Taking Care of Business ch-28

by Peter Corris

  I shook my head. ‘The smart money called it a draw- we both had busted noses and three broken ribs.’

  ‘You had him down.’

  ‘I forget. Someone must’ve been holding me up.’

  ‘I need him, Cliff. Top dollar for the job. Go up there and bring him back and you can take the rest of the year off.’

  ‘Hardiman’s got that kind of money?’

  ‘No comment.’

  I had a certain amount of respect for Bannister, none for Hardiman, and a very limited cash flow with the bills mounting. For a private investigator, being hired by a lawyer is gold. ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Standard fee and expenses…’

  ‘Plus bonus.’

  ‘If you insist. Where’s “up there”? Tell me it’s not New Guinea or Ambon.’

  ‘Nimbin.’

  ‘Cool,’ I said.

  We did the contract stuff; I got the subpoena and a retainer and drew on it. I caught a plane to Lismore. I didn’t shave for a couple of days, and by the time I was ready to drive out of Lismore-having met with Elsie, the woman who’d given Bannister the tip about Pike, at the Gollan Hotel and hired a battered Land Rover from a Rent-a-Wreck-I was whiskery. My hair is greying, wiry and still thick. Unkempt is no problem for me.

  I took the road north, passing through places with names like Goolmangra, and admiring the lush country even after the dry winter everyone had been telling me about. Elsie said that Pike lived on a couple of acres out of Nimbin but came in for supplies and a beer every other day. I didn’t expect to find him on the first day and I was right, but I spent my time sussing out the town which I hadn’t seen for many years. It seemed to have gone downhill, to have become more seedy, and the people likewise, from the way it had been. I was surprised, though, at the respectability of the pub and the supermarket and at the way the straights and the ferals seemed to get on together-a sort of uneasy truce.

  I ate lunch in the pub, struck up a few conversations, visited the marijuana museum and refused quite a few deals in the street. I spent another night in the Lismore motel with a pizza, the TV and a bottle of Rawson’s Retreat, and was back in Nimbin by late morning in time to see Kerry Pike pull up outside the supermarket in his old Holden ute. Pike had lost weight and grown a bushy beard but he was easily recognisable by the way he walked-head up, a screw-you strut.

  I watched him buy groceries, toss them into the ute where he had a Rottweiler tied in the tray, then tracked him into the pub. I sat opposite him out on the back deck and reached across to take a chip from his plate before he lifted his fork.

  ‘Gidday, Kezza,’ I said. ‘Remember me?’

  Pike had a long jaw, a flat nose and pale grey eyes, giving him a fishy look that had led people to make jokes until they felt his knuckles. The beard was gingery so the fishy look was still there. The chilly eyes narrowed.

  ‘Jesus Christ, Cliff Hardy.’

  ‘The same. Eat up. Good chips.’

  ‘The fuck are you doin’ here?’

  I passed the subpoena over so that it sat across his scarred, clenched fists. ‘I’m here to take you back to Sydney for the Hardiman trial. You’re hereby served, sport.’

  ‘How d’you reckon to do that?’

  ‘Whatever it takes. Shoot your dog. Cuff you now. Talk to the police.’

  Pike surprised me then. He took a slurp from his schooner and dug his fork into a chunk offish. He impaled some chips, carried the food to his mouth and chewed vigorously. He swallowed, took another drink and built an even bigger forkful. Watching him made me hungry and impatient.

  ‘Kerry,’ I said. ‘It’s going to happen, one way or another.’

  He pushed a mound of chips onto a napkin and eased it across towards me. I’d come in with a middy of light and he touched his glass to mine. ‘That’s okay, Hardy. I’ll come back, but there’s some business here I have to attend to first.’

  I couldn’t help myself. I took a chip and a drink. ‘I dunno…’

  ‘Just listen.’

  He told me that he’d left Sydney because of some massive gambling debts to some very heavy people.

  ‘These guys aren’t fussy, they’ll take an eyeball on account. Know what I mean?’

  ‘Sure.’

  He dropped his voice, although there were only two or three other people on the deck. ‘In a few days I’m going to get enough money to clear it. I’m talking about a couple of hundred grand. Then I’ll come back with you, quiet as a lamb. Play along and everything’ll be sweet.’

  I looked at him closely. He was lean and tanned and there was impacted dirt under his fingernails. ‘I think I can guess,’ I said. ‘The answer’s no.’

  ‘A bit of a crop. What’s the harm? My guess is you’re on a big earner. D’you want it or not?’

  ‘I’m going to get it.’

  ‘I don’t think so. Take a look, Hardy. I’m not the slob you belted behind the pub and I’ve got friends in town. Have a go here and I reckon I could take you. Even if I didn’t you wouldn’t get far with me once the word got out. Make it easy on yourself. Three or four days. A week, tops.’

  I ate chips and drank beer while I thought about it. The confidence in his tone, his lack of interest in the beer, the absence of the cigarette that used to be ever-present, convinced me that he was telling the truth. He’d be hard to fight and harder still to abduct. I didn’t have an ethics problem; the drug laws are stupid and a bit more grass on the market wouldn’t make any difference.

  ‘All right, Kezza,’ I said. ‘But I’m not letting you out of my sight until you front up in Sydney.’

  ‘Glad to have you along, Hardy.’

  I should’ve taken more notice of that remark.

  I spent the rest of that day and the night at Pike’s acres. His crop was planted over a wide area in small patches with a fair amount of tree cover. I assumed this was to beat air surveillance but Kerry said that was going out of fashion. ‘Too expensive, what with insurance liability and all that.’

  I slept in the Land Rover and watched the harvesting get underway the next day. Pike’s mates Frank and Vince clearly knew what they were doing and he took his lead from them. They stripped the plants of leaves before chopping them down. Then they hung the stalks with the buds attached in a shed to dry. Some of the leaf was kept but not much. It sounds easy, but it wasn’t; they worked under a hot sun and got covered in dust and resin and were bothered by flies and other insects. They were earning their money.

  With the crop in I thought Vince and Frank might take off but they didn’t. They hung around, drinking beer, smoking joints and checking on the drying. All three were very nervous and so was I. After three days they judged the stuff was ready and they collected the buds. It was all very professional; the best buds went into two large garbage bags and the rough stuff was mixed in with some leaf.

  ‘This is called kif,’ Vince explained. ‘It’s shit stuff but there’s a market for it. We’ve got a bit of the good stuff for personal consumption. Wanna try it, Cliff?’

  ‘I’ve tried it,’ I said. ‘Give me a single malt any day.’

  ‘Peasant,’ Frank said, but he grinned. Kerry had told them who I was and what I was about and they tolerated me.

  The night after the packing was over I found out what Kerry had meant about me being welcome. Four men invaded the place. They were armed with bike chains. Vince had been keeping watch and his shrill whistle sent Kerry and Frank into action. They broke out some hard hats and axe handles and switched on a floodlight. The invaders, probably expecting to work in the dark against three men, found themselves up against four under strong light. Pike could always fight like a threshing machine and Vince and Frank were very willing. A bike chain is scary but not very effective. We waded into them and whacked them around the knees and the head. Pike went berserk and I had to dig my axe handle into his balls to stop him killing one of the attackers. Two of them ended up stunned and bleeding and we let the other two drag them away. Frank had a nasty gash on his arm. I had a bruis
ed shoulder where a chain had caught me.

  ‘Good stoush,’ Vince said. ‘You pulled your weight, Cliff.’

  Kerry glowered at me, clutching his groin. ‘Why the fuck did you do that?’

  I chucked the axe handle away. ‘I want you in court in Sydney testifying, not in the dock up here for murder.’

  The buyer came late the next day and he and Kerry settled their business very quickly. The buyer sampled the buds and sniffed at the kif. Money changed hands but no hands were shaken. Kerry paid off Vince, who agreed to look after the dog, and Frank, and that left him and me and a bundle of notes the size of half a brick. I used my mobile to book a flight to Sydney from Lismore at 6.30 am.

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ Pike said. ‘Why so early?’

  ‘Bird and worm,’ I said.

  It hadn’t escaped my notice that he’d left his ute parked at the top of a slope that ran down to pick up the track into his property a hundred metres away from the house. He went to a shed and pulled out a big tarp.

  ‘Better cover ‘er up. Can’t tell how long I’ll be gone.’

  I nodded and offered to help but he waved me away. ‘Go and have a swim in the creek. Be beaut about now.’

  I grabbed a ratty towel from the outhouse bathroom and jogged away in the direction of the creek. As soon as I was out of sight I worked my way back close enough to watch Kerry make his plans.

  We microwaved a pizza and had a few drinks to celebrate the closure of business and I pretended to be sleepy drunk.

  Pike said, ‘I’ll set an alarm.’

  I settled down fully clothed under a light blanket and got into a good snoring rhythm. At 2 am Pike checked on me and crept out of the house. I followed him and saw him retrieve something from the dog kennel. He moved quietly for such a big bloke working in the dark. He stripped the tarp from the ute and got in the cab, leaving the door open. Careful man-he’d killed the interior light.

  I hit the floodlight switch and walked towards the ute with an axe handle in my fist.

  Pike jumped down with a bike chain. ‘I’m going, Hardy.’

  ‘No, you’re not.’

  ‘I warned you.’ He swung the chain. ‘Don’t try to stop me.’

  ‘Forget it,’ I said. ‘I’ve got the money.’

  He scrambled back into the ute, fumbled around and swore as he scattered newspaper on the ground. ‘You bastard.’

  I moved closer. ‘We can go at it if you like. You might win but that won’t get you the money. Come along quietly and do what you have to do and I’ll hand it all over to you as soon as you’ve said your piece.’

  Pike wasn’t stupid and it was a fair bet that he’d made enough to pay his debts and have something over. He threw the bike chain away and collected his bag from the ute.

  ‘That’s two to you, Hardy. How d’you reckon round three’ll turn out?’

  ‘I wonder,’ I said.

  THE PEARL

  Do you know much about the art world, Mr Hardy?’

  ‘Less than nothing,’ I said.

  I was talking with Mr Charles Stevenson in his Vaucluse house. Mr Stevenson had had something stolen and wanted it back. Getting stolen items back is something I do know about. He led me through a few big rooms which let in views of the water at a million dollars a square metre, to a softly lit chamber near the back of the big house. Paintings hung on the walls, lots of paintings. Too many.

  ‘I’m a collector,’ he said. ‘Occasionally I sell in order to buy something I want more than that I’m selling. You understand?’

  ‘I guess so. I once traded up from a single fin to a thruster.’

  Stevenson raised an enquiring eyebrow. He was in his fifties, tall and slender with a mane of white hair and a nifty little white goatee. He wore a dark suit with a tie and appeared to be as comfortable dressed that way as I was in drill slacks, an open-neck shirt and a linen jacket. The jacket was advertised as ‘unstructured’-read crumpled.

  ‘Surfboards,’ I said.

  ‘Ah, yes. Now if you’ll come over here.’ He drifted across the parquet floor to a wall that was less cluttered than the others. In fact it held only one painting. Beside the painting was a mounting where something else had been hung but it wasn’t there now. Painting to me means Van Gogh, Toulouse-Lautrec, a bit of Streeton and Tom Roberts, and the odd Brett Whiteley, so that initially I paid more attention to the vacant space than the painting.

  ‘It’s a Galliard,’ he said, ‘perhaps his best.’

  It was my turn to say, ‘Ah.’ The painting was of a woman wearing a black velvet dress. She was pale and beautiful with dark hair, sitting very straight in an upholstered chair. The neckline of the dress came to just above her nipples and sitting there against her glowing skin was a pearl suspended on a black ribbon. The woman was glancing down at the pearl and her right hand was positioned as if about to reach up and touch it. The effect was amazingly erotic and Stevenson smiled when he saw its impact on me.

  ‘Powerful,’ he said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But I’ve tired of it I’m afraid, and have my eye on something else altogether. Now you’ve noticed the empty space. That’s where the pearl was, the very same pearl that Galliard painted. It took me a great deal of effort and money to acquire it but I finally did. Needless to say, the value of the painting goes up immeasurably when accompanied by the pearl. It’s vulgar, I suppose, but I felt the same way myself, I have to confess.’

  ‘What sort of money are we talking about?’

  ‘Oh, say one point five million for the painting itself.’

  ‘And with the pearl?’

  ‘Three million, possibly more, depending on the buyer.’

  ‘What’s the pearl worth on its own?’

  ‘I’m not sure. It’s not extraordinary in any way. Perhaps a hundred thousand. It’s insured for a little less.’

  ‘So the thief got the wrong thing?’

  Stevenson shrugged. ‘I have to assume he didn’t know what he was doing.’

  I stared at the painting for a while. I liked it a lot and thought it’d take me a long while to tire of it, but I could find much better uses for a million five. Most recovery of stolen property work is done through insurance companies and the recoverer gets a percentage of the insured value. Nice enough most times, but Stevenson was talking about a different situation altogether and the payoff had to be big. Tempting, but a bell named caution rang not too far distant.

  ‘There are specialists in this sort of thing, Mr Stevenson. Why me?’

  ‘For a very good reason,’ Stevenson said as we moved away from the painting. ‘I’m planning to auction the picture and the pearl in a few weeks. That information is abroad, but not widely. Sufficiently, shall we say. Subtlety is of the essence in these matters. People like to think they’ve acquired the knowledge through their own cleverness, or that it’s held by a few. You understand?’

  I was beginning to dislike this phrase of his. Patronising. But with nothing else important on hand, the credit cards up near their limit and the bills coming in, I couldn’t afford to be choosy. I nodded.

  ‘If I used one of the usual agencies the information would leak out that the pearl is missing. Interest would drop immediately. The atmosphere would be… negative.’

  I said, ‘I see,’ before he could ask me if I understood.

  It sounded okay. We went through to a room he called his study. It was book-lined, with more pictures and a big desk with a computer and other high-tech equipment. I’d done the usual quick check on Stevenson before I’d arrived. He’d inherited a lot of old money and made a lot more new money on the stockmarket. He had an old money wife and two daughters who’d married on the same financial level. Money cosying up to money the way it does.

  Peter Corris

  CH28 — Taking Care of Business

  I had one of my standard contracts with me and we signed it and he wrote me a retainer cheque. I was guaranteed fifteen thousand dollars for the return of the pearl on top of my usual da
ily rate and expenses. I put my copy of the contract and cheque in my pocket and shook his cool, dry hand.

  ‘I wonder if there’s a photograph of the pearl,’ I said.

  ‘Of course. He opened a drawer in the desk and removed a plastic envelope. From it he slid out two photographs, one, a bit above postcard size, of the painting and the other, slightly smaller, a close-up of the pearl on its ribbon. Both were expertly done, vibrant and alive.

  Then I was given an inspection of the alarm system that protected Stevenson’s collection. State of the art, probably, twenty years ago, but now pretty primitive. No laser beams or photoelectric cells, just a pulsing alarm and a hook-up to the police call board. The main doors to the house had deadlocks but Stevenson showed where a wall had been climbed and a window, not connected to the system, had been expertly cut out. Stevenson and his wife had been away in the Blue Mountains (acreage at Blackheath) at the time of the burglary.

  ‘I’m surprised the insurance company was happy with these arrangements,’ I said.

  Stevenson let slip a wry smile. ‘Ah, now there you’ve caught me out a fraction. That’s another reason for my… preference for your services, Mr Hardy.’

  It’s nice to find that people aren’t completely straightforward. Humanising.

  Stevenson was right about leaks in the detective business, but there was one sure way to plug them, at least temporarily-with money. I knew some of the art theft boys in the game, and my first move was to get in touch with one I could at least partly trust. Quentin James is an art validator, assessor and recoverer of stolen objects. We’ve worked together successfully a few times. Money is his god, and the right amount buys his total discretion.

  I went to James’ office in Pitt Street and laid out the story. James is close to sixty, very fat and wheezy, a chain smoker and boozer, but he knows his business. As an ex-smoker I find it hard to spend much time with him in the fug he creates. He’s not a window opener, not a fresh air man.

  ‘Hmm, I believe I heard something about a Galliard going up for sale. Not which one, mind. Interesting.’