Open File ch-33

by Peter Corris

  ‘There’ll be a lot to sort out, Sarah. But you’ll be safe with some people you’ll like if I can swing it. I’m sure I can get your father’s support when he’s properly informed.’

  She stubbed the cigarette out. ‘I don’t care about him. Fuck him if he doesn’t agree. At least she stayed around, even though she was lying through her teeth every day. But he just buggered off.’

  ‘Right,’ I said. ‘You have to remember that I’m still working for him and looking for Justin. So there’s a couple of things I need to ask you before we move on. Did Justin know about your mother and Ireland?’

  She dropped her head. ‘Yeah. I mean, just before he went away and was acting so strange I got pissed off with him and told him everything I knew.’

  ‘How did he take it?’

  She sniffed back more tears and shook her head. ‘I dunno. Bad, I guess. He was usually sort of quiet, you know. But he started yelling and carrying on. I heard Angela on the phone later making an appointment for him with Dr Van Der Harr.’

  ‘Who’s that?’

  ‘This dopey shrink Angela made us go to after Dad left. She said we needed support after such a… traumatic desertion. She should’ve said after having two such pricks as parents. Some support-he groped me a couple of times.’

  This was something new. I was sure no such name had come up in the police file on Justin’s disappearance. There were questions to ask about that, when the time was right.

  ‘Can you get me that address for Ronny?’

  ‘Oh, sure. You won’t let them heavy him too much, will you?’

  I shook my head. So much trust -waves of guilt running through me. I reminded myself that she could be acting. If she was, she was good.

  I gave her a pen and a card and she scribbled on the back of it.

  ‘You’re sure this cop and his wife are okay?’

  ‘They’re great, but I doubt they’d want you smoking grass while you’re playing pool in their house.’

  ‘They’ve got a pool table? That’s…’

  ‘Don’t say it.’

  She gave me a full candle-power fifteen-year-old smile. ‘That’s neat.’

  13

  Then it got tricky. I asked Sarah to pack a few things. Cafarella, having given us an extra ten minutes, came in and I told her that the information Sarah had given me could put her in danger.

  ‘Well, we can take care of that,’ she said.

  ‘No you can’t. She doesn’t trust you. I don’t mean you personally, but the police in general. I’m sorry but I’m going over your head. I’m calling Deputy Commissioner Frank Parker to help me make some arrangements. All I can tell you is that a very important figure is involved-not a policeman, but someone with a lot of influence in that area.’

  She shook her head. ‘I don’t think I can allow that.’

  ‘You have to. There’ll be something in this for you and for Watson if you do as I say. If you don’t it could all get very messy.’

  ‘Jesus, you’re a slippery bastard. Are you threatening us with your commissioner mate?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Sounds like it. He’s in Internal Affairs, isn’t he?’

  ‘That’s one of his hats.’

  I went into the kitchen to the wall phone and rang Frank. It took a while to get him and Cafarella fretted, unsure how to handle it. You couldn’t blame her. She sneered at the cigarette butts but didn’t do anything else. To keep her happy I handed her the card Sarah had written on and mouthed ‘Ronny’ as I hung on the line.

  ‘Frank? Cliff. I’ve got a situation here that’s going to need your most delicate and diplomatic touch.’

  Cafarella listened as I outlined things to Frank-no names, no pack drill at this point, but I made it clear there was a high-profile suspect for the murder of Angela Pettigrew. I said that the source of the information was a minor who was fearful and that I was hoping he and Hilde would provide her with a place to stay while events unfolded.

  Cafarella took this in sceptically, tapping the card against her fingernails. It wasn’t as bizarre as it must have sounded to her. Frank and Hilde had a big, three storey terrace in Paddington they’d hoped to fill with children. So far, after twelve years of marriage, they had just one-Peter, my anti-godson, all of us being non-believers. Hilde had a strong maternal instinct that one child, much as she loved him, didn’t satisfy. She took in strays and was happier for it. Which meant that Frank was happier.

  It was all a bit like the old radio program ‘Two-Way Turf Talk’. Frank agreed to contact Watson to put him in the picture, assure him that his investigation wouldn’t be compromised, and to get him to contact Hampshire to reach me about the arrangement for Sarah. I spoke her name just as she emerged with a bulging overnight bag. Luckily, Cafarella had put the card away. Sarah gave her a hostile look and turned to me.

  ‘What’s happening?’

  ‘It’s coming together,’ I said with the mouthpiece covered, then I said, ‘Thanks, Frank,’ and hung up.

  Cafarella hated it. She was out of the loop, would probably have trouble with Watson. If she revealed to Sarah that I’d taped her, we could be in for a lot of conflicted shit. The phone rang and it was Watson asking for Cafarella. I handed her the phone and stepped away. I could almost hear him shouting on the line and Cafarella’s knuckles whitened as she gripped the phone. She said, ‘Yes, sir,’ several times before hanging up.

  Her lean jaw tightened. ‘I’m in the shit.’

  ‘It’ll work out.’

  Sarah plonked her bag down and drifted over to the window to look at the yard. ‘We used to have a dog,’ she said, ‘but it died. I think he ran it over.’

  Cafarella looked enquiringly at me but I shook my head. The phone rang again and it was Hampshire. He said he’d spoken to Parker and Watson and agreed to the arrangements for Sarah. He seemed dispirited, indifferent. I guess he had a lot on his mind. I got his new number.

  I went to the toilet and removed the recorder. The doorbell rang and Cafarella answered it. ‘Time to go,’ she said.

  ‘I’m not going with you,’ Sarah said.

  ‘Nobody asked you to. Mr Hardy’s taking you to where you’re going to be staying and then Mr Hardy will be part of a high-level meeting that I don’t know a bloody thing about. Does that satisfy you?’

  Cafarella was a tall, imposing woman, and for all her teenage pizzazz, Sarah wasn’t up to coping with her anger. She didn’t reply. We trooped through the house. Sarah led the way down the steps and I handed the recorder to Cafarella. It was my second peace offering but she didn’t thank me and I was pretty sure she never would.

  Maintaining reasonable accord with the police is difficult in my business at the best of times, but I tried not to create outright enemies. As things stood, Watson and Cafarella were shaping up as just that.

  I drove Sarah to Paddington. She was quiet, didn’t smoke and seemed to be thinking about what lay in store for her. No wonder-mother dead, brother gone, father uninterested and powerful forces possibly arrayed against her. She relaxed a bit when we got over the bridge.

  ‘Where do you live, Mr Hardy?’

  ‘Call me Cliff. Glebe.’

  ‘Cool. Why do you drive this old car, if you don’t mind me asking?’

  ‘I like it and when my clients see it they feel more inclined to pay my fees.’

  She laughed, the first free and easy sound I’d heard from her.

  I introduced her to Hilde and stayed long enough for Sarah to settle in. Everyone gets along with Hilde; she has a quality that immediately puts people at their ease and impels them to like her. Hilde made coffee and we had it out in the back courtyard, which was biggish for Paddington. Sarah dug out her cigarettes and asked Hilde if she minded.

  ‘It’s okay,’ she said. ‘I did it at your age, so did Frank, and I bet Cliff did, right?’

  ‘Rollies,’ I said.

  ‘You’ll quit if you’re smart,’ Hilde said. ‘You’re a very pretty girl and it stains your tee
th and isn’t good for your skin, but right now isn’t the time.’ She slipped into a serviceable American accent. ‘Bad week to give up sniffing glue.’

  Sarah giggled. ‘Flying High. I love that movie,’ but she lit the cigarette.

  Hilde said her twelve-year-old son would soon be home and hitting the fridge. ‘He’s a hot pool player.’

  Sarah smiled. ‘We’ll see how hot.’

  The conference was held at the Surry Hills police centre under tight security. Present were Frank Parker; Ian Watson; his superior, Chief Superintendent Maurice Lomax; Inspector Gail Henderson the head of the police media liaison unit; Kate Cafarella and me. Watson had cooled off about the way I’d handled things at Church Point and seen the necessity of having Cafarella there for the discussion and planning. I gathered there’d been some dispute about my participation but sanity had prevailed.

  They’d played the tape through once already but ran it again when I arrived.

  ‘Any comment, Cliff?’ Frank asked.

  I shrugged. ‘It says what it says. Wayne has to be a person of interest.’

  ‘He’s a minister of the crown,’ Lomax snapped. ‘A bit of respect.’

  ‘I’ll consider respecting him when I hear he has a watertight alibi for the time Angela Pettigrew was killed.’

  Gail Henderson looked up from a note she was writing. ‘This has to be handled very carefully. If the press gets a whiff of an interest in Mr Ireland,’ she nodded at Lomax, ‘the knives will be out. Dodgy MPs sell papers.’

  ‘Do you mind me asking what you’re writing there, Gail?’ Frank asked.

  She held up the notebook. ‘Just the names of everyone here. Am I right in thinking no one else shares this information?’

  ‘Except Sarah and Ronny and his dad,’ I said.

  Watson said, ‘Ronald Charles O’Connor and Michael O’Connor are both under surveillance pending the outcome of this meeting.’

  Then there was a lot of procedural stuff about MPs’ diaries and their drivers’ log books and telephone and tax records and background checks. Angela Pettigrew had been a partner in a small firm importing ceramic ornaments from Italy. A blow from one of these-a vase I certainly hadn’t noticed on my visit to the house-had killed her. The books would be looked at and a search warrant secured for the house.

  ‘To look for the frilly stuff,’ Cafarella said. ‘My job, I suppose.’

  ‘Give you a hand if you like,’ I said.

  The look she shot me would have made lava freeze.

  Watson asked the question I’d been waiting for. ‘Hardy, was there anything else she said that you didn’t get on tape? I mean before or after you started recording?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Lomax, Watson and Cafarella leaned forward; Gail Henderson had her pen poised. Cafarella twigged that I was playing games and shook her head, leaned back. Watson didn’t catch on. ‘What?’ he said.

  ‘She said it was neat that Deputy Commissioner Parker’s house has a pool table.’

  Frank smiled. Gail Henderson smiled. The detectives didn’t. What I’d said was almost true: I didn’t think there was any need to tell them that Justin had also seen the psychiatrist Sarah had described as dopey. That had more to do with my case than theirs.

  I phoned Hampshire and arranged a meeting. He wanted me to go to Crows Nest and I said I was tired of the Harbour Bridge and how about Glebe. He hesitated and I knew why. Sydney’s criminal world was divided into sectors, like Berlin, and you didn’t want to be in your enemy’s sector. Wilson Stafford was inner west.

  We agreed on Hyde Park. I walked there from where I’d left the car in Darlinghurst. I had no reason to think that Wilson Stafford had anyone watching me, but with cops and crooks always talking to each other you never know, so I took the. 38 and paid very careful attention to my rear and sides on my way.

  I took a seat fifty metres on from the fountain and watched the passers-by and the pigeons and the windblown leaves. Therapeutic. Hampshire came from the direction of St James train station. He looked very different from the jaunty figure who’d come to my office. He was tieless, wore a grey suit that didn’t match his brown shoes very well. He was smoking and he stumbled over a small step in the paving. He got to my bench and sat without saying anything, breathing hard. He took a long drag on his cigarette before dropping it and stamping it out.

  ‘Last one,’ he said. ‘Ever.’

  ‘Good luck. I met up with Wilson Stafford the other day and he-’

  ‘Jesus Christ!’ He half rose and looked around as if he expected Sharkey Finn to pop out from behind a tree.

  ‘Easy,’ I said. ‘You didn’t tell me you had such interesting acquaintances, Paul.’

  14

  I told him what I’d learned from Barry Templeton about his activities before he went to America. Hampshire nodded his agreement.

  ‘That’s about right. What you don’t know is that when I was flush in America I made restitution to some of those people.’

  ‘Not to Wilson Stafford.’

  ‘No, that was beyond me and the money I made ran out pretty quick.’

  ‘Money made how?’

  He sighed. ‘The usual way. Americans can be very gullible. But it all went pear-shaped after a while.’

  ‘That’s why you came back? Because there were Wilson Stafford types in America?’

  ‘Worse. They contract out their grievances to ruthless individuals who… but that’s not the whole of it. The woman I took up with turned out to be a gold-digger who got very nasty when the gold ran out.’

  ‘Which expression do you prefer-between the devil and the deep blue sea or between a rock and a hard place?’

  ‘You’re taking the piss. I suppose I deserve it. You won’t believe me, but I genuinely wanted to try to get things in order-make my peace with Angela, try to find Justin. But now, with everything that’s happened, I don’t know.’

  ‘You did the identification?’

  ‘I did. The injuries were horrible. It must have been a terrible sight for Sarah.’

  ‘Let’s talk about Sarah. You implied she wasn’t your child.’

  ‘That’s right. Angela wasn’t faithful to me, any more than I was to her. When she fell pregnant with Sarah it was just barely possible I was the father. Unlikely though.’

  ‘Any idea who the father might have been?’

  ‘No. I was away a lot, in the Pacific, in the States. I had the impression there was one person in particular but I didn’t know who. I didn’t want to know, and I wasn’t in a position to throw stones. Why are you asking?’

  I expanded a bit on what I’d told him on the phone when I was getting his permission to look after Sarah. Then I’d simply said that Sarah was distressed and there were concerns for her safety. Now I said that an important person was under suspicion for Angela’s death-someone capable of exerting pressure on the police.

  ‘Who, for God’s sake?’

  ‘I can’t tell you. It’s under control, but the lid has to be clamped tight on it until they get more evidence.’

  He felt in his jacket pocket for his cigarettes and came up with an empty packet.

  ‘Day one,’ I said. ‘No, tomorrow’s day one.’

  ‘I don’t think I’ll make it. What happens now?’

  ‘Up to you. I’ve got some leads on Justin. Nothing solid but worth pursuing-if you want to go on with it.’

  ‘Of course I do. If you can find him it’d be something good at least to come out of this mess. But…’

  ‘What?’

  ‘What about Stafford?’

  ‘Any chance you could recompense him to some extent? You spoke of investments. Any way to make him less unhappy?’

  ‘Just possibly.’

  ‘I could probably arrange a meeting for you to talk it over. At best you might be able to calm him down a bit, at worst you’d know exactly where you stand.’

  ‘Please do it,’ he said.

  Without enthusiasm on either side, we shook hands and he w
andered off, almost certainly to buy more cigarettes. I watched until he was out of sight. I was still on the payroll, which was good, but I was on ethically shaky ground. A meeting between Stafford and Hampshire just might cool things down and that would be good, but neither party was trustworthy. And, if I was being honest with myself, I’d have to admit that I’d welcome a chance to even the score with Stafford and Sharkey Finn. Well, there’s nothing wrong with having two beneficial objectives.

  I walked back through the park under the trees that showed signs of suffering from the city pollution-blotchy leaves and discoloured trunks. The water in the fountain had a tired look, but that might just have been my mood. I skirted the war memorial, a dreary, ugly structure that someone told me was only half-finished from the original design. Probably just as well.

  Kathy Petersen rang me at home late that afternoon. She’d visited her grandmother and put the question to her.

  ‘It took quite a while and a few cups of tea laced with brandy to get her talking,’ Kathy said, ‘but she finally told me that the scandal had to do with a Hampshire deserting in World War I. Apparently he jumped ship somewhere on the way to Gallipoli. The army contacted the family and wanted to know if he’d got back to Australia. As far as Grandma knew, he never did. The family disowned him and changed their name. There was something about it in the local paper and the family nearly died of shame.’

  ‘It fits. Thank you, Grandma, and you, too,’ I said. ‘Justin found no Hampshire on the memorial. Looks like he must have gone to the Mitchell Library where he could’ve looked up the paper.’

  ‘The poor kid, after all that build-up from his father. So are you getting anywhere, Cliff?’

  ‘Hard to say. I’ve got someone to see who might be useful.’

  ‘Is the Easter offer still open?’

  ‘You bet.’

  ‘What if you’re still working on this?’

  You can never tell but I had a feeling things were coming together pretty quickly. I said I’d be in the clear by Easter.