by Peter Corris
I drove back to Darlinghurst and went up to the office. I pulled out a contract form and dialled LP Consultancy’s number. The phone was answered by a well-modulated female voice.
‘LP Consultancy. This is Fiona. How may I help you?’
‘My name’s Hardy. Is Mrs Master available?’
‘She’s very busy, Mr Hardy.’
Her first husband was an obsessed stalker, her third was behind bars and razor wire and she hadn’t seen him for weeks, I had questions and wasn’t in a mood to be put off by Fiona, well modulated or not. ‘Tell her I’ll be there in ten minutes.’
The office was in a tasteful commercial block in a tasteful street in a tasteful suburb. Something, probably in poor taste, had been knocked down to provide car parking space for the tenants. In Double Bay you can buy practically anything you want at approximately twice the price you pay anywhere else. As a guarantee of quality, that’s an unreliable measure but a lot of people go for it. I had no doubt it applied to business consulting in spades. Money likes to be around money.
She was in a black suit today. Lorraine Master, that is, not Fiona, who was so waif-like she scarcely made an impression. The office was nicely done out in Swedish wood, vases, flowers, pictures—all those things my office lacks. Her computer was state-of-the-art and it looked like she’d got as close to the paperless office as was possible. She held out her hand across the desk—two rings on the hand on the surface of the desk just where they should be.
‘Mr Hardy, I gather you’ve been to see Stewart.’
I shook her hand. ‘Word gets around. Hope I didn’t intimidate Fiona.’
‘Fiona’s a state high-diving champion. I doubt you intimidated her. Sit down.’
I sat. Her computer was emitting a soft buzz and lights were flashing on her telephone console but she ignored them.
I had her full attention. ‘Your husband couldn’t give a toss about what you propose.’
‘I know.’
‘Do you know why?’
‘He has faith in Bryce O’Connor.’
‘You don’t?’
She shrugged. ‘So far the track record’s not good.’
‘Why wasn’t there an appeal?’
‘No grounds.’
‘There’s always grounds.’
‘That’s what I said. They disagreed.’
‘They?’
‘Stewart and O’Connor.’
‘Don’t you find that odd?’
‘I do, yes. But so what? You can’t force a person to appeal if they don’t want to.’
The Samuel Goldwyn line sprang to my mind: ‘If the people won’t go you can’t stop them.’ What she was saying seemed to have something of the same logic. She was sitting perfectly still behind the desk with her dark eyes fixed unwaveringly on my face. There was something very unsettling about her, and attractive, very attractive. ‘I’m puzzled by your husband’s attitude to you,’ I said.
‘What do you mean?’
‘His refusal to see you.’
She sighed and the force field around her lessened a fraction. ‘He doesn’t want any distractions. He’s focused on legal manoeuvres and surviving inside the gaol, physically and . . . psychically.’
‘Psychically?’
‘Stewart’s got a very strong spiritual side. It’s giving him strength, but it takes strength to maintain it.’
Bullshit, I thought. I sat back in the chair and she read me accurately.
‘You think that’s nonsense, don’t you? So do I. But that’s what he says and I think he means it. Anything that helps him to stay . . . strong . . . is fine with me. Who are we to say different?’
She was manipulative. That’s okay, so am I, so are we all. She was good at it, too—enlisting me as it were. I almost pulled out the contract there and then, but not quite. ‘You seem to have a lot of pull with the lawyer. I’d like to meet him, but QCs are hard to get to see.’
‘I’ll arrange it.’ She tapped a few keys on the computer. ‘When?’
‘ASAP.’
‘This means you’ve accepted the commission?’
I nodded and took the contract from my blazer pocket and passed it over. She must have topped her speed reading course. She took in the contents rapidly, signed and took a cheque book from a drawer.
I spoke again before she wrote the cheque, timing it so as to rattle her. ‘There’s one more thing I’m not clear about.’
Gold pen poised, she said, ‘What’s that?’
‘Tony Spears.’
It didn’t rattle her. She carried on writing. ‘Already? I knew you’d run into him sooner or later, but not this soon.’ She flashed me a smile as she handed over the cheque. ‘I hope you didn’t hurt him.’
Boot on the other foot but I tried not to show it. I took the cheque, folded it and tucked it away along with the contract. ‘You’ll get a proper accounting.’
She leaned back in the chair. ‘Tell me about Tony.’
I told her.
‘He’s a fool. I’ve taken out restraining orders against him time and time again. But he persists.’
‘Master . . .’
‘Beat him up. It didn’t stop him. When I broke up with Lance I may have offered Tony some encouragement—in his own mind at least. He’s a pest. I’m sorry he bothered you.’
‘Not really much bother. I just wondered. Is it possible he could have anything to do with setting your husband up?’
She let out a burst of laughter. The first reaction I’d seen from her that wasn’t under total control. ‘Tony? No, he’s harmless.’
And that, I guessed, was about the worst thing Lorraine Master could say about a man. I told her I’d leave for Noumea in a couple of days and she said she’d let me know about the money. We shook hands again. I walked out with some of her money but nothing else she hadn’t wanted me to have.
I took a longer look at Fiona in the outer office and I saw that she wasn’t quite as waif-like as I’d thought. Slender, but like a gymnast, which is what a diver is in my book. Behind hers there was another desk which had been empty when I came in. A man was sitting at it now operating a computer. He glanced at me without interest and went back to his screen. He was young, dark and good-looking.
I was in Broadway on the way back to Glebe when my mobile rang. I made the turn into Glebe Point Road, pulled over and answered. Fiona told me that an appointment had been made for me with Bryce O’Connor for 4 pm that afternoon. I thanked her, drove to the bank, deposited Lorraine’s cheque and bought a thousand dollars worth of Amex traveller’s cheques. I had a late lunch at the café beside the Valhalla theatre and made some notes from memory on my conversations with Master and his wife. I wondered why I hadn’t told Master I’d read his letters to his wife. Maybe I was worried about disturbing him spiritually.
The travel agency did me a deal on a return flight to Noumea with four days at the Sunrise Surf hotel thrown in. I booked the flight for two days ahead and put the charge on my American Express card. Lorraine was going to be facing a pretty hefty bill, but, from the look of the office, Fiona, the young screen jockey and herself, that wasn’t going to be much of a problem.
With time to kill, I wandered into Gleebooks’ secondhand store and bought a tourist guide to New Caledonia and a French phrase book. My high school French was a long way behind me and wasn’t too flash anyway. I remembered the eye doctor, Frank Harkness, who I’d once bodyguarded, saying you only needed to know two things in a foreign language—‘Take off all your clothes and lie down,’ and ‘My friend will pay.’ I doubted I could get by on that.
‘Going travelling, Cliff?’ Sam Ross, who works in the shop and puts books aside for me, asked.
‘Yeah.’
‘D’you know what things cost in New Caledonia?’
I shook my head.
‘You’ll get a shock. Checked the exchange rate?’
‘Fair go. I’ll only be eating and drinking, I’m not planning to buy a beach.’
‘You won’t b
e drinking much, I’ll tell you that.’
‘Good. You know me, Sam—occasional social. That’s what I put on life insurance forms.’
‘Have a good time.’
‘I’ll try.’ As I said it, I realised that I wasn’t approaching the case with a fully professional attitude. Did I really expect to sort out who’d planted heroin on Stewart Henry Master? No. But I didn’t think the Masters were playing straight with me either, so I’d go along and see what panned out. Or not.
For a fairly law-abiding type, I have extensive experience of lawyers. Fortunately, they get to employ me more than I have to employ them. As a species, I prefer lawyers to doctors and I rate them well above politicians, at least until a lawyer becomes a politician, which too many of them do. There was no danger of Bryce O’Connor becoming a politician. Nowadays the breed has to look reasonably good in a single breasted suit and O’Connor would never make it. Too many bulges in the wrong places. He looked like a front row forward gone to seed, and, as his teeth were obviously capped, maybe he had been. He was balding, bull-necked and red-faced but he had shrewd little green eyes. They fixed on me as soon as I was ushered into his handsome office and they didn’t like what they saw. We didn’t shake hands.
‘I don’t see the need for this meeting, Hardy.’
I sat down in a comfortable leather chair without being invited. ‘The thing is, what you don’t see don’t matter.’
‘Are you trying to be funny?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’m trying to be funny to get over all this mutual hostility so that we can talk some sense.’
His office had all the fixings—crammed bookshelves, filing cabinets, vast teak desk, computer, phone/fax and a medium-sized conference table. Degrees and other certificates on the walls. He glanced around as if to assure himself that he belonged here and then let go a smile with the too-perfect teeth.
‘I was told you were an arsehole, but a good arsehole to have on your side. I’m a bit the same.’
‘Who told you that?’
‘I’m too much of an arsehole to tell you.’
‘You recommended me? I thought you held a low opinion of PEAs.’
‘I do.’ He pointed at the table where four sets of papers were laid out. ‘I’ve got a meeting in twenty minutes. Talk.’
‘What are Stewart Master’s chances of getting his sentence reduced?’
‘Slim.’
‘Why isn’t he backing his wife’s attempt to find out who set him up?’
It was warm in the room and I was sweating inside my blazer. O’Connor’s suit was of some lightweight material that probably breathed, as the ads say. He shrugged and the suiting moved smoothly on his burly frame. ‘He’s not the sort of man to put any faith in women.’
‘In women generally, or in his wife in particular?’
Another shrug.
‘She says she’s prepared to spend a lot of money to clear her husband. A six figure amount.’
‘Your question?’
‘Is she good for it?’
‘She certainly is. She trebled her divorce settlement in a matter of months and has significant investments and a list of high-profile clients.’
‘Why didn’t you appeal, if money’s no object?’
‘Have you read the trial transcript?’
‘Not yet.’
‘You must. I’ve practised criminal law for twenty-five years and Master’s was the most remarkable trial I’ve ever been involved in.’
5
WHAT he said made me wish I had read the transcript.
I’d been saving it for flight reading. I looked at my watch. Time was short and O’Connor was the type and in the profession to mean what he said about it. ‘Please explain.’
‘Have you sat through many trials, Hardy?’
‘A few, yes.’
‘Raggedy affairs, aren’t they?’
A surprising thing for a QC to say but I was in agreement. ‘They can be.’
‘Not this one. I’ve never seen a better prepared, better marshalled, better argued case. The Crown had everything sewn up tight—witnesses word perfect, evidence spotlessly presented, technical stuff exactly right.’
I held up a hand. ‘Hold it. What does that mean?’
‘You’ll see when you read the transcript. Scrupulous chemical analysis of the heroin, precise evaluation of its quality and . . . financial potential. That was crucial. The anticipated returns were off the graph. Just for bringing in a couple of packets of powder. The jury . . . shit—’ he broke off as his composure sagged momentarily. ‘The jury couldn’t wait to convict this bastard who’d tried to book himself into paradise.’
He was good, very good. I felt sure then that Bryce O’Connor would have done all he could for Master and found it not enough. That answered one of my questions, although it threw up quite a lot of others. His statement had wrung him out a bit and left him unhappy, not in the best condition for his meeting. I eased up out of my chair and gave him a respectful nod.
‘Thanks for your time, Mr O’Connor.’
The pain and discomfiture were still working in him. ‘Get fucked,’ he said.
‘Last thing. Who was the prosecutor at Master’s trial?’
‘John L’Estrange.’
‘Might be worth having a chat to him.’
‘Good luck.’
‘Meaning?’
‘You’ll find him in Holland, at the Hague. He got some sort of job in the War Crimes Tribunal.’
‘When was this?’
‘Soon after he got ten to twelve for Stewart Master.’
Trying to be a good citizen, I’d taken a bus into the city. As I left the Martin Place building that housed O’Connor’s firm I felt in need of exercise and decided to walk home to Glebe. Sometimes I’ve found that walking, if I can strike a good rhythm, can help with thinking. Not always, sometimes I just get tired. I strolled down to Goulburn Street and bought take-away chicken and salty fish from the Super Bowl, my favourite Chinese restaurant. More Asian faces than Anglo-Celt but Australian accents all around. Up through Ultimo into Glebe. A few years ago all the streets were littered with overflowing skips as the terraces were renovated or pulled down for facsimiles to go up in their place. There’s less of that now as the area settles down into its gentrified state. There are still ungentrified patches though, like my house.
I had a quick beer in the Toxteth, bought a bottle of red and went home to watch the TV news, eat and study the trial transcript, maybe get my tongue around a few French phrases. ‘Good evening, are you alone?’ ‘May I join you?’ ‘Would you like to . . .?’
The news consisted of more posturing about Iraq and I turned it off before the program finished. I put the take-away in the microwave and went upstairs to fetch the transcript. I poured some wine and sat down at the kitchen bench. The door bell rang. Not again, I thought, but it was a courier with the card that would allow me to tap the hundred thou.
Trial transcripts make frustrating reading. There’s too much legal quibbling holding up the action, the same ground is gone over and over again and there’s a kind of sterility coming off the pages because you don’t get a sense of the audience. Throw in the spectators and bit players and you can get the sort of stuff that works so well in plays and films and novels. Without it, dullsville. The newspaper reports were still fresh in my memory and this helped to flesh things out a little. Now that I’d met O’Connor I could see him in the role and there had been artists’ sketches of John L’Estrange, whose name hadn’t stuck with me, and of the judge. And of course, although she didn’t participate, Lorraine Master was there in my imagination.
Another frustration arises from the questions that come to your mind as you read. You want to be there to ask the witnesses questions that seem important to you but apparently didn’t to the learned counsel.
As I turned the couple of hundred pages, skipping the dull stuff, I thought I could see what O’Connor meant. John L’Estrange had presented the case against Maste
r in a straightforward manner that seemed to say, Look, no tricks. This is all above board. Judge for yourself. Likewise, the judge’s summing up had been scrupulously fair, without frills or flourishes. Reading between the lines, you could get a sense of her law-and-order agenda as reported in the newspaper, but there was nothing the defence could point to as untoward.
I closed the binder and sat back with only one phrase coming to mind: a very neat package. I’d put my notebook beside the transcript but when I’d finished reading I only had three names written down—Salvatore Verdi, Colin Baxter and Detective Senior Sergeant Karl Knopf. Verdi and Baxter were the customs agents who’d inspected Master’s bags and detained him. Knopf was the forensic examiner who’d analysed the heroin and done tests on the packaging. There was no reason why any of them would be willing to talk to me and possibly nothing to be gained. But you never know. Ten to twelve was a heavy sentence and if any one of them was surprised by what resulted, they might have started thinking . . . Besides, I had two days before my flight and had already talked to the principals, so it was time to try the supporting cast.
As I finished the wine and poured another glass, I realised that I hadn’t turned the microwave on. I do that. I sometimes take out mugs of coffee and find them stone cold. I heated the food and ate it slowly, enjoying it and the wine and regretting that there was no one to share it with. The murder of my one-time partner Glen Withers some time back, following not long after the death from cancer of Cyn, my ex-wife of many years earlier, had rocked me more than a little. It wasn’t that I thought myself a Jonah, or that I didn’t feel a surge when an attractive woman came into view—like Lorraine Master—it was just that I sometimes wondered what the point was. In my experience sexual attractions, even love, were very transitory.
As I rinsed the dishes I remembered something I’d heard on the radio, maybe from Robin Williams on ‘The Science Show’, that in all creation only some kind of flatworm is truly monogamous and that’s because it fuses with its partner first time up in coitus. Bad night ahead, Cliff, I thought. Go out and find some company.
I found it at the Toxteth, where else? Daphne Rowley, who runs a printing and photographic business in Glebe and has provided me with false IDs from time to time, was playing pool in the pub and gave a cheer when she saw me.
