Forget Me If You Can ch-20

by Peter Corris

  ‘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, sceptical 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, nee Douglas; Lee North, son of Percy and Rose, nee Valletta; David Trumble, son of Sean and Clara, nee 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 A
pril 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.’

  I told her I drank and that I was only a few minutes away. I turned off Parramatta Road and drove through the leafy, gentrified streets of Stanmore. Her house was an imposing Federation job set in a big overgrown garden at the bottom of a street that ended at the railway line. The location-the tracks were within seventy metres of the house-would have sliced thirty grand off the value. A train rumbled past as I pulled up and a plane roared low overhead at the same time. Double-glazing would be an essential.

  The name of the house on the brass plate by the front door was Rosalind. It should have been Neglect. I’m an expert on neglected houses, my own being an outstanding example, but this one had mine beat to a frazzle. The tiles on the porch had cracked and lifted as weeds pushed up through them. A tangle of shrubs and weeds and creepers had invaded the porch and the window ledges. Small gardens grew in the guttering, spilling out to trickle down the brick walls.

  I rang the electric bell and got no result so I knocked hard on the door, dislodging flakes of paint. High heels clicked on boards and I heard a muttered curse as a step was missed. She flung the door open and looked at me with the same deep, dark eyes as her mother. ‘Mister Hardy, please do come in.’

  She was tall and thin, wearing a blue silk dress that would have fitted better if she had another kilo or two of meat on her bones. Her dark hair, with a little grey in it, was swept back and held with a blue headband in a style ten years too young for her. I put her age at about forty-five. I took the hand she extended-the free one, the other carried a glass-and shook it. ‘It’s good of you to see me like this,’ I said. I reached inside my jacket. ‘You wanted some identification.’

  She waved that away and s
wayed slightly but regained her balance quickly. ‘Now that I’ve seen you I have no doubt whatsoever that you’re who you say you are. Not that I really care. Come in and have a drink.’

  I followed her into the house, which smelled of damp and dust, through to a big tiled kitchen with French windows letting out onto a back garden more wild than the one in front. The windows were open and a train rattled by, shaking the cocktail fixings set out on an old-fashioned card table. She pointed to a pair of deckchairs with slightly torn canvas. ‘Sit you down. I was just having a martini. You’ll join me?’

  ‘Yes, thank you.’

  She slugged back the rest of the drink she’d carried and poured two more from a crystal pitcher. Her hand shook but she managed to get the glasses two-thirds full. Then she dropped an olive in each and added more gin. ‘Gilbey’s gin keeps you thin,’ she said. ‘I believe that, I really do.’

  I reached forward to take the glass, doubting her ability to get it to me. She smiled, lifted her own and steered herself into her chair. ‘Cheers.’

  I drank. The vermouth bottle was on the table but it might just as well have stayed in the cupboard. The drinks were almost pure gin, diluted a bit by melted ice. Not that I minded. She took a hefty pull and extracted a cigarette from the packet on the table. It gave me a chance to study her. My original guess at her age was way off-she couldn’t have been more than thirty-five, but cigarettes and booze had put ten years on her. Her hands were slender and young-looking, but the fingers were heavily nicotine-stained; the flesh around her neck was firm although her chin was sagging and her fine eyes were disfigured by deep pouches and a mass of premature wrinkles.

  ‘So, you’ve been out to see Rose and now you’ve come to see me. All about poor Lee. That’s strange. I haven’t thought about Lee in ages. Mind you, at one time I used to think about him a lot.’

  ‘It must have been a shock, to hear of his death in that way.’