by Peter Corris
‘I do. Two o’clock, here at Waterloo Barracks. Suit you?’
I agreed and thanked him. Then I rang Guyatt and made my meagre report. It didn’t sound like a thousand dollars’ worth to me but Guyatt didn’t complain. I asked him about the Laser and he told me that Julian had put a deposit on it and was paying it off from his army pay.
‘What finance company?’
‘Western, I believe. Madness! I lease, myself.’
I gave my name at a glassed-in, wired-for-sound guardbox. A silent sergeant escorted me down concrete paths, through sturdy metal gates and between some squat, undistinguished red brick boxes to a stylish aluminium and glass block. The sergeant led me down a corridor past some busy offices and knocked on a door marked Military Police.
‘Mr Hardy.’ A tall, thin man with sparse sandy hair got up from behind a desk and extended his hand. His face was about fifty years old; his uniform looked brand new.
‘Captain Renshaw.’ We shook hands and I sat in a straight-backed chair by the desk. The room was big enough to hold two other desks, three filing cabinets, a bar fridge and a large bookcase crammed with official-looking publications.
Renshaw pushed a pencil around on the desk in front of him. ‘Probably won’t surprise you to hear I looked up your record.’
‘No,’ I said.
‘Decent enough. See you don’t draw a pension or any benefits. Why’s that?’
I shrugged. ‘Stubborn. Let’s talk about Julian Guyatt. What sort of a soldier is he?’
Renshaw took a file from the top drawer, opened it and ran his eye down the first sheet. ‘Pretty good. No apparent weaknesses.’
‘Specialist?’
He shook his head. ‘No.’
‘Have you got a psychological profile there? Any progress reports? Anything that suggests a reason for desertion?’
Renshaw kept his eyes on my face. ‘Like …?’
‘Gambling, drink or drugs, sex?’
‘No.’
‘Why was Guyatt’s mother told he was on leave?’
‘A mistake. An apology was made.’
I grinned. ‘You’re not being a lot of help, Captain. How about a drink?’
He looked puzzled. ‘What?’
‘There’s a fridge behind you. I thought there might be a beer in it.’
He turned his upper body slowly and looked at the fridge as if he was seeing it for the first time. He reached forward and opened it. The seat of the swivel chair moved slightly. The fridge was empty. ‘Sorry.’
‘Don’t worry. I’d like to talk to a couple of his mates.’
Renshaw consulted the file again. ‘He doesn’t seem to have had any close friends in the service.’ He snapped the file shut. ‘That’s why we looked outside and why I think you’re wasting your time. Unless you have any information which could be of help to us.’
I stared at him … The temperature in the room seemed to have dropped. Renshaw stood; I heard the sergeant’s boots scrape the floor behind me. ‘Goodbye, Mr Hardy.’
As an investigative interview it wasn’t much to boast about, but I had got something. Captain Renshaw didn’t know where the fridge was or that his chair swivelled—he hadn’t spent more than ten minutes in that office before I arrived. If he was a military policeman, I was Frank Sinatra.
I wouldn’t say I was encouraged, but at least I had something to bite on. When I checked with the finance company and found that Guyatt’s payments had been made for three months ahead, I had a bit more. I did some more phoning—to the police to check on stolen and recovered cars and to a contact who can tell you useful things about credit cards. Result: several Lasers lost and found but not Julian Guyatt’s, and he hadn’t used his credit cards in the past month.
I slept on it and woke up feeling that I had enough to ring my client and make an appointment to talk to his wife.
The Guyatts lived in Greenwich, which isn’t a part of Sydney I know well. I drove there in fine weather in the mid-morning and missed the street because a tree from a front garden was drooping over the sign. The place seemed to have more trees per square metre than anywhere else east of the Blue Mountains. I found the street and parked outside the long, low, timber house. Some distance off a car backfired and birds flew up from the trees. The noise they made was deafening.
Mrs Guyatt was a large, heavy-featured woman who had given her looks to her son. She seemed commanding and firm of purpose but she was just the opposite. As soon as I mentioned Julian’s name her eyes moistened.
‘I’ll show you his room,’ she said.
‘I don’t think that’s necessary.’
She didn’t listen. She led me down a passage towards the rear of the house and showed me into a large bedroom that had too much built-in furniture, too much carpet and too much window. It was an ugly room that someone had tried too hard to make comfortable. I stood uncomfortably while Mrs Guyatt showed me Julian’s sports trophies—NSW Under-17 100-metres champion, 1984—tennis racquets and skis. There were no books. A poster on the back of the door showed a helicopter gunship in attack, a scene from Apocalypse Now.
Down in the over-elaborate sitting room we drank coffee while Mrs Guyatt told me what a good boy her son was.
‘Did he have any friends?’ I asked.
‘Certainly. Chris Petersen, Phil Cash, I’m sure there were others.’
‘These are army friends?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did you try to contact them?’
She looked distressed. ‘No. I didn’t know how …’
‘Do you know where they come from, Petersen and Cash, or anyone else he was friendly with?’
‘I don’t think … I believe Phil Cash was from Gundagai. I think Julian said that. Otherwise, no. What has happened?’
‘I’m trying to find out. You say you have your son’s passport?’
‘Yes. Julian left it here after his last trip to New Caledonia. Would you like to see it?’
I said I would. She left the room and came hurrying back, more flustered and distressed than ever. ‘It’s gone!’
‘You’re sure? You didn’t misplace it?’
‘No! I’ve never misplaced anything of Julian’s. How could I? Someone has been in here and taken it.’
I tried to calm her down but didn’t do a very good job. In the end I had to phone Guyatt at his office. He said he’d come home but he wasn’t pleased at being taken away from his work.
I became aware of the car following me when I was a few miles from the Guyatts’. A grey Corolla. The driver wasn’t bad at it but it’s almost impossible to follow someone who spots you and doesn’t want you there. I lost him in Hunters Hill between the Lane Cove and Gladesville bridges. I turned off Waterloo Road towards the city and outlaid some of Guyatt’s money in a parking station as close as I could get to the GPO.
The country phone directories were a brand-new set. In a few weeks they’d have pages missing and entries obliterated, but for now they were the private detective’s friend. There were only three numbers listed for Cash in Gundagai. The woman who answered at the first number had only been in the town a few weeks and gave a squawk of laughter when I asked her if she had a son. ‘I’m a lesbian feminist separatist,’ she said. ‘If I had a son it wouldn’t live twenty-four hours.’
The second number was the right one. Mrs Enid Cash confirmed that her son Phillip was in the regular army. ‘There hasn’t been an accident?’ she said anxiously.
‘No, nothing like that. I’m Captain Renshaw, Army Statistics. I’m afraid our records haven’t been as well kept as they might have been. I’m trying to confirm the rural backgrounds of personnel. They’re going to be in line for special benefits.’
‘Quite right too. Well, our Phillip grew up on the farm here. He’s a country boy.’
‘Excellent. Let me see, he’s stationed at …’
‘Waterloo Barracks.’
‘Right. He comes home on leave of course?’
‘Always.’
&n
bsp; ‘Thank you, Mrs Cash. You don’t happen to know anything about a Sergeant Petersen, do you?’
‘Chris Petersen, do you mean? How exciting! He must’ve been promoted. Phil will be pleased.’
‘Yes. Is he a Gundagai man too?’
‘Goodness me, no. He’s a Victorian, from Benalla. Phil was always ribbing him about it. But he’s from the country too so he’ll be eligible, won’t he?’
It took me four calls to locate the right Petersen in Benalla, but the story was much the same. Chris was a soldier who always came home on leave. One more call laid it out for me—the duty officer at Waterloo Barracks confirmed that Cash and Petersen were on leave. That would be surprising news to the old folks back home on the farm.
I puzzled about it as I walked through Martin Place back to the car park. I could understand three young men doing something else with their leave than what their mums expected, but the posting of Julian Guyatt as a deserter and Renshaw’s manner needed explanation.
I’d parked five or six levels up, close to the fire stairs. I had my key in the door lock when the stair door opened and two men came out. I unlocked the door expecting them to go to their car but they suddenly swerved and jumped at me. They were big and quick; one hit me hard and low while the other grabbed my throat with his big, hard hand. He squeezed and I felt the darkness wrapping around me. He eased up and I fought for breath. He squeezed again; the puncher pulled me down so that we were squatting by the car. My knee hit the concrete. The darkness came and went again.
‘Let it go, Hardy,’ the squeezer said. ‘Do yourself a favour and let it go. Understand?’
I shook my head. He put his palm on my forehead and slammed the back of my head against the car door. I felt the metal give.
‘Forget about Guyatt or everyone’ll forget about you.’ He squeezed again and this time the darkness was thick and heavy and it didn’t lift.
•
‘The oldest trick in the book,’ I said.
‘What’s that?’ A man was brushing me down and helping me to struggle to my feet. I recognised my car; I didn’t recognise him.
‘You were really out to it,’ he said. ‘What are you, a diabetic or an epileptic or something? My aunt …’
I pulled myself up. ‘No. I’m all right. Thanks a lot. I just had a sort of turn. Not enough sleep lately. Working too hard.’
‘Better take it easy.’ He moved away, happy to have helped, happy not to have to help any more.
‘Thanks again.’ I leaned against the car, massaged my bruised stomach and felt my stiff, aching neck. It must have been the two-car trick; let the subject see one car following him, drop that one off and keep him in sight from another. It’s not something I’ve had much practice at, seeing that I work alone and can’t drive two cars at once. But I should have thought of it.
I sat in the car for a while until I was sure my head and vision were clear. My attackers had cost Ambrose Guyatt some money by delaying me in the car park.
I reviewed the attack—very fast, very professional. If the fist that had hit my belly had held a knife and the hand that gripped my neck had gripped harder and longer, it would have been a classical jungle-fighting kill.
I drove home to Glebe watching for tails and not spotting any. The cat was outside the house, which wasn’t unusual. But when I opened the door it didn’t march straight in ahead of me. That was unusual. I waited in the passage and listened to the erratic hum of my refrigerator, the dripping tap in the bathroom upstairs, the creaking from the loose piece of roofing iron. All normal. I went in and looked around. The place had been quickly but systematically searched.
I made myself a drink and sat down to assemble what I had. It was a fair bet that my office had been searched too and if they hadn’t found the file that carried Guyatt’s name, his cheque and two or three other entries, they should go back to searching school. I was in a unique bind: I needed more information on Renshaw, Guyatt, Cash and Petersen. With civilians you can always find a source—a neighbour, a relative, a lover—but these men inhabited a closed world.
The only lead I had into Julian Guyatt’s private life was his fondness for New Caledonia. There I had some room to manoeuvre. Ailsa Sleeman, an old friend, has sizeable business interests in New Caledonia and contacts to match. I called her, chatted about old times, and asked her to put out some feelers about Guyatt.
‘I’ll find out what I can,’ she said, ‘and you’ll have to have a drink with us, Cliff.’
‘Us?’
‘I’m nearly married again.’
‘Don’t do it.’
She laughed. ‘Maybe I won’t.’
I had other things to do for the next few days and I did them. I didn’t get in to the office for a couple of days and when I did I found the search had been rougher and more destructive than the one in Glebe. Papers were torn, things were broken and I got angry; my stomach was still sporting a dark bruise. I sat at my desk and brooded. Then I phoned Renshaw.
‘Here’s what I’ve got,’ I said. ‘A deposition from Mrs Guyatt that she was told her son was on leave. A taped conversation with the duty officer to the effect that Cash and Petersen are on leave plus taped conversations from their homes to say they’re not. I’ve got a witness to my being assaulted in the car park and the licence number of a grey Corolla. I’ve got a videotape of your people searching my office. What d’you say, Captain? Are you going to tell me what’s going on?’
Renshaw’s short, barking laugh sounded far too confident for my liking. ‘You amuse me, Hardy. I’ll tell you what you’ve got—nothing! You called Gundagai and Benalla from a public telephone. Neither of your phones, office or home, has a recording device so you’ve got no record of any call to the duty officer here. I’ve never seen you, of course.’
‘I’ve still got a client.’
‘Listen, Hardy, I’ll talk freely since I know you can’t record anything I say. I’ll admit that clumsy mistakes have been made. That’s all I’ll admit.’
‘I don’t think that’ll satisfy Guyatt.’
Renshaw was calm, almost courtly. ‘I think it will. I think his good lady’s satisfied too. Why don’t you ask them? Goodbye, Hardy.’
I’ve heard that tone of voice before; it’s the tone of the fixer, the smoother-out of things who feels that he’s done a good job. I drove to Guyatt’s place of business in North Sydney. It was a busy operation—warehouse, printery and machine division topped by an office space that seemed to be in the process of expanding. I fronted up to a reception desk and told the young woman in charge that I wanted to see Ambrose Guyatt.
‘Yes, he’s … oh, have you got an appointment?’
Something about her manner and the bustle of the place suggested newness, innovation. ‘I’ve never needed an appointment to see Ambrose before,’ I said. ‘What’s up?’
She leaned forward confidentially. ‘You haven’t heard?’
‘No,’ I whispered.
The phone rang and she fumbled uncertainly with the buttons on the new-looking system. When she got the call properly placed she smiled at me. ‘New contract. Big one.’
I felt a lurch in my stomach, just below the bruise. ‘Oh, the army thing?’
‘Yes, isn’t it wonderful? Hey!’
I walked past the desk and pushed open the door she’d been guarding. Ambrose Guyatt sat with a phone at his ear in front of a paper-strewn desk. He was smiling as he spoke into the instrument. The smile faded as he saw me come into the room. He spoke quickly and hung up.
‘Hardy.’
‘Mr Guyatt.’
He reached into a drawer of his desk and took out an envelope. ‘What’s that?’ I said.
He beckoned me closer. ‘Cash instead of the cheque,’ he said softly.
I was standing beside the desk now, looking down at him. His thin, dark hair was freshly cut and he was wearing a new suit. I took the envelope. ‘Congratulations on the army contract.’
He nodded.
‘Want to tell m
e where Julian is?’
‘I can’t.’
‘Secret mission? Something like that?’
‘I can’t say a word.’
‘I understand his mother’s a proud and happy woman?’
His eyes widened as a faint doubt crept in. ‘I think you’d better go.’
‘I will. I’m sorry for you, Mr Guyatt. You’re going to be a very unhappy man.’
‘What … what d’you mean?’
I leaned close to him. I could smell his expensive aftershave and the aroma of cigar smoke. ‘They don’t make these arrangements for things that go right, Mr Guyatt. They do it for things that go wrong.’
He gaped at me as I walked out of the office.
•
I was right. Ailsa reported to me several days later. The information was fragmentary, hardly to be relied upon unless you had something to support it as I had. Julian Guyatt was part of a small task force that had been infiltrated into New Caledonia to operate against the Kanaks. It had been wiped out in the first exchange. Piecing it all together, the one-time Under-17 100-metres champion had been dead for twenty-four hours when his father first stepped into my office.
THE BIG LIE
From Burn, and Other Stories (1993)
Robert Adamo was a slender, medium-sized man with a slow, disconnected way of speaking. ‘Mr Hardy, I hope you can help me,’ he drawled. ‘I’ve never hired a private detective before.’
‘There’s a first time for everything, Mr Adamo,’ I said. ‘I don’t ask as many questions as an accountant or cost as much as a plumber. What’s the problem?’
He glanced around my office for a moment, which is all the time it takes to register the minimal furniture and non-existent decoration. ‘I want to find someone. That is, I saw her yesterday, but …’
‘Hold on. Who’re we talking about?’ I’d already written Adamo’s name and address on a foolscap pad, along with the fact that he ran a picture-framing and art restoration business in Paddington. Then I’d written MP, for missing person, and drawn the male and female symbols and a question mark.
‘Valerie Hammond. She’s my fiancée. We were going to be married in two months.’
