Craig was almost jumping up and down with excitement as he envisaged the scenario. To me, it was all a bit strange and somehow unreal. I couldn’t fully believe in these two wide-ranging, desperado book thieves, but there was something infectious about his enthusiasm.
‘The main interest for me,’ I said, ‘apart from earning my appropriate fee, is what the fuck they’re playing at.’
‘Me, too.’
‘Set it up, Craig. I’m in.’
* * * *
Craig issued the catalogue and gave Northern Trekking a prominent place with a photograph. It was priced at a hefty four hundred and fifty dollars. The launching of the catalogue, a special evening social event for the regulars to place their orders, would be a couple of days before the items went on sale. I checked on the video surveillance gear. A four-way split screen gave good coverage of the whole shop. Crisp black and white images and a running time clock. The equipment had the capacity to record all four images on a hard disk and transfer them to a cassette or a CD. Must have cost a bomb and was way over the top for a shop like Craig’s, but he was on a mission.
I told Lily, my part-time partner who was staying over at my place that night, about the case and she said it sounded like fun.
‘How’s he going to pay you?’ she asked. ‘In books?’
‘Not a bad idea. Build up a decent credit.’
‘You’ve got an unread pile beside the bed.’
‘That’s because you distract me.’
‘I’m off to Canberra tomorrow for a couple of days. Give you time to catch up.’
* * * *
As Craig had predicted, there was an early rush at the opening and no chance for anyone to do any stealing. I had a chair that was deliberately not too comfortable, and Craig’s office had a coffee machine. I’d brought sandwiches and a wide-neck bottle to piss in. As stake-outs go, it was one of the most comfortable I’d undertaken.
After a while watching the screens became boring, especially as nothing happened. Then something did: a woman wearing a loose, full-length coat took a book from a shelf and dropped it into an inside pocket. Then she browsed for a second or two before unhurriedly leaving the shop. Nothing I could do. The book she took wasn’t one of the pricey items but Craig was still out a few dollars. He was doing a brisk trade, though, taking orders.
After a while the numbers dropped off and there were empty spaces on the shelves, fewer browsers, fewer placing orders. Danger time. I kept a close watch on people coming through the door. Would they come in singly or in a pair? My bet was singly. Overall, there had been more women than men but there was no reason the thief couldn’t be a woman, or a man with a female accomplice or any other combination. I’d have put my money on a woman to do the distracting and a man to do the lifting. Glass cutting isn’t easy, although this time it wasn’t necessary.
The lights went down and the screens went blank. I’ll swear it was only for a split second, the blink of an eye, but it happened. As soon as the screen was active again I homed in on the stand that held the book. It was still there. I breathed a sigh of relief and went on with my watch. Coffee and sandwiches. The crowd thinned away to almost nothing, and Craig must have told the few people remaining that he was closing because they filed out obediently.
I came down the stairs. ‘Did you see the lights flicker?’ I said. ‘What was that?’
‘Something to do with the grid, I guess. It happens, but I’ve got generator backup because of some manuscripts that have to be kept at a set temperature. You didn’t lose picture, did you?’
‘Blink of an eye only. Anyway, the book’s still there.’
‘That’s disappointing. I felt sure they’d try on day one.’ He drifted over to the display stand. ‘Jesus H Christ!’
I was snooping at the credit card slips. I practically hurdled the counter to get to him. ‘What?’
He held the book in his hand. ‘This is a dummy—a fucking fake.’
* * * *
We pieced it together. Somehow, someone had tripped the fuses located near the front of the shop. In the time the power was off the book had been switched. Craig was cursing himself for not thinking about the power supply and I was telling him it was my fault for not checking on it. That was true.
‘Shit, I’m out six hundred bucks and we learned nothing.’
‘That’s what you paid for it?’
‘I told you not to ask.’
‘Okay. But when we play back the video we should be able to see who was near the fuse box and who was near the display stand.’
We replayed the footage captured on the hard disk. At the time there were four people in the shop. One stood between two big shelves, spectacles hanging from his mouth, peering at the titles. One was Craig, busying himself behind the counter. Two were on the move, one towards the fuse box, the other towards the display stand. The trouble was, they must have known exactly how the cameras were placed because they kept their backs to them both on the approach and on the retreat. They wore coats and hats and were medium-sized. Impossible to tell their ages and my feeling that the one who’d dealt with the fuses was a woman was just that, a feeling, a guess, based on the way the person moved.
The browser took a book from the shelf, replaced his glasses and went to the counter.
Craig took the order with less than his usual enthusiasm. ‘Picked Somerset Maugham’s Ashenden,’ Craig said when the door closed, shaking his head in disappointment.
‘Good taste.’
‘Yeah, but we learned bugger-all from the exercise.’
‘Not quite. They knew about the cameras and exactly where they were placed. How would they know that?’
‘Search me. I had it done when the shop was closed for the Easter break. Never showed it to anyone except you.’
‘And they knew about the fuse box, although I suppose that’s fairly easy to spot. But it means they’ve spent some time in the shop and checked things out. And had that dummy copy all prepared. Meticulous.’
‘Bastards! What can we do now?’
I replayed the footage. Another person had entered the shop as the thieves were leaving. I froze the frame.
‘Who’s that? She might have seen something about them that could be useful.’
Craig riffled through the order slips. ‘She chose something. Here it is—Oscar, Picture of Dorian Grey—MasterCard.’
‘Give me the number. I can track her down.’
‘How?’
‘Trade secret. You know how to operate that equipment. Pick out a couple of the clearest shots and blow them up. Could be something we’ve missed. I’ll get back to you if I turn up anything useful.’
I was mostly humouring him, but he seemed to take a little heart. He scribbled down the credit card number.
‘Thanks anyway, Cliff.’
‘We ain’t done yet.’
* * * *
At home, with Lily away on her journalistic assignment, I poured a solid scotch over ice and was ready to turn on Lateline when there was a knock at the door. I opened it, drink in hand. A medium-sized man wearing a long coat and a hat and carrying an overnight bag stood there.
‘Mr Hardy,’ he said, ‘my name is Sylvester Browne— Browne with an e.’ He dug in the bag and held up a book—Northern Trekking. ‘I think we should have a talk, don’t you?’
I ushered him through to the living room. He opened the bag and stacked a number of the books on a chair.
‘Fourteen copies. The total in Australia.’ He opened his wallet and laid three one hundred dollar notes on top of the pile. ‘Payment for the damage to three glass cases.’
My jaw must have dropped. All I could think to do was offer him a drink.
‘Thank you. Whatever you’re having. May I take off my hat and coat?’
I nodded and he draped the coat over the stair rail and put the hat on the post. I recovered my wits and asked him to sit down.
I came back with his drink and the bottle and a bowl of ice and sat opposite hi
m.
‘Cheers,’ he said.
He was pale, thin-faced, with sandy hair neatly parted. Horn-rimmed glasses. He wore a fawn v-neck sweater with a collar and tie, brown trousers and black Oxfords—not a good look. He took a solid swig of the scotch and let out a contented sigh.
‘I’m glad you brought the bottle in, Mr Hardy, because I have a peculiar tale to tell and it may take some time.’
I guessed him to be in his fifties. There was an accent, South African or thereabouts, and the slight clicking of false teeth. I drank, nodded, indicated my willingness to listen.
‘I am a bookworm, Mr Hardy ...’
He told me that he was South African, an academic historian who specialised in nineteenth-century history. During his researches he had come across a letter written by EB Lyell to a friend in Cape Town. Lyell’s vessel, the Esmeralda, was held up for repairs in Mauritius and Lyell had sent a letter home by another ship that would get there earlier. This friend was a mining engineer of no importance until he went into politics and became a minister in the post Boer War government. The letter was included among his papers, which Browne was studying.
‘The letter was discursive, rambling even, and I have a suspicion that Lyell may have been under the influence.’ Browne raised his glass. ‘He alluded to his book and said that he had arranged to send some copies ahead of him and some to England and left some in Australia in the care of a man named Carter whom he described as his agent. He said that he had discovered a rich reef of gold while on his expedition in northern Australia and that he’d marked the spot on a map in one of the copies of the book, which he’d intended to keep with him at all times.’
‘Hang on,’ I said. ‘I’ve been told that he faked those expeditions.’
‘Not the first one. That was genuine. May I continue?’
I topped him up and he went on. ‘Lyell was in distress when he wrote this letter. He’d found, to his dismay, that the three copies of the book he had with him did not have the marked map. He’d been drinking a good deal after being exposed as a fraud in Australia, something he freely admitted to his friend, and now he didn’t know where the marked book was. Possibly still in Australia, or on its way to England or South Africa.
‘I took early retirement from the university on a generous settlement and I’ve devoted the last few years to tracking down the copies of Lyell s book. Fifty, as you know. I found twenty-three copies in South Africa and fourteen here in Australia. Three went down with the Esmeralda, leaving ten.’
‘Always assuming some haven’t just been lost or are mouldering away somewhere.’
‘Remarkably, that’s not the case. I located the papers of Richard Carter, Lyell’s agent, in the Oxley Library in Brisbane. They clearly show that he dispatched ten copies to his agent in England.’
‘You’ve been thorough.’
‘It’s something I pride myself on.’
‘Also criminal. Why didn’t you just buy up the copies as you found them here? You say you’ve got the money.’
‘I haven’t had a lot of excitement in my life, Mr Hardy. I was a dud at sport, which was all that counted when I was at school. I’m a bachelor with no children and only a few relatively insignificant books to my credit. I did it to see if I could do something out of the ordinary. I did it for fun, and now I’ve made recompense.’
I poured us some more scotch and asked him how he’d known what was going on at Craig’s shop. He said he smelled a rat when Craig’s catalogue came out and he conducted a careful surveillance of the shop. He’d seen me arrive, followed me to my office and knew my profession. He knew where the cameras were positioned and he found someone to help him disable the power supply.
‘Who?’ I asked.
He smiled. ‘Just a friend. Someone who’s helped me in my little escapade.’
He was determined to construct the whole thing as a sort of goofy adventure and I couldn’t blame him. It was, and Craig and I were both going to come out of it okay. Craig could restore the books to his colleagues and I could take credit for having resolved the matter. He read my mind.
‘Mr Minson will be satisfied with your efforts, won’t he?’
‘I guess so.’
‘You can imagine my disappointment when this last volume turned out not to be the one. I had high hopes of it. I always intended to return the books or to pay handsomely for the right one if I found it. But seeing that Mr Minson took the matter so seriously and went to some expense, it seems only fitting to return them to him.’
‘He’ll be grateful.’
‘Yes, but it would embarrass me to do it in person and his reaction might be problematical. I thought it best to ask you to do it.’
‘How did you know I wouldn’t be problematical?’
‘I’ve observed you. You strike me as someone with a sense of humour and of course what I’m doing is comical, ridiculous. You’ve been hospitable and patient, bearing out my judgement. I have a favour to ask. Could you please not reveal what I was about until you next hear from me? I’m off to England tomorrow. I don’t know how long the search will take me, could be months or years. But I’d be glad if you could keep it a secret until I let you know the result, one way or another.’
He was obsessed, more than a little mad, but somehow likeable. I thought of El Dorado and Lasseter’s lost reef. ‘It’s a deal,’ I said. ‘And good luck to you, Mr Browne with an e.’
<
* * * *
Patriotism
C
layton Harrison was someone I’d known in the army. He was a fairly gung-ho type who stayed in longer than me. But we’d got along. We hadn’t exactly saved each other’s lives, but when you’ve been together in mutual support in some of those dangerous spots, there’s a bond. Now he was the editor of a couple of magazines of the outdoor persuasion—shooting, fishing, climbing. His office was in Newtown where I’d recently moved my modest operation and we ran into each other, had an occasional drink, yarned. Then he phoned, sounding serious, and asked me to come and see him.
His office was something of a macho shout of defiance, but there were two or three women working there who didn’t seem to mind. One showed me into Clayton’s bunker. No preliminaries. Clayton slid a glossy magazine across the desk. The cover showed a young man in semi-combat gear with backpack, slogging up a bush track. The name of the publication was Dare to Survive.
‘Don’t bother to open it,’ Clayton said. ‘You can imagine the contents—fitness instruction, equipment, weapons, medication, plenty of advertising. Plus articles on the psychology of readiness and ways of identifying enemies. Quizzes about paramilitary and terrorist matters. A rich brew.’
I flipped it open anyway. Classy photography, plenty of detachable coupons for advertised products.
‘What’s the problem, Clay—competition?’
‘No, not the same market. The problem is that I’ve got this son. He’s into all this stuff in a big way. Now this mob,’ he tapped the magazine, ‘run a sort of camp in the bush— survival stuff, toughen-you-up crap, orienteering, paint-gun exercises, that sort of thing.’
I nodded. ‘Like Outward Bound—used to be sponsored by Phil the Greek. Probably still is.’
‘Don’t take the piss, Cliff. This is paramilitary stuff. It worries me that Gary’s getting into it. His mother tells me he’s all set to go on the next bivouac—they use the term— and she can’t talk him out of it.’
‘How old is he? Is he a big bloke like you?’
‘He’s eighteen—no—nineteen. Yeah he’s about the size I was at that age, before I put on the flab.’
‘He’s an adult. What harm can it do?’
‘There’s more to it. Shit, I wish I was allowed to smoke in my own bloody office. The Nanny state is here, wouldn’t you say?’
‘I couldn’t care less. Get to the point, Clay.’
‘I split up with Gary’s mother years ago. Harriet, a bit of a ball-breaker. Okay, I wasn’t husband material. Anyway, give h
er her due, she didn’t stop me seeing Gary through all the important years—school, sports teams and that. I wasn’t very reliable though. We never got close. He’s at uni now. Just, started, part time. I offered to pay upfront but he didn’t want to know. He works as a motorcycle courier— cunt of a job.’
‘Shows independence.’
‘Yeah. But Harriet took up with this Arab bloke a couple of years ago. Sirdar something or other. I think he helped push Gary in the direction we’re talking about and I’m. worried that ...’
Corris, Peter Page 16
