by Peter Corris
‘Okay.’ She held out the glass and I had to reach to take it. I liked her style—classy and considerate, but not too considerate.
‘Where’re the kids?’
We did a quick silent toast. ‘Why?’ she said. ‘Do you like kids?’
‘I don’t know many. Like some, not others.’
She sat and took a solid swig of a drink that looked to be about half the strength of mine. ‘Ours are okay. They’re upstairs. We’ve got an au pair. Why don’t you drink your drink and let me read the report? I can’t cook so I sent out for some food. Nothing special. We can discuss the details and whatever there is to discuss while we eat.’
I did as she’d done—extended the folder so that she had to lean forward from her chair to take it. She was the sort of woman you had to play those games with, otherwise, she’d have you in the back court all the time and you’d never make it to the net. The drink was just right for temperature, mix and punch and I sat back and enjoyed it while she read. I also enjoyed looking at her over the rim of the glass. Her skin glowed, her hair shone and her bones were well-covered. Whatever you’ve been up to, Stewart, I thought, you couldn’t have expected her to wait ten years.
She read rapidly, flicking back to confirm things or lodge them in her memory, names perhaps. She was through it in a few minutes and then spent nearly half that long studying the photograph. She tapped the pages back together and pinned the photo back where it had been.
‘Very professional,’ she said. ‘Let’s eat.’
We went through to a dining room with a teak table that looked something like the one Paul Keating bought for the Lodge. It was set for two places with a bottle of red wine standing by.
‘I thought you’d be a meat man,’ she said, ‘so I ordered in some stuff from the Balkan. You know it?’
‘I do. Great place. Haven’t been there for a while. Still going strong?’
‘Sure is. Wouldn’t mind a percentage.’ She picked up a waiter’s friend style corkscrew and handed it to me. ‘Open the wine while I bring in the food. Freshen your drink if you like.’
I did both things. I could hear sounds from the kitchen—microwaving, a fridge door, the rattle of plates. She came back with a stack of plates and a couple of steaming bowls on a tray, set them down and went back for more. After another trip we sat down to a spread of oysters in the shell, skewered meat with vegetables and rice, breadsticks and side dishes of spiced sausages and various sauces and dips I couldn’t name. The solid gins had relaxed me and the wine was smooth and fruity. We both dug in for a minute or two and then she looked across at me with a forkful held ready.
‘What’s wrong?’ she said.
‘I was thinking of Stewart.’
The fork clattered to the table and the food spilled. ‘Fuck you,’ she said.
‘Sorry.’
She had the fastest recovery time I’d ever seen. She had the spilt food scooped up and back on her plate, her lips wiped with a napkin and had taken a sip of wine before I could think of the next thing to say.
‘Just sometimes,’ she said, ‘I try to forget that my husband’s facing ten years in gaol and that I’ve got two kids to explain things to and a business to run and—’
‘Let’s start again,’ I said. ‘It was very nice of you to invite me and I’m enjoying it. Let’s talk about something else. Yachting. How long for a yacht to go from Noumea to Vila?’
She gave her throaty laugh. ‘You bastard, that’s not something else. You’re still working. Am I being rude?’
I knew she was manipulative, but was she that manipulative? Hard to say. ‘You’re doing fine, most women’d be climbing the walls. Most people.’
‘Caught yourself almost in time.’
‘Old habits. The food’s great.’ I reached over and poured her some more wine. We ate and drank for a few minutes, both things she did neatly and efficiently. She seemed to enjoy the wine without wanting to get it down as fast as possible, but it’s hard to tell with drinking. I knew a bloke who I’d have said drank about as much as me and ended up going to AA. I said if he did maybe I should but he told me he usually had half a bottle of scotch inside him before we got together and finished off the rest later.
She pushed her plate away and had a good sip. ‘Right. So where are we? Some kind of a policeman set Stewart up.’
‘If we can believe Fay and Montefiore.’
‘Mmm. Which one was she?’ I’d put the Salon de Fun leaflet in the folder.
‘She was the one on the end.’
‘Which end?’
‘That’s what I asked Montefiore.’
She smiled. ‘You sort of liked them, didn’t you? D’you believe them?’
‘I’ve met worse. Chancers, toughies. We’ll see if they turn up with some solid information. If they don’t, you’ve spent a fair bit of money for nothing.’
‘I think you handled it well. You baited the hook. Is there anything to be done while we wait?’
I drank some more wine, judging it to be about five notches in quality above the stuff I’m used to. ‘It’s difficult. If he is a policeman he could be federal or from any one of the eastern states. Very hard to find out if he’s an undercover type. I’ll have to talk more to Fay to get a line on that. If he isn’t . . .’
‘Is that worse or better?’
I broke a breadstick and poked it into one of the sauce bowls. ‘I’ll be honest with you, Mrs Master—’
‘Lorrie.’
‘Okay, Lorrie. I just don’t know. I haven’t come up against anything quite like this before. Rogue cops, yes. High level, complex international operations, no.’
‘Isn’t there some kind of internal affairs department in the police?’
‘Yes, but which state, and state or federal? Same problem.’
‘Let’s leave that aside for a moment. I’m interested in a sly suggestion you made—that Stewart might have agreed to cooperate with . . . whoever, and got double-crossed.’
I shrugged. ‘It was just a thought. No, more like a feeling. I had a sense of him perhaps walking into a situation with his eyes open.’
‘How could that be?’
Something about her concentrated alertness made me want to fidget, to play with the breadstick, spin my wineglass. I kept my hands still. ‘What if Stewart was into something here that went badly wrong and the cops had him over a barrel? So he had to agree to a part in this sting or whatever it was, or they’d hit him with everything.’
She shook her head confidently. ‘No. That’s not possible. He’d broken off all his ties with the crims. He didn’t have any money but he wasn’t looking to get it in the old way. He was happy to lie low, think about things, get himself back in order. He was considering doing a university course. Psychology. Becoming some sort of counsellor—’
She broke off and stared at me. ‘Why are you looking like that?’
‘Did you know he’d put in an offer to buy the Atlas gym?’
14
‘THAT bastard!’
She slammed her glass down so hard that the base and stem broke and red wine spilled out over the white tablecloth. Not content with that, she hammered her fist on the table and let out a stream of obscenities directed at men in general and Stewart Henry Master in particular. ‘He promised me,’ she snarled. ‘He fucking promised! No more scams. No more dodgy deals. Shit! That’s it. I’m finished. He’s had it. He can fucking rot in there as far as I’m concerned, the lying prick!’
Nothing to do except sit quietly and wait for the storm to pass. It didn’t. She reeled off a list of betrayals and deceptions Master had perpetrated and castigated herself for her forgiving ways.
‘No more. It’s finished.’ She glared at me and it was clear that I’d gone from helpful employee or something more to less than nothing. I heard a movement outside the room and a pretty young head poked around the door.
‘Mrs Master . . .?’
‘Go away, Britt. Go away!’
The head withdrew and Lorraine Master cont
inued to rage, sweeping things from the table and almost spitting as she spoke.
‘Ten years. It should be twenty. The lying . . .’
That was enough. I took out my keys and rattled them in her face. ‘Stop it. It might not be as bad as you think.’
‘That’s all you know,’ she spat. ‘This is a typical piece of Stewie bullshit. He must’ve done some kind of deal to come out of this New Caledonia thing with money and it all went sour on him. Good. Fuck him!’
She meant it. She was the clean-sweep queen and she was holding all the cards. I hadn’t expected the news about the gym buy to trigger this much reaction but I wasn’t completely surprised. Master was a conman; Lorraine was the kind of woman vulnerable to that kind of man. Neither of them could help themselves. It was time to think of number one.
‘Where does that leave me, Lorrie?’
She caught the sarcasm and it didn’t faze her one bit. She jumped up, went out and returned with her shoulder bag. She dug out her jumbo-sized cheque book, flipped quickly through the manilla folder and wrote a cheque which she put on the table within my reach.
‘Our business is finished.’
I ignored the cheque. ‘Your privilege,’ I said. ‘What about Montefiore and his girlfriend?’
‘Turn them over to the police. And now, if you don’t mind, I’d be glad if you left. I have some thinking to do.’
I got up, folded the cheque and put it away and knocked off the rest of my wine. ‘You know where to contact me if you change your mind.’
‘I won’t.’
I left. She was genuinely distressed and I was pretty sure she’d paid enough for me to let her have the last word.
. . .
It’s not often a case blows up in your face quite that suddenly and completely. I drove home in a slightly stunned state. I realised I’d become involved in the Master case to an unusual degree and not just because of the intrigue and mystery attached to it. It was all very well for Lorraine to tell me to turn Jay and Fay over to the cops. It wasn’t that easy. Charging them with what? I was their first port of call, always supposing they made it back. They weren’t pushovers and it was hard to say what frame of mind they’d be in. It depended on how things had gone since I waved them goodbye. They’d have high expectations. Very sticky.
I’ve had clients pull out before for one reason or another and even a couple die in the middle of proceedings. In those cases you’re inevitably short-changed, sometimes stiffed altogether. Not with our Lorraine. Her cheque covered everything I’d run up on my credit cards, paid me for more days than I’d put in and if I cashed in the return flight from Noumea I’d be well ahead. I could use the money, but it gave me an uneasy feeling. I like closure, hate loose ends. There was no way in the world Jay and Fay were going to get twenty-five grand from me. I realised I was starting to think of them as an act, almost a comic turn, and that was dangerous.
The next day I banked the cheque and paid some bills and tried to feel good about that. Over the next couple of weeks I dealt with routine matters—served writs, bodyguarded a corporate high flyer whose business had gone west so that he had more enemies than Rasputin. Nothing happened and he grew in confidence by the minute so that after three days he reckoned he didn’t need me any more. I wasn’t sorry to be released, another day of his bragging bullshit and I’d have pushed him out of a window. I heard nothing from Mrs M.
Then Bali happened and everyone went security crazy as the government and the media played it for all it was worth and more. The phone never stopped ringing with requests for debugging, escorts for school children of diplomats, an armed presence at functions, security training for corporate personnel. I handled it personally as much as I could and offloaded it to other PEAs when I couldn’t. I met a lot of people from different walks of life, of different nationalities, all united in fear. It was a circus and in my more cynical moments I felt I could smell the orchestration, the political opportunism, the massaging of the worst human impulses. But I made money and began to think about a break, some time out from human dishonesty.
Then Lorraine Master rang me.
‘They’ve contacted me, Mr Hardy.’
What happened to Cliff? I thought, but I said, ‘Tell me.’
‘A phone call to the office. A demand for twenty-five thousand dollars.’
‘Him or her?’
‘Him. Jarrod Montefiore.’
‘Have you ever met him? I got the impression from the letters that you knew some of the people Stewart mentioned.’
‘Only Reg Penny, through the yachts. Possibly Gabriel Rosito, I’m not sure. No, I never met Montefiore and I don’t want to. He was very demanding, very threatening. I thought . . .’
‘You thought they’d contact me and I’d have to handle it somehow. After all, I gave the undertaking.’
‘Yes.’
‘And now?’
I was in my office late in the day with the city slowly going quiet around me. I had money in the bank and no big bills and I’d lost a couple of kilos through keeping busy and hard workouts. I didn’t need any complications and I could feel one heading towards me from the long pause at the end of the line. Lorraine Master wasn’t one for long pauses. ‘God,’ she said. ‘I don’t know. It’s so hard without him. Jasper keeps asking about him. He’s two, almost three. He’s very bright and he’s bound to find out before long. He’ll want to visit him and Stewart won’t allow it. God . . .’
‘What about the other child?’
‘Inez? She’s six. She’s Lance’s. She adores Stewart. Lance is a write-off. Can’t blame him, he didn’t want a child. She’s become too clinging. It’s a mess.’
‘Where’s this heading, Mrs Master?’
Her sigh came down the line like a harsh wind. ‘I won’t have him back. I know I can’t trust him. But if he was out at least the children wouldn’t suffer. We could work something out. I could help him set up a business or something. Maybe it wouldn’t be too bad.’
She was talking to herself rather than to me and clearly she’d been doing it for some time. I felt like a psychiatrist letting the patient talk and then saying, ‘And what do you think about that?’ I tried to take a different tack.
‘Have you talked to anyone else about this? I mean the problem with the kids?’
‘No. Who would I talk to?’
‘I don’t know. A doctor. Friends?’
The pause again. ‘I haven’t got any friends.’
I could tell she was speaking the truth and suddenly I saw her life in a different light—the big house, the au pair, the yacht, the gym, the office, the wealthy clients, Fiona the champion diver, the Tom Cruise lookalike underling and bugger-all else. I could feel myself being drawn back into it and I didn’t want to go.
‘What about the lawyer, O’Connor?’
‘I spoke to him as soon as I started thinking this way. Before Montefiore phoned. He says he can’t see a way to get Stewart out early.’
‘Has he told Stewart?’
‘I imagine not. He doesn’t like dispensing bad news.’
‘No one does, Mrs Master.’
‘I know, but here’s some for you, Mr Hardy. I want to re-employ you. I want you to pay this creep his money and get the information he has and use it to get my husband released. I’ll pay you whatever you ask.’
15
WHAT do you say? To knock it back would seem like handing in my ticket and taking up another line of work. No way. It crossed my mind that I hadn’t had any unpleasant messages on my computer or been knocked down stairs in the dark since Lorraine’s cancellation. Could I expect that to start again? But then I had to admit I was interested to see how things had worked out with Jay and Fay and Reg. And at least this time I’d be dealing with them on my own turf.
‘Mr Hardy?’
I’d been silent for too long. ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘I’ll take it on, but you know how things stand. How tricky it all is. There are no guarantees.’
‘There never are. I
learned that a long time ago. Thank you. As to the money . . .’
‘You’ve already paid me enough money to get started. We’ll see how it goes. We’d better meet and you can fill me in on all the details.’
‘Right. I can be there in a couple of minutes. I’m on my mobile. I’m parked in William Street.’
I had to laugh. ‘Jesus, you were confident.’
‘No. I was desperate.’
St Peters Lane, even though the area is gentrifying fast, isn’t a place to walk around in after dark, for man or woman. I went down and waited for her at the door. The bonnet of a silver Saab appeared at the top of the lane and stopped in a marginally legal parking spot. A bit of a parking fine wouldn’t worry Lorraine and the attendants gave the area a wide berth anyway. I heard the door close and then she was striding down the middle of the strip. I was starting to learn to read her. Would she have the white suit on? Sexy and successful. Or the smart dress, neutral colour? Relaxed and in control. Neither. She was in dark pants, dark shirt, blazer, flatties. All business.
It was cold there in the shadows and I was in shirtsleeves. I have to admit it—the sight of her warmed me. She stopped a metre away, shifted her bag on her shoulder.
‘Mrs Master.’
‘Can we go back to Lorrie?’
‘Didn’t work so well last time.’
‘I’m sorry. I didn’t behave well.’
‘Lorrie, it is. Let’s go up; it’s cold down here. I can’t offer you anything like the hospitality you offered me.’
‘Don’t worry about it. I saw your set-up and I’d settle for a cup of instant. I sat there in the car for over an hour trying to summon up the courage to ring you.’
‘I’m glad you did,’ I said, and I meant it.
Had to hand it to her. She had the answering machine tape of Montefiore’s first message, the one she hadn’t been home for. She made notes on the second message and she recorded the third.
‘Mrs Master, I met your detective Hardy in Noumea. We have some unfinished business. I’ll call again.’
The next time he rang he made remarks about the monkey and the organ-grinder. He said he expected she’d use me as a go-between, which was all I ever was. He’d give her a day or two to contact me and then he’d call again with instructions.
