Beware of the Dog ch-15

by Peter Corris

  Beware of the Dog

  ( Cliff Hardy - 15 )

  Peter Corris

  Peter Corris

  Beware of the Dog

  1

  Dan Sanderson cleared his throat, ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he said. ‘I’d like you to meet Mr Cliff Hardy, who has been a private enquiry agent for…’

  ‘Longer than some of you have been alive,’ I said.

  It got a laugh, but it was true. Some of the bright young faces looking at me didn’t have twenty years on them and that was how long I’d been in the business. We were gathered in a room in the Petersham College of TAFE where I was doing a guest lecturer spot in the Commercial Agents and Private Enquiry Agents course. When I got my licence it was different. All you needed were some solid citizens to vouch for you and an insurance company to give you the appropriate cover. As a former army officer and investigator for an insurance company, I had no trouble qualifying. Now, you have to do a course in small business practice, legal principles and other things. I’m not sure I could pass it. Dan showed me the text books-very thick and not at all racy. But I didn’t have to pass it. Instead, I was on the instructing end.

  I talked for about forty minutes, giving them the spiel Glen Withers and I had worked out. I told them about the unwritten rules of confidentiality, the necessity for good relations with the police force, the advisability of having a friend in a newspaper office and various other short cuts to success. I told jokes, like the one about the client who had failed his driver’s licence test ten times and was convinced there was a conspiracy against him. I’d taken him seriously for a time. Then I’d stuck some L-plates on my car and had him take me for a drive. End of case. And I told them about some sad ones, like the man who was sure that he was the father of his younger brother.

  ‘The main thing to remember,’ I said in the wind-up, ‘is that, as a PEA, you are at the end of a long line. People have been let down by the law, their families, their friends and all the authorities listed in the phone book. Often, you are a last resort. That’s either an opportunity to exploit them, a reason to dismiss them or a challenge. The choice is up to you.’

  I got a hand. Then it was question time. Nothing very tough: Did I carry a gun? Sometimes. Did I ever break the law? Not if I could help it. How many men had I killed? Two, one in defence of someone else’s life, one by accident.

  ‘You should be asking me if I can name all fifty of the United States of America.’

  A blonde woman spoke from the back of the room. ‘You mean the work is often boring and that you have to kill time.’

  ‘That’s right,’ I said.

  Many eyes turned towards her.

  ‘And can you name all fifty?’

  ‘Usually,’ I said.

  Time was up and the students trooped out of the room. Dan Sanderson, usually a restrained type, shook my hand. ‘That went great, Cliff. Will you do the other class?’

  Glen Withers had jacked it all up. Senior Sergeant Glenys Withers, that is. She was taking a break from hands-on policing, and teaching at the Sydney annexe of the Goulburn Police Academy. She had a flat in Petersham and spent three or four nights a week there; the other nights, her visits to Goulburn and my work permitting, she was at my place in Glebe. We were being very cautious about the whole thing-I had yet to sleep at Glen’s flat. She had met Dan in a coffee shop and they got talking about their different teaching jobs-he was a lecturer in the commerce department of the Petersham College-and Glen produced a real live private eye for his students.

  I’d enjoyed the lecture. Who wouldn’t? Applause, appreciative young faces. ‘Sure, Dan,’ I said.

  ‘I could probably get you a few tutorials, too,’ he said. ‘Could be the beginning of a new career for you, Cliff. You’re a natural.’

  I shook my head. ‘I don’t think so. Once was fine, twice might not be so good and after that…’

  ‘Well, see how it goes. Gotta rush. Thanks, Cliff. Give my best to Glen. The cheque’ll be in the mail.’

  ‘Better be,’ I growled. He laughed and hurried out of the room. I gathered up the cards I’d scrawled a few notes on and followed him. The College is a grim, redbrick structure that looks forbidding from the street, but the library, administrative offices and classrooms are arranged in a three-storey semi-circle around a small garden, making it all surprisingly bright inside. I walked down the big-windowed corridors enjoying the atmosphere. It had been a long time since my own, brief, university days, and things seemed to have changed enormously. There was an air of informality that had been totally lacking in my time when we wore jackets and ties and tried to look older than we were. The students here were all ages and didn’t care how they looked.

  ‘Mr Hardy. Could I speak to you?’

  The woman who’d twigged about the boredom component of the job was standing under an archway at the top of the steps that led down to Crystal Street. I judged her age as late twenties; she was tall and slim with a pile of blonde hair held back by a couple of combs and a velvet band. Her clothes were studentish-loose top, long skirt, boots. Her eyes were an alarmingly penetrating blue; they seemed to go right through me, out across the street, over the used car yard opposite and up beyond the rooftops.

  I stuffed the cards into the pocket of my leather jacket and took the hand she held out. Smart move, to stick out your hand when you want to talk to someone. Takes a double-barrelled rudeness to snub you. ‘Of course,’ I said. ‘Ms…?’

  She laughed. ‘Mrs. I’m old-fashioned. Mrs Paula Wilberforce. Paula.’

  She wasn’t as sure of herself as she wanted to be. Her hand was smooth and warm. She looked the type to trick herself out with earrings and bangles, but the only jewellery she wore was a wedding ring.

  ‘Hello, Paula. What can I do for you?’

  ‘Are you going to be doing any more teaching in that course?’

  ‘I don’t think so. It was just a one-off for me. Something I haven’t done before. I’ll do a repeat performance for the other class, but that’ll be it.’

  Her nicely-shaped face fell into lines of disappointment. ‘Oh, I’m sorry.’

  ‘Come on. At a guess you were the smartest one there. You’re not going to have any trouble getting your ticket.’ I glanced down at the backpack she had on the ground between her boots. It was stuffed with books and folders. ‘You’re obviously a worker.’

  ‘I am,’ she said fiercely. ‘That’s the trouble. I only enrolled in this course as backup to my PhD.’

  I must have started to edge away at that point. There’s something about the intensity of people who want to be doctors of philosophy that disturbs me. ‘Well, I’m sorry I can’t help you.’

  She grabbed five fingers’ worth of leather sleeve. ‘You can! You can. You see, I’m doing my thesis on the role of the private enquiry agent in the legal system, and I’m having terrible trouble gathering material.’

  ‘I’m not surprised,’ I said. ‘We don’t exactly go around shouting about our place in the scheme of things.’

  ‘No, but when I heard you talk today I thought I might actually get something useful out of this course. You’ve had the experience.’

  ‘That’s true,’ I said. ‘But…’

  ‘Will you at least give me an interview? A long, in-depth session to let me get a handle on how experience feeds into the philosophical…’

  That was enough for me. I pulled free of her and headed down the steps. ‘Afraid not, Mrs Wilberforce. Professional code’s against it. Sorry. Best of luck with your studies.’

  I could feel those blue eyes boring into my spine as I walked along Crystal Street. There was something scary about her. I’d parked my car in a side street and I actually checked to make sure she hadn’t f
ollowed me before I drove off.

  The thing is, business is slow. There’s plenty of work around at the nastier end-industrial espionage, bugging, various forms of intimidation-but the bread and butter work of summons serving, bodyguarding and money moving has shrunk. This is one of the reasons Glen encouraged me to take on the lecturing-we were sitting in the backyard at Glebe, catching a few feint rays of June afternoon sun. For no good reason, I was having my third glass of wine after lunch.

  ‘You’re under-worked,’ Glen said.

  ‘Is there such a thing?’

  ‘Not for some people, but there is for you. You’ve got a low boredom threshold.’

  ‘Are you teaching community policing to the boys and girls in blue, or psychology?’

  ‘Don’t be snaky, Cliff. Your mortgage on this place must be down to nothing by now. Business is bad. You need something else to occupy your time and energies. I’m only trying to help.’

  I put my arm around her as we leaned against the fibro wall of the outside laundry and bathroom. ‘I know you are, love. And you’re right. No kids, credit cards under control and I own the car, such as it is. There is a bit of mortgage left, though. I had to buy Cyn out, remember, and she hiked up the price.’

  ‘The dreaded Cyn,’ Glen murmured, ‘I wonder if I’ll ever get to meet her?’

  ‘Don’t see why. I haven’t met her for over ten years.’

  There wasn’t much to say to that, but when Glen proposed that I talk to Dan Sanderson about lecturing to his students I couldn’t think of any way to refuse. Glen had a knack of being right in advance of me finding she was right. I was getting used to it.

  As I drove to Darlinghurst I was thinking that she’d been right again-after all, I’d enjoyed the time with the students and had been offered another spot. I could have scooted around the streets to Glen’s flat and waited for her but we had our rules. That night we were meeting for a meal in Glebe before going to my place and such arrangements were sacrosanct. I hadn’t been into the office for two days and there was always a chance that someone had slipped a note under the door asking for my help in finding Lassiter’s lost reef. I parked beside the church wall in St Peters Lane and entered the building for what must have been the three thousandth time. Stop it, I thought. You’ll be counting the number of stairs you’ve climbed next, multiplying fifty-eight by three thousand. You’re doing it already. Knock it off!

  There was nothing interesting under the door, where one of the other tenants, an iridologist, shoves my mail. That could mean a lot of things. The iridologist might be sick, or she might be pissed off with me for not availing myself of her services, or there just might not be anything interesting coming my way. The thought depressed me and I sat at my desk watching the sun go down at around 4.30. It was the shortest day of the year, still three hours to seeing Glen and dinner time. There was only one thing to do.

  I’d had one glass of red from the office cask and was thinking about a second when the phone rang. I grabbed it with relief.

  ‘Hardy Investigations. Cliff Hardy speaking.’

  ‘I thought you might be there. You have a lonely look.’

  A woman’s voice. Familiar. Who?

  ‘Are you sure you’ve got the right number?’

  ‘I’m sure, Mr Hardy. This is Paula Wilberforce. I looked you up in the book. I’m sorry if I alarmed you this afternoon.’

  ‘You didn’t alarm me, Mrs Wilberforce.’

  ‘I think I did. Anyway, I wanted to apologise and to make it clear that nothing you tell me would ever be attributed to you in print. I’m simply asking for help, Mr Hardy. Like one of your clients about whom you spoke so eloquently today.’

  Put it down to the early sunset or the wine or the total absence of anything interesting to do beyond the few routine jobs I had on hand-the upshot was that I agreed to allow Paula Wilberforce to interview me in my office the following day at 11.00 a.m. She sounded pathetically grateful, but I could see her blue eyes glittering. The woman was dangerous, even over the phone. I was thinking better of it as soon as I replaced the receiver, but what could I do? The snaky side of me said that it was Glen’s fault for getting me into the academic racket in the first place. It would give us something interesting to talk about over dinner. I drew off another glass and stared through the window at the lights of the city. The angry traffic noises and the static of men and machines in conflict drifted up to me. Suddenly, I wanted to be up at Whitebridge, at Glen’s cottage overlooking the ocean with the lights of Newcastle away to the north and the sound of the waves on the beach. And I couldn’t just up stakes and go because I had Mrs Wilberforce to see tomorrow and Dan Sanderson’s second class to talk to the day after that. To hell with it, I thought. Maybe I should do a PhD — Dr Cliff Hardy, Senior Lecturer in Detection and Personal Mismanagement…

  The knock at my door was sharp-anxious or angry. I called out, ‘Come in’ and stuck the glass in the top drawer. A woman entered from the gloom of the passageway. She was smartly dressed in a navy suit with a red blouse. As I eased up politely from my chair I saw that she was wearing nylon stockings and sneakers. She saw me looking and smiled. ‘I’ll explain,’ she said. ‘You’re Mr Hardy’

  I nodded. ‘Cliff Hardy. Please sit down. Your name is…?’

  Verity Lamberte. You’d better write it down. The Lamberte has an “e” on the end.’

  I wrote the name on a pad and added ‘35, dark brown, shoulder length, wedding ring, 170cm’-you never can tell with women, they can change their appearance in all sorts of cunning ways. Verity Lamberte was a vital, attractive sort of woman, a little too sharp-featured to be called good-looking, but with the confidence in her manners and gestures that good-looking women often have. She sat in my client chair, very composed and relaxed, with a big leather holdall on her lap. She unzipped the bag and held up a pair of expensive-looking high-heeled shoes. ‘I wear these to work and take them off the minute I can.’

  I nodded. ‘I would, too.’

  She smiled. ‘I was told you were a wit.’

  I was starting to like her and to wonder if she’d fancy a glass of cask red. “Who by?’ I said.

  ‘Barbara Winslow. The other reason I came in my runners is that I didn’t like the look of this building of yours after dark. I’ve got some Mace in my bag but I wouldn’t like to have to deal with some low-life while wearing high heels.’

  ‘I hope you locked your car.’

  ‘I did, and set the steering lock and the alarm.’

  “That should do it. You seem to be ready for anything, Mrs Lamberte. Are you sure you need a private investigator?’

  She put her hand into the bag and pulled out a package wrapped in brown paper. It was about the size of a thick paperback book and it had been sealed with masking tape. The package had been opened and the tape was now only partly holding the paper down. She slid it across the desk. ‘Have a look at this.’

  I released the tape where it was gripping and folded the paper back. Inside a lot of wadding consisting of strips torn from a newspaper, were six pistol cartridges-. 357 magnums, Winchester brand.

  ‘That was posted to my husband,’ Verity Lamberte said. ‘I believe he is planning to kill me.’

  2

  Mrs Lamberte told me that she and her husband, Patrick, were on the way to getting a divorce. The lawyers were working on a settlement.

  There’s quite a lot of property involved and, unfortunately, custody questions. We have two children.’

  ‘How long were you married, Mrs Lamberte?’

  ‘Ten years, five good ones and five very bad. Michelle was born in the happy time, she’s eight. Shane is only four. We’ve been separated for six months. I’m claiming custody of both kids.’

  ‘You referred to your work. What do you do? And what does your husband do?’

  ‘That’s diplomatic. Not many men would put the questions that way around.’

  ‘I’m learning,’ I said.

  ‘Patrick is… listen to me. I�
�m a partner in a small travel agency. I used to be an air hostess. We specialise in business travel. Patrick’s an architect and he has interests in other things.’

  ‘I gather the divorce isn’t amicable?’

  ‘Far from it. In the last few years before we separated we fought about everything.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘Money, me working, the kids, drugs, lovers real and imagined.’

  I leaned back in my chair. ‘That’s a rich mixture. Perhaps you’d better tell me about this package and we can work back from there.’

  ‘Right. Well, we… Patrick… God knows what you say under these circumstances. We have four acres in the Blue Mountains, at Mount Victoria. I heard that Patrick had been spending time up there so I knew he must have built some kind of a house. The land was worth about thirty thousand and that’s how it appeared in the preliminary settlement documents, so I went up there yesterday to check it out. Sure enough, he’d built a nice little timber and glass cabin looking out over the valley towards Bell’s Line of Road. D’you know the mountains, Mr Hardy?’

  ‘A bit. It sounds pretty good.’

  ‘It is. I’d say that property would be worth five times as much as Patrick has stated. That kind of fraud is typical of him.’

  ‘You searched the cabin and found the bullets?’

  ‘No. God, no. I wouldn’t do anything like that. I’m trying to play it very straight so as not to give him anything he can use to challenge the custody claim. That’s why I’m here.’

  ‘Go on about the bullets.’

  ‘I went into the Post Office for some change to make a phone call. I’d only been up to Mount Victoria once or twice, and not for at least five or six years, but the woman in there recognised me and gave me the package. As you see, it’s addressed to my husband.’

  A label on the package read: Lamberte c/- PO Mt Vic 2765.

  ‘Not exactly,’ I said.

  She shrugged. Well, I was never there, for God’s sake. It had to be for him. I think that’s why she gave it to me-to be malicious. They must know what Patrick does up there.’