by Peter Corris
'Cliff Hardy,' he said and cleared his throat.
'Don't be embarrassed,' I said. 'I'm not after a job.'
As a practitioner scrubbed permanently off the books by the licensing authorities, my market value was nil. I told him I wanted some information about their acquisition of Patrick
Malloy's share in Pavee Security. Acquisition of that sort was Carstairs' area of expertise.
'Not sure I can tell you anything-commercial confidentiality and all that.'
'He was my cousin and a friend and he was shot to death in my house. I'm helping the police in their investigation and I just need to know a few things-nothing about the money.'
A pause and then he said, 'I'll help as far as I can.'
'Who was his lawyer?'
'He didn't have one. He was legally trained and did all that side of the work himself.'
'What about his bank? He must have paid the money in somewhere.'
'I see what you're getting at. No harm in telling you this, it's on the public record. There was no money involved. It was a straight share transfer-his in Pavee, and it was a substantial but not an outright majority holding, for a number of ours.'
'Can you tell me when it all went through?'
I could hear the keys clicking and remembered what Patrick had said:… all computers and bullshit. Carstairs came back on the line and gave me several dates. The last few coincided with the time of our trip.
'Emails and phone conversations to tie it up?' I said.
'Of course.'
'What about signatures?'
'All provided earlier. Look, I'm sorry… for your loss, but everything was perfectly straightforward. Agreement was reached easily with both parties perfectly happy.'
'Isn't that a bit unusual?'
'It's not unique. Was there anything else?'
I thanked him and rang off. He hadn't remarked on the physical similarity between Patrick and myself because we'd never met. Our dealings had been solely by phone and email.
Two days later I got a call from Dan Munro at Pavee Security. He reminded me that he'd been at the funeral and asked if I was willing for my phone number to be given to a woman named Sheila Malloy.
'Who is she?'
'She says she's Patrick's wife.'
'His wife?'
'That's what she says. I've got her on the other line, Mr Hardy, and she's very insistent.'
'Tell her I'll meet her anywhere she chooses at whatever time.'
8
I'd read that some lawyers feeling the pinch and unable to afford presentable offices were meeting their clients in Macquarie Street coffee shops, so I wasn't surprised that she proposed a cafe opposite Parliament House. Probably meant she'd have a cut-rate lawyer along. She took me at my word and set the meeting for the mid-afternoon of the same day. All this came through Munro, so I didn't even get to hear her voice and he hung up as soon as the meeting was set.
I arrived early as usual but they weren't far behind. Maybe a sign of anxiety or nervousness, maybe not. Sydney traffic being what it is, precise timing is difficult. I watched as they approached-a tall, slender woman in a dark suit and a shorter chunky man, also in a suit which, as they got closer, I could see was a three-piece pinstripe. She was smoking but dropped the butt and put her high-heeled shoe on it before reaching the outdoor table area. I stood and when she saw me she stopped in her long striding tracks and her bag fell from her shoulder.
'Jesus Christ,' she said. 'This is amazing.'
She bent to pick up her bag and her shoulder-length hair fell across her face. She swept it back and moved forward with her hand out. I took it; her nails were long and painted bright red.
'Sheila Malloy.'
'Cliff Hardy.'
'This is Harvey Spiegelman.'
'Solicitor,' he said.
I shook his hand and we sat down at the table. It was partly sheltered by a flapping canvas wall anchored to some uprights. The day was really too cool for sitting outside in comfort, but there were others at the tables for the usual reason-to smoke. Sheila Malloy took a packet of fifty from her bag and lit up. She put the packet and her lighter on the table.
A waiter came out and we ordered.
'Mrs Malloy…' I began.
She smiled and lines appeared on her face. She was probably on the right side of fifty, but not by much. She was good-looking in a rather narrow, thin-lipped way. Her hair was auburn; her makeup was expert. She was very vaguely familiar, but that might have been just that she looked a bit like Sigourney Weaver.
'Call me Sheila. The people at Parvee had heard from Paddy that you looked like him but they didn't tell me you were twins.'
'A genetic thing,' I said. 'We're… were second cousins.'
She glanced around for an ashtray and, not finding one, flicked ash on the footpath. 'Fancy that. He told me he didn't have a relative in the world.'
'He told me he was divorced.'
The coffee arrived and she used her spoon to stir the chocolate into her cappuccino. 'Well, looks like he was wrong about no relatives and I know for a fact he was lying about the divorce.'
Spiegelman leaned forward to sip at his latte, taking care to keep his silk tie out of the way. 'Sheila understands that her husband died intestate,' he said. 'Under the law, she inherits his assets.'
'That sounds right,' I said, 'if she can prove they were still married and that there's no will. That could be legally tricky, wouldn't you say?'
Sheila and Spiegelman exchanged glances. She appeared to be about to speak but he lifted his hands in a soothing gesture.
'What exactly is your interest in the matter, Mr Hardy?'
I almost laughed. I drank off the short black and waved away wisps of Sheila's smoke. 'First off, tell me why you wanted to contact me, because that's the order of things.'
Spiegelman stirred his cup. 'Well…'
'Don't play games with him, Harvey. When I heard Paddy was dead-'
'How did you hear?'
'From the police, of course. I don't use the name anymore but they knew how to find me. They've got us all pegged.'
I nodded. 'Right.'
'And I'll tell you something-television and crime fiction's got it all wrong. They didn't treat me as a suspect. Anyway, I got straight on to that company of his and asked a few questions. They told me nothing really, but your name came up and I remembered that you were mentioned in the paper. I wanted to know if you thought you were in line for some of his money. Is that plain enough for you?'
'That's very plain,' I said. 'And I can give you a plain answer. I don't give a stuff about his money. I'm only interested in finding out who killed him. Plain enough?'
She surprised me then with a smile that seemed to have genuine warmth in it. She put her hand on my arm, almost stroking the sleeve of my jacket. 'We're getting off on the wrong foot here, Cliff. I admit I thought you were going to turn out to be one of his rough mates from his army and drinking days. They used to show up and leech on him. But I can see that you're not like that.'
She was a chameleon. The brittle, hard-boiled manner dropped away and was replaced by something altogether more sympathetic, almost likeable.
'Of course I want to know who did such a terrible thing,' she said, 'but I won't lie to you. Paddy treated me very badly, and he virtually robbed me. We had a house and other assets in common and when he left he managed to take them all out from under me. He was clever in the way he set everything up in his favour, under his control. He owed me and I want… compensation. You have to believe me.'
'I don't have to,' I said. 'None of that sounds like the Patrick I knew.'
'How long did you know him?'
She had me there. 'A matter of weeks.'
'Enough said. He had that Irish charm, a way with him, as they say.'
She had her own charm and was turning it on now, full bore. Spiegelman appeared to be taking no more than a polite interest at this point and I had to wonder what his role really was. He clicked his own lig
hter for Sheila as she produced another cigarette and there was no doubt; the gesture was intimate and devoted, almost embarrassing to watch.
'You weren't at the funeral,' I said.
'I didn't know about it.'
'However you look at it,' I said, 'it comes down to legalities. Is there a will? Were you divorced? Comes down to sets of papers. Have you got any?'
'I have a marriage certificate. Have you got anything?'
I couldn't help thinking of the package Patrick had posted from London. Surely not. I shrugged. 'This is of almost no interest to me. Can you throw any light on who might have wanted to kill Patrick? Kill him in that… emphatic way?'
'Just a minute, Hardy,' Spiegelman said. 'What are you implying?'
'Nothing,' I said. 'I'm sorry, but I don't think we can be of any use to each other. I'll pay for the coffee and be on my way. In time there'll be a niche for Patrick's ashes at Rookwood if you're interested, Sheila. I believe they keep them for a certain number of years and then dispose of them if no one claims them.'
She killed her cigarette in her coffee cup and stood. She was almost as tall as me. She blew smoke past my shoulder.
'Fuck you,' she said.
It was all getting a bit strange, out of shape. I caught a bus back to Glebe as the afternoon light died. All very well what I'd told Hank about drawing conclusions from information gained, but what if the information was highly suspect to begin with? It was Friday night with the traffic heavy and the bus losing and taking on passengers at every stop. Something was nagging at me and by the time we made the turn into Glebe Point Road I had it. The name Harvey Spiegelman rang a bell. Only faintly, but it was there. Something to follow up.
Sheila Malloy, if that's who she really was, presented a problem. I'd met women I'd found difficult to believe many times before, but she was a mixture. Her frankness about her interest in Patrick's death was one thing; her denial of their divorce was another. She used the name Paddy naturally, convincingly, but her picture of the man was very different from mine. People can change over time, but Sheila appeared to be able to change from one minute to the next.
I stopped at the Toxteth for a drink and ordered a Jamesons, Patrick's favourite tipple. I was thinking I preferred scotch when a man dropped into the chair next to mine.
'On the hard stuff, eh, Cliff?'
I knew him but couldn't immediately put a name to the face. He raised his own glass and it came to me.
'Gidday, Sammy. Good to see you again.'
Sammy Starling nodded. 'As Keef says, it's good to see you-good to see anyone.'
Sammy had been out of circulation for almost seven years, serving a sentence for manslaughter. He'd been a private detective and a good one, but a gambling problem had forced him to cross the line and become a standover man, working for gamblers. One night he went too far and the man he was putting extreme physical pressure on died. Sammy hadn't completely lost his moral bearings and he turned himself in. It was more than his life was worth to name the people he'd been working for, though that would have earned him a lesser sentence, so he served nearly the whole term. I'd put some work his way before he went off the rails, and given a character reference when he was up on the charge.
'I heard you were out,' I said, 'but I thought you were an eastern suburbs type.'
'I am. Give me Bondi any day; but I've been hanging around here hoping to see you.'
'I'm out of the business, Sammy.'
'I know that. But you always played square with me and stood up when I was in the shit, so I want to return the favour.'
I finished the whiskey and held out my glass. 'Buy me a drink and we'll call it quits.'
He dropped his voice and looked around to be sure he couldn't be overheard. 'This is serious. Do you remember Soldier Szabo?'
I nodded. Szabo was a hardcore crim who'd come after me and I'd shot and killed him in the living room of my house. Even after scrubbing at it and years of wear and tear, there was still a faint stain on the carpet where he'd bled. He was a vicious murderer and I felt no remorse, just the natural empty, stomach-churning reaction at the time.
Sammy leaned closer. 'He had a son named Frank. He was in Bathurst with me, doing time for armed robbery. He got high on ice one day and said he was going to kill the man who killed his father.'
'When was this?'
'About a year ago, bit less. I didn't think too much about it because they all go around making threats, especially when they're high, but when I heard about that bloke being killed at your place I thought I should tell you.'
I got up and bought two drinks. Sammy never drank anything but scotch and ice so I didn't have to ask. I sat down and looked at him. He was ten years younger than me and medium-sized. A welterweight, say. For someone who'd been inside for so long he looked more lined, greyer, but pretty good-he must have worked out and kept a limit on the starches.
'He's out, is he?'
'A month ago, maybe two months.'
'What's he like?'
'An animal, and a crack-head. And, Cliff, his weapon of choice was a sawn-off automatic shotgun.'
9
I'd spent a part of the previous year overseas, leaving the house in the care of a friend who'd carried out some renovations. The security system Hank Bachelor had finally persuaded me to install had malfunctioned and I hadn't got around to having it repaired. Out of the private eye business, I hadn't seen it as a priority and I had to accept that my neglect had contributed to Patrick's death. His agile killer had come in from the poorly protected back over a high fence.
Sammy Starling's information changed my thinking. In the morning I phoned Hank and asked him to come and get the system up and running again-coded alarm, sensor lights and all.
'I wondered,' Hank said. 'Didn't like to ask.'
'Yeah.'
'When do you want it?'
'Soon as you can.'
'How so, something happening?'
'No, just getting around to doing what I should've done as soon as I got back from the US trip. I've been slack.'
Maybe he believed me, maybe he didn't, but he agreed to come in the afternoon with his box of tricks. I thanked him and went to the gym where I worked out harder and longer than usual. It was a sort of useless penance. After the gym session I went to an ATM and drew out a thousand dollars and went visiting.
Ben Corbett was an ex-biker and ex-stuntman, ex because he'd crashed his bike at something like two hundred kilometres per hour and lost the use of his legs. His mates from the Badlanders motorcycle gang had looked after him by making him a sort of armourer. Corbett traded in guns for bikers and others and made some non-declarable money to top up his disability pension. He was an expert at removing serial numbers and retooling barrels, magazines and cylinders to make the weapons hard to identify. I'd encountered him when working on a blackmail case in which a movie director's wife had put her favours about with the cast and crew, including Ben. Just a memory for him now.
I drove to Erskineville where Corbett lived in a flat below street level. It was reached by a steep ramp with a bend in it that Corbett could take at full tilt in his powered wheelchair. Once a speed freak
…
He opened the door to me and the reek of marijuana and tobacco smoke blended with the smell of gun oil and worked metal.
'Fuckin' Cliff Hardy,' he said. 'What's in the fuckin' bag?'
'A bottle of Bundy and a packet of Drum.'
'Come in, mate, come in.'
We were a long way from being mates, but I admired his resilience and courage. I'd have probably been an alcoholic mess if what happened to him had happened to me. He was killing himself with drugs and tobacco, so perhaps his apparent good humour and aggression were covers for something despairing. Impossible to say. I went down the narrow, dark passage and into the room that served as his living quarters and workshop. The flat was tiny, consisting of this room, a kitchenette and a bathroom, all fitted out for his convenience. He wheeled himself behind a workbe
nch, where he had a rifle barrel fixed in a vice.
He produced two non-breakable glasses from under the bench and set them up. A rollie had gone out in the ashtray and he relit it with a Zippo lighter. I put the packet of tobacco next to the ashtray, ripped the foil from the bottle, pulled the cork and poured. Knowing Corbett's habits, I also had a bottle of ginger ale in the bag. I topped the glasses up, more mixer for me than him. He tossed off half of the drink and I gave him a refill.
'What can I do for youse?'
'First off, information.'
He puffed smoke, took a sip and shook his head. 'Fuckin' unlikely, but go ahead.'
'Done any work on an automatic shotgun lately? Say, sawing off, making a pistol grip?'
Corbett wore a biker beard and a bandana, concealing his receding grey hairline. The greasy remnant was caught in a ponytail tied with copper wire. The ponytail sat forward on his shoulder and it jumped back as he shook with laughter.
'Fuck you. As if I'd tell you if I had, but no. Wouldn't mind. Be a challenge. Too short and it could blow up in your face, not enough grip and you'd drop the fucker when you let loose.'
I had a drink and waited until his laughter subsided. I took the wad of notes from my pocket and fanned them. 'I need a gun.'
He pinched off the end of his rollie, picked up the packet I'd bought, took papers from the breast pocket of his flannie, expertly rolled another thin, neat cigarette and lit it.
'Like what?'
'Smith amp; Wesson. 38 revolver.'
'You're a fuckin' dinosaur, Hardy.'
'But…'
'You're in luck. The Victorian cops are trading up. I can get you what you want.'
