by Peter Corris
‘You talk, I’ll listen.’
He sniffed. ‘Tough guy. This is a matrimonial, right?’
I nodded.
‘I’m on Mrs Butterworth. Her husband wants a divorce. You know the drill, he needs repeated acts of infidelity.’
‘No, he doesn’t. He only needs the one. She needs repeated acts. Besides, Butterworth’s wasting his money. I’m on the bloke, Lucan-Paget. His wife’s citing Mrs B as co-respondent. The divorce isn’t going to be contested, so your bloke’s got his cause, cut and dried.’
‘That’s not the way I hear it,’ Pike said.
I gave him his things back and we shook hands. ‘I’m Archie Merrett, Ted. Hope I didn’t hurt you. I think we better have that talk.’
The pubs were closed. We went to a club Pike knew in Darlinghurst and started to compare notes. He knew a lot more about what was going on than me, and some of the names he started dropping were big ones-newspaper bigwigs like Alexander Farfrae, doctors like Molesworth and Hamilton, politicians like Redding, Bothwick, the judge. Lucan-Paget as I already knew, was a vice-president of the AJC; Mrs Butterworth’s husband, although I hadn’t made the connection until we started chatting like this, was Sir Peter, chairman of Allied Industries Proprietary Limited.
‘Interesting,’ I said. ‘I like to move in the best circles. Now tell me what you meant when you said you were waiting for me.’
‘Not you, yourself, Arch,’ Pike said. ‘I mean, I didn’t know who you were. But we knew there’d be someone working for Mrs Paget-Lucan.’
‘Lucan-Paget,’ I said. ‘Who’s we?’
‘I’ve got some mates I think you’d better meet. All good blokes. I’m sure you’ve heard of some of them. Ross Martin? Frankie Bourke?’
They were PEAs. And not the most ethical ones either. I got a sniff of it then, but Pike wasn’t about to tell me any more. He suggested a meeting at the club the following night. I agreed and asked him if I could have a couple of his shots of the happy couple.
He grinned. ‘I wasn’t taking pictures, Arch. Like I said, I was waiting for you.’
There were five of us at the club the next night-me, Pike, Bourke, Martin and Dick Maxwell. Bells would have started ringing in the heads of any cops or lawyers who saw us together, but it wasn’t that kind of a club. Pike, as I discovered, was a sly type, always looking for an angle; Martin and Bourke were both ex-cops, resentful, lazy and dishonest; Maxwell was a queer and a drunk with family connections to some top people. I was an old soldier with short wind and starting to put on weight. Getting past it. An unholy bunch. We ate a bit, particularly Maxwell and Bourke, sailed into the beer and the Scotch, wrapped ourselves in cigarette smoke and got down to it.
Pike and Maxwell laid it out. This bunch of filthy rich eastern suburbs snobs had all started rooting each other’s wives. The men were all boardroom and club bar chums; the women were all younger than the men. Things got out of hand and thoughts turned towards divorce. The problems were, the disputed custody of a fair number of kids, a hell of a lot of property involved, reputations at stake in areas like the law and politics where reputations mattered, and a fair amount of bitterness. Naturally, these types tended to have the same lawyers, or at least members of the same firms. Things got sticky.
‘The chaps attempted to stitch things up neatly,’ Maxwell said. ‘Make arrangements, come to agreements, one gentleman to another. Worked well up to a point.’
I said, ‘I never heard a whisper until I got my little piece.’
Maxwell nodded. ‘Right. That’s one of the things that worked. All very hush-hush, nothing in the papers.’
Pike grinned, showing that he’d reached the good bit. ‘But the women weren’t having a bar of it. They got their own lawyers and that’s where nasty, low-life types like us come in.’
‘Speak for yourself,’ Martin said, and got a laugh.
Dick Maxwell said, ‘He was, dear boy’ and got another laugh. Maxwell and Pike went on to explain how a deal had finally been put together by the nobs and the lawyers. A clutch of men and women had agreed to become the official co-respondents so that none of the people who couldn’t afford to be named would be.
‘That’s not right,’ I said. “The solicitor told me Mrs Butterworth would be cited as the correspondent in Lucan-Paget vs Lucan-Paget, and that the divorce would be uncontested.’
‘Who’s the lawyer?’ Maxwell asked.
‘Alistair McLachlan.’
‘When you go and see Mac with your snaps, Archie old love, you’ll find out things have changed a trifle. I imagine Mrs Butterworth needed a little pressure to bring her into line. That’s what all of us have been doing-getting the goods on this one and that so that the shysters can apply the screws.’
‘Right,’ Pike said. ‘The upshot’s something like this: Redding will divorce his wife but he won’t cite the judge. He’ll cite Joe Blow, who’ll get a pay-off.’
Maxwell chortled. ‘I’d like to meet him-Joe Blow.’
Pike ignored that and went on, ‘Mrs Molesworth will divorce the doctor, but she won’t cite Mrs Hamilton, the other doctor’s wife…’
Maxwell took a big swig of gin and exploded into laughter. ‘She’ll cite Henrietta Head, or May Kum, the Chinese…’
I laughed along with everyone else. Maxwell wore green suede shoes, hung around gymnasiums and drank neat gin as if it was iced water, but he was a funny bastard until he got nasty and then got too pissed to move. Pike lit a cigarette from the stub of the last, a temptation I’ve always avoided, and went on with his report.
‘Farfrae’s paying a bundle to keep out of it. His missus has got terminal cancer. He’ll be on the loose soon anyway, but if there was a scandal just now, some of his churchie kinfolk would grab his company off him.’
‘Who’s he been rooting?’ I asked.
Bourke waved a forkful of spaghetti. ‘Everybody.’ He leered at Maxwell. ‘Boys, even.’
Maxwell smiled. ‘Hence his generous contribution to the fighting fund. Ted?’
‘They’ve got together a heap of cash,’ Pike said. ‘To pay the dummies, square a couple of the lawyers, buy off this person and that. A quarter of a million, we’re told, and plenty more where that came from.’
I lit a smoke and tried to sound casual. ‘Who’s holding the kitty?’
‘Terry Farmer of Soames, Farmer amp; Cain,’ Maxwell said. ‘We’ve got an arrangement, Terry and I, although it’s not quite what Terry thinks.’
‘Iron each other’s silk hankies, do you?’ Martin said.
Maxwell had drunk enough to turn snaky. ‘You chaps in your flannel pyjamas with your winceyette wives,’ he snapped, ‘don’t have any idea how much fun an interesting piece of fabric can be.’
‘Easy, Dick,’ Pike said. ‘Frankie’s a poofter basher from way back. He can’t help it. We all know this couldn’t have worked without you.’
‘What couldn’t have worked?’ I said. ‘All I see’s a bunch of PEAs collecting their fees and sitting around getting pissed. Nothing special about that.’
‘We’re going after half of the fund,’ Pike said. ‘A hundred and twenty-five thousand-twenty-five grand each. We were just waiting for the last man to come aboard. Glad it was you, Arch.’
I said, ‘Why?’
Ross Martin put his big fists on the table. He wore rings on several fingers, as some of the people who’d had face-to-face dealings with him had cause to regret. ‘You can’t afford to turn it down, Arch. Like the rest of us, you’re not young, you’re not getting any quicker. I’ll bet London to a brick you haven’t got any gilt-edged investments.’
I looked around the table but I didn’t even have to think about it. Not really. Didn’t even have to remember the supercilious tone of McLachlan and his kind, and the late cheques and the cheques that bounced and the accounts that were never paid at all.
‘Right,’ I said. ‘How?’
Dick Maxwell had mopped his flushed, damp face with a silk handkerchief which he stuffed back into the pocket of his
Harris tweed sportscoat. Pissed, but holding himself together, he lifted his glass. Somehow, Maxwell’s glass always seemed to contain an inch or so of gin. ‘To the Commonwealth Matrimonial Causes Act, 1959 to 1965,’ he said. ‘To the right honourable convention of the discretion statement.’
That was the end of side one. Arch had enclosed a copy of the Act in the file. The Act had been in force when I began working in private enquiries, and I’d done a bit of divorce work back then-more the serving of papers and checking on assets sort of thing than photograph-taking, but a bit of that as well. Then the law was changed in the early Seventies and we had no-fault divorces of the kind that Cyn and I got. It was interesting to read over the relevant bit of the old legalese again:
A discretion statement in respect of adultery committed prior to the petition shall be filed-
(1) with the first pleading by the spouse
(a) seeking dissolution…
(b) seeking judicial separation…
(2) with the application for custody by a respondent (not otherwise required to file a discretion statement) who seeks custody of a child of the marriage.
(3) in respect of adultery committed by a spouse in respect of either of the above two proceedings between filing of the petition and its hearing (as soon as practicable after its commission) unless in a prior discretion statement the applicant has stated that he is living as man and wife with the person referred to in the discretion statement.
In such discretion statement the applicant shall set out:-
(a) particulars of adultery since marriage or particulars of subsequent adultery;
(b) circumstances leading up to its commission; and
(c) grounds on which the court is asked to exercise its discretion.
And so on.
What this meant was that all the people bringing divorce actions had to lodge with the court a detailed list of their own infidelities. Mostly, these statements were not read by anyone. They were lodged simply to comply with the law, but sometimes a judge who smelled a rat, or took a dislike to one of the parties, would take the statements into consideration. Then the feathers might fly. I filled my glass again. By way of penance, I did a few of the excruciating exercises the physiotherapist had recommended and turned the tape over
…
We had a few more meetings in different places. McLachlan played it just the way Pike said he would-paid me, even thanked me, but there was no follow-up. The last get-together we PEAs had was in one of the Lebanese joints that had opened up in Surry Hills. Funny food.
Dick Maxwell said, ‘The legal eagles’ve got the whole thing stitched up like a Savile Row suit. The divorce hearings are going to come on to coincide with some interesting criminal cases, and there’ll be some subtle misspellings in the lists published in the Farfrae press.’
Ross Martin shook his head. “These people have got the world licked. My fuckin’ wife took me for every cent. And I haven’t seen my kids for five years.’
‘Justification for every man here, if needed,’ Maxwell said. ‘Personally, I find the idea of going to bed with the same person for fifty years obscene, but…’
‘Shut your gob,’ Bourke said. ‘I’m a Catholic. All this divorce business’s so much Protestant bullshit. The man says what’s what and confesses his sins. The woman and the kids do what he tells them. That’s it.’
‘Right, Frankie,’ Pike said. ‘Which brings us to the next point of business. And this’ll be news to all of you blokes except me and Dick. We’ve worked it out-eight hundred bucks apiece.’
I think every one of us sat a little straighter in his chair. I knew I’d have a fair bit of trouble laying my hands on eight hundred quickly. I could do it, just, but I’d be stretched. I assumed it was the same for the others, but I was getting the hang of the scheme now. “For the clerk of the court,’ I said.
Pike nodded. ‘Right. Four grand’s a lot of money to a bloke like that. And what’s he got to do? Turn a blind eye for an hour or two. Nothing’s missing. No harm done.’
‘Unless the bigwigs decide to get heavy about it,’ Martin said.
Maxwell slowly took out a packet of black Balkan Sobranies and lit one. It looked like he was enjoying his affluence already. ‘They won’t. When they find out that someone knows everything about who was up who, they’ll pay like little gentlemen. I know these people, believe me.’
‘Eight hundred gets you twenty-five grand,’ Pike said. ‘Tax free. That’s better than thirty to one.’
Everybody looked at everybody else for a time. We hid behind our drinks and cigarettes. Eventually Frankie Bourke nodded and Ross Martin followed suit. They didn’t look altogether happy though, and I think I was talking for both of them when I opened my trap. ‘It sounds all right,’ I said. ‘No, it sounds bloody good. And possible. I just…’
‘We’ve got the details worked out, too,’ Maxwell said quickly. ‘The timing, method of approach
‘I’m sure you have,’ I said. ‘But you interrupted me, Dick. I just wanted to say that if you and Ted have got any idea of pulling a con on Ross and Frankie and me you’d better forget it. You’d both be in hospital for a very long time.’
Bourke said, ‘Not in hospital. Somewhere else.’
Maxwell said, ‘I’m hurt. But point taken.’
Pike sat very still. ‘Frankie knows the court from his police days. He can look things over and make the contact with the clerk, name of Patterson.’
Bourke nodded.
‘My office is in the Rocks. Hop skip and a jump from the court. I’ve hired a photocopying machine.’
‘A what?’ Martin said.
‘You’ll see,’ Pike said. ‘We’ll copy the documents and get them back quick smart. Then Dick will make contact with the marks through his lawyer mate.’
‘Dick and me,’ I said.
Everyone nodded. If we’d been more friendly we’d have clinked glasses. But we weren’t friends-just partners in crime, which is an altogether more serious thing.
And that’s where the tape ended. There were some scribbled notes on the conversation pinned to the bill from Azim’s in Elizabeth Street-kebabs, kefta, felafel, hommos, salad and bread, Turkish delight, $22.90-not bad for five.
I couldn’t leave it there. I had to know. I phoned Arch’s solicitor with some politely framed enquiries about his late client’s circumstances. Not polite enough. The solicitor must have had a deep distrust for our profession. He probably feared I would challenge the will on the basis of something I’d found in the files. I did my best to reassure him, but all I got out of him in the end was that Arch had owned his substantial waterview apartment outright and had some quality investments. His estate had gone to a relative. The solicitor wouldn’t say who.
I could almost hear Arch’s harsh, cracked voice gently mocking me. ‘You’re an investigator aren’t you, boyo? Investigate!’
‘Right, Arch,’ I said. I wrote down all the names and tried to assemble information about them. I knew that Sir Alexander Farfrae, the press baron, and Colin Redding, the politico, were both dead. The Who was Who told me that George Lucan-Paget was dead too. I’d never heard of the doctors, but neither was listed in the current register-presumably gone to join ordinary mortals. A couple of phone calls got me the unhelpful intelligence that Sir Arthur Bothwick, the judge, was alive, but in a nursing home suffering from advanced Alzheimer’s.
The women were all said to have been younger, therefore probably still around, but a quick check on a couple of them showed several subsequent marriages and name changes. Too complicated, and it was unlikely that they would talk to me, anyway. That left the lawyer, Terry Farmer, and the private dicks. I rang Richard Adcock who runs a magazine called Seneca, which is dedicated to keeping law-makers and lawyers in line.
‘Hello, Cliff Hardy, private eye,’ Richard said. ‘About as popular as…’
‘Don’t, Richard. Please don’t. Terry Farmer. What d’you know?’
‘Interesting. What do you know?’
‘Nothing. I’m looking into something that happened a quarter of a century ago. So far, everyone’s dead.’
‘Send out for a ouija board, Cliff,’ Richard said. ‘Farmer’s dead, too. Of AIDS last year. One of the oldest victims.’
‘Shit. Alistair McLachlan?’
‘Barrister, solicitor or what?’
‘Solicitor.’
‘Hang on.’
I was at home, nursing the ankle. I judged I had time. I limped to the kitchen and tapped the cask of white. When I returned Richard was back on the line-waiting, very keen.
‘Cliff,’ he said. ‘We’re going to have to go tit for tat on this.’
‘It’s ancient history,’ I said.
‘I like a good story.’
‘I’ll buy you lunch and tell you all, when I’ve got to the bottom of it.’
‘What if I want to print?’
I thought about it-about Arch and the big names involved. Some of that old power might still be lurking about and Arch had deemed me his ‘friend and confidant’. ‘Maybe,’ I said. ‘I can’t promise.’
Richard sighed. He’s a great radio and TV performer and knows how to sigh, even into a telephone. ‘I’m too intrigued to hold back. I accept your risible terms. Alistair McLachlan had a very big eastern suburbs practice. He committed suicide the hard way twenty-four years ago. The cops said he must have nearly ruptured his soft palate with the gun muzzle. He left a lot of very unhappy people behind him. Cliff?’
‘I’ll call you,’ I said.
There were no current listings for Pike, Bourke or Martin as private enquiry agents. That didn’t necessarily mean they weren’t still active-working for big security firms or trading under names like Ace Detective Agency. But I had never heard of them and, from the sound of Arch’s notes, they were contemporaries of his-highly strung men with chequered pasts and some very bad habits. The odds against them still being around were long. But Dick Maxwell was still around and still working, after a fashion. What’s more, I knew where he was. The problem was whether to take him a packet of Earl Grey tea or a bottle of Beefeater gin.
