Comeback

by Peter Corris

  ‘No.’

  ‘Better catch up if you want to stay in your game.’

  We were walking down Parramatta Road away from the Glebe coronial court. The morgue was in the same building and it was a precinct I’d spent a bit of time in over the years.

  ‘What’s the theory?’

  Rockwell laughed. ‘Publicity stunt gone wrong.’

  ‘Come on.’

  ‘It’s the latest thing. You claim you were shot at. Generates publicity, wins sympathy.’

  We stopped at the lights. Rockwell pressed the button to allow him to cross.

  ‘That’s bullshit,’ I said.

  The light changed. ‘It’s as good as anything you’re likely to come up with.’

  It was an empty feeling. The inquiries I’d made, which had looked promising for a while, had come to nothing. I was still holding a fair bit of Ray Frost’s money but without any idea of how to use it. A couple of minor jobs came my way—bodyguarding, money minding, process serving. I went about them efficiently enough but my mind was still on Bobby Forrest. I hadn’t asked Mountjoy about it because there didn’t seem to be any point, but someone had sent that warning text message. I had no idea who.

  I concentrated on getting myself fully fit. People who hire someone like me prefer to see a physical specimen better than themselves. I went to the gym four or five times a week and worked harder. The shoulder healed completely and the small scar was nothing compared to some of the others I had.

  ‘Looking good, Cliff,’ Wesley Scott said. ‘Who is she?’

  ‘Sorry?’ I said.

  He chuckled. ‘Most guys your age getting themselves in shape are doing it to attract or hold a woman. I’m all for it.’

  ‘No woman, Wes. Just trying to look the part of the capable ready-for-everything private detective.’

  ‘Which you are, my man. Just don’t overdo it.’

  Work harder, they tell you when you’re young and don’t overdo it when you’re older. There’s no in between. I tapered off a bit. I was spending too much time on my own—working at trivial jobs, exercising, taking my multifarious medications, living in my head. I could feel it getting me down. And in the background, nagging away, was the knowledge that I’d had a client murdered and didn’t seem to be able to do anything about it.

  That’s how things stood when I got a call from Sophie Marjoram. She told me she was co-producing a film starring one of her clients and that the production was held up because the armourer had got sick.

  ‘You’ve done it before, I know,’ she said. ‘Can you help us out, Cliff? It’s only for a couple of scenes over a day or two. Good rates. I can arrange the union side of it and the insurance.’

  I had done it a couple of times. It’s time consuming and ticklish. You have to get permits to use the weapons, arrange the hiring and inspect them very closely to make sure they’ll operate the way you want. Sometimes you have to supervise the installation of sugar glass windows or windscreens that’ll shatter in the right way. You have to liaise with the special effects and stunt people. And you have to teach the actors to keep their hands away from the parts of the weapons that get hot, even when firing blank ammunition. A bad burn and the production company is up for medical costs and can cause the director’s worst headaches—injuries and delay.

  The film was a police drama set around Sydney and the scenes I was involved in concerned a shoot-out after a robbery and a shotgun suicide. The shoot-out was pretty straightforward but close work with a shotgun is dangerous and needs care. It was a change from my usual line of work and a chance to relate closely with other people. I threw myself into it and enjoyed the whole thing. The waiting around is boring. ‘I spent twenty years as an actor,’ Gary Cooper once said. ‘That’s one year acting and nineteen years waiting to act.’ But the money’s good. Coop should have added that.

  My scenes were near the end of the film and, unusually, they were shooting in sequence, so I was around when the director called it a wrap and I was invited to the wrap party.

  The party was held in a house in Wharf Road, Balmain. The house was owned by Sophie’s co-producer, not by any of the actors, still less by the writer. It was a big sprawling place that ran down to the water where there was a small jetty. I was told that the producer speed-boated himself to his office in Rose Bay and to as many of his meetings as he could get to by water.

  The credits at the end of a film seem to roll forever and the names run into the scores if not over a hundred. Not all of them are invited to the party but a lot are and the house was pretty full by the time I arrived. Going to parties solo isn’t much fun and I wasn’t planning to be there very long. Have a couple of drinks and something from the catered buffet, chat to the chief stunt man, say hello to the special effects girl who’d helped with the shotgun scene.

  They were talking on the ground floor, dancing on the first floor to music I’d never heard and doing other things on the top level. I got a scotch, ate some canapés and wandered about nodding and smiling. I was relieved to find Sophie Marjoram on her own in a corner but not so relieved when I saw how drunk she was. She grabbed my arm and pulled me down into a chair beside her.

  ‘Cliff, darling,’ she said. ‘Isn’t this great? Nicky’s so happy.’

  ‘Nicky?’

  ‘The star, the bloody star. My boy. He’s over there. Look at him. Is he cool or what?’

  I looked where she pointed. A tall, slim young man was leaning against the wall talking earnestly to an older man. He wore a dark suit with a white shirt—no tie and the shirt hung outside his trousers. Cool.

  ‘He looks a lot like Bobby Forrest,’ I said.

  Her face was flushed and her eyes were sparkling until I said that. Her expression changed as she grabbed a glass from a circulating tray. ‘Why’d you have to say that? Why’d you have to bring me down? Poor Bobby, he could’ve had all this. He was better than that . . .’

  She was speaking too loudly, possibly loudly enough for the young actor to hear, so I put my hand on her mouth.

  ‘Shush, Soph, too loud. You’ll do yourself out of your commission.’

  She grabbed my hand and held it in a sweaty grip. ‘You think I only care about money. I don’t. I love them. I love ’em all, ’specially poor Bobby.’

  A young woman in jeans and a silk shirt stained by red wine and with the sleeves rolled up to reveal some interesting tattoos on her left wrist, came across and almost jostled Sophie aside. She was drunk.

  ‘Heard you talking about Bobby Forrest,’ she said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What was he to you?’

  ‘Sorry, that’s my business. Who are you?’

  ‘I’m Chloe.’

  ‘Chloe what?’

  ‘Just Chloe, just poor Chloe. You shouldn’t talk about him, not worth talking about.’

  Sophie bristled and Chloe looked ready to get physical when we were interrupted.

  I’d been introduced to Earl Carlswell, the director, when I arrived. He came across now and spoke quietly.

  ‘Sophie’s not herself,’ he said. ‘She’s had some bad news. I wonder if you’d be kind enough to take her home?’

  Sophie was still gripping my hand and trying to get her head onto my shoulder. Her makeup was smeared and her loose top threatened to slide down and reveal more of her than she’d have wanted. I helped her to her feet and she draped herself around me.

  ‘You’re nice,’ she said. ‘Let’s have a drink together.’

  ‘Let’s not,’ I said.

  I scooped up her bag, slung it over her shoulder and guided her towards the nearest door. The cool night air and the breeze sobered her up enough to at least walk. The street was full of cars generated by the party and I’d had to park a couple of streets away. She was staggering by the time we reached the car and had to steady herself against it. She took a flask from her bag and had a swig.

  ‘You’ve had enough, Soph,’ I said.

  ‘Fuck you, or is that what you’ve got in
mind?’

  I opened the door and helped her in. She took another swig and slumped down in the seat. I got the car moving and realised I didn’t know her address.

  ‘I’ll take you home, Soph. What’s the address?’

  She told me. It was Paddington, not far from her office. The traffic was heavy in Darling Street and the going was slow.

  ‘What’s the bad news?’ I said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Earl what’s-his-name said you’d had some bad news.’

  ‘That prick.’ She slurred the words. ‘Told me he was cutting Nicky’s scenes to the bone. Prick. Nicky’ll be devastated, prob’ly blame me. Prick. They never forgive you, actors. Bastards.’

  ‘Who was the drunk girl? I thought I recognised her from somewhere.’

  ‘Chloe? Nobody. Actor groupie. Bit of a nutter.’

  She used the flask again and sat silently for the rest of the drive. Something was nagging at me as I navigated Paddington’s narrow streets and I nailed it down just as I drew up outside Sophie’s house. It was something she’d said in our interview before Bobby was killed. No, something she hadn’t said about his past. Breaking my old habit, I hadn’t made notes on the conversation and, in the drama of the events that followed, it had slipped my mind. I was sure I’d missed something then.

  I helped her from the car to her door but she was too drunk to open it. I fished in her bag for the keys and unlocked the door. The house was single-storeyed which was a relief—I didn’t fancy carrying her upstairs. I considered trying to get some coffee into her and asking her again about the violent incident but I remembered that she’d been adamant about there being no dirty linen. She was too drunk anyway.

  I helped her down the passage to her bedroom. Like her office, it was a mess, clothes lying around on the bed and on other surfaces. I stumbled over shoes as I eased her towards the bed and lowered her down. She was barely conscious. I took off her shoes, lifted her legs onto the bed and made her comfortable. Her eyes opened and she looked at me as if she’d never seen me before. Then her eyes closed and she snored.

  I went through to the kitchen and filled a glass with water. I put it on the bedside table. I walked back towards the door and noticed the set of framed photographs along the wall. Men and women, actors; I recognised two—Bobby Forrest and Nicky. I looked at Bobby’s picture. It was a studio portrait presenting him in the best possible way. He looked handsome and wholesome, but was he? I thought about Jane Devereaux and Ray Frost and the feeling of failure that had been with me for weeks.

  I went back to the bedroom. Sophie had rolled slightly so that she was on her side with one hand up close to her face, probably her natural sleeping position. At a guess she’d be asleep for at least a couple of hours before her bladder or her dry mouth woke her. I juggled her keys in my hand and knew what I had to do.

  It was quicker to walk the couple of blocks to Sophie’s office than to drive there and waste time looking for a park. I tried a few of the keys on the ring until I found the right one. I unlocked the door. There’d been no alarm when Sophie had unlocked it before so it didn’t seem likely she’d have had one installed in the interim.

  Her office was in the usual mess with scripts and magazines and books piled up everywhere. Sophie had been in the business a long time and, like me, would have kept hard-copy files on her clients. It was a difficult habit to break. There were three filing cabinets. I found the drawers containing the client files in the second cabinet. Chaotic though the office itself was, the files were in strict alphabetical order. It’s the only way.

  Robert ‘Bobby’ Forrest’s file was thick, running to several bulging folders. He’d only been on Sophie’s books for a few years but work in the film business evidently generates a lot of paper—contracts, correspondence, financial statements, magazine and newspaper cuttings. I took the folders to the desk, cleared away the detritus, and began to work systematically through the material.

  Most of it was easily set aside. It looked as though his career had started slowly, survived a few glitches and then settled into a pattern of steady improvement. Good stuff for his biographer if there was to be one for such a short life. There probably would be one if the lives of James Dean and Heath Ledger were any guide. I found what I was wondering about in a batch of correspondence and accompanying documents beginning almost four years ago and running for several months.

  Bobby Forrest had got into a fight with Jason Clement, another actor on the set of a film. It was over a girl called Chloe Monkhurst. Clement had called Forrest a faggot and Bobby had punched him and continued to hit him once Clement was helpless. He had to be dragged away. At the time neither Forrest nor Clement was a big star, there were few people around and it wasn’t too difficult to hush the matter up—a payment here, a promise there.

  But Clement’s injuries were far more serious than they thought. He needed several operations and these didn’t go smoothly—complications, infections, nerve damage. The upshot was that Clement would never walk properly again and his face was disfigured. Like Michael Corleone in The Godfather, he was left with a weeping eye and he also experienced breathing problems. This brought the insurance companies for the production outfit into play along with personal liability cover for the actors. As the one who’d arranged Bobby’s liability insurance, Sophie was heavily involved in the assessments and arguments. In the end it came down to lawyers, threats of suits backwards and forwards and hefty payments to Clement.

  The cover-up held as far as the public was concerned but some word got around among film people and casting agents steered clear of Bobby for a while. But he had a film in the can, one whose release was delayed for some reason, and when it was released he got good reviews and his star was on the rise. He got better and more varied parts, work in television and was on the brink of being a major figure when I met him.

  Clement made threats against Bobby during the legal and financial negotiations. The documentation Sophie held ended with a copy of a statement signed by all the major parties pledging confidentiality as to the details of the settlement.

  I worked through the rest of the material but the only thing of interest I found was a note from Bobby to Sophie telling her that he’d seen a psychiatrist at her suggestion and thought he might be some help with his problems. What problems? He didn’t say. I knew that Sophie had been in therapy for years, so it would be natural for her to refer Bobby to her guy. I found him in Sophie’s personal teledex—Dr Lucas Kinsolving. I made copies of a few of the documents on Sophie’s photocopier and tried to put the office back the way I’d found it. Sophie was still asleep, with her hand now tucked under her head. I put her keys back in her bag and left.

  On the way home a memory kicked in: Chloe Monkhurst, who the fight between Bobby and Clement had been over and who’d been drunk and aggressive at the party, was the woman who’d given me the evil eye at Bobby’s funeral.

  I was energised and at the computer early the next morning. Dr Kinsolving was easy to find. He had consulting rooms in Bondi Junction and Chatswood—a both-sides-of-the-harbour guy—and he was an honorary member of staff of a couple of hospitals. He had a string of degrees and was the editor of a leading international journal of psychiatry.

  There were a number of photographs of him posted. He was bald and bearded, impeccably dressed, and looked self-satisfied in shots of him in the company of distinguished people in the sciences and arts.

  Jason Clement was more elusive. The few entries on him dated back in time and weren’t much more than notices of his minor roles in minor films. He was a NIDA graduate and had briefly attended the Australian Institute of Sport as a hurdler before acting lured him away from athletics. A still from one of his film roles showed him as dark and passably good-looking. Back numbers of Showcase, the directory used by casting agencies to pick actors, was online and Clement appeared in two of the issues. He was represented by the Barton & Baird agency.

  I phoned Barton & Baird and asked to speak to the a
gent who’d handled Jason Clement. There was a pause as the receptionist tapped keys.

  ‘I’m sorry. We don’t have a client of that name.’

  ‘I know. He was on your books about four years ago.’

  She sounded young. Four years probably seemed like a long time to her.

  ‘Could you hold for a minute, please? I’ll ask around.’

  I waited, listening to music I couldn’t identify.

  ‘Are you there, sir? I think Tim Stafford might be able to help you.’

  ‘Could I speak to him?’

  ‘It’s a she.’

  ‘Tim is a she?’

  ‘Her name is Timpani. I’m afraid not. She’s out of town on location and won’t be back for two days.’

  ‘Could I have her mobile?’

  ‘We don’t give out numbers and anyway it wouldn’t help, she’s on a boat out at sea.’

  ‘Is there no one else?’

  ‘No. I’m sorry, I have calls waiting.’

  I thanked her and said I’d ring again in a few days. Next I tried Dr Kinsolving but that was like picking your way through a minefield. I got an answering machine message at the Chatswood number advising me of the times the doctor would be in attendance. At the Bondi Junction number I actually got a living person but not much joy.

  ‘You need a GP referral to see doctor,’ the receptionist said.

  ‘I’m not a patient. This is a different matter.’

  ‘I can put you through to doctor’s business manager.’

  ‘I don’t want his business manager, I want to speak to the doctor in person.’

  ‘Doctor is very busy; if you’re not a patient and it’s not a business matter, I don’t see . . .’

  ‘Can you give him a message?’

  ‘Of course.’

  I told her I was a private detective employed by Ray Frost who was the father of Dr Kinsolving’s client, the late Robert Forrest. I heard her gasp.

  ‘Oh, Bobby.’

  ‘Yes, Bobby. Tell the doctor it’s very urgent that I speak with him.’