by Peter Corris
‘What d’you think of the amounts mentioned?’
‘Hard to say. Could be right.’
‘Is it possible that someone might think the pearl is worth more than the painting?’
James shook his head as he exhaled and a cloud of smoke wafted towards me. ‘No. More likely a ransom job. “I’ve got the pearl. You pay up and you’ve got your package back.” He hasn’t been approached?’
‘Not yet. So who’re the likely candidates?’
‘Alarm system disabled, wall climbed, glass removed. Wall hard to climb?’
‘Hard for me, impossible for you.’
He smiled. ‘I find climbing stairs taxing enough. There’s work involved here, Cliff, my boy. Ring around, find out if Stevenson’s had any inside work done on the house lately. Who did it, if so. Who they might pass info to. Like that.’
‘I’m on a big earner, Quentin. I’ll pay.’
‘Leave it with me.’
I busied myself with other matters for the next few days. Then two things happened. First, the story of the theft broke in the newspapers. The report described the painting and the pearl and said that the Sydney private enquiry agent Clint Hardy was investigating. I rang Stevenson immediately.
‘It wasn’t me,’ I said. ‘I wouldn’t get my own name wrong.’
‘I believe you. It’s most unfortunate. Perhaps my wife, perhaps one of my daughters… I don’t know. They gossip. Have you made any progress?’
‘Some.’
‘Well, our arrangement holds.’
‘You haven’t been approached with an offer?’
‘Offer?’
‘To buy back the pearl. Understand?’
He said, ‘No,’ quite sharply, but whether he knew I was getting at him was hard to tell.
Later that day, Quentin James faxed me a list of three possible burglars.
I rang him. ‘Sandy Foreman’s in jail,’ I said.
‘You’re well informed.’
This was just part of the fencing that goes on in this business. James would have known that Foreman wasn’t a candidate and put the name in to pad the list and check that I was on the ball. I was left with two names-Jim ‘the fly’ Petersen and Kevin Barnes. James gave me last-known addresses for both.
‘Something’s troubling me about this business of ours,’ James said.
I liked the ‘ours’; James has a way of inserting himself into things. ‘And what’s that, Quentin?’
‘Can’t quite put my finger on it. When the penny drops, I’ll let you know.’
That could mean almost anything or nothing at all. I had to hope it didn’t mean that James was dealing a hand of his own. These days, he was too fat and lazy to take the trouble, but he had a reputation for playing both ends against the middle and you never knew.
Kevin Barnes was nearest to home. He lived in a rent-controlled flat in Darlinghurst, one of the few remaining. Barnes’ family had been in crime for three or four generations, stretching back to the days of the razor gangs and before that to ‘the pushes’ of the inner city. James’ fax included brief notes on the subjects. Barnes had served a number of terms for burglary and break and enter, having graduated from shoplifting. He was also an arsonist when the price was right and was not above a little standover work. Bit of an all-rounder, Kevin.
I climbed a creaking iron staircase that was insecurely attached to the building in Riley Street and knocked on the door of the flat. Most of the space on the tiny landing near the door was occupied by cartons containing empty beer cans. Naturally, cats had pissed on the boxes.
The woman who answered the door had a pair of the most tired eyes I’d ever seen. She had dyed blonde hair, a lot of make-up and wore a halter top, bikini pants and white spike-heeled shoes. Her hair, clothes and body put her in her forties; her eyes made her a hundred and ten.
‘You Clive?’
‘No.’ I got my foot in the door before she could close it. ‘I’m looking for Kevin Barnes.’
‘At the pub.’ She put her heel on my instep and pressed down a little. I pulled the foot back and she slammed the door.
She meant the nearest pub and that was the Seven Bells, a block away. It was an old-style Sydney pub: dark and smelly with faded advertisements showing people wearing clothes that had gone out of date about the time I was born, and drinking from glasses of a shape I could barely remember. There were four men drinking in the bar-one pair and two singles. I ordered a middy, paid the correct money, and put a five dollar note on the bar. ‘Kevin Barnes?’
The barman palmed the note and inclined his head at one of the single drinkers. Not a word spoken. I carried my drink across to where he sat on a stool. ‘Mr Barnes?’
He looked at me, raised his glass and took a drink, then picked up his cigarette from the ashtray and had a drag. There was one cigarette left in the open packet. Both hands shook and I could tell that Kev’s burglary and standover days were past. He was big but the flesh was sagging on his bones as if something was sapping him from inside. The ashtray was full of butts and his bleary eyes and slack mouth told me the middy he was drinking was more like his tenth than his first. His woman was on the game and cats were pissing on his doorstep.
‘I’m Barnes,’ he slurred. ‘An’ I wish I wasn’t. Cop?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘Sorry to trouble you.’
I moved away and finished my drink. I put ten dollars on the bar and the barman stood ready to pounce. ‘His next packet of smokes is on me,’ I said.
It took me three days to track down Jim Petersen because he was in funds, and when Petersen was in funds he went to racecourses. I caught up with him at Rosehill. ‘Jockey-sized’ was how James’ notes described him, and others had told me about his dressing-New York gangster style, pork pie hat, dark shirt, light tie. I watched him place a large bet and then stroll to the ring to take a look at the horses parade. It was an unimportant race at an unimportant meeting and not many people were about. When I joined him at the railed fence there was no one else within ten metres. I stood slightly to his left, partly blocking anyone’s view, and bent his right arm halfway up his back while clamping his left hand on the rail with my left.
‘Gidday, Jim,’ I said.
‘What the hell’re you doing?’
‘Engaging you in conversation.’
‘Piss off.’
‘Jim, if you don’t cooperate, I’m going to break your right arm, dislocate your right shoulder and break your left wrist all in two seconds flat.’
‘You wouldn’t.’
‘You’ve climbed your last wall.’
I increased the strain on his arm to just short of breaking point. Sweat broke out on his face.
‘Okay, okay’
I escorted him to a quiet spot under the grandstand and we had a talk. Not much to it. Stevenson had hired him to steal the pearl, helping out by disabling the alarm system and pointing out the most accessible window. Five grand for the job.
‘I figured it was an insurance job, you know how it is.’
‘Where’s the pearl?’
‘I ditched it according to orders.’
‘Jim.’
I was thirty centimetres taller than him, ten kilos heavier, and clearly not in a good mood. He was backed up against a metal post. I flipped his hat away and pushed against his forehead so that the metal bit into the back of his head.
‘It’s in my car. In the upholstery.’
I let him watch the next race and collect his winnings. As we walked towards the car park, the question in my mind was: Why did Stevenson hire me if he didn’t want the pearl to be found? Why not just let sleeping dogs lie?
Petersen dug the pearl on its ribbon, all sealed in a plastic bag, from the back seat upholstery and handed it to me. Then he gave me the answer to my question.
‘Guess I’ll have to do what I said I’d do,’ he muttered.
‘What’s that?’
‘Use the ticket he gave me to fly to Perth. I’m my own worst enemy. Couldn�
�t resist a flutter against these bloody bookies.’
I don’t like being taken for a ride by a client, so I made another call on Quentin James to talk things over. I’d agreed to pay him a percentage of my bonus, so he had a stake in the matter.
‘Very considerate of you, Cliff,’ he said, turning the pearl over in his pudgy hands. ‘As it happens I’ve worked out what was troubling me. And by the way, the leak about the missing pearl came from Stevenson himself. Quite contrary to what he told you, the publicity would add value to the painting, pearl or no pearl.’
‘Okay, but I still can’t see why he wanted it to go missing.’
James pulled down a book from his dusty shelves. ‘You have to understand how the art business works. At any one time there are three or four versions of a valuable painting in circulation, or out of circulation. They all have provenances, documents and so on. Now here is a photo of that particular Galliard. It was taken over fifty years ago. The picture was in private hands then and now Stevenson claims to have it. No doubt he has proof of its authenticity, but…’
He opened the book to show a high quality photograph of the woman in the black dress. He produced a magnifying glass. ‘If you look closely at your pearl and then at the one in this photograph, you’ll see that they’re rather different. Slightly different shape and colouring. Yes?’
‘Mmm, yeah, I guess so,’ I said. ‘Therefore Stevenson’s picture’s a fake. Or this one is.’
‘Doesn’t matter,’ James said. ‘As soon as doubt arises the damage is done. My guess is that Stevenson twigged to the problem and couldn’t afford to display the pearl in case someone made this same comparison.’
‘He won’t be well pleased when he gets it back then.’
‘Correct, but he’ll honour your contract.’
‘Oh, he’ll honour it all right, and you’ll get your cut, Quentin. But aren’t you concerned that he was trying to pass off a fake picture as the real thing?’
James shrugged and lit a cigarette from the butt of the previous one. ‘Not at all. They’re both beautiful pictures and, my boy, the art business is a racket.’
SOLOMON’S SOLUTIONS
I need a bodyguard,’ Charles Marriott said.
I said, ‘Why?’
‘Because I think my life is in danger.’
‘All our lives are in danger,’ I said. ‘Nothing surer.’
He looked at me through his wire-framed glasses and stroked his short, gingery beard. He was a tall, spindly individual with narrow shoulders, a pasty face and a slight stoop. He didn’t look the sort of man who should fear for his life, barring accidents, until he was near his three-score-and-ten. Quiet type. Safe. But his eyes were busy. They darted around my office looking frightened. I can understand why you’d look frightened in my office if you have phobias about dust, draughts and old furniture, but not otherwise.
Marriott stopped fiddling with his facial hair and brought his scared gaze around to fix on me. ‘I’ve been told you like to joke to upset people. You don’t need to do that to me. I’m upset already. I need help, Mr Hardy, and I’m willing to pay for it.’
I wondered who’d told him that and whether it was true. I couldn’t think of a recent client with that kind of analytical capacity, but his response got my attention.
‘If I can help, I will, but everybody who employs me pays the same-a retainer variable according to how long it looks like the job’ll take; two hundred and fifty a day, GST included, plus expenses.’
He nodded. ‘So can I consider you engaged?’
‘No, not quite. I’ll have to hear what’s on your mind first. If you’ve been importing heroin freelance from the Golden Triangle and the Triads and the Yakuza are after you, I’ll have to pass.’
My father used to say that only men with weak chins grew beards. He continued to say it after I grew one, and I’ve got as much chin as anyone needs, but I still tend to look at bearded blokes with the thought in mind. Marriott s beard was wispy, but it grew on a solid chin. ‘When do the jokes stop?’ he said.
I pulled myself up straighter in my chair. ‘Now,’ I said. ‘Tell me why you feel in danger?’
‘What d’you know about the IT industry?’
I moved my hand across the surface of my computerless desk. ‘Nothing.’
‘Nothing at all?’
‘You’d better assume that. I doubt I know anything worth knowing. Is IT your game?’
He stroked the beard again. ‘Interesting choice of words. It was a game at the start. A bloody exciting game, but it’s turned into something else.’
I nodded. ‘The money’d do that.’
He gave a respectful nod and told me that he’d started up a dot com with two partners a couple of years back. They were all computer studies graduates from the University of Technology and couldn’t wait to become players.
‘We were full-on computer nerds. Especially Mark and me. Totally into it.’
‘Surfing the net,’ I said, just to be saying something.
He looked at me as if I’d dribbled on my chin. ‘Way beyond that. We were all good programmers and lateral thinkers.’
I persisted. ‘Hackers.’
He looked exasperated and I raised my hands in apology. ‘I’m sorry. That exhausted my vocabulary. I was just getting it over with.’ The truth was, computers bored me and I wasn’t feeling as if this was going to be my sort of thing. But he plugged on, which meant that at least he was serious.
‘I’m talking about Steve Lucca, Mark Metropolis and me. We formed Solomon Solutions and went at it. We did a fair bit of Y2K bug stuff, remember that?’
‘Yeah. Didn’t worry me too much.’
‘Bit of a scam, really. But we made some money and so we had some capital behind us to go for the big stuff.’
‘Which is?’
‘Database financial consulting.’
‘You’ve lost me.’
‘Solomon is now just about the best in the southern hemisphere for accessing financial information worldwide and forecasting government and corporation policies, company profits and share movements.’
‘Ah,’ I said. ‘Bucks.’
‘Big bucks. You have to pay to use Solomon to get our advice and forecasts, which are bloody good, and when you do, Solomon can monitor your transactions and take its commission on successful deals.
‘We developed this brilliant software, you see. It’s all automatic, and your user fee goes up, but we sweeten the pill by having the commission we take go down as your business progresses. It’s all geared to exchange rates, of course.’
I was starting to get interested. As someone who thinks stockmarkets and futures trading and currency speculation ought to be illegal, I was aware that I was radically out of step with the times. I dimly grasped what Marriott was saying, enough to understand that it sounded like being allowed into the mint with a U-haul van.
‘Well,’ I said, ‘three into however many millions you’re making goes very nicely.’
Talking about success had excited him, but now he was sobered. ‘For a while it was four,’ he said. ‘We brought in this marketing man. The money side of it was getting a bit hard to handle. Sounds funny, doesn’t it? We were helping move billions around the shop and we started to get into tax and business troubles ourselves. Weird. We brought Stefan Sweig in as a full partner, even though he hardly had any capital. We’d known him at UTS. Bloody economics genius and no slouch with computers either. Bit younger than us.’
‘And you are how old?’
‘Twenty-six, shit, no, twenty-seven. I’m losing track. Mark and Steve… uh, much the same. Stefan’s maybe twenty-three. Looks younger, acts older.’
I was starting to become interested in Charles Marriott. He had some idea of how to tell a story and I could sense the relief he was experiencing at letting it all out. Cliff Hardy-private enquiries and narrative therapist.
‘Stefan got us into the big time. He knew the buttons to push. The trouble to avoid. Got us out of our tax
hole like magic. We thought we were going to go under at one point and we just… bobbed up, better than ever. Advertising revenue, more clients…’
‘Sounds like I should hire him,’ I said.
Marriott shook his head almost violently. ‘No. He’s poison. I wish we’d never… No, I can’t say that. But we should’ve, I don’t know, drawn up a better partnership agreement when we brought Stefan in, one that protected us somehow. We were bad at that all along.’
‘Who drew up the agreement?’
Marriott suddenly looked angry and older than twenty-seven, much older. ‘Stefan did, with a lawyer mate of his. Can you believe it?’
I didn’t want to do myself out of a job, but I had to say it. ‘Get another lawyer.’
‘I did, or tried to. No way to change it. Watertight.’
I shrugged. ‘I still can’t see the problem. If you’re going gangbusters with this thing, four into even more millions goes even more nicely.’
‘Three, or two.’
‘I don’t follow.’
‘Steve’s dead. I think Stefan had him killed. And I reckon I’m next. Or it could be something worse.’
With me having virtually no understanding of big business, it took a bit more explaining. But Marriott was patient and seemed to be drawing some comfort just from talking. There were certain clauses in the original partnership agreement that plotted the future of the company. One was that when business reached a certain level, the company should be floated.
‘That’s not as rigid as it sounds,’ Marriott said. ‘We had ways of keeping below that level because none of us wanted to float the company. Rog made sure we all understood about that-writing things off, tax dodges really.’
‘Rog?’
‘The lawyer, well, paralegal guy who helped us set up in the first place.’
‘And he’s not in the picture now?’
‘No. He hated Stefan after a while and wouldn’t work with us anymore. Anyway, since Stefan moved in all that’s gone by the board and we have to float now. Stefan’s enforcing the terms of the original agreement.’
