by Peter Corris
I said, ‘It wasn’t quite twenty years back, was it? What happened to the wife and child?’
‘The wife committed suicide when Murphy was convicted. That’s all I know.’
Usually, when Harry helps, I promise him the story if it can be told when everything sorts out, if it sorts out. The strike rate isn’t that good, but there wasn’t a chance of it happening this time. I thanked him and left him grumbling.
Using the name I had, I trawled through the Sydney Morning Herald database and came up with the information in detail. My recollection was confirmed, with additions: Murphy had emigrated from Ireland to Australia when he was barely more than a youth and had no relatives here. His wife’s maiden name was Wexler. She’d been a street kid with emotional problems and when found dead in her flat from a drug overdose the infant was dehydrated and suffering from various illnesses to do with malnourishment and neglect. It was odds on that the child had been put in care and fostered out to become, in time, Cameron Beaumont.
I emailed Sydney Featherstone that I was on the job, making progress and that the omens were good. I drove straight back to the mountains and pulled up outside the cabin early in the afternoon. I approached the building and a dog, tethered near the steps to the front porch, began barking loudly. I stood where I was and waited.
Cameron Beaumont opened the door and looked me over suspiciously. Despite my jeans and leather jacket I might still have been a cop. Can’t tell these days.
‘What do you want?’ he said.
‘To talk to you and Daniel Murphy.’
That rocked him. He looked over his shoulder and his body language directly contradicted what he said: ‘There’s no one here of that name.’
I held up the photograph. ‘Was yesterday.’
Like all great tennis players, he had vision like a jet pilot and he didn’t need to come any closer to see the picture. ‘Who are you?’
‘We can talk about that and a few other things.’
The dog kept barking. I heard hacking coughs coming from inside and then Murphy appeared in the doorway.
‘He’s sick,’ Beaumont said.
I nodded. ‘I know. I saw him chuck his guts up yesterday. You didn’t.’
Beaumont turned his head. ‘Dad?’
Murphy shrugged. ‘Don’t worry, this had to happen some day. You a reporter?’
‘No, I’m a private detective and right now I’m thinking about all this staying private. That is, if you’ll talk to me. You could start by calling the dog off.’
‘Quiet, Max,’ Murphy said. Raising his voice caused him to start coughing again. When he recovered his breath he invited me in. I went past the dog and Beaumont into the cabin. It was a mobile home that had been put up on stumps and ceased to be mobile. It was cramped but everything appeared well ordered and arranged. Several windows were open and there was a fresh eucalyptus scent mingling with the smell of cigarettes. Everything was spotlessly clean except for an ashtray brimming with butts.
‘Make some coffee, Cam,’ Murphy said, ‘and we’ll let the man tell us who he is, first off.’
Beaumont moved towards the back of the room and ran water. Murphy sat on one side of a built-in eating bench and indicated to me to sit opposite. I put the photo on the surface and showed him my PEA licence.
Murphy lit a cigarette. ‘I met a few blokes in your game inside.’
‘You would,’ I said. ‘Hazard of the job. I’ve been there myself.’
I told them my story and then Daniel Murphy told me his. After he escaped from gaol he’d made his way to Queensland, where he worked on fishing boats, and then to Wollongong and into a plastics factory.
‘Little show,’ he said. ‘No one cared who you were or where you came from. I got a driver’s licence in a false name, Medicare card—the works. One day there was a chemical spill—Dioxin—and I got two lungs full, thank you very much. Like inhaling that Agent Orange shit. Fucked my lungs first and then it spread. I took a payment to keep quiet about it. Didn’t like doing it, but I couldn’t afford to make a fuss.’
By the time we’d finished the coffee Murphy had worked his way through a few more cigarettes. He asked Cameron to get him a drink and the young man set a couple of cans on the table.
‘Doesn’t drink himself,’ Murphy said as he cracked a can. ‘Smart.’
‘How did you end up here?’
‘I had some money. Went to Sydney and tracked Cameron down. I always meant to do it but I didn’t have the chance till then. Wasn’t easy, couldn’t go through official channels, but I had a few names from people who’d written to me in the early days in gaol. I found him. Doesn’t look much like me, but he’s the spitting image of my dad as I remember him. Show him the photo, Cam.’
Cameron produced a faded, slightly creased photograph of a man in football togs with a 1950s look to them. Murphy was right—the resemblance was striking.
‘That’s all I’ve got of him. He was a champion Gaelic footballer. He was IRA and the Brits killed him.’
Cameron had hardly spoken a word. Now he handled the photograph like a precious relic, smoothing it in his big, strong hands.
‘Anyway, when I found out that Cam was a tennis champ I was that proud. I’d had a pretty useless life up to that point and I decided I’d do something with the time I had left.’
‘Dad’s a natural sportsman,’ Cameron said quietly.
‘Was,’ Murphy said. ‘Any ball game, I could play it.’
‘We met up about eighteen months ago when I was battling away in the satellites. His training and help got me to where I am now.’
‘You’ll be well inside the top one hundred after that win,’ I said. ‘I saw it.’
Murphy stubbed out another cigarette and looked at me. ‘I wish I had. I’d give anything to see him play, but it’s too big a risk. Too many people who’d pick me.’
‘You could wear a disguise,’ I said.
Cameron smiled. ‘Yeah, we thought of that, but Dad hasn’t got the breath to get up stairs and that. And he needs to smoke all the time, and …’
‘Couldn’t handle it, Hardy,’ Murphy said, ‘and the way the fucking world’s going with the pricks in charge now, they’d come down on him like a shit shower for having a crim for an old man and harbouring him. Cam’s been seen around here. They’d put it together.’
Murphy and I drained our cans. He fiddled with a cigarette and then put it down. ‘I’ve had chemotherapy and it only made me worse. I haven’t got long. I know how to take myself out peaceably and I’ll do it when it gets too bad. We’ve talked about it—Cam and me. He’ll help me to disappear.’
Cameron’s eyes were wet. ‘And every fucking thing I win’ll be dedicated to him in my mind and in my heart.’
‘The question is, Hardy,’ Murphy said, picking up the cigarette and lighting it, ‘what are you going to do?’
I reported to Featherstone that his intended client was merely doing some specialised training on his own in a bush location. No girls, no boys, no drink, no drugs. Featherstone was edgy about it, but when he heard that a pitch from another management group had fallen on deaf ears, he agreed to go along.
Daniel Murphy died six weeks after our first interview. I’d seen him a few times subsequently, did a bit of ball collecting. Cameron contacted me when his father died and I went up there and helped him with the burial. We put Daniel Murphy deep in the ground in the national park at a place where the birds sing and the insects buzz and the leaves fall softly.
Worst case scenario
‘Come on, Cliff,’ Lily said, ‘tell me about your worst case, your worst cock-up.’
‘Why?’
‘Confession’s good for the soul.’
‘I don’t have a soul.’
‘Neither do I. Tell me anyway.’
Lily Truscott and I are partners, sort of. Separate houses—Glebe and Greenwich—and we’re together in one or another by arrangement dictated by work. Lily is a journalist and often out of Sydney. My work c
an take me anywhere at any time with very little notice, but we were together in Glebe one evening, just talking, drinking a bit. The case was a long time ago and the scars had healed, so I told her about it.
I’d cleaned the desk in my Darlinghurst office, not that there was much to clean, when the knock came on the door. A Mormon, I thought, or a JW or an SDA. They’re everywhere. I needed a sign: NO JUNK MAIL—NO GOD SQUAD.
I got up to repel the invader at the threshold. I opened the door to find a man who certainly didn’t have a Pentecostal look about him. He was casually dressed in jeans and a flannie, with sneakers. He was tall, a little soft-looking, with thin fair hair. His hand came out tentatively.
‘Mr Hardy, my name is John Turner. Mario Ongarello suggested I see you.’
‘I know Mario, known him for years. Please come in, Mr Turner.’
Mario was a florist at the Cross. Way back, my then wife, Cyn, was in St Vincent’s with encephalitis and complications. I bought flowers every couple of days and struck up a friendship with Mario. Cyn recovered. Maybe the flowers helped. Anyway, over the years we’d have a drink together, talk boxing, disagree about soccer versus rugby. Good bloke, apart from that, but I’d never expected anyone in his line of work to present me with a client.
Turner stepped into the office, looked around briefly and took the chair I pointed to. He put his hands on the desk as if to steady himself.
I went behind my desk, opened a notebook, picked up a pen. Just props.
‘What’s the problem?’
He took a few seconds to answer. ‘I’ll try to be as clear and concise as I can,’ he said. ‘My wife died four years ago. She drove her car off the Great Ocean Road down in Victoria. D’you know it?’
‘I was there once a long time back. Dangerous then.’
‘It still is, especially if you drive a high-powered car at speed and haven’t quite got the skill to go with it. Paula drove a Porsche. The car went through the rail and down into the water. It was winter and the sea was wild. The car, what was left of it, washed up, but Paula’s body was never found.’
‘Like Harold Holt.’
‘What? Yes, I suppose, something similar.’
Prime Minister Holt had vanished in the surf at Cheviot Beach in 1967—quite a long way east of where he was talking about. I was young at the time and barely remembered it, but the event was regularly revived in the media on the anniversary. It’d be well and truly history to him, but it’s always worthwhile to test a potential client’s grasp. Politically incorrect, but who cares? I guessed his age at forty—max.
He went on. ‘Paula was a wealthy woman. She was a little older than me and she’d built up a sporting goods consultancy business. She negotiated with the management of sports stars for their endorsements and helped to organise the manufacture of equipment bearing their names. All done overseas on the cheap, of course. Then she was involved in handling the importation, the advertising and distribution.’
‘It sounds lucrative.’
He nodded. ‘Very. But she worked incredibly hard to get it that way. She was a triathlete in her younger days and she had the contacts and the respect—both very important in that business.’
‘I can imagine.’
‘I worked for her. I had the qualifications as well—a business degree and I’d swum competitively at a high level. I worked hard, too, and we … clicked. We appreciated each other’s abilities. We married. Standard stuff—boss marries worker, except in reverse, gender-wise. When everything was running smoothly, she … we began to have fun— holidays, beach house, the Porsche for her, an Audi for me. She was thinking of branching out into wine tourism. And so the trip to Victoria on her own—I hate the cold. It was a new challenge.’
I nodded. I’d always tried to avoid new challenges, finding the old and present ones quite enough.
‘Paula’s will left me very well provided for. The house, the consultancy in its entirety. There were no children. Her mother was still alive but they’d had a falling out years back and hadn’t had any contact, although Paula knew where she lived—in Darlinghurst. There was no mention of her in the will. I ran the business for a while but gradually eased out of it and sold it eventually. There were cashed-up bidders, and I judged that it had needed Paula’s special touch. I’m taking a long time to get to the point, aren’t I?’
He smiled and his bland, composed face came alive. Easy to see why the boss’d go for him. There was charm in the smile. He reminded me of an actor whose name I couldn’t quite call to mind—someone who could play on the emotions with a look.
‘Take the time you need.’
‘When the business was sold it was worth less than I’d thought. There were… encumbrances—outstanding debts and loans that were hard to trace. The house carried a bigger mortgage than I’d expected. I admit I didn’t try too hard or get my people to pursue it. I had enough. Plenty. I began to take an interest in the stock market and did pretty well. Do I sound cold?’
He did, a bit, but you have to cut a potential client some slack. ‘I wouldn’t say so necessarily, Mr Turner. You sound sane and sensible. Grief has its place, I guess, but it never did anyone any good in the long run. After a while it’s mostly just self-pity.’
‘True. I was very fond of Paula and we got along well, but it was never a grand passion. Anyway, as I say, I soldiered on. Then just last week I happened to see in the paper that Paula’s mother had died. I’d never met her, you understand, but the name and the address matched. I have a lawyer friend—he made discreet enquiries. She suicided apparently and left quite a bit of money and instructions that she was to be cremated and her ashes scattered from Tom Ugly’s Bridge over the Georges River—she and Paula had lived in Sylvania when it wasn’t as expensive as it is now. She’d made arrangements in advance with a funeral parlour.’
He stopped talking and drew a breath. ‘Sorry I’m still being so long-winded.’
‘Don’t be. Better to get the details upfront. And it’s interesting—the Tom Ugly’s touch.’
‘It gets more interesting. I don’t know why, but I found out when the cremation was to take place and I went along. I never got to say goodbye to Paula, so I suppose I was sort of filling in that gap in a funny way. Well, I was the only person there and I bought a wreath on the way, but there was another wreath. I mean, she, Claudia Ramanascus, didn’t know anyone. She didn’t know her neighbours. She was dead in the flat for a week before anybody …’
‘You’re saying?’
‘The wreath had to be from Paula. I know it’s a guess, an assumption, but as I see it there’s no other possibility.’
I could have told him there were always other possibilities, but the story interested me too much. I doodled on the pad, giving him time to collect himself.
‘The wreath came from Mr Ongarello’s shop down the road from here,’ he said finally. ‘I went to see him and asked if he knew who had ordered it. He didn’t, he’s busy, he has assistants, things are done over the phone and online. I’m afraid I became upset and told him something—not that much—of what I’ve just told you. He suggested that I see you to find out if an … investigation is feasible.’
I’d been watching him closely and decided that the actor he resembled was William Hurt. He had the same thin hair, pale eyes and winning smile. My suspicious nature made me wonder if, as well as looking like an actor, he was one. But his manner was direct and his story was intriguing. There were questions, though.
‘Faked deaths have happened before,’ I said. ‘There was John Stonehouse and that other one not so long back.’
‘But they got caught. It can’t be easy to bring off.’
‘No, but as I’m sure you know, with all crime more gets away than gets caught. Just suppose she is still alive and I could find her. Wouldn’t that jeopardise your financial position?’
‘No. As I said, there was no life insurance to speak of and the assets weren’t quite what was expected. I had some investments of my own at the ti
me and I worked with that as well as with what I got from Paula’s estate. What I have now I mostly accumulated through my own efforts and I could prove it. Besides, if you did find her I wouldn’t want to … expose her.’
‘Why bother to look, then?’
He released the slow smile again. ‘D’you remember Kerry Packer saying that acquiring Fairfax would amuse him? It’s a bit like that. No, that’s not quite honest. I admire her if that’s what she did, but I do feel … tricked. I’d like to know. I’d like to know how she did it. How she squirrelled away a good deal of money. Not that I want it, not that I’m entitled to it.’
‘You’d also like to know why.’
‘Yes.’
‘How about—with whom?’
He shrugged his broad ex-swimmer’s shoulders. ‘If it worked out that way, so be it. But as I say, I don’t bear any serious grudge. If you can find her and have some solid evidence, an address and a photo, say, I’d take it from there.’ He plucked a wallet from his shirt pocket and extracted a couple of hundred-dollar notes as if they were tens.
I wasn’t sure that I quite believed him. People’s motives in coming to private detectives are often devious, but he told a good story and evidently had the money to pay for my time, which I had plenty of. I went through the usual routine—told him my retainer and fee structure, and that no outcome could be guaranteed. He showed a polite interest, signed a contract and paid the retainer. He handed me a full-length photograph of his presumed-to-be-late wife. Tall, slender, as you’d expect for a triathlete, with just a suggestion of weight gain around the face.
‘Now,’ I said, ‘who’s this lawyer who made the discreet enquiries?’
‘Do you have to know that? I told you what—’
I moved the signed contract back towards him a little. ‘I need to know, or this is cancelled by mutual agreement. And you get your money back, minus a small deduction for my time.’
He studied me for most of a minute. ‘Mr Ongarello said you were thorough. I’m beginning to see what he meant. Okay, his name is Simon Amherst. He’s a solicitor and his firm is Amherst and Bruce. They’re in the book. Good afternoon.’