by Peter Corris
‘What?’ I said.
‘Here’s a six-foot four-inch lesbian who wants to be a priest. She claims she’s being discriminated against on grounds of sex, sexuality and height.’
‘That’s a tall order.’
‘Go away.’
Harry waved at me. ‘Got it,’ he said. ‘It seems old Beckett married a younger woman and he took her lawyer on. Not a wise move to my mind, but there you are. Name’s Wallace Cavendish. I’ve written it all out on a Post-it so you can stick it somewhere.’
I put the mug on the desk where the ring it would make would join a thousand others. ‘Thanks, Harry.’
‘I also asked Marjorie for copies of the main cuts on the Beckett case. I’ll fax them to you if you like.’
‘Forever in your debt. I must make sure there’s some paper in the machine. It’s all been a bit slow lately.’
‘If you turn up anything interesting . . .’
‘It goes without saying,’ I said.
I walked out into the early-afternoon sunshine, completely sober, my mood much improved by the meeting with Harry, but very hungry. My first stop was a sandwich bar much patronised by Harry’s people, where they build elegant structures that somehow hold together and don’t drip on you. I ate the sandwich sitting on a bench in one of the little paved squares that have been carved out in the middle of the residential and industrial busyness. I shared the space but not the sandwich with some disappointed pigeons and seagulls. The weather had improved as the day went on and, professionally, the outlook wasn’t too bad either. I had a police consultant to consult, a lawyer to meet, newspaper cuttings to read and a widow to visit at the Gold Coast. I’ve had much worse starts.
5
I drove the short hop to Darlinghurst, parked in my usual spot, and headed for my office. The way Harry Tickener worked, the faxed cuttings could be spewing out of the machine right now. The area around St Peters Lane has changed a hell of a lot since I first lobbed there, but the change seems to have stalled, which suits me. I used to like the accretion of posters on the walls—rock gigs, religious meetings, political rallies—dating back years. The bill posters tended not to overlay them exactly, or they peeled off and you could trace history on the walls the way archaeologists read stratified deposits. Nowadays, the council employs someone to strip them off. Sad.
I went up the stairs humming some Sinatra song or other and was embarrassed when I saw a man waiting outside my door. I’m not a tuneful hummer, as several women have told me. At least I have the sense not to sing. The man looked unthreatening—late middle-aged or more, stocky with thinning grey hair, a slightly rumpled lightweight suit to match, briefcase. Still, nothing to say there wasn’t a pair of brass knucks in the briefcase at his feet. I slowed down to give him time to make the first move. Someone pretending to be passive, but intending to be active, sometimes betrays the intention by body language. Sometimes. This guy was harmless stillness itself.
‘Mr Hardy?’ he said loudly, taking a step away from the wall and leaving the briefcase where it was.
I stopped humming. ‘That’s right.’
He stuck out a surprisingly big, meaty paw. ‘Glad to meet you. I’m Max Savage.’
The name registered—Frank Parker’s consultant—but this was all very disconcertingly premature. I shook the hand and dug for my keys. ‘You’ve jumped the gun,’ I muttered.
‘What was that?’
The volume of his voice forced me to look at him. ‘I said you’ve jumped the gun.’
He nodded. ‘Jumped the gun, that’s right. I’m afraid I have. I’ll explain when we get inside.’
The light wasn’t good in the corridor, a matter of dirty windows and low wattage in the bulbs, which was why I hadn’t noticed the small hearing aids in both ears. I unlocked the door and ushered him in. He bent easily to pick up the briefcase and stepped smartly past me. For a mature-age citizen he moved pretty smoothly. The office has a tiny vestibule, about big enough to hold a bicycle, and then the room itself. Max Savage went in, put his briefcase down and stood by the client chair. I had the odd feeling that he was directing the traffic, willing me to get behind the desk to my allotted place. Instead I went over to the fax machine and examined the long roll of paper that had come through. Good old Harry.
I looked straight at him. ‘Sit down, Mr Savage,’ I said.
‘Thank you.’ He sat, and the contrast with the last man who’d sat there couldn’t have been more extreme. Whereas Barry White had been a mass of tics and fidgets and habitual gestures, Savage was a model of harmony and control. He waited for me to sit down and looked as if it wouldn’t worry him if he had to wait an hour or so. I tore off the fax paper and let the roll settle. Then I sat down.
‘I don’t want to be rude, but Frank Parker was going to give me some time to get back to him,’ I said. ‘This is all a bit premature, isn’t it?’
‘It is and I’m sorry. But as you can imagine, the telephone is a difficult instrument for me. I have to use a relay service or get someone to interpret, as it were, for me. That’s cumbersome and people tend not to want to go through the rigmarole. I find face-to-face meetings much more productive. As to the rush, I’ll be frank with you, Mr Hardy. The police service takes a dim view of me on the whole. Frank is one of my few supporters. I’ve had bugger-all to do since I was approached and this is the first chance for me to get my teeth into something. I’m excited by it. So, as you say, I jumped the gun.’
I realised that I liked him. He was direct and honest, not common characteristics in the people I meet, and he seemed to treat his disability matter-of-factly, so that I felt comfortable with it. Still, you have to know exactly who you’re dealing with.
‘How deaf are you?’ I asked.
‘Very, but not totally. I get a fair bit in on some frequencies and next to nothing on others. In a quiet setting like this I can hear your voice more or less. You speak very clearly. Of course, I don’t really need to hear it.’
‘How’s that?’
‘I’m a very good lip-reader. You open your mouth when you speak and you haven’t got any facial hair so I can pick up what you’re saying pretty exactly. Then there’s the body language.’
I was interested. ‘Body language?’
‘Yep. People express themselves in the way they move as much as in what they say. A lot of what’s said is superfluous anyway—repetitive, retracted, ambiguous. I can tell if someone’s speaking positively, negatively or speculatively from the way they move their bodies and their facial expressions. Then, with the bit of hearing and the lip-reading I don’t miss much.’
‘Must be fun in a bus.’
‘It can be. I’ve picked up things that’d make your hair curl.’
‘Okay. But this is all a bit previous. I’m still scratching around with this thing and . . .’
‘Let’s scratch together. I’ve learned a thing or two that could be useful.’
I glanced across at the faxes and he raised an eyebrow. It was then I noticed a mark on the side of his face, like a birthmark but somehow different. It was slightly shiny and I suspected that he had applied some kind of make-up to it. His face was lean and firm, his dark eyes were deep-set and steady. No spectacles, faint frown lines suggesting contacts had replaced them.
‘Newspaper cuttings on the Beckett matter,’ I said. ‘From a friend.’
Savage nodded. ‘Harry Tickener. Parker speaks well of him. I’d like to see them.’
It amused me to think about what my client would say if he could see me now, chatting away and perhaps about to share confidences with this grey-hair. One thing I knew, I put more trust in Max Savage than in Barry White. But I was at a disadvantage; Frank Parker had evidently told Savage something about me, whereas I knew nothing about him. I leaned back in the chair. ‘Tell me a bit about yourself, Mr Savage. How did you lose your hearing?’
Savage smiled, showing strong, even teeth that helped to give his face structure. ‘I was a cop, what else? I was on the South
Australian force for more than twenty years. Made acting Inspector. Didn’t like it much, all bloody paperwork. I went out with the detectives one night to pull in one of these ram-raid bastards. To make a long story short, I wound up at close quarters with him and a sawn-off shottie up against a wall. Gun went off and killed him.’ He raised a hand to his face. ‘I got burns and a bit of blast, but the worst thing was it buggered up my hearing.’
‘Bad luck,’ I said. ‘So you got invalided out?’
He smiled again. ‘Not right away. The hearing loss was sort of gradual but I could tell it was going. I got a doctor to pass me for a year or two and I took the promotion. I learned to lip-read and I got these miniature hearing aids, but they spotted me in the end and saw me off.’
‘So how did you get this job?’
‘Partly contacts. I worked with New South boys on quite a few occasions, but mostly because no one else wanted it. What did Frank tell you?’
‘Next to nothing.’
‘It’s all bullshit on the face of it. The title’s just window-dressing. The empire-builders don’t actually want me to do anything, but they can point to me if they get asked what’s being done about these open cases. A few people, like Frank, think I can really be useful. I think so, too. I intend to be useful and I expect I’ll have to be a nuisance to do it.’
I liked that. ‘Nuisance value’ is a good expression in my book, and I had a feeling that Mr Savage was going to display plenty of it. The opposition would be formidable, though. ‘You’re going to be unpopular,’ I said. ‘Have you got a family or . . .’
It was apparent that he was picking up every word I said, and I was deliberately speaking quietly. He shook his head and leaned forward intently. His fists, resting on his knees, clenched hard. He’d been speaking in a normal tone but now the volume went up a bit. ‘No. My wife died a few years back. No kids. I’m on good, indexed super from the South Australian department. Look, Mr Hardy . . .’
I grinned at him. ‘Cliff, Max.’
He cleared his throat, eased back in the chair and his hands relaxed. ‘Good. Cliff. Right. I know you’ve got a living to make and people to protect . . .’
‘Call it keep sweet, at least for a while.’
‘I don’t want to get in the way of any of that and I won’t if I can help it. But this Ramona Beckett case is bloody interesting and anyone with any kind of a feel for detective work would like to sort it out.’
‘True. And from the angle I’m coming at there’s a hell of a lot of money involved.’
‘But you wouldn’t frame anyone or misrepresent things to get it?’
‘No.’
‘We can work together, don’t you reckon?’
‘Mm. I’m a bit worried about you and the cop culture, I must admit. I was expecting you to be an academic or a computer genius or something. As things stand now, a former policeman involved looks pretty dirty.’
‘Johnno Hawkins? That’s not a problem. I’ve got no time for blokes like him. Never did.’
‘Why d’you mention Hawkins?’
‘I’ve been reading the files, Cliff. If Hawkins was fair dinkum about that investigation I’ll shout you drinks for a month.’
There didn’t seem to be any point in pussyfooting around. I told Max pretty well everything I knew. He made notes while I talked and only asked the odd question, mostly about White and Grogan. When I finished I scissored the fax, ran the sheets through the photocopier and handed the copies to him. He thanked me, folded them and put them away in his briefcase. ‘Make interesting reading. Okay, what do you want to ask me?’
‘I’d like to see all the investigation reports.’
Max held his hand a metre above the floor. ‘The file’s about this thick.’
‘Shit. Hawkins’ notebook, then.’
‘Notebooks. He filled half a dozen at least. Mostly bullshit, wool to pull over eyes. What would you be looking for specifically?’
‘Obviously, trying to get a line on who would’ve paid him to run dead.’
‘Right, well he interviewed everyone of course. Some of them a couple of times. You think you’d be able to smell the phoney one?’
‘Or ones. Who knows how many of them were in on it, if it happened.’
‘I’ll dig out the notebooks and we can go through them together. There’s one thing that worries me. Say it all happened the way your informant suggests, the likelihood is someone else was in on it, someone higher up, giving Hawkins protection. That person might still be around and might have a lot to lose.’
I hadn’t thought of that. Dealing with disgraced and retired cops is one thing, dealing with cops still in place and powerful is quite another. After my recent de-licensing and reinstatement I was vulnerable in a way I hadn’t been before. And, as a good number of people found out in the seventies and eighties, a disgruntled policeman is a danger to life and limb.
‘How sealed-off can you keep your inquiries?’ I asked.
‘Not very. I’ve already done the obvious thing—called for all sorts of files to provide a haystack for the needle. But if anyone gets really interested . . .’ He opened his hands expressively.
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘But that cuts both ways. If you get to hear of anyone taking an interest, that could be a bird flushed.’
Max smiled. ‘I like your devious mind. How do you see it from here? Oh, shit, I’m assuming . . .’
‘You can,’ I said. ‘I think it’ll be intriguing, as you say.’
‘Yes, yes, for sure. Okay, the notebooks, then . . .’
‘It’d be good if you could pull Barry White’s file and see if there’s any hint on who his benefactor might be.’
Max made a note. ‘Right, and see if Hawkins had any particularly useful mates. What are you going to do?’
‘Talk to the lawyer if I can. See if the reward story’s kosher. If it is, I’ll need to talk to the widow up on the Gold Coast. The trouble with this thing is, even if we get a line on who paid off Hawkins to suppress the note, it doesn’t tell us anything about who killed Ramona Beckett. Not necessarily.’
‘I see what you mean,’ Max said. ‘Against that, there’s a chance the guilty party went all the way with the kidnappers.’
‘Maybe.’
‘I might come to Queensland with you, if that’s okay. I’m on expenses. I wouldn’t mind meeting a widow.’
‘We’ve got two widows here. Don’t forget Mrs Beckett.’
‘One’d be enough,’ Max said.
6
After an exchange of phone numbers we agreed to a meeting, same time, same place, in two days. I read through the newspaper cuttings that carried headlines like ‘HEIRESS DISAPPEARS’, ‘MILLIONAIRE’S DAUGHTER VANISHES’ and ‘SOCIETY BEAUTY FEARED DEAD’. The photographs brought back sharp memories. Ramona Beckett had not exactly been beautiful—all her edges and lines were too sharp and defined for that. There was nothing comfortable and soothing about her the way there is with truly beautiful women, but she had something extra that more than compensated for this deficiency. Sexy wasn’t quite the word for her either. You wanted to touch and you wanted her to touch you is the best way of putting it, and when those dark eyes swung your way, you had the feeling that it might be possible.
I could remember our social meetings and our one and only sexual encounter quite vividly, although a lot of alcohol was consumed each time. She was well read and very bright, also funny in a caustic way. On the night that I put the screws on her, we went to her flat in Potts Point after dinner at the Bourbon and Beefsteak, her favourite hangout. We were clawing at each other on the stairs. If she was acting I didn’t care. I wanted to touch every inch of her and enter her wherever she’d let me. She was wearing a black dress, cut low in the front and back, with thin straps and a short, floating skirt. A black ribbon choker with a pearl set in it emphasised the slenderness of her long neck. Her dark hair fell to her square shoulders and smelled of flowers and tobacco. We were both smokers and our breaths must have been foul wit
h alcohol and Chesterfields, but in those days no one cared. I could almost span her waist with my hands and her long, thin legs, dark stockings and high heels were sexual signals all saying ‘Go!’
I got an erection, sitting there at the desk thinking about it, and got up to break the spell. I tried to remember how I’d felt when the story about her disappearance broke in the papers. All the information, such as it was, was there in front of me in the faxes: she was seen in a restaurant in Manly on a quiet Monday night, dining alone. Her car, a white Celica coupé, was found garaged under her apartment block. How she got to Manly, why she hadn’t driven, hadn’t been determined. She left the restaurant alone and was seen walking towards the ferry and that was about it. The reports that followed were mostly about the lack of progress in the police investigation. There were speculative stories about Ramona’s political ambitions and very veiled hints about her methods. Her ‘friendships’ with ‘prominent political figures’ were mentioned, but nothing specific, no names.
As I flicked through the sheets the initial reactions came back to me. I had been deeply puzzled that a person with so much intelligence and energy had taken such a bad turning. I had wondered what had made her the driven, ruthless creature she was and had no idea of the reason. We had mostly talked money and politics. Another reaction came back as well, something that had surprised me at the time—I remember laughing hard at some of the things she’d said, admiring the shrewdness of other observation. Then there was the intensity of the brief sexual transport: I thought then and still did—what a waste of an exceptional human being!
The cuttings reminded me that Joshua Becket had made his initial millions from digging up bits of Australia and selling it overseas. Then he invested in fast food outlets, shopping malls, medical centres and pharmaceutical companies. It sounded as if he had the knack of turning one dollar into a hundred, a hundred into a thousand and so on. His first wife had divorced him early in his career but the custody of their son and daughter was shared. The son, Sean, was thirty-six at the time of Ramona’s disappearance and held an executive job in one of Dad’s businesses. The daughter, Estelle, was said to be ‘developing her own fashion label’.
