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The thirty-eighth book in the Cliff Hardy series This wasn't Hardy's usual brief--uncover the mysteries of a nineteenth-century shipwreck--but he could do with an easy case and the retainer was generous. But is it ever that simple? Not with a notorious crime family tearing itself apart, and an undercover cop playing both sides against the middle. These and an alluring but fiercely ambitious female journalist give Hardy all the trouble he can handle. 'Ever feel manipulated?' Hardy asks. The body count mounts up as he pushes closer to the truth about the mystery and the loot.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017
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All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual people and circumstances is coincidental.
First published in 2013
Copyright © Peter Corris 2013
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.
Allen & Unwin Sydney, Melbourne, Auckland, London
83 Alexander Street Crows Nest NSW 2065 Australia Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100 Email: [email protected] Web: www.allenandunwin.com/uk
Cataloguing-in-Publication details are available from the National Library of Australiawww.trove.nla.gov.au
Paperback ISBN 978 1 74331 022 9
E-book ISBN 978 1 92557 615 3
Cover design by Emily O’Neill/Kirby Armstrong Internal design by Emily O’Neill Typeset by Midland Typesetters, Australia
For Stephen Wallace
Gloomy cliffs so worn and wasted, with thewashing of the waves,Are ye not like giant tombstones roundthose lonely ocean graves?
‘Drowned at Sea’, by Henry Kendall (1839–1882)
Contents
Part One
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
Part Two
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
Part Three
23
24
25
26
27
28
part one
1
I was sitting in Anton’s on King, a restaurant in Newtown. French. I suppose there were Antons elsewhere but ‘on King’ is a popular tag and pretty well all Sydney diners would know from that where it was. Anton’s wasn’t the sort of place I usually ate at. Way too expensive. It had all the trimmings—the muted lighting, sound-absorbing walls and floor, white tablecloths, gleaming glass and silverware and attractive waitresses. I was enjoying the ambience because I knew I wouldn’t be paying for it. My client, Henry Wakefield, had suggested—call it insisted on—the venue.
‘Mr Hardy,’ he’d said in rounded private school tones when he rang, ‘Roberta Landy-Drake recommended you to me and I was pleased to find you online. My name is Wakefield, Henry Wakefield.’
‘That was kind of Roberta,’ I said. ‘How can I help you, Mr Wakefield?’
‘Initially, you can help by agreeing to lunch with me to discuss something.’
He proposed the day, the time and Anton’s. I asked a few questions but he fended them off, saying that it was a confidential matter. It was a very different approach to what I’d become used to—the sad requests to trace missing teenagers, the low-paid serving of demands for court appearances, the surveillance of alleged stalkers, workplace bullies and sexual harassers. That kind of work brought in a more or less steady cash flow for a private detective, but did nothing for the sense of self-worth. Nor did the jobs I’d done for Roberta Landy-Drake—mostly keeping order at her upmarket but volatile parties—but they paid much better.
From time to time there were more interesting jobs and I remained ever hopeful. Wakefield had suggested we meet in two days; no great urgency then. Another unusual feature. I awaited his arrival with interest.
‘A drink while you’re waiting, sir?’
‘Why not? A light beer, please.’
She named several brands and I picked the only one I was familiar with. I’d done a web check on Wakefield. He was a professor of history at the Independent University, an institution I knew nothing about so I had to check that out as well. Wakefield had degrees from a couple of American universities I’d never heard of, and the IU was a new outfit privately funded from corporate sources. It had a small campus in Newtown. From the photograph it seemed to consist of four three-storey terrace houses opposite a park two blocks east of King Street—just a short stroll for the prof to Anton’s. The web page didn’t say so, but from the elaborate coat of arms and the motto—‘Knowledge is Power’—I got the feeling that the IU would charge pretty hefty fees. I was surprised that such a place would teach history at all, but I suppose there are lots of ways of teaching it.
I was early. I always am. I call it professional caution but it’s really an anxiety, or maybe both. The beer arrived, very cold, in a beautiful glass. As someone who’d enjoyed a public school education and hadn’t enjoyed a few years at university when it was free, I was critical of the way money dominated the sector now. I was prepared to dislike Professor Wakefield and settle for a free lunch. Jimmy Carter was wrong about that as about so many other things, particularly cardigan-wearing.
Wakefield came in precisely on time. The head-shot on the web page had flattered him a little, but he was impressively tall, with a good head of hair and a beard—both silver although he wasn’t old. He was trim and looked to be a few years short of fifty. With the day sunny and mild, he wore a lightweight beige suit. He would. I was in a light linen jacket and drill trousers myself, but Wakefield wore a stylish light blue shirt and a silk tie, while I wore a T-shirt. Clean, though.
The restaurant was filling up and Wakefield nodded to a few fellow eaters and sketched an almost bow to the waitress in charge as he advanced towards my table. No big trick to that—my mug shot was on my web page, too. Body language is very important. If you stay seated at a meeting, a natural bully or dominant type will loom over you as he extends his hand. An egalitarian will take his seat first. Wakefield hesitated just long enough to make me feel he inclined towards option one, before dropping into his chair and sticking his hand out across the snowy surface.
‘Henry Wakefield.’
‘Cliff Hardy, Professor. Pleased to meet you.’
‘Henry, please.’
A waitress was hovering and Wakefield pointed to my half-full glass. ‘The same for me, please, and don’t bother about the menu.’
He undid the top button of his shirt and slid his tie knot down. ‘Good place, this.’
I nodded. Was his accent now a shade closer to mine? Possibly.
‘I recommend the whitebait for starters and the swordfish for a main,’ Wakefield said. ‘Unless you’d care to study the menu.’
‘That’ll do me,’ I said.
His beer arrived and he held the waitress by the arm. ‘Wine?’
‘Sure.’
‘A bottle of that New Zealand riesling I like, please, Suzie.’
‘Yes, Professor.’
He gave our order to another waitress without touching her and drank half of his beer in a couple of manly gulps. ‘I gather you like to get straight down to business.’
‘That’s right, but you’re paying so you can call the shots.’
He drained his glass. ‘Have you ever heard of the wreck of the Dunbar?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘A luxury passenger vessel. In August 1857 she was wrecked when trying to enter Sydney Harbour—’
‘I’m with you now. There’s a monument down the way in St Stephen’s cemetery.’
He didn’t like being interrupted. The wine arrived and he was too irritated to be polite to Suzie. He tasted it and nodded. ‘Good. Thanks. Yes, that’s right. Do you know the details?’
I shook my head. He was a prospective client and there was no point in annoying him further. Anyway, I didn’t know the details. I’d just had a passing look at the monument when wandering one day in the cemetery with my daughter Megan and grandson Ben. Megan lived a stone’s throw away.
‘The Dunbar was driven onto the rocks and she was holed and sank quickly. A storm was raging. As things stand, no one knows why the captain, who was very experienced in those waters, attempted the entry, given the conditions. One hundred and twenty-one people, passengers and crew, were drowned. There was, so the story goes, one survivor.’
The whitebait appeared and we dug in. Wakefield seemed to be torn between giving his full attention to the food and going on with his story. The food won and there was no way he’d talk with his mouth full. He poured the wine. The fish was crisp and delicious, so was the wine. We both used pieces of bread to wipe our plates.
He looked at me, his clear grey eyes keen and penetrating under trimmed white eyebrows. ‘You’ve registered something in what I’ve said.’
‘Yeah, you implied that there’s more to the story than—’
His turn to interrupt. ‘Yes, much more. Mind you, the story is dramatic enough as it is—tremendous loss of life, greatest maritime disaster ever, bodies washing up on the beaches for days, a navigational mystery and one survivor.’
He had my attention and I found I was able to remember something about the monument in the cemetery. It was a fenced-in white structure, something between a grave and a memorial stone. The writing had been partly obliterated by time and the weather. ‘Wasn’t there something about another ship?’
‘You’re thinking of the mass grave. Yes, the Catherine Adamson. That doesn’t matter.’
The entrée plates were whisked away to be replaced by the swordfish with baby carrots, snow peas and new potatoes. We both accepted ground pepper. It was eating time again and we started. The words ‘mass grave’ had triggered more memories—the remains of people drowned from two ships were interred but, according to Wakefield, only those from the Dunbar mattered. Single-minded and not long on compassion. Well, perhaps that’s the way you have to be to become a professor at a corporate university.
The restaurant was about two-thirds full, a good crowd for a Wednesday lunch and easy enough for the staff to handle. I sensed that Wakefield was keen to go on with his story but the food and wine deserved attention. A few pauses, however, were in order and during them he got on with it.
He said that a good many of the sixty-three passengers on the Dunbar were Sydney residents returning from a trip to England and there were Sydneysiders among the fifty-eight crew. This meant that family members were involved in identifying bodies or trying to find them. The city went into mourning, shops and banks closed and churches were full. Twenty thousand people watched the funeral procession.
‘A seaman with the uninteresting name of James Johnson was apparently thrown from the deck onto the rocks when the ship struck. He clung on there through the night and was spotted the next day and hauled up.’
‘Where was this, exactly?’
Wakefield dealt with a chunk of fish before answering. ‘Off South Head; the fool of a captain apparently thought he was approaching North Head and gave the wrong order.’
There didn’t seem to be anything to say so I just nodded and got on with my meal. A few years back I’d had some dealings with an academic historian who became impassioned about his subject when there looked to be a chance of latching on to something new. Wakefield didn’t give off that kind of vibe, but from the way he settled down to cleaning his plate I sensed that he was working up to something important even if it didn’t seem to excite him overmuch.
We both sat back with empty plates and the last of the wine in our glasses.
‘The Dunbar story has been pretty well cut and dried for a long time,’ Wakefield said. ‘The wreck was only nine metres down and they located it early on. Divers retrieved various things in the 1960s. There’s an exhibition of relics in the Maritime Museum—worth a look, but only just—and the grave in the cemetery is a Newtown tourist feature. Do you want dessert or coffee?’
‘Coffee, please, but what I really want is for you to give me some idea of the relevance of all this to me. It’s very interesting but . . .’
‘You’re right, I’ve let myself get off track. I understand you were in the army.’
‘A long time ago.’
‘Where, if I may ask?’
‘Here and there.’
‘And you were a boxer?’
‘Amateur.’
‘And you were in gaol?’
‘Again, a while back. Where is this heading?’
‘I need someone who’s resourceful, discreet and experienced at dealing with the rougher elements in society.’
‘To do what?’
‘To find someone and persuade them to give something up for a fair price.’
‘There’s no such thing as a fair price, Professor, there’s—’
‘Henry.’
‘—only a matter of what it’s worth to whoever’s selling and whoever’s buying.’
He drained his glass and beamed—the first full-blown emotional reaction I’d seen from him. ‘That’s splendid, worthy of some of my colleagues in the Business School. Very pithy. You said coffee. Long black?’
I nodded. He ordered two from the waiter, who cleared the table. He leaned forward as if wary about being overheard, although the space between the tables and the buzz of sound in the place made our conversation private.
‘There was another survivor,’ he said.
2
Wakefield reached into the pocket of his jacket, pulled out a fat wallet and selected a card which he passed over to me as the long blacks arrived. The card had the university’s embossed coat of arms and motto and carried his name and titles, including ‘Director of the Center for Australian Historical Revision’.
I read the card, sipped the coffee. ‘C-e-n-t-e-r?’
He shrugged. ‘For the Americans. We have a fresh approach that appeals to our corporate supporters here and abroad. A determination to take an entirely new look at the major signposts in this country’s history.’
‘The Dunbar’s a major signpost?’
‘Perhaps not, but it offers a chance to put the centre on the map because I believe there was another survivor and a manuscript that offers a different version of events. If I can secure it, quite apart from its not insignificant monetary value, it’d lend credibility to the enterprise I’ve staked my career on. I make no bones about that. I was lucky to get this appointment and I’ll only be able to hold it if I show results. The backers, shall we call them, are impatient people.’
‘You need a win?’
‘I do. And I need your help.’
It was a tricky moment. I hoped he wasn’t one of those revisionists who wanted to say that only a few Aborigines were killed on the frontiers, that the White Australia policy never existed and that Australia was in danger of German invasion in 1914. But my newly revived agency wasn’t doing too well in a year of local disasters like the Christchurch earthquake, the floods and the demolition of the ALP in the recent state election, and I couldn’t afford to turn down work from someone with a wallet that size. I had office rent and a six-figure mortgage to cover. And, as a sucker for Sydney history, I found the story interesting.
‘I’m listening, Henry,’ I said.
He finished his coffee. The wallet was still on the table and he took out a credit card. ‘Let’s set the scene,’ he said, ‘a post-prandial stroll to the cemetery.’
It was late in March, a month when Sydney can decide it’s time for winter to take a grip or, like that day, can bring on spring early. We joined the young and the old, the freaks and the suits, walking along King Street past the boutiques and eateries and turned down Church Street.
‘A bit like Lower Manhattan,’ Wakefield said as he stepped over a milk crate.
‘Spent a bit of time there, have you?’
‘Mmm. Some.’
‘At Columbia?’
He glanced sharply at me. ‘No, I was upstate mostly.’
We reached the church grounds and crunched down the path past the Moreton Bay figs, shrubs and flowers I couldn’t identify, and weathered headstones.
‘This is all in a disgraceful state,’ Wakefield said.
‘I don’t know, it’s got an authentic feel, sort of restful, as if no one’s bothering them and never will.’
He grunted. The church was quiet; we left the path and moved into the graveyard area proper where the roots of the trees pushed up and threatened to trip you and the grass grew in tussocks around the headstones and fenced graves. I had only the vaguest memory of where the monument was but Wakefield went straight to where it stood, white and imposing, inside a rusted iron fence, in pride of place in the middle of a recess in the east wall of the cemetery.
The dark lettering on the monument had suffered some attrition at the edges but most of it had remained clear enough: WITHIN THIS TOMB WERE DEPOSITED BY DIRECTION OF THE GOVERNMENT OF NEW SOUTH WALES SUCH REMAINS AS COULD BE DISCOVERED OF THE PASSENGERS AND CREW WHO PERISHED IN THE SHIPS ‘DUNBAR’ AND ‘CATHERINE’. THE FORMER OF WHICH WAS DRIVEN ASHORE AND FOUNDERED WHEN APPROACHING THE ENTRANCE TO PORT JACKSON ON THE NIGHT OF THE 20TH OF AUGUST THE LATTER ON ENTERING THIS PORT ON THE MORNING OF THE 24TH OF OCTOBER.
AD 1857 was engraved at the base of the tomb.
A mass grave is a sad thing, it seems to me, but if Wakefield had entertained such feelings he’d got over them.
‘Quite a few of the victims, those they could identify, are buried here,’ he said, ‘and a couple in this spot, but you’d be hard put to read the headstones now, apart from that one.’
He pointed to a well-preserved white headstone for John Steane, a naval officer who’d lost his life when the Dunbar went down.
‘A hundred and fifty-odd years is a long time,’ I said.
Wakefield took care not to brush against the fence. ‘You’re thinking it’s a long time-lapse to be tracking something down.’
I shrugged. ‘It’s what, five generations?’
‘Fewer in this case; four in fact. It’s a great-grandson of the survivor I’m interested in. That’s not a very long stretch as these things go. Some of the people claiming Aboriginal or convict ancestry have to push back a lot further than that.’
‘I know,’ I said. ‘My sister found a convict ancestor for us way back. She was a London prostitute.’
‘Colourful,’ Wakefield said, moving away from the monument. ‘As you may or may not know, we academics get our postgraduate students to do some of our research. They earn their degrees and go on to bigger and better things and . . .’
‘You write your books. I’ve heard of it.’
We moved between the headstones back to the path.
‘You object?’
‘No. I suppose it’s subject to abuse, but what isn’t?’
‘Just so. I was able to discover a reliable list of the passengers aboard the Dunbar. That took time and effort, let me tell you. There were many uncertainties. I set some students to tracing descendants of the victims—direct descendants. One of them found a record of a child born to one of the passengers in 1883. You see the implication of that date?’
‘Yeah, if it’s not a clerical error.’
‘It isn’t. You’re interested?’
‘Maybe.’
‘Fair enough. What I propose is this—I show you the fruits of my research so far, on an understanding of complete confidentiality, and the . . . direction in which it’s heading and, if you’re still interested, we come to an arrangement.’
I thought he might be going to invite me back to the university but he didn’t. When I said I was in the car park behind the supermarket we stopped there and shook hands. He asked for my card and I gave it to him. He said he’d email me a document and that I should read it and get back to him with my thoughts. I thanked him for the lunch and watched him stride away—straight-backed, head up, one of the winners.
Or was he? I decided I had a fair bit of checking to do on him, on the university and on the Dunbar before I took this assignment. It might amount to no more than a good, a very good, lunch.
I went to my office in Pyrmont, paid a few bills, wrote the dates due on a couple of others and placed them where they’d stare at me. The office has no views to speak of, which is how I like it. My previous offices, in Darlinghurst and Newtown, carried a lot of memories, of clients good and bad, encounters pleasant and unpleasant, so that sometimes I could sit there reliving the experiences. A bad habit and it didn’t operate here where I hadn’t been very long and the memories were too recent to dwell upon.
I Googled the Dunbar and was soon immersed in details of the ship and its unhappy fate. While the whole episode didn’t have the dimensions of the Titanic disaster, the ship was luxurious for its time, with some very smart cabins, and it had been custom-built as a fast ship to compete with American vessels in the era of the gold rushes. The crew was said to be first class and the captain, James Green, was a veteran of eight previous voyages to Sydney.
Wakefield’s uncharitable account of Green’s navigational error was more or less accurate. The Dunbar slammed broadside into the cliffs between the Gap and the Macquarie Lighthouse, which wasn’t completely effective in bad weather, and her solid construction of British oak and Indian teak couldn’t save her.
I read through the accounts of the inquiries and the exoneration of Green that attributed the tragedy to the extreme weather, and James Johnson’s testimony that seemed to have, understandably, a shell-shocked quality to it. Survivors carry a burden of guilt no matter how innocent they are, and Johnson was defensive and anxious to withdraw from the limelight. He later distinguished himself by brave actions in connection with another wrecked vessel and, interestingly, accounts of this carried a flavour of rehabilitation, as if the poor bugger had lived something down. I’d been there.
I printed out a few pages and sat back from this pretty superficial research thinking how unfair history could be. I had to admit to being very interested, even intrigued. Wakefield’s claim to be able to track another survivor and another account of events was as compelling as a treasure island map.
I didn’t learn much more about Wakefield from the web. He’d written a few articles in minor journals and a book for a small Californian publisher on Australians in the California gold rush. You could pick it up very cheap on Amazon.
There was no email from Wakefield by late in the afternoon so I did my usual workout at the Redgum Gym in Leichhardt. I’d had a quadruple bypass a few years before and had to take various medications at various times under different conditions that annoyed me and made me feel fragile. I tended to work too hard in the gym to prove I wasn’t.
Then I paid Megan and Ben a visit. Megan was working on her laptop while keeping an eye on Ben, who was watching a DVD of The Gruffalo. I gave him a gingerbread man and he gave me a thumbs-up without taking his eyes off the screen.
‘He particularly likes the scary bits,’ she said. ‘Should I be worried?’
‘I liked Mr Hyde better than Dr Jekyll,’ I said.
‘Look where it got you. But I have to say, Cliff, you’re more like yourself today than you have been lately.’
‘What d’you mean?’
‘You’ve looked bored, now you look almost excited. Something on your plate? Tell me you’re not going undercover for ICAC.’
I laughed and told her about Wakefield. She remembered the tomb in the cemetery and the wording ‘such remains as could be discovered . . .’ The mass grave had had the same effect on her as me. They’d had to do something similar in Christchurch after the earthquake and even more extensively in Japan after the earthquake and tsunami.
Megan shut down the laptop. ‘Is he fair dinkum?’
‘I don’t know. He’s from Queensland, although you wouldn’t know it from his accent. He’s got these degrees from little US colleges and a few publications in not very impressive places. I don’t think you’d want Ben to go to the Independent University. It’s mostly online stuff and the thrust is for personal achievement and organisational management. Apparently there’s a lot to learn about the dynamics between those two.’
‘I bet. Still, it’s got you in and it’ll pay.’
‘It might. How’s Hank?’
Hank Bachelor was Megan’s partner and Ben’s father. He’d given his genes to the boy. Hank stood 190 centimetres and when they measured Ben at two years of age and doubled the figure, a formula which is supposed to give you the fully grown height of a child, he clocked in at 195. Hank had worked for me in the past and now he was on his own, specialising in surveillance equipment.
‘He’s fine,’ Megan said. ‘Busy, but he misses the street stuff he used to do with you.’
‘There’s not much of it around these days.’
‘You usually manage to find some. Take care of yourself, Cliff, you’re not . . .’
‘As young as I look. I know.’
I kissed her and said goodbye to Ben, who gave me a double thumbs-up.
The email was there when I got to my home computer in the morning. I couldn’t open the attachment. An hour later Wakefield rang.
‘You got my email?’
‘Yes, I can’t open the attachment.’
‘Of course not. You need a password.’
‘I tried Dunbar just for fun.’
He chuckled. ‘The password is Twizell.’ He spelled the word. ‘Call me when you’ve read what I’ve written.’
I opened the attachment. It had no heading and ran to twenty pages. Wakefield’s prose was functional rather than elegant:
Research has revealed that William Dalgarno Twizell may have survived the wreck on the Dunbar. Twizell was born in South Shields, Durham, 17/8/1808. A master mariner, who had captained vessels in the British merchant marine for twenty years, he was a skilled navigator who had also worked as a pilot in various ports around the world as a break from his captaincy responsibilities. He was fit, single and had taken passage on the Dunbar to Australia, where he had been several times before, to take up the command of a coastal trading vessel. He had no family connections in Australia. His body was not discovered after the wreck.
The document went on to say that a birth certificate had been discovered registering the birth of a Robert Dalgarno Twizell in Newcastle on 3 March 1883. The mother, Catharine Lucy Tanner, had registered the birth and the father’s name was given as William Dalgarno Twizell with the birth date of 17 August 1808; the birthplace was Durham, England. An entry on the certificate noted that the father was deceased.
Wakefield, or his students, had traced Robert Twizell, who appeared to have been a man of some means, the owner of a couple of ships and himself an experienced mariner. Robert Twizell married late and fathered a son and a daughter. The son, born in 1925, also Robert, did not prosper. He had a spotty criminal record as a youth, joined the 2nd AIF in 1944, was invalided out in 1945 and fought a long battle with the authorities over his entitlement to a serviceman’s pension. The matter was unresolved when he died of lung cancer in 1988.
I made some notes as I read, forgetting that I could print out the whole thing. Old habits die hard. Despite his claimed service disabilities—damage to hearing and eyesight and malaria contracted during his brief time in the catering corps in New Guinea—Twizell married and had three sons, all born close together in the early 1970s. One son, Robin, was drowned off Newcastle beach in 1980; another, Hunter, was killed in a car accident when driving drunk after his father’s funeral in 1988. The surviving son, John Dalgarno Twizell, was in gaol.
3
I rang the university when I’d finished reading and asked for Professor Wakefield in the History Department.
‘History? Oh, that’d be Human Studies, I suppose,’ the switchboard operator said. ‘I’ll put you through.’
‘Wakefield.’
‘This is Hardy.’
‘Good. Well?’
‘It’s compelling.’
‘I imagine you have questions.’
‘A few. No death certificate for William Twizell, I take it?’
‘No. He must have used another name.’