The Black Prince

by Peter Corris

  And cut some grass and trimmed some hedges, I thought.

  ‘But he told me he had this job lined up on a boat that was leaving on the Saturday morning. Charter boat. One of the hands had got sick and young George had talked himself into the job. So, on the Saturday, I takes him down to the jetty and there she is, bloody great sea-going yacht. And I escort George on board. I explain that he’s been the victim of an assault. The owner’s all sympathy and he takes George on. Tells him to rest up. I reckon if George played it smart he could rest long enough to learn what he had to do, because he knew bugger-all about boats at that point.’

  ‘How did he get the job, d’you think?’

  He sucked his teeth and the action seemed to trigger his need to smoke. He took a packet of cigarettes from his other shirt pocket and offered them to me. I shook my head. He extracted one and moved sideways to open a door that would take him around the counter. When he reappeared he had the cigarette in his mouth and a lighter in his hand.

  ‘Not allowed to smoke in me own station, would you believe? Time was when the man on the spot made the rules. Not now. Come outside.’

  We stood on the concrete porch overlooking the cut grass and the street. Pipe lit up and exhaled luxuriantly. ‘Something that feels so bloody good can’t be bad for you, that’s my philosophy. You’re a quiet sort of bloke, Hardy.’

  ‘I’m interested in what you’re telling me. I’ve got a couple more questions and I haven’t got an answer to the last one yet.’

  ‘Right, well this boat owner, I forget his name, was about my age and not in much better nick. His wife was a real good-looker and she was younger, a lot younger. I saw the way she looked at George. I reckon he got the job because of her. Just a guess, mind you. But in my game you pick up a bit on those things.’

  ‘I know what you mean.’

  ‘I suppose so. Has George done anything, you know, dodgy? Struck me as a decent bloke who should stay off the grog.’

  There didn’t seem to be any point in elaborating. I told Pipe that it was a straight family concern about a missing member.

  ‘Kids,’ he said. ‘Thank Christ mine’re all right. I’ve got a son in the military and a daughter who’s a nurse. You know, you’ve done me some good, Hardy. That missing person report’ll be on the computer. I can respond with a sighting of the subject here. Helps to be able to deal with that sort of stuff.’

  ‘Fine. Now the big questions. What was the name of the boat and where was it heading?’

  ‘She, mate, she. Boats are female. You’re as ignorant as that George was. Well, the name’s easy. She was the Coral Queen. Beautiful boat.’

  ‘And heading . . .’

  ‘North. That’s all I know. North.’

  10

  I thanked Sergeant Pipe and went in search of Danny Roberts. There were fishermen on the jetty and others strung out at long intervals on the beach. I asked one of the jetty men about Danny and he pointed north.

  ‘He’s along there like always. Best part of a mile.’

  Walking the best part of a mile, or even the lesser part, in city shoes on soft sand is no fun. About halfway there I was sweating freely and cursing Roberts for not fishing closer to civilisation. When I got close enough to make him out I could see that he was in the act of catching a fish, reeling in, moving back and forward and sideways. I moved nearer and saw him win the battle. He brought the line in with a big flapping fish on the end of it. He unhooked it and tossed it still flapping into a battered Esky.

  He was re-baiting the hook when he saw me come up.

  ‘Hey, Cliff. I’ve caught six. Sell you a couple if you like.’

  ‘No thanks, Danny. Dunno when I’ll next be home. Can I have a word?’

  ‘Sure. I’ll just toss this in.’

  He made his cast with a fluid flick of shoulder, elbow and wrist. The line flew out past the breaking waves. With an action like that he should’ve done better in the ring. He slotted the butt of the rod into a sleeve embedded in the sand and turned towards me.

  ‘Now . . .’ He gave a whoop as a second rod in the sand bucked. He jumped to it, slid it out and began the same process. I watched, admiring his skill and the obvious intense pleasure he got from what he was doing. If you can make a living doing something you like you’ve got the game beaten. I sometimes wondered whether it applied to me. He landed the second fish and dealt with it in the same way. When he had both rods re-set he washed his hands in the shallows and indicated that he was ready to talk.

  ‘Sorry about that, mate. Gotta grab ’em while they’re there.’

  ‘Right.’ I said. ‘No problem. Look, Danny, I got the feeling you were a bit pissed off at Clinton . . . George, not saying goodbye.’

  ‘Yeah, a bit.’

  ‘I talked to Copper Pipe. He took him to the clinic and they patched him up. Ah, George told Pipe that he had a job lined up on a boat, starting the next day. He talked Pipe into letting him go away on the boat the next morning instead of going up before the magistrate.’

  ‘That right? Well, he was a good talker.’

  ‘He’d have probably told you about the job if the fight hadn’t happened.’

  Danny nodded and looked at his rods.

  ‘The thing is, I need to get a line on this boat. It was called the Coral Queen. Did you see it?’

  ‘Did I? I’ll say. Beautiful craft. Ocean-going yacht. Ketch-rigged with diesel auxillaries and everything that opened and shut. Be a fuckin’ great boat to be on.’

  ‘Did you see the owner?’

  ‘Yeah. Nothin’ much of him. A nothin’ sort of a bloke, really. Except for the money of course. But no change out of a million for that thing.’

  ‘Did you see his wife?’

  Danny winked. ‘Who didn’t? Marilyn Monroe brought back to life, she was.’

  ‘That good?’

  ‘Yep. She had it and she showed it. Hello!’

  The first rod twitched. He took hold of it and did whatever it was he did. This time the contest was over quickly and Danny swore as he reeled in the hook and sinker.

  ‘Fucker threw the hook.’

  ‘Can’t catch ’em all.’

  ‘Can try. Why’re you asking about the woman?’

  ‘Sergeant Pipe took George to the boat. Kept his eyes open. Like you, he reckoned the owner was a bit past it. He thought the wife had the hots for George and that was how he got the job.’

  ‘Could be, but I doubt it. She’d be wasting her time. Hang on. Think I’ll try a worm this time.’

  He baited the hook with a length of still-wriggling worm. It was an intricate business and he did it with dexterity and finesse. He made his cast and the action was exactly as before. He sighed with satisfaction as he re-set the rod.

  ‘They say the old people could catch sand-worms with their toes. Buggered if I can. Tried. No way.’

  ‘Why would the wife be wasting her time with George?’

  ‘I heard him make some very nasty remarks about white women.’

  ‘You didn’t mention that before.’

  Danny nodded. ‘It was about the one thing I didn’t like about him.’

  Clinton Scott was becoming a more complex character with every little bit of information I gained. But at least I was gaining some and had a lead to follow. I wasn’t sure, but I assumed that big, expensive boats checked in with some kind of marine authority from time to time. Maybe even notified where they were headed next. A million-dollar yacht couldn’t be too hard to trace. The new snippet on Clinton was interesting. Hard to interpret though. From what I’d been told, he’d liked white women well enough in the past. I wasn’t convinced.

  I headed back to Campbelltown, intending to tell Morton Grace about the sighting of Clinton Scott. The further I went the worse the idea seemed. If I told him I’d have to talk about the boat, the wife, Clinton’s change of name, maybe even that Danny had told me about his sexual racial preference. I didn’t want to say anything about those things to anyone except Wesley and, a
t this stage, not even to him. I had a course to follow. I was re-plotting myself to Sydney when a truck coming the other way threw up a stone that shattered my windscreen. The glass starred; I punched it out as quickly as I could, cutting my hand, and wrestled with the steering wheel. The Falcon had a tendency to pull to the right and in my momentary loss of control it threatened to swing me off the road and towards some solid gum trees.

  A car was coming fast towards me and it sailed past just as I got the Falcon under control and back on the right side of the road. I could feel the adrenaline pumping and the sweat breaking out on my body. I steered the car towards the verge and stopped. I sucked in air and waited for the jitters to pass. I’d known too many people who’d finished up dead on country roads not to feel that I’d had some sort of escape. Again. I was limping towards Ulladulla, peering through the punched hole in the windscreen, pretending that the wind and dust weren’t bothering me, when the car started to bump and grind like Tina Turner.

  I stopped, got out and was confronted with a flat rear tyre, driver’s side. I detached the jack and wheelbrace and changed the wheel in no time at all. When I was young we drove on tyres that were as bald as Yul Brynner and were constantly changing wheels and could do it with our eyes closed. Then we bought thin retreads and did it all over again. I let the car down and it settled lower and lower and lower. The spare clearly had a slow puncture. The motorist’s nightmare—two flats.

  If I’d limped before I hobbled now into Ulladulla. There was a garage opposite the motel I’d stayed in and I put the car in there for a new windscreen and two tyres. I carried my overnight bag across to the motel and booked in again.

  ‘Hullo, Mr Hardy,’ the receptionist said brightly. ‘Nice to see you again so soon.’

  I barely managed a grunt. I went to my room, the same one as before, dropped my bag on the floor and opened the minibar. I poured the miniature bottle of Johnny Walker red over ice and took two decent sips, almost finishing it. I topped the meagre remainder up with water and sat down on the bed. It hadn’t been a long day or a hard one, but I felt drained. If I’d kept up the gym work the mile and back along the beach wouldn’t have taken so much out of me. I resolved to go back to working out. I finished the drink, kicked off my shoes and went to sleep.

  I slept deeply and when I woke up I had the sensation of not knowing where I was or what time of the day or night I was in. The familiar sights and sounds were missing and it took me a few seconds to get my physical bearings and work out the time. The empty glass on the bedside table made sense. My watch told me I’d slept for an hour. It was getting dark outside so that figured. I realised that it was my bladder that had woken me. I stumbled to the bathroom in my socks, had a long piss, climbed out of my clothes and took a hot shower followed by a quick burst of the cold. By the time I’d dried myself, dressed and opened a can of VB, I knew who I was, where I was and what I was supposed to be doing.

  I rang through to my number, gave the code and picked up my messages. The first was a miscall, the second was from my personal physician Dr Ian Sangster, proposing a night on the town, and the third was from a young female addicted to the upward inflection.

  ‘Mr Hardy? This is Kathy Simpson? Could you ring me please? I’ve got something to tell you.’

  She gave her number and that was it. Something to tell me? About what? Mark Alessio, what else? I rang the number expecting to get her answering machine but got the real live Kathy instead.

  ‘Kathy, this is Cliff Hardy.’

  ‘Oh, hello, Mr Hardy.’

  Well, at least it didn’t sound like life and death. I told her that I’d got her message and that I was stuck in Ulladulla for the night with car trouble. I asked her what she had to tell me.

  ‘It’s more something to show you, really. About Mark’s investigation. I was working with him on the paper as I told you and now I’ve had a look at his files. I couldn’t bear to before, but . . .’

  ‘I understand. What shift are you on tomorrow?’

  ‘Morning, then I’m at the office of the paper. I could meet you there and show you.’

  ‘That’d, be good. I think I can get clear of here by mid-morning. If I’m going to be late I’ll ring. What’s the number?’

  She gave me the number, I wrote it down, thanked her and hung up. My destination was going to be Campbelltown after all.

  I thought about calling Wesley Scott but decided the time wasn’t right. I wasn’t interested in dinner. After the beer I ate the crisps and nuts provided with the complimentary biscuits and called that dinner. To make up for it I ordered a big breakfast. That left some time to kill. Time can fly by in a motel when you’re with someone but it crawls when you’re on your own. Solitary big breakfasts aren’t much fun either.

  I’ve never known instant coffee to keep me awake; I drank several cups while I read a book I’d thrown into the bag—Clifford Irving’s account of how he and Susskind attempted to pull off the hoax of the century by concocting a phony biography of Howard Hughes. I suspected that Irving was a bit of a shit, but he was a good writer with a great story to tell. I read until the book fell out of my hands.

  11

  On two new tyres, with a new windscreen and bacon, eggs, grilled tomato and toast inside me, I got to Campbelltown at 12.30, in time to catch Kathy coming off her shift. She still looked downcast but my judgement was that she was on the way up out of it. She had a naturally buoyant nature of a kind that’s hard to keep down. We walked through the campus to the newspaper office, housed in a demountable building that had that resigned, permanent look they get when there’s no money to replace them.

  The Southwestern Star had a room in the building it shared with a student employment service, a textbook exchange and the Asian Students’ Association. The room was small, lined with shelves crammed with books, newspapers, magazines and academic periodicals. The desk was a chaos of paper, audio cassettes, computer discs and plastic coffee cups, some bristling with pens and pencils. Kathy waved her hand at the mess apologetically.

  ‘A lot of this’s Mark’s personal gear. It’s all mixed in with the paper stuff. He wasn’t a very organised person.’

  At least she could speak his name without a sob and refer to him in the past tense. She’d get there. She sat down at the computer, turned it on and did the things young people can do—used the mouse, shot through all the intermediate stuff that baffles me and got what she wanted in seconds.

  ‘Here it is. Notes on possible sources of steroids. This is all about what happened to Angela, of course. That was the password he used for this stuff. Angie. I was just fooling around and tried it and got in. It looks as if he had a . . . what d’you call it? Someone who knows things, in Sydney?’

  ‘An informant.’

  ‘That’s right. There’s a few code names in all this. Was he just being mysterious or what?’

  ‘Hard to say. Investigative reporters do that.’

  ‘That’s right. That’s what he said he wanted to be—an investigative reporter.’ She sighed and tapped some keys. ‘Anyway, it’s hard to follow but . . . Jesus!’

  The screen went blank.

  ‘What’s happened?’

  She tapped keys frantically. ‘I don’t know. Oh, shit, yes, of course!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘He must’ve used a double password and put in a wipe function.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘It’s a way of safeguarding files. He built in a second password and unless the user puts it in at some point the files get wiped. I’m sure that’s what happened. Shit! I should have thought of it. He was up to all the tricks that way. I’m sorry, Mr Hardy.’

  I was sorry as well but I could hardly blame her. I scarcely understood what she was saying. ‘Would the information be on the discs?’

  ‘Maybe.’ She pointed at the twenty or thirty discs littering the desk. ‘But where would you start? And he would definitely have put massive protection on the discs. I wouldn’t be able to get in. Oh
, bugger him. Why’d he have to be so fucking clever?’

  I had a feeling she was coming apart again. I spun her chair away from the computer, away from the source of her distress, away from Mark.

  ‘Listen, Kathy. Don’t worry. We’ll be right. Now, there’s obviously a way to make coffee around here. How’s it work?’

  ‘Jug in the employment centre. We all put in for the coffee and that.’

  ‘Okay. I’m going to make some. White with three sugars, right?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Oh, to be young, I thought. ‘Okay. Make your mind a blank. Back in a tick.’

  The door to the employment centre was closed but not locked. I boiled the jug, took two plastic cups from the stack, spooned in the International Roast and added long-life milk and sugar to Kathy’s and stirred. I took mine black.

  ‘Here you go,’ I said. ‘Drink a bit. Mind a blank?’

  She was close to tears. ‘I feel an idiot getting you here . . .’

  ‘That’s not blank.’

  ‘Okay. Blank. Might as well be.’

  We sipped coffee for a few minutes. She put her cup down and moved as if to turn back to the computer but I stopped her.

  ‘No. Listen. You read the stuff through once, didn’t you?’

  ‘Yeah. Sort of.’

  ‘So it’s a matter of what you can remember of it.’

  She laughed and sounded as if she went on laughing she’d reach hysteria. That was the last thing I wanted. I shuddered at the thought of having to slap a young female student out of a fit when we were all alone in a demountable building at lunchtime. But she pulled back and suddenly seemed genuinely amused. Mood swings.

  ‘You know I told you I was a lousy student?’

  I nodded.

  ‘That’s mainly why. I’ve got a rotten memory.’

  I shook my head. ‘I don’t believe it. Now, did Mark list some gyms or places that sold steroids?’

  She nodded.

  ‘You saw the names on the screen?’