by Peter Corris
‘Everything.’
He crossed his legs, not bothering to protect the creases in his expensive suit pants, a sign of extreme agitation, I suspected, because this was a very image-conscious man. He was about forty, with a tan, a disciplined figure, carefully tended hair and well-chosen clothes. My diagnosis was confirmed when he took out a packet of cigarettes and looked at it with disgust.
‘I gave this up five years ago. But I’ve lapsed.’
‘Don’t,’ I said. ‘Play with them. Suck on them, break ‘em in half but don’t light them. It’s like standing in the road waiting for a car to hit you. Might not, but probably will.’
‘You’re right. It doesn’t help anyway. To answer your question-there’s a gang of shoplifters at work. That’s one thing. Then there’s a pickpocket. It could be the same people. I don’t know. Two ram-raids in the last month. It’s like the place is a target.’
‘Who for?’
He shrugged, stripped the cellophane from the cigarette packet and crumpled it. He threw it and the packet into my wastepaper basket which, along with the desk, a filing cabinet, two chairs, a phone, fax and a bookcase, completes my office hardware.
‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘It’s never popular with the local shopkeepers when a shopping centre opens up. Some of them go to the wall. Market forces. But I can’t believe they’re behind this.’
‘What do the police think?’
‘They’re stretched. They put some people in for a while and nothing happened. They say these things come in cycles, but that’s no use to me. We’re hurting; and with Christmas a month away it couldn’t be worse. We started off well but there’re signs the place is fading and it’s hard to win back customers. You’ve got to hold on to every one you’ve got.’
I knew the feeling. I’ve got my regulars, too-people who need company when they’re carrying money, people who need information and some who have information and need people to sell it to. Bread and butter stuff. I nodded understandingly but was unsure of what he wanted me to do. I’ve tried to stay out of shopping centres ever since Wade Frankum cut loose in a Strathfield mall coffee shop.
‘The police were obvious,’ Morgan said. ‘I need someone experienced to hang around unobtrusively and see if he can spot anything-like a pickpocket or a shoplifter, or anyone who seems like they might be looking the place over. You know.’
‘Well, I could do that, I guess.’
‘If you catch anyone we can find out if there’s anything more behind it-angry locals, the competition, whatever. And do it on the quiet. We’re gearing up for a big Christmas push. Lots of giveaways and that. We’ll get them in, but we’ll lose them if there’s any more of this bullshit.’
He signed a contract committing to pay me a retainer, expenses and a week in advance. I agreed to devote myself exclusively to this problem for that period initially and to report at forty-eight hour intervals. He gave me his card and that of the manager of the Petersham Plaza-Tabitha Miles.
‘Tabby’s the best,’ he said. ‘She’ll give you all the help she can. Jobs are on the line here.’
I shook hands with him, grateful for the work but also grateful that I was working for the corporate sector rather than in it.
The Petersham Plaza was built on disused railway land. In the old days there must have been a goods yard, multiple tracks and points, shunting space and loading docks. Now the suburban lines were all that was left. The shopping centre was the standard late nineties job-three levels of steel and glass, air-conditioned interior with a water garden in the centre, escalators to the specialist shops on two mezzanines. The ground floor held the chain supermarket and the usual array of necessity shops-hardware, newsagent, pharmacy, liquor etc. There was also a medical clinic on that level, an NRMA office and a Medicare branch.
The administration centre was on the top level and Tabitha Miles’ office was in a corner of the building with a view towards Iron Cove. Ms Miles was an impressive-looking woman in her mid-thirties. She was tall and straight with thin features that missed being pretty by a long way but succeeded in being attractive. Her dark hair was drawn back severely and in her black suit and white blouse she looked ready for business at any hour of the day. She’d inspected my card, dealt with my refusal of coffee and had me seated while I was still catching my breath from the two substantial flights of stairs. My trainer has instructed me to avoid escalators except when drunk or severely wounded.
A flash of even white teeth. ‘Well, Mr Hardy. I’m glad to see that Brian has done something at last.’
I showed my own less even, less white teeth in a grin. ‘Are you suggesting he’s been slow off the mark, Ms Miles?’
‘Snail’s pace. I’d have had someone in weeks ago. But, I have to admit, probably from a bigger firm.’
‘Mr Morgan’s concerned about publicity. With me, you don’t get any.’
‘I see.’ She got as much scepticism into that as it’s possible to get. ‘And what do you propose to do?’
‘Look and listen. What security firm do you use?’
‘Braithwaite.’
‘They’re okay. I’ll need a pass to identify myself to any of their people and not be hampered.’
She made a note. No rings on her capable-looking hands. Shortish nails, clear polish, a no-nonsense gold wristwatch. ‘That’s easy. And
…?’
‘A list of leaseholders and their current status with you; a rundown on your staff, like cleaners, car park attendants…’
‘That’s all contracted out.’
‘Of course. A list of the contractors then.’
‘You’re suggesting this is an inside action.’
‘Am I?’
‘Aren’t you?’
‘Inside, outside, a bit of both or nothing at all. Just a heap of unrelated incidents. What d’you think?’
‘I’m not paid to think like that.’
‘I’d have thought it was your area of responsibility.’
She bit her lip. ‘I have limited authority and limited responsibility.’
It hurt her like hell to say it and I decided to let things lie there. I arranged to collect the pass that evening when I came back to see how the Petersham Plaza was doing on a Thursday night a month and a bit from Christmas.
Four days later I’d made a couple of friends, several enemies, and was none the wiser about the shopping centre’s troubles. I’d scouted the shops in the vicinity that were likely to be hurt by the competition. Some had closed up already and the rest seemed to be battling on well enough with a captive market among the ethnic communities in the area or vigorous discounting policies. I’d hung around the centre at various times of the day and night poking my nose in where it wasn’t welcome. The Vietnamese couple in the hot bread shop liked me because I praised their croissants; the guy in the sporting goods store liked me because he was a boxing fan and we shot the shit together. Another on my side was Grant, the young man who collected the supermarket trolleys and who was thinking of doing the private enquiry agents course at TAFE, and hung on my every word and gesture.
The Braithwaite guards hated my guts. I’d annoyed them by insisting on inspecting all entrances and exits and running checks on some of the shops’ barcode alarm devices. I’d also made a few minor changes to the security arrangements. Just the night before, a fat guy who bulged in ugly fashion out of his grey and blue uniform told me to get lost when I asked him for a copy of his inspection itinerary. I showed him the pass and it only seemed to make him angrier.
‘What’s your problem, mate?’ I said. ‘We’re both just trying to do a job here.’
He gave me two fingers and stalked off with as much dignity as you can muster when you’re twenty kilos overweight. I used the administration’s computer to get his name-Roger Mason-and the times he was on duty. The computer threw up a picture of him in all his jowly, red-haired, freckled ugliness. Perhaps that was enough to make him angry.
The Christmas push was well underway when I showe
d up at the centre in the middle of a Tuesday morning that happened to be a pupil-free day for the local high schools. I didn’t think it likely that there was anything organised among the younger set, but I’d seen several groups of teenagers sporting some of the insignia of gangdom-reversed caps, earrings, studded jackets-and I reckoned that if trouble was going to come from that quarter a non-school day might provide the spark.
I mooched around the centre, calling in here and there, keeping an eye open for pickpockets and shoplifters, although they tell me the experts have got these occupations down to a fine, virtually undetectable with the naked eye, art. I saw nothing suspicious and if there was someone casing the hi-fi and video store with a view to staging a raid, I couldn’t spot it. The day was warm and the airconditioning was working hard. I rambled through the heat in the car park and was grateful for the cool of the interior. By midday, despite three cups of coffee, I was almost asleep when it happened. I heard shouts and breaking glass from a point about as far from where I was in the centre as it was possible to be. I sprinted towards the sound.
Glass was still breaking and women were screaming as I rounded a corner. About twenty youths were fighting in the middle of the concourse, throwing punches, wrestling and hurling bottles at each other. The windows of the hardware store, the beauty salon and the pet shop were smashed. Several of the youths had grabbed supermarket, trolleys and were using them like battering rams against their opponents. A big denim-clad type with a polka-dotted bandanna around his head was bellowing like a berserker as he lifted trolleys and threw them at the reinforced glass doors of the supermarket, which had apparently been closed and locked when the trouble started.
I waded in, breaking struggling kids apart with short punches and elbow work, tripping them and shouting at them to pack it in. There wasn’t as much resistance as I expected and I eventually confronted the berserker who had hurt his hand throwing a trolley. Nevertheless, he wrenched a pole from the collapsed awning of the pet shop and came at me swinging. I waited for him with my feet well spread and my body balanced. His wild swing went over my head and he made the mistake of trying to hang on to the pole. I jolted him the ribs, collapsed his right knee with a kick and thought he was finished. I turned to take on a kid squirting paint from an aerosol can and would have lost my head if it hadn’t been for Grant, the aspiring private enquiry agent.
The one I’d flattened had taken off his bandanna, wrapped it around one end of a metre-long shard of plate glass, and was coming at me on his gimpy leg like a crippled but deadly assassin. Grant cut a swathe through retreating battlers who were running out of energy fast and planted his right foot solidly in the lower back of my would-be executioner. The glass flew from his hand as he skidded across the tiled surface, now wet with blood and water spilling from broken fish tanks in the pet shop. I was about to thank Grant when a trolley propelled at speed caught me in the kidneys and sent me flying.
I crashed into the bench beside the escalator and banged my head against an arm rest as the wind left me in a rush. I lay on the ground fighting for breath while I watched, with dimmed vision, the invaders retreat before a belated, baton-wielding charge by Mason, the fat Braithwaite guard. I saw Grant bend down and unwrap the spotted bandanna from around what was left of the piece of glass as its owner limped away. If the bandanna was a trophy, he’d earned it.
Grant hurried over to help me and I thanked him as I came out of my fug. Mason stood among the debris and looked accusingly at me. For a man who’d arrived full of fight he was amazingly unrumpled and his uniform was innocent of the underarm sweat patches it usually displayed. There’d been some minor looting from the window of the hardware store, power tools mostly, but the greatest damage was the breakage inside the pet shop, the broken windows and some trashing of pot plants, rubbish bins and supermarket trolleys.
Mason supervised the clean-up efficiently enough. I put in a good word for Grant with the supermarket manager and went to the medical clinic to get some painkillers for my throbbing head. While I was waiting Grant turned up in need of a dressing for a cut on his hand. He had the bandanna wrapped around his fist and was looking pale.
‘I know that guy, Mr Hardy,’ he said.
‘Cliff. What guy?’
‘The one with the bit of glass. His name’s Lance Lee. He was caught shoplifting in the supermarket the day it opened. A guard let him go with a reprimand. He’s a bad guy-does and deals drugs, steals cars, bashes people…’
‘Do you know where he lives?’
He shook his head. ‘But I can find out.’
‘Safely?’
‘Sure.’
‘If you can do it safely that’d be a big help. But keep your distance. Don’t put yourself in it.’
A nurse arrived with a bandage for him and some Panadol for me. She unwrapped the dirty bandanna, cleaned and sterilised Grant’s cut, said there was a piece of glass in it and produced some tweezers. She probed. It must have hurt and he took it well.
Half an hour later I was sitting in a room in the administration area reviewing tapes from the centre’s several closed-circuit video cameras. I’d had these relocated from their existing positions, which hadn’t changed since they were installed. The original positioning hadn’t looked good enough to me. The first few tapes showed nothing of interest, but then one brought me to full alert. It was of an area near a rear entrance, somewhat shielded off from normal view. The picture quality was good and I watched Mason conferring with Lance Lee and one of the other youths. He gesticulated, pointed and made throwing motions, clearly giving instructions on what was to happen where.
‘Got you, you bastard,’ I said.
Then Mason showed the pair something which I couldn’t see. This was state-of-the-art equipment. I froze the frame and enhanced the picture until I could make out the detail. When the enlarged image came into sharp focus I could see that Mason had a copy of the photograph that had been taken for my security pass. It was a good likeness. Mason indicated my height by holding his hand up at about the level of Lance Lee’s head. Close enough. Lee and the other kid nodded. Lee showed decayed teeth in a grin, took his bandanna from his pocket and tied it around his head. He slammed his right fist into his cupped left palm. I knew how he felt-now it was personal.
I commandeered the tape of the confab between Mason and the two rioters and one showing the fracas in progress. There were several courses of action open to me. I could take the evidence to Braithwaite or to Brian Morgan or Tabitha Miles or all three. It was a fair bet that with Mason out of the picture the trouble would stop, but I couldn’t believe that the slob was running an agenda of his own. What was really important was to find out who was behind him and why.
The security roster told me that Mason’s shift ended at 3 pm. I was about to visit a friend who is a video expert when Tabitha Miles cornered me on my way to the car park.
‘You don’t seem to be making much progress, Mr Hardy,’ she said. ‘That brawl this morning probably drove away thousands of dollars of business.’
I was in no mood to be reproached. I nodded. ‘Could have. That was certainly the intention. That and nothing more.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I’m sorry, Ms Miles. I’ll be reporting to Brian Morgan, not you, but you’re wrong. I am making progress. I expect to have this thing wrapped up soon.’
Her thin-lipped smile was almost winsome. ‘Do you? And where are you off to now?’
‘Home for a rest. I took a nasty bump on the head this morning.’
She nodded unsympathetically and went on her way.
At four fifteen I was sitting in my car outside a house in Five Dock. I’d followed Mason in his red Commodore. He’d stopped for a six-pack of beer and a pizza and was looking pleased with himself as he waddled from the carport to his front door. Beside me I had blown-up stills from the tapes showing Mason in close consultation with the glass-breakers and a few shots of the rumpus in full swing with Lee and the other kid clearly in focus
.
I waited until I calculated he’d have fed his face with a few slices of pizza and was into his second can before I knocked on the door. Wearing track pants and a T-shirt, he opened it, chewing, and I barged past him into the hallway and kicked the door shut behind me.
‘What the fuck…’ He spewed crumbs and shaped up to throw the beer can in his hand.
‘You throw that, Mason, and you’ll be spitting teeth instead of crumbs.’
He dropped his arm and I took the can from him. ‘Let’s sit down and look at some pictures.’
The living room was messy, strewn with newspapers, magazines and cardboard. It looked as if he lived on VB and pizza. I’d underestimated him; he’d started on his third can. I steered him to a chair and pushed him into it. Without his uniform and baton he was a nothing. I took a can, opened it and had a drink. He sucked on his own can and found some courage.
‘You’ve just got yourself the sack. You-’
‘Shut up!’ I opened the envelope and spread the pictures out over the cheese and pepperoni. Somehow, they made a more dramatic statement against that background.
‘You’re gone,’ I said. ‘You set up that brawl and told those kids to pay special attention to me. I’d say that was worth a broken nose and a few teeth from me now, the boot from your employers and a police charge. And just look at the way you’ve got your arm around that kid’s shoulders. I’d say his lawyer’d go for a sexual abuse angle as a defence.’
‘Jesus, Hardy. I never done nothing like that.’
‘It’s not what you’ve done, mate, it’s the way it can be made to look. Think about Lance Lee. You got him off a shoplifting charge. I wonder what was between you…’
‘Nothing.’ His hands were shaking. Maybe in all this bluffing I’d hit a nerve.
‘That other kid wouldn’t be sixteen…’
‘Please, Hardy.’
‘Okay. I’m a reasonable man. You tell me who put you up to this and I’ll keep you out of it.’
‘How?’
‘Look. You’re small fry. No one’s interested in you. But someone’s making a big play of some kind. Corporate stuff’s my bet. They play by their own rules. If the player I’m working for gets the upper hand over the other players, he wins the game. That’s all there is to it. They sort it out and I get paid.’
