

  I looked at my notes. ‘Did Peter go to Angola as well? I’d have thought he was too young.’

  The old woman smoked and said nothing for a couple of long minutes. Mavis Saunders came in with two cups of coffee on a tray. Rose North snatched at hers with a brown, wrinkled hand. A little spilled into the saucer and she deftly tipped it into the cup. Her hands didn’t shake. I took my cup and sipped it—instant and pretty weak at that. The old woman gulped hers down fast. She took a last drag on her cigarette, flicked the butt out of the holder and dropped it into the cup. She lit another and drew in the smoke. ‘Always best after a coffee, better still with a glass of wine. You know how much wine they allow me here?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘A litre a week. Can you imagine that? Not worth having. What were you saying? My memory jumps around a bit. It’s all right for most things, it just sort of skips a beat now and then.’

  ‘I said I thought your son Peter would have been too young to have fought in Angola.’

  She stared through the window at the waving treetops, the cigarette burning unheeded in its holder. She sat very still and seemed to be looking down a tunnel into the past. Her voice was quieter and the accent stronger. ‘Eric and May Trumble are dead, is that right?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And my Percy is long gone. He was a good man, Percy, but … I am Maltese, did you know that?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Yes. African, Arab, Greek, Roman
—real mixture. Passionate people. What harm can the truth do now? Eric Trumble was Lee’s father, not Percy. I had an affair with Eric soon after Percy and I were married. What do you think of that?’

  I had many questions but no idea of how to ask them. How does a married woman with a lover know which man is the father of her child? Did Eric Trumble know about his paternity? Did Lee North know? Most importantly, was the old woman romancing? She twisted in her chair away from the window and stared at me. ‘I don’t know why I told you that. There’s something about you that made me want to say it. That’s your talent is it, Mr Hardy? Making people talk?’

  I mulled over what I’d learned as I drove back to the city. She had shown me a family photograph of herself with Percy, Lee, Peter and Maria. Lee and the girl resembled the mother, lean and dark. Peter followed his father who was a stocky, sandy-haired type. No doubts about paternity there. The information was just a further twist to an already screwy story and didn’t help me.

  I’d felt bad about lying to Rose North about my interest in her family, but there was some comfort in my feeling that she didn’t believe me anyway. She’d been about to press me for more details on my project when a kind of cloud had passed across her face and her mind drifted away. Mrs Saunders had chosen that moment to come in and pronounce her tired and Rose hadn’t objected. Her last words to me were, ‘They were brave, brave boys, but very, very, foolish.’

  Well, one of them was foolish still. The address I had for Maria North was in Stanmore, not far from the comforts of home. I’d intended to leave her until the next day but the intriguing elements in the case had got to me. I called her number on the car phone.

  ‘Maria North-Barr.’ The voice was a rich, slurred contralto.

  I gave her the journalistic spiel, including that I’d just come from seeing her mother, and asked if it would be possible to see her.

  ‘I would be positively delighted, Mr Hardy, positively delighted. It’s been ages since I’ve talked to a journalist. It’ll be just like old times. I’m just having a little drink. You do drink, I trust.’