Comeback E-Book

Peter Corris

• Herausgeber: Allen & Unwin
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Serie: Cliff Hardy Series
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 264

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Beschreibung

The thirty-seventh book in the Cliff Hardy series Cliff Hardy has his PI licence back - but does he still have what it takes to cut it on the mean streets of Sydney? Cliff reckons the skills are still there, if a little rusty, and actor Bobby Forrest's case looks promising. Bobby's a nice-enough guy, but why is he being stalked by a red-hot brunette? And why did he have to go online to find a date? When Bobby is murdered, it comes as a shock. Cliff's only solid lead is a white Commodore, the most ubiquitous car around. When a surprising connection with his own past surfaces, Cliff is forced to put some of his skills to the test. But is he heading in the wrong direction? Somehow he has to put it all together without losing his licence again, but in true Hardy fashion he's managing to find his way into trouble, not out of it.

Leseprobe

‘PETER CORRIS is known as the ‘godfather’ of Australian crime fiction through his Cliff Hardy detective stories. He has written in many other areas, including a co-authored autobiography of the late Professor Fred Hollows, a history of boxing in Australia, spy novels, historical novels and a collection of short stories about golf (see www.petercorris.net). In 2009, Peter Corris was awarded the Ned Kelly Award for Best Fiction by the Crime Writers Association of Australia. He is married to writer Jean Bedford and has lived in Sydney for most of his life. They have three daughters and five grandsons.

Peter Corris’s thirty-seven Cliff Hardy books include The Empty Beach, Master’s Mates, The Coast Road, Saving Billie, The Undertow, Appeal Denied, The Big Score, Open File, Deep Water, Torn Apart, Follow the Money and Comeback.

Thanks to Jean Bedford, Ruth Corris and Jo Jarrah.

All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual people and circumstances is coincidental.

First published in 2012

Copyright © Peter Corris 2012

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) under the Act.

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For Michael Wilding

A boxer makes a comeback for two reasons:either he’s broke or he needs the money.

Alan ‘Boom’ Minter, British boxer

‘You read the papers don’t you, Cliff?’ my lawyer, Viv Garner, said.

‘All depends,’ I said.

‘On what?’

‘Whether they’re going to make me angry or not, and a lot of things make me angry—politics, economics, religion, television . . .’

‘That just about covers it. Bit sour though.’

‘Oh, a lot of things make me happy. Make me laugh. Sometimes the same things that make me angry. I’m not sour. You might say bittersweet.’

‘Okay, I gather you haven’t followed the High Court decision in the case of Wade versus the Commissioner of Police.’

We were drinking coffee in a place in Glebe Point Road that had been recommended to me by a coffee snob. ‘The best, mate,’ he’d said. It was okay, better than some, and they’d served it very hot, the way I like it. Viv had rung wanting to meet and offering to buy. He knew I was broke or very close to it. I’d ordered a croissant to go with the coffee. I’d been skipping meals a bit to save money. I thought I could probably tap Viv for a second cup. I shook my head in answer to his question.

‘Jack Wade was, and will be again possibly, a licensed commercial and private inquiry agent. Like you, the Commissioner banned him for life.’

That got my interest. ‘What did he do?’

‘He impersonated a police officer for financial gain. The thing is, a law firm took up the case and fought it all the way to the High Court. The court decided that life bans are unconstitutional. Violation of human rights.’

‘What’s the upshot?’

‘Jack wins the right to apply for a review of his case to the Security Industry Registry. If he gets the nod there it’s likely the Commission’ll have to settle for a suspension, say, three years.’

I forgot about coffee good or bad, hot or cold. ‘I’ve done more than that already.’

Viv’s smile was smug. ‘Exactly.’ He reached into his briefcase. ‘I downloaded the appropriate forms. Does that make you happy?’

‘I think it might. You want a kiss?’

‘No thanks. I just want to see you back at work.’

It happened and more easily than I’d imagined. I’d had a couple of suspensions even before I’d had the book thrown at me. I’d served a brief gaol term which, strictly speaking, should have cancelled me out for a long spell except that I had some high-profile help. There was no chance of getting help this time. The application was processed and the hearing was held and the matter was referred to a committee and a sub-committee and they must have built up a metre-high stack of paper. But in the end I was reinstated, given the plastic licence card and a folder of rules and regulations that would have taken a week to read.

Then it was a matter of getting liability insurance at a ruinous rate given my age and record, joining a gun club and putting in the hours to qualify for a pistol licence and renting an office and furniture. All costly. I’d had my house in Glebe free and clear of mortgage for years; now I took out a sizeable mortgage again at a high interest rate over the fairly short term the bank allowed me. Gratifying, though, to find out what the old place was worth. I felt I’d got away with something. I was back in business with a necessity to earn money to cover my overheads. Just like the old days and I got a lift from it.

At my daughter Megan’s insistence I bought some new clothes, and that gave me a buzz, too. But I drew the line at changing cars; Megan just wanted to get her hands on my noble old Falcon.

The office was in Pyrmont, squeezed between Miller Street and Bridge Road. The building had been a warehouse. It’d been gutted, honeycombed, painted and rewired but sometimes I could swear I still smelled wool or wheat or copra or whatever had been stored there. I threw a small office-warming party. Megan, her partner Hank and my ten-month-old grandson Ben, Frank and Hilde Parker, Viv Garner, Daphne Rowley, my doctor Ian Sangster and a few other Glebe types drank cask red and white, ate saladas and cheese slices and wished me luck.

‘Fresh start, Cliff,’ Frank Parker, who’d retired as a Deputy Commissioner of Police, said as he examined my secondhand Mac and phone and fax set-up. ‘Not common at your age. How’re you feeling?’

‘Bit anxious but optimistic,’ I said. ‘Comebacks aren’t such a good idea, even if Ali made it.’

Frank nodded. ‘He stayed at it too long though.’

‘I’ll know pretty quickly whether I’ve still got it,’ I said. ‘In this game you’ve got the knack or you haven’t. Anyway, I have to give it a go. Trouble is, I’m out of touch with the usual conduits, the lawyers and such.’

Daphne Rowley, who runs a printing business and plays pool with me at the Toxteth Hotel, topped up her plastic glass with the red. ‘That’s why I got him to advertise, Frank,’ she said. ‘Ads in the local rags, cards up here and there and a website.’

Frank almost spilled his drink. ‘You, a website?’

‘Megan set it up,’ I said. ‘Photo makes me look ten years younger.’

‘It’d need to,’ Frank said. ‘Well, good luck, mate, and try to stay out of trouble. They’ll be keeping an eye on you.’

I’d worried about the website and the photograph. In the past anonymity had been the PIA’s stock in trade but times had changed. If you’re not in cyberspace you’re nowhere. Anyway, the photo didn’t look all that much like me.

They drifted off and I shovelled the glasses and paper plates and uneaten food into a garbag. I sat at the desk and examined the room. It felt better for having had people and wine and talk in it. Less sterile. But the brightness and the clean surfaces made me uncomfortable. My two battered filing cabinets and the bar fridge from offices past stood against the wall like comfortable old friends. The hired desk and chairs weren’t new either and I noticed a couple of wine stains on the pale grey carpet. I’d soon knock the place into shape.

I sat there wondering if I’d made the right decision. The private inquiry business has changed radically over the past decade or so. Now it’s all search engines and databases and emails and very little knocking on doors. I’m told some people in the game charge by the hour, like lawyers. I was always one for getting out there, asking around, finding the pressure points and applying the force. Of course I did my share of bodyguarding and money minding, but there were security firms doing those jobs exclusively now. Process serving could provide a steady but minor income stream like credit checking. But credit checking in particular was completely computerised now. The question was, were there still human problems out there that needed the personal touch, the right question, the accumulated experience of more than twenty years? I was sure there must be.

The mortgage didn’t worry me too much. There it was, an extraction from a slender bank account every month with heavy penalties for failing to have enough money to cover it. I decided to see it as a stimulus. Until about eighteen months before, I’d enjoyed a period of affluence, courtesy of an inheritance from my partner, Lily Truscott. I hadn’t exactly enjoyed it; I felt guilty about it mostly, and it had all gone west in a financial scam of which I was the victim. It’d been a bad feeling and I’d done things about it. That had primed me for my new start. I was ready.

I kept busy renewing old contacts and trying to establish new ones. A few crackpots approached me—a psychic offering her services, a wannabe crime writer with twenty rejected manuscripts wanting me to read them and tell him where he went wrong, a defrocked minister wanting me to prove that the woman who had replaced him was an atheist. One matter I had to look at very seriously. It was a thinly veiled invitation to shoot a witness in a criminal trial. It had a peculiar smell to it and I concluded that it was a set-up, either by the police or some old enemy, designed to put me deep in the shit. Big bait, but I didn’t bite.

The doubt was pretty much dispelled when Robert ‘Bobby’ Forrest turned up to keep the appointment he’d made by phone. Forrest was tall and lean, say 188 centimetres and 80 kilos. He was also remarkably handsome, with fair hair and regular features. Good teeth. His knock lacked authority though, and he was clearly nervous as he took a seat.

‘My father recommended you, Mr Hardy,’ he said.

I sighed. The generation gap with a vengeance. Forrest was in his mid-twenties at a guess. That probably put his dad in his fifties.

‘Who would that be?’

‘Ray Frost. I changed my name for professional reasons. Dad said you handled a delicate matter for him way back when. He said he thought you’d gone out of business, but I found your web page.’

‘I took a break. I’m sorry, I don’t remember the name Ray Frost. Did he tell you what it was about?’

He shook his head. ‘He wouldn’t say. He was a bit of a wild man back then, I gather.’

‘Probably best to leave it then. Anyway, I’m glad I gave satisfaction. What can I do for you?’

I have misgivings about grown men using a diminutive like Bobby, but it happens and probably more in show business than anywhere else. He was wearing sneakers, jeans, a T-shirt and a leather jacket. All good quality and expensive-looking. He fiddled with the zip on the jacket. ‘It’s like, kind of embarrassing.’

I nodded the way the psychiatrists do, trying to look comforting as well as professionally concerned.

‘I’m being stalked.’ He blurted it out.

Another nod. ‘By whom?’

‘I . . . sort of . . . don’t know.’

He had my attention. A changed name and a mysterious stalker will do that every time. I must have got the comforting look right because he stopped fidgeting, sat up straight and told me the story.

Bobby Forrest was an actor. He’d changed his name because Frost had connotations of cold and discomfort, and Forrest suggested something natural and, in these greening days, valuable. He said he’d dropped out of NIDA and hadn’t regretted it. A good part had come along and he’d grabbed it and been in regular work ever since, in television, films and commercials. He wasn’t surprised when I admitted I’d never heard of him.

‘No offence,’ he said, ‘but I’m geared towards a younger market.’

‘Fair enough,’ I said. ‘Very wise.’

‘I’m pretty well known. I’ve done a lot of TV and some movies. I’ve been on the cover of a few magazines and stuff like that. But I know I’m not that smart,’ he said.

I made the sort of gesture you make but he was serious. He said he’d been good at a variety of sports at school. He could sing and dance a bit and play a couple of musical instruments, but he’d never been interested in studying and his talent for acting was just a knack. He’d always liked to show off. He planned to start reading books and developing his mind.

‘I’ve got a girlfriend who’s helping me with that. Her name’s Jane. I’ve got a photo . . .’ He started to reach for the inside pocket of his jacket but stopped. ‘I’m getting ahead of myself. I haven’t been much of a success with girls—shy, really. So I tried the online dating thing and that’s how I met Jane. But before I met her I got into a sort of online relationship with this other woman.’

He took two photos from his jacket and studied them. ‘I don’t know if you know how online dating works, Mr Hardy.’

‘Call me Cliff. I’ve got a rough idea. You exchange information and photos and if you tick enough boxes with each other you arrange to meet.’

‘That’s right. With no obligation on either side. If you don’t get along, all bets are off with no harm done.’

Just stating it so matter-of-factly made me see a whole minefield. No obligation, the bet’s off, no harm done, can mean very different things to different people.

He selected one of the photos and put it on my desk as if he was glad to be rid of it. It was a full-length shot of an extremely attractive woman. She was slim and dark, provocatively posed in a tight dress that showed an impressive length of shapely leg.

Forrest held the other photo as though it was fragile or so light it might float away. He pointed to the photo on the desk.

‘I met her once. You don’t have to use your real names. I didn’t use mine. She said her name was Miranda but it probably wasn’t. She said she was an actress.’

‘It didn’t take?’

‘She was awful. Very conceited and aggressive. Tried to . . . run everything. It was a disaster and I couldn’t get away quick enough.’

It was mid-October and getting warm outside. He was dressed a bit too heavily in the leather jacket but it was the memory of his meeting with Miranda that was making him sweat. He transferred the photo to his left hand and rubbed his fist across his damp forehead.

‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Like I say, it was awful . . . in every way. I thought that was it and I went back online, looking, and I found Jane. We met and hit it off right away. She’s terrific. She’s very smart, much smarter than me, but she somehow makes me feel smarter than I am, better than I am, if you can understand that.’

I wasn’t sure, but I thought I could. ‘A good feeling.’

‘The best. But this other one, she won’t leave me alone. She bombards me with text messages and emails. She’s turned up a few times at places where I’ve been. I’ve no idea how she finds out my movements. I get the feeling that I’m being followed sometimes, but that might just be paranoia—isn’t that what they call it?’

‘Yes. Does Jane know about her?’

‘No, and that’s one of my worries. Jane is sort of insecure about me.’

‘How’s that?’

He shook his head. ‘It’s hard to explain and it’s bound up with one of my other problems. The whole fucking thing’s all bound up together and with my . . . I’m sorry, Mr . . . Cliff, I’m not sure I can go on with this.’

It was 4 pm, late enough under the circumstances. I had a bottle of Black Douglas in the bottom drawer of the desk. I got it out, opened the bar fridge and put a couple of ice cubes in two plastic glasses left over from the party. I added solid slugs of the scotch and pushed the drink across to him.

‘Have a drink, Bobby, and collect your thoughts. Nothing you say to me gets said to anyone else without your permission.’

He took the glass and had a sip, then a longer pull. ‘Okay, thanks. This is the really embarrassing bit . . . bits. Being stalked by a woman and not being able to handle it, that’s bad enough, but . . . I went home with Miranda. I don’t know why. I suppose I thought I should. I couldn’t get it up for her. She was beautiful and all that, but I just couldn’t. I’ve had some trouble in that department over the years . . .’

‘You’re not Robinson Crusoe.’

‘What? Oh, yeah, but nothing like this. It was miserable.’

‘Do I have to ask the obvious question?’

‘No. With Jane everything is wonderful. Amazing, really. But Miranda, or whoever she is, has threatened to harm Jane. To physically hurt her. And she says she’ll tell her I’m really gay and that I’m just using her as a . . .’

‘Beard, the Americans call it.’

‘Do they? Okay. She says she knows I’m not and that she can fix my problem, but she says she’s so hurt that’s what she’d do.’

‘Unless?’

‘Unless I agree to see her, respond to her messages and emails, go on a holiday with her, all that.’

‘These threats come how?’

‘Emails, letters, cards, phone calls.’

He handed me the other photograph. It showed a young woman sitting in a chair smiling shyly at the camera. She had curly, cropped hair, a pug nose and slightly droopy eyes. She wore a blouse and a skirt that covered her knees. Forrest cleared his throat.

‘Jane isn’t beautiful, as you can see, but that doesn’t matter to me. She’s wonderful and I love her, but because I look the way I do . . . shit, I hate saying this.’

‘She feels she’s not good enough for you while you feel you’re not good enough for her.’

He had large, expressive blue eyes like Mel Gibson and he opened them wide. ‘That’s it exactly. I can’t bear the thought of losing her or of any harm coming to her because of me.’

‘Tell me about the threats to Jane.’

‘They’re kind of veiled, I suppose you’d call it. Nothing like “I’ll throw acid in her face” or like that. But she says how people can have accidents, how they can contract diseases by being in the wrong place at the wrong time. She says she knows people who can arrange things and how Sydney is such a dangerous city.’

‘Nothing direct?’

‘No.’

‘And you believe she’s capable of carrying out these threats?’

‘That’s the trouble, I don’t know. But I can’t afford to take the risk. I’m embarrassed about all this. The only person I’ve been able to talk to about it was my dad. Can you help me?’

It didn’t feel like such a big deal. It was a reversal of the usual stalker scenario, but what could I expect? It was the twenty-first century and we had climate change, an unwinnable war supported by both sides of politics, a minority government and a female prime minister. Change was everywhere.

Bobby said he’d been back to Miranda’s flat but she wasn’t there. He felt too angry to reply to her emails or phone calls because he was worried she might record him saying something he shouldn’t. He mentioned his bad temper. He wanted me to find Miranda and talk to her. Persuade her that the course she was following would only get her into serious trouble.

‘Would you take legal action?’

He finished his drink as he thought about it. ‘I’d be reluctant. It’d be embarrassing and Jane would find out all about it. But Dad says you’re good at getting through to people. If you thought she was serious about the threats and wouldn’t listen, then yes, I’d take legal action.’

That was sensible. He was smarter than he thought. I had him sign a contract and pay over a retainer. I asked him for more details on how the particular dating website he’d used worked and he filled me in. I took notes. I got his email address and his postal address, his landline and his mobile number.

Jane’s surname was Devereaux and I got her details, including the publishing company she worked for as a commissioning editor. I got Bobby’s agent’s details and those for his father. Bobby and I shook hands and he thanked me effusively. So far all he’d had was a sympathetic ear, and the retainer he’d given me, in line with what I’d learned was the new scale of fees, was steep. I felt I had to have something to contribute immediately. I asked him if Miranda had given him a deadline for carrying out her threats.

‘Not exactly, but she implied I didn’t have long.’

‘If I have trouble finding her, another way might be for you to contact her and arrange to meet. I could step in then.’

He looked dismayed at the prospect, almost angry when I told him that if it came to making contact with Miranda it would be better to do it by phone in case Jane read his emails.

‘She wouldn’t do that.’

‘You never know what a person will do.’

The anger subsided. A flush had come over his face and he’d gripped the arms of his chair so that the structure creaked. He drew in a deep breath. ‘I don’t think I could meet her. I think if I did I might . . .’

‘Do what?’

He shook his head and didn’t answer.

‘How strong is this feeling of being followed?’

‘Pretty strong. I haven’t known what to do about it with Jane there in case it was Miranda herself. I mean, she talked about knowing people . . .’

He was suddenly anxious to go and I let him. I stared at the closed door and wondered what he’d been going to say. Was it, I might try to prove my manhood, or I might harm her?

After he left I scanned my notes and the signed contract into the computer and created a file for it. I scanned the photos of Miranda and Jane into the computer and made copies. Then I threw the notes away. They say the paperless office didn’t happen; I kept the signed contract but otherwise I was prepared to get as close to paperless as I could.

I checked the site Bobby had used. The drill was to choose a username which could include a bit of your real name or not. The instructions suggested that it was a good idea to give a hint of your main interests at this stage. Then you set up a profile with a list of your interests, likes and dislikes. At this point you also sketch in the kind of person you’re looking for. You get an ‘inbox’ so people can send you messages through the site and you can respond to them. No email address or contact details until you get responses and have communicated back and forth enough to feel confident you’ve latched on to a ‘possible’. Then contact details and face-to-face meetings are up to you. Photographs are optional in the profile but you can protect them from being looked at by all and sundry and restrict access to them to people who take your fancy. You can pay a subscription, and Bobby’s was pretty heavy, or just buy credits and pay message by message.

Bobby, looking shamefaced, had told me that Miranda’s photograph had attracted him and her list of interests included acting and several sports he was keen on. He’d ‘messaged’ her, got a response and they communicated a few times before arranging a meeting at a wine bar in Coogee. He’d given her his email address and mobile number. Once bitten, he’d been more cautious with Jane and they’d spent more time providing details and filling in backgrounds before they’d arranged to meet. He said he hadn’t been disappointed by her looks when they met at a coffee shop in Randwick. He described her face as fascinating. She hadn’t objected to his intellectual shortcomings. He said they’d laughed a lot and at the same sorts of things. He’d agreed to read some books and she’d agreed to let him teach her to play golf. They went to bed on their third meeting and hit the jackpot.

It all sounded potentially very dangerous to me unless you played strictly by the rules and exercised a great deal of common sense. But I suppose that applied to the old style of meetings between the sexes. How many mistakes had I made in connecting up with women and how many women had made mistakes in connecting up with me?

First things first. I had to know more about Bobby Forrest. His website was just a photo, a few broad-brush details and a list of his film and TV credits. I’d never heard of the films or the television shows. His agent, Sophie Marjoram, I did know from back when I did security work for film crews. I rang her and arranged to meet her the following morning. That left me sitting in the office at 6 pm with a paying client, a glass of scotch and a nagging half-memory. When I focused on it the name Ray Frost rang a bell but nothing more. Over the years I’ve done favours for people that haven’t needed a documentary record. I guess everybody has. If the name had cropped up in that context I’d have to rely on my uncertain memory, but I had a feeling that it was something more than that.

My filing system has never been well organised and, what with moving office a couple of times and a spell of working from home, it’d become a bit chaotic. So it took me more than an hour and another drink to track down Ray Frost. It was twenty-five years ago. All it took was a glance at one of the notes I’d made to bring the whole thing back to me.

Frost had been in gaol, on remand for involvement in an armed robbery.

‘He’s innocent,’ Frost’s lawyer, Charles Bickford, had told me. ‘I want you to prove it.’

It was a bit unusual for a lawyer to be so adamant about the innocence of a client and I asked Bickford why he thought so.

‘The police have it in for him. He’s been in trouble before and he’s a maverick sort of character. Won’t take shit from anyone, including me. I can’t help liking him.’

I’d dealt with Bickford before and more or less trusted his judgement, so I took his money and the case. Three men had robbed an armoured car delivery to a business in the CBD very early in the morning. They’d been masked and were efficient. They didn’t injure the guards and got away with about sixty thousand dollars—probably less than they’d expected. A witness said the mask on one of the robbers had slipped and he identified Frost in a lineup. I went to see Frost in Long Bay.

‘It’s bullshit,’ he said. ‘I was at home asleep. I’ve never worn a mask in my life.’

‘How do you figure it, then?’

Frost was a big, solid man, handsome in a rugged way. He was very calm, which isn’t easy to be when you’re on remand facing a serious charge. I knew because I’d been there. He didn’t fidget or avoid my eyes. He smoked, as so many did back then, including me, but not compulsively.

‘Must’ve been someone who looked like me. Plenty do.’

That was true enough. He said he was alone in the house at the time of the robbery. His wife had just had a premature baby and was still in the hospital with it. He’d been awake for two days through the crisis and was grabbing some sleep.

‘How d’you read it?’ I asked.

‘To be honest, I see it as payback. I’m no angel and the cops haven’t managed to nail me for a few things I have done. They’re causing me grief for something I didn’t do.’

There were a lot of dodgy police back then, many of them capable of framing people and using their powers and the courts to pay old debts.

‘What about the other two?’

He shrugged. ‘No idea who those guys are but I could hazard a guess.’

‘That might help.’

‘No, I’m not a dog, but you know how it works, Hardy. They could’ve green-lighted the job and set me up to take the blame.’

He was right about that. It happened. If it had, the weak spot in the arrangement was the witness. I poked around and got enough on him for Bickford to cast serious doubt on his evidence if the case came to trial. It didn’t. Wheels turned and the charges were dropped. It made me popular with Bickford, who put work my way for the next few years. Frost had thanked me. It made me unpopular with the police but that was nothing new.

The files were arranged in chronological order so I could see that other matters had come along hard on the heels of that one. It had been a busy time and the details had been crowded out long ago. I made some notes, put the old file back in its place, and copied the notes into the Forrest file and then to the memory stick. I fitted the memory stick onto my key ring. It felt like a day’s work so that’s what I called it.

I felt good about Bobby’s case. It had an interesting texture to it. The phone rang as I was about to leave the office. It was Sarah Kelly, a woman I’d met down in the Illawarra on a brief holiday a while back.

‘You said you’d call me,’ she said.

‘I should have,’ I said.

‘When are you likely to be down here again? I want to see you, Cliff.’