The Big Score

by Peter Corris

  I had seen a German Shepherd around a few times. It looked friendly enough and I said so.

  ‘He isn’t when he’s tethered at night near the electric control panel and instructed to bark blue murder if anyone approaches. But I’ve got matey with him and I can keep him quiet.’

  ‘I can’t see why you need me. A man with your resourcefulness should’ve been able to pinch a car key by now.’

  He nodded seriously. ‘I probably could have but the thing is, I’ve got to cover nearly two hundred metres in thirty seconds in the dark. I’ve worked out that I could just about do it, but I couldn’t get my gear into a vehicle, get it started and reach the gate in time. That’s where you come in.’

  ‘I still can’t see the problem. If the gate locked my Pajero’d go straight through the fence.’

  ‘No it wouldn’t. The fence doesn’t look much but it’s electrified at a pretty high voltage. You hit it and it’d short out your electricals.’

  ‘A thousand bucks,’ I said. ‘And St James said something about patrols.’

  ‘Seven fifty. There aren’t any patrols. He says that just to make everything sound … you know, military.’

  ‘Sure you won’t tell me why you need to do this?’

  ‘I’ll tell you when we’ve made it. How’s that?’

  ‘Have to do. When do we do the Steve McQueen bit?’

  He looked at me blankly.

  ‘A movie,’ I said. ‘The Great Escape—you’ve never seen it?’

  ‘I don’t think so. Yeah, well, at 0300.’

  He was hard to read—a gung-ho, dead shot, spit ’n’ polish type who’d never seen one of the iconic war movies. The military lingo slid off his tongue but he wanted out. About an hour to wait. He said he had to sneak back to collect his gear and he nominated a meeting point.

  ‘What if one of your mates spots you?’

  ‘They’re knackered from today’s exercise. I’m fitter.’

  Arrogant, too, I thought. I wanted to ask him about the NCOs, and particularly Sirdar Assad, but that would’ve aroused suspicion. It was all very odd but I reflected that my two jobs were to watch him and to find out what DTS was all about, and this was a perfect chance. I offered him another drink but he refused and took off in his socks. I poured another slug for myself and packed up my belongings. I was only going to have to travel twenty metres in the dark and start an engine. Piece of cake. I felt like Errol Flynn, except that there was no blonde in sight.

  It went like clockwork. We met at the appointed time. I took his duffel bag and scooted across to my car. Pearson disappeared into the semi-darkness at the edge of the floodlit area. I heard a low growl a few seconds later and I started the motor. The lights went out. Pearson sprinted towards me and threw himself into the seat.

  ‘Go!’

  I gunned the engine, hit the lights and headed for the gate. Pearson jumped out while the car was still moving, operated the mechanism and swung the gate open. He got back in as we passed through. In the rear vision mirror I saw the area around the house light up like a football ground at night, and I heard the siren scream over the noise of the motor and the tyres on the gravel.

  ‘Yes!’ Pearson yelled.

  We travelled about another hundred metres and then he leaned across and turned off the ignition. The Pajero bumped to a stop. I could see activity behind us, heard a yell and a dog bark.

  ‘What’re you doing?’ I shouted.

  ‘Fooled you, Hardy. We have to do an exercise to pass the course, and I chose to persuade you to get me out of the perimeter.’

  Few things upset me more than being hoodwinked. His laugh was strangled when I hit him hard with an anger-fuelled short right to the temple. He was thrown sideways, bumped his head, and slumped down in the seat. I started the motor and drove on. I stopped at the cattle grid gate long enough to open it, pass through, close it again and roll a big rock in front to block it. Headlights appeared but I was well clear and drove steadily along the track, making the turns carefully, keeping up a respectable speed. There was a straight stretch before I hit the gravel road and if there was a vehicle following, it was well behind.

  Adrenalin and exhilaration pushed me on until I reached the paved road, where I pulled over to take a look at Pearson. He was barely conscious—one of my better punches, aided by the hard interior parts of the car he’d bounced off. But then, many a knockout has been due as much to the head hitting the floor as the left hook. He was coming around, wasn’t bleeding from the ear—a mild concussion at worst. I strapped him firmly into his seatbelt, took a good swig of Johnnie Black and drove on with my right hand throbbing.

  Pearson surfaced fully, after some muttering, about the time we met the highway.

  He shook his head several times. ‘What happened?’

  ‘You bumped your head.’

  ‘You king-hit me, you bastard.’

  ‘You were fighting above your weight, son. I’ve been tricking people and being tricked for as long as you’ve been alive.’

  ‘Let me out!’

  There was no traffic and I slowed. ‘Sure. Here?’

  He stared out to the left and right. ‘Where are we?’

  ‘About fifty kilometres from Sydney. You could hop out, hitch back. Take you a while.’

  ‘I’d be a laughing-stock.’

  ‘I wouldn’t say that. You gave it a go and did pretty well, just didn’t quite wrap it up.’

  ‘My head hurts.’

  ‘Probably got a slight concussion. Want a hospital?’

  ‘I could sue you for assault and … restraint or whatever they call it.’

  ‘You’d look pretty silly doing that.’

  He went quiet but his breathing sounded normal and he seemed to be okay—physically. I reached down for the bottle of water I’d brought on the drive out and passed it to him. He unscrewed the top and swigged.

  ‘Where d’you want to go, Gary?’

  He sounded young all of a sudden. ‘I dunno.’

  ‘Tell you what, why don’t we go and call on your old man.’

  ‘What?’ he said, sounding even younger.

  I told him everything. He listened, occasionally turning his head to look at me. After I finished he stayed silent for quite a few minutes.

  ‘I didn’t think he gave a shit about me,’ he said.

  ‘He does. Probably has trouble showing it.’

  ‘I suppose so. It’s mutual, I guess. I used to look at a picture of him that Mum had, and I wished … but we never … He’s right that Sirdar got me interested in DTS, but he’s behind the times and way off-beam. Him and my mum were washed up a while back. They’re just friends now. Sirdar’s not a Muslim by the way, he’s a Christian. What do you think of DTS?’

  ‘How much did you pay to go on the course?’

  ‘Three thousand dollars. I took out a loan to pay it.’

  ‘I think it’s an exploitative play-acting operation. If you want to be a soldier, join the army, or the reservists.’

  ‘I might. What would my father think of that?’

  ‘I don’t know. He was a very good soldier himself, but he might have a different opinion of the army these days, the way things are.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Politics. Was it true what you said about the consequences of trying to get out of the place—the bastardisation, as it’s known?’

  ‘No. I made that up. Do you really mean what you said? We go and see him now, at this hour?’

  ‘Yes.’

  I rang Clay, woke him and filled him in. ‘I’m bringing him to your place,’ I said. ‘You have things to talk about.’

  I drew up outside Clay’s house in Erskineville. Clay was standing in his pyjamas and dressing gown at the front gate waiting. Gary grabbed his duffel bag, seemed to think about shaking my hand, didn’t, and got out. I waved and drove off.

  I waited a couple of days, making use of the 4WD to do a bit of carting. My daughter Megan had moved into a flat in Dee Why and I help
ed her to stock it with some furniture I didn’t need. Then I rang Clay and arranged to return the Pajero and the gear he’d lent me. I handed him the keys and dumped the rest on the floor of his office.

  ‘I drank the scotch,’ I said.

  ‘Of course. What do I owe you?’

  ‘I’ll invoice you. Your kid’s got a hard head—I bruised my knuckles. How’s it going with you two?’

  ‘Not bad. We’re talking. I even had lunch with Harriet the other day.’

  ‘Don’t tell me I’ve …’

  He laughed. ‘No, but it all feels a hell of a lot better. I have to thank you, Cliff.’

  ‘Any flak from St James?’

  He smiled. ‘Flak, eh? Still taking the piss. No, not a squeak. Is there anything dangerous about DTS, d’you reckon?’

  ‘Only to the bank balances of people silly enough to get into it.’

  A Cliff Hardy novel by Peter Corris

  Appeal Denied

  Stripped of his investigator’s licence and with his appeal denied, Cliff Hardy faces an uncertain future. Then something very personal happens that sends him off doing what he does best—confronting, questioning, provoking violence—with his lack of credentials not an issue.

  Is policewoman Jane Farrow bent or straight? Will vertically challenged but charismatic media star Lee Townsend be a help or an obstacle? Taking and dealing out punishment, mostly on Sydney’s North Shore, Hardy encounters corrupt cops, bereft wives and computer geeks. In a showdown at Balmoral Beach, Hardy sorts out those who need to be sorted, but his future remains even more clouded than before.

  ‘Corris is a tried and true crime writer. Until you’ve read the Cliff Hardy series, you can’t call yourself an aficionado of Aussie detective fiction.’

  The Age

  ‘Hardy has grown into a vulnerable and engaging human being . . . Cheap motels are still his milieu.’

  The Weekend Australian

  A Cliff Hardy novel by Peter Corris

  The Undertow

  Frank Parker, retired senior policeman and Cliff Hardy’s longtime friend, has a problem. A case from early in his career involving two doctors, one of whom was gaoled for hiring a hit man to kill the other, is coming back to haunt him. The convicted doctor, who is now dead, may have been innocent and, to make matters worse, Parker had been the lover of his beautiful wife, Catherine Castiglione.

  Hardy tracks back through the now ageing names and faces, trying to tease out the truth. If the doctor was set up, who was responsible and why? Along the way Hardy encounters dodgy plastic surgeons, a broken-down ex-copper, a voyeuristic cripple, a hireling who wields a mean basketball bat and the charismatic son of Catherine Castiglione, who just may be Frank Parker’s love child.

  ‘Hardy has seen off many imitators and lives to drive his beloved Falcon another day.’

  The Sunday Age

  ‘A fine, tightly controlled story.’

  West Australian

  A Cliff Hardy novel by Peter Corris

  Saving Billie

  When journalist Louise Kramer hires Cliff Hardy to find Billie Marchant, Hardy heads for the unfamiliar territory of the far southwestern suburbs of Sydney. Billie claims to have information about media big-wheel Jonas Clement— the subject of an incriminating expose by Kramer. Clement doesn’t want Billie found and Clement’s enemies want to find her first.

  Hardy tracks Billie down, but ‘saving Billie’ means not only rescuing her, it means saving her from herself. Billie, ex-stripper, sometime hooker and druggie, is a handful. Hardy gets help from members of the Pacific Islander community and others, but the enemies close in and he is soon fighting on several different fronts.

  Clement and his chief rival, Barclay Greaves, have heavies in the field, and Hardy has to negotiate his way through their divided loyalties. Some negotiations involve cunning but others involve guns. The action takes place against the backdrop of the Federal election campaign, and all outcomes are uncertain.

  ‘I don’t know how many Cliff Hardy novels there are, but there aren’t enough.’

  Kerry Greenwood, Sydney Morning Herald

  ‘There has been no more efficient, entertaining and amusing writer of detective thrillers in Australia than Peter Corris.’

  The Age

  A Cliff Hardy novel by Peter Corris

  Master’s Mates

  When rich, attractive Lorraine Master hires Cliff Hardy to investigate the circumstances surrounding her husband’s conviction for smuggling heroin from New Caledonia, Hardy welcomes the assignment. A week on generous expenses, sniffing about under a tropical sky, escaping from a cold, dry spell in Sydney—just the job. But Stewart Master’s mates in Noumea prove to be a difficult and dangerous bunch.

  The danger follows Hardy back to Sydney where he and his client become targets when an intricate conspiracy goes seriously wrong. Hardy deals with a tricky lawyer, a man on the run and Sydney’s most corrupt ex-cop. He has allies as well, but in the end his survival will depend on his own guts, experience and savvy.

  ‘Until you’ve read the Cliff Hardy series, you can’t call yourself an aficionado of Aussie detective fiction.’

  The Age

  ‘Hardy is a wonderful creation still, under Corris’s magisterial narrative control, capable of those odd echoes and resonances, the elegiac interludes that characterise the best crime writing.’

  Graeme Blundell, Weekend Australian