by Peter Corris
I scratched out the male symbol. It took a bit of hacking and slashing through Adamo’s reticence and shyness, but I eventually got something I could put down in point form on the pad. Adamo and Valerie Hammond had met when she’d come to collect a painting she’d had framed. They got engaged after six months. The date was set; then Valerie Hammond disappeared. She moved out of Adamo’s house, where she’d been living for three months, quit her executive job with Air France and dropped out of sight.
‘So you had an argument,’ I said. ‘What about?’
‘No argument. Nothing. I asked her to marry me. She said yes. Then she was gone.’
‘What did you do?’ I said.
His long, bony hands were in his lap now, twisting and flexing. They were strong-looking hands, and Adamo himself was a strong-looking-man—straight dark hair, firm chin, high cheekbones. ‘I … I looked for her, but I didn’t know what to do. She took her clothes and she got a reference from Air France. She’s very good at languages.’
It was a better start than some. Adamo was a very well-organised guy: he had a recent photograph of his girl, who was blonde, with a high forehead, big eyes and a sexy mouth—165 centimetres, fifty-five kilos. I did the conversions to the old system on my pad. Valerie was twenty-five to Adamo’s twenty-nine; she’d learned French, German and Italian from her Swiss mother, and she and Robert had had a lot of fun in Leichhardt restaurants. His people were Italians who’d come out in the sixties when Roberto was a small boy. He was Robert now, and his Italian was rusty. I got the rest of the dope on Valerie—parents both dead, no siblings, only friends known to Adamo were Air France people he’d already talked to with no result. Valerie Hammond seemed to lead a quiet, very constrained life.
‘Sorry to have to ask,’ I said, ‘but does she have any … peculiarities? I mean does she smoke a lot, or drink or gamble?’ I gave a little laugh to help the medicine go down.
Adamo shook his head. ‘Nothing like that. She is very quiet, a very private person. That’s why I’m dealing with you rather than the police.’
‘What does she spend her money on? She’d be on a good salary with the airline.’
‘Don’t know. We never talked about money. I’m very careful about money. Running a small business isn’t easy.’ His eyes flicked around the office again and I could sense him weighing up incomings and outgoings the way I did myself, periodically. ‘All I can tell you is that she’s careful about it, too.’
I made a note on the pad. ‘She must’ve saved a bit then. You don’t know what bank she used?’
He shook his head. ‘She didn’t have any money.’
‘Excuse me, Mr Adamo, but you don’t seem to have known a lot about the woman you were going to marry.’
‘Am going to marry,’ he said fiercely, ‘when you find her.’
I nodded. His firmness deflected me from that approach. ‘Tell me about seeing her yesterday.’
‘In Terrey Hills. Mona Vale Road.’ He checked his watch. ‘At half-past three. She got in a Redline taxi and drove away. I was in my van. I’d been delivering a picture I’d restored.’
It turned out that he’d tried to follow the taxi but couldn’t do it. I’d have been surprised if he could; following taxis is a lot harder than it sounds. He also didn’t get the taxi’s number, which was disappointing but not fatal. I took the photograph and got addresses and phone numbers and three hundred dollars from him—two days’ pay—and told him I’d phone him within forty-eight hours.
‘I love her,’ he said. ‘No matter what.’
‘There could be problems you haven’t anticipated, Mr Adamo,’ I said. ‘Emotional things …’
He shook his head. ‘I deal with artists every day. I know about such things. They’re a part of life. I want Valerie for better or for worse.’
He was serious and I was impressed. He lived in Lilyfield, only a hop, step and jump from Glebe, where I live. I could always drop in on him and take a look at the coop Valerie had flown. Unlikely to be necessary; people can be hard to find, but it’s a matter of categories. Clean-living, good-looking quadrilingual blondes who get references from their employers aren’t as hard to find as some.
It’s not often in a missing persons case that you have the luxury of two clear, fresh trails to follow. As I get older, luxury appeals to me more. I rang Redline Cabs and spoke to a guy I know there who helps me because I once helped him. He undertook to find out from the service dockets which driver had picked up a fare in Mona Vale Road, Terrey Hills, approximately twenty-four hours ago, and to put me in touch with him or her.
Then I rang an employment agency that had once provided me with a typist when I needed one to make up a long and largely fictitious report. Amy Post was the typist; we’d had a brief, non-title, sexual bout and had remained friends. Amy was an executive in the company now.
‘Amy? It’s Cliff Hardy.’
‘God, so it is. Let me guess—you need a physiotherapist who can do bookkeeping and house repairs.’
‘I don’t need anyone. I …’
Amy’s voice went smoky. ‘We all need someone, Cliff.’
‘Sometimes,’ I said. ‘Right now, I’ve got a profile of a person who’s left a job and is looking for another. I’ll give you the details, and you tell me where she goes looking. Okay?’
‘Okay. She, eh? Hmm.’
‘It’s business. A man’s paying me to find her.’
Amy’s voice went professional. ‘Shoot.’
I gave her the details, such as I had, of Valerie Hammond’s age, appearance, qualifications and experience. Amy said, ‘Fluent in all of ’em?’
‘So I understand.’
‘Half her luck. She wouldn’t need to be out of work a minute. And with a good reference? Shit, she could walk in anywhere and ask for top dollar. Got your pencil sharpened? No joke intended.’
Amy gave me a list of eleven likely employers—airlines, travel agents, convention organisers, consultants. I noted down the addresses and numbers and the names of her contacts at each place. Efficiency was Amy’s god, and that was one of the things that had kept our affair light—she’d sensed that my ramshackle operation ran the way I liked it, and in a manner she couldn’t bear. I drew a line under the last entry and thanked her.
‘Glad to help. Are you sure this chick’s a job of work for you?’
‘Yes. Why?’
‘Nothing. Just that she sounds interesting, and she’d be earning a hell of a lot of money. Bye, Cliff.’
I hung up and thought about what she’d said before dialling the first number. I’d made a dollar sign on the pad when I’d been getting information from Adamo. I underlined it and put another question mark beside it, and the word ‘bank’.
The next hour was a minefield of answering machines, indifferent secretaries, hostile underlings and the occasional cooperative person. My spiel was that I was representing a legal client who needed to contact Ms Hammond, and Amy Post’s name was my calling card. I positively eliminated eight of the organisations and was left with just three—Air Europe, a new charter-flight operation that could get you anywhere as long as you could pay the freight; a package-holiday outfit which specialised in booking clients into off-the-beaten-track hotels; and a consultancy that arranged computer linkups and interpreters in certain European locations. I could expect calls from these three when Amy’s contacts were available and their commitments permitted. I made a separate note of the addresses—my time is important too.
Then I felt a little stir-crazy and went out for a drink and the paper. It was a cool, early November day, and the city seemed oddly quiet. There was nothing of interest in the paper, and I had to get out of the pub fast after one drink—it was the sort of afternoon you could easily spend in a bar, hanging around until the afternoon became evening and the evening night, and all you’d get out of it would be a headache. It wasn’t so far to the Redline depot in Surry Hills and I decided to walk it and tell myself I was working.
‘You missed him,’ Bernie, my sa
tisfied ex-client, said. ‘Name’s Wesley.’ He waved at the phone on his desk. ‘Be home now. Call him if you like.’
I sighed and called the number he gave me. Wesley had a deep, tuneful voice and sounded very tired. He remembered the fare.
‘Where did you drop her?’ I asked.
‘Lindfield, I think. Yeah, Lindfield.’
‘At a house, block of flats, what?’
Wesley’s deep yawn came down the line. ‘In the street, brother, just across from the railway station.’
I swore, apologised to Wesley and got his address in case I needed to talk to him about his impressions of the woman. Another question now and I was sure I’d hear him start to snore.
‘No go, Cliff?’
I put down the phone. ‘Tougher than I thought it’d be.’
Bernie clucked sympathetically and went back to his work.
That’s the way it goes; one minute you think you can solve the whole thing between lunch and afternoon tea, and the next it’s all questions and no answers. I went back to the office and looked at the three illuminated zeroes on the answering machine. No calls. I sat down and wrote up my notes on the Hammond case so far, the way the Commercial Agents and Private Enquiry Agents Act of 1963 requires you to do. I also completed the notes on a couple of other cases which had either been resolved or had petered out. Full of virtue, I drove home to an evening of TV news, spaghetti, red wine and Len Deighton. I worried on Len’s behalf about the effects on his fiction of the Berlin Wall coming down. But not too much. Len could probably have more fun without a wall.
The calls came in the next morning, two of them with a little urging. At Conferences International, the outfit that set up the computer links and interpreters, I hit the bull’s-eye. Yes, Ms Hammond was an employee and yes, certainly, the message to call me would be passed on to her. I sat at my desk and thought about cigarettes and mid-morning drinking, two habits I’d reluctantly abandoned, while I waited for the call. As a result, I was edgy when the phone rang.
‘Mr Hardy?’ A crisp, businesslike female voice. A voice used to cutting through the shit and getting things done. ‘This is Valerie Hammond. I’m returning your call.’
‘I’ll be honest with you, Ms Hammond. I’m a private investigator. It’s not a legal matter. I’m working for Mr Robert Adamo. He hired me to locate you.’
‘I see. And you’ve succeeded.’
‘He needs to talk to you, very badly.’
The voice started off flat, dull almost, and rose in pitch and intensity, losing control. ‘No. Positively not. Tell him I don’t want to see him or talk to him. I don’t want to marry him … or … or have children or have anything to do with him. Do you understand?’
‘No,’ I said.
‘That’s all. Leave me alone!’ The line buzzed and then went dead; she must have fumbled cutting the connection. Very upset. Very intriguing. Very unsatisfactory. How do you tell a client you scored a bull’s-eye but the arrow fell out of the target? You don’t. I hung up and ran down the stairs and along the street to where my car was parked. I drove straight to the Conferences International office in Bent Street and parked almost outside. Totally illegal, but I didn’t expect to be there long. I got out of the car and circled the tall building on foot—smoked-glass windows, imposing entrance but no car park. I lounged in the street enjoying luxury again—I’d recognise her and she wouldn’t know me from Harry M. Miller.
She came out fast, taller and blonder than I expected, but still Valerie H. as per the picture in my pocket. Her business clothes were smart and looked medium-expensive. No car. She stepped into a taxi, which had drawn up seconds before. The parking Nazi was just rounding the corner as I got back into my car and pulled away from the no parking zone. I jockeyed the Falcon into the traffic, a couple of cars behind the cab. I had my sunglasses on against the glare and a full tank of petrol; I had to hope that the driver was a sober type who signalled early and stopped for lights.
He was. The drive to Lindfield was almost sedate. I had no trouble keeping the cab in sight and staying unobtrusive myself. It was a little after eleven, with a fine, clear day shaping up. I squinted hard, trying to read something from the woman’s demeanour. She sat in the back the way most women passengers do. Nothing in that. She seemed to be sitting very rigidly, but it might have been my imagination. The cab turned off the main road just past the railway station and pulled up outside a small block of red-brick flats. For the area, very low-rent stuff. There was no mistaking her distress now; she rushed from the cab, leaving the door open, and almost fell as she plunged up the steps towards the small entrance.
Shaking his head, the cabbie got out, closed the door and drove away. I parked opposite the flats; the sun was shining directly through the windscreen and my shirt was sticking to my back. It was suddenly very hot and still. The highway was noisy, and I heard a train rattle past. This little patch of Lindfield seemed to have missed out on the trees and the quiet and the money. I sat in the car and looked at the flats. It didn’t figure. Amy said she must be earning a bundle. Adamo said she had no vices. So why was she living here? Like other people in my racket, I’ve been known to trace someone, phone the client with the address and bank the cheque. Not this time. I had to know more.
It wasn’t nearly as hot out of the car. I flapped my arms to unglue my shirt, and put on my jacket. A sticker over the letterbox told me that Hammond lived in Flat 3. That was one flight up, a narrow door at the top of a narrow set of stairs. Ratty carpet, cheap plastic screw-on numbers, flimsy handrail, no peephole, no buzzer. I knocked and held my licence folder at the ready. The door opened more quickly than I expected. A big man stood there. He was moon-faced, with thinning fair hair. He wore a white T-shirt and jeans that sagged under his bulging belly. He was well over 180 centimetres tall and must have weighed over ninety kilos, much of it fat.
‘My name’s Hardy,’ I said. ‘I’d like to see Ms Hammond.’
Valerie Hammond shrieked, ‘No’ from behind the fat man and he reacted by brushing the folder away, putting a big, meaty hand on my chest and pushing.
Fat can be a problem if it comes at you fast. This guy was serious, but he wasn’t fast. I stepped back, surprised but balanced, and he swung a punch. I’d almost have had time to put my licence back in my pocket before it got anywhere near me. As it was, I moved to one side and let the punch drift away into thin air. That upset and angered him. He lowered his head and bullocked forward, trying to crush me against the brick wall a few feet back. Couldn’t have that; I jolted the side of his head with a short elbow jab and pushed at him with my shoulder as he blundered past. He hit the wall awkwardly with his knee and head, groaned and went down.
I looked through the open door. Valerie Hammond was standing there with a shocked, dazed expression on her face. Her eyes were full of terror, and her hands were fluttering like lost birds. I couldn’t think of a thing to say to her. I took out a card, bent and put it on the frayed carpet just inside the door. Behind me, the fat man was struggling gamely to his feet.
I pointed to the card. ‘I don’t mean you any harm. Robert Adamo is concerned about you. Call me when you feel calmer. I don’t know what your trouble is, but maybe I can help. I didn’t want to hurt this guy.’
Her hands stopped at her face, almost covering her eyes. I stepped clear of the man trying to make a grab at me and went down the stairs. I realised that I was breathing hard but not from the mild exertion. Valerie Hammond’s fear had shaken me more than anything that Fatty could have done. I peeled off my jacket and sat sweating in the car, wondering what to do next. It was one of those times when the distress you run into seems to outweigh the distress of the person who hired you. It happens and it’s confusing. The only way to cope is to get more information. I started the engine and drove away, grateful for the breeze created by the movement and feeling an overwhelming need for a drink.
I had the drink in a North Sydney pub and reviewed my options. All very well to want more information, bu
t where to get it? I couldn’t give a work-in-progress report to Adamo as things stood, and I didn’t see Conferences International as a promising source. The only other person who’d dealt with the lady was Wesley, the taxi driver with the tuneful voice. What the hell? I thought. He sounded bright, and she might have said something useful. I had another glass of wine and a sandwich and rang Bernie at Redline, who told me that Wesley would be signing off at the depot about three o’clock. He’d tell Wesley I’d be there for a quick talk, but he warned me not to be late because Wesley would be buggered after his shift and wouldn’t wait around.
Wesley was a Tongan, short and wide with a bushy black beard. He rubbed at the small of his back and flexed his shoulders as he spoke. ‘Remember the lady well. Very upset, she was.’
‘How d’you mean?’
‘Crying. That’s not so unusual there, you understand.’
‘What? Where?’
‘Where I picked her up—there in Mona Vale Road. Outside the place.’
‘What place?’
‘Some kind of institution for, you know, people with something wrong—mental cases, spastics and like that. Very sad place. But they treat them real good there. Looks very pricey—nice grounds, nurses in uniform, all that. But the visitors don’t come away laughing. That all, brother? I’m bushed.’
I thanked him and Bernie and drove away with more questions in my mind but also some of the answers, maybe. I stopped at the post office in Glebe and located the Terrey Hills Nursing Clinic in Mona Vale Road in the phone book. Then I called in at the surgery of Ian Sangster, who is a doctor and a friend, and a lover of intrigue. I waited while Ian disposed of two patients and then went into his light, airy consulting room. Ian is a jokester: he poured two measures of single malt whisky into medicine glasses and lifted his in a toast. ‘Good health.’
We drank and I told him what I wanted.
‘It’s a top-class joint. Very good, very expensive. But it’s for serious cases, Cliff. I doubt you’re ready for it yet.’
‘You’ll beat me to it if you keep knocking this stuff back the way you do,’ I said. ‘When will you know anything?’
