Win, Lose or Draw E-Book

Peter Corris

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

Seitenzahl: 252

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Beschreibung

The forty-second book in the Cliff Hardy series Will one man's loss be Hardy's gain? 'I'd read about it in the papers, heard the radio reports and seen the TV coverage and then forgotten about it, the way you do with news stories.' The police suspect the father, Gerard Fonteyn OA, a wealthy businessman. But he's hired Cliff to find his daughter, given him unlimited expenses and posted a $250,000 reward for information. Finally there's a break - an unconfirmed sighting of Juliana Fonteyn, alive and well. But as usual, nothing is straightforward. Various other players are in the game - and Cliff doesn't know the rules, or even what the game might be. He's determined to find out, and as the bodies mount up the danger to himself and to Juliana increases.

Leseprobe

Thanks to Jean Bedford, Sofya Gollan, Vincent Hawkins, Gaby Naher and, for yachting information, Mark Killeen and Dr Philip Nitschke.

Also a special thanks to Patrick Gallagher, Angela Handley, Jo Jarrah, Ali Lavau, the publicists and the sales and marketing team at Allen & Unwin for being so helpful and supportive over many years.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

First published in 2017

Copyright © Peter Corris 2017

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.

Allen & Unwin

c/o Atlantic Books

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26-27 Boswell Street

26-27 Boswell Street

London, WC1N 3JZ

Phone: [phone]

Email: [email protected]

Web:www.allenandunwin.com/uk

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9781760294786

eISBN 9781760639136

Cover design by Emily O’Neill

Cover photography by Lori Andrews / Getty Images

Internal text design by Emily O’Neill

For Jean

The first one was for her and so is the last

And the losers now will be later to win.

—Bob Dylan, ‘The Times They Are a’Changin’’

Contents

Part One

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

Part Two

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

Part Three

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

31

part one

1

I’d read about it in the papers, heard the radio reports and seen the TV coverage and then forgotten about it the way you do with news stories. For a couple of weeks or so the image of fourteen-year-old Juliana Fonteyn was never out of the heads of anyone who paid attention to the media.

Juliana attended an exclusive private school, Chelsea College, in the eastern suburbs. With her father, businessman Gerard Fonteyn, and stepmother Sonja, nee Bartholomew, and her brother Foster, eighteen, she lived in Vaucluse in a waterfront property that had its own beach, wharf, pool and spa, and five-car garage. At fourteen, Juliana stood 178 centimetres tall, had the face of a fashion model, was a high-performing athlete, and a talented musician with an IQ of 150. She was, by all accounts, a friendly, unassuming, rather serious-minded girl.

One day in December, during the school holidays, she disappeared while her father was at his office, her stepmother was attending a charity event and her brother was doing whatever eighteen-year-old boys on holiday do. None of the servants—maid, cook or gardener—was live-in. Her father, first to come home, found her gone. Her mobile phone and iPad were still in the house; her bicycle was in the garage. Her three swimming costumes were in her room and the clothes she’d been wearing when her father last saw her—shorts, a T-shirt and sandals—were missing. She’d announced her intention to ‘veg out’ for the day.

Juliana had scarcely had a day’s illness in her young life. She’d received ten dollars a week pocket money when she reached ten years of age and she’d had two five-dollar increments since. She paid for her own iPad downloads and the DVDs she bought or hired. She had perfect vision and perfect teeth.

Naturally, I didn’t absorb all this from the media. I hadn’t paid that much attention at the time and more than a year went by after the disappearance before the matter came my way. I got this information and a lot more from Gerard Fonteyn OA when he hired me to find his daughter.

‘I won’t pretend you’re the first investigator I’ve approached, Mr Hardy,’ Gerard Fonteyn said when we met at his office in Double Bay. He’d phoned the day before and we’d agreed on the time and place. My business was in a slump and I’d had to give up my rented office in Pyrmont. I was working from home and had moved a desk and filing cabinets into the upstairs front room. I’d cleaned the carpet and the windows and had the room painted. But it reeked of STO—small time operation—and I was glad of Fonteyn’s suggestion of where to meet.

‘I don’t imagine so,’ I said. ‘I’m not on the A-list and probably barely make the B-list.’

We were sitting around a coffee table in a sort of alcove to his spacious office—wood panelling, air-con, discreet lighting. A slim young woman, impeccably dressed, had served us coffee. Fonteyn waved my response away.

‘One on the A-list, as you call it, tried hard with no result; another charged me for doing nothing. A third, I suspect, intended to exploit me in some way. They had nice suits and offices. You have a reputation which is worth more than … the trappings.’

When he said that I couldn’t help looking around the room. I drank some of the excellent coffee and didn’t say anything. Neither did he.

Gerard Fonteyn was forty-nine and the CEO of a company that bore his name. My quick research following his initial phone call told me that he owned various interlocking enterprises: beauty parlours that related to fashion boutiques and high-end catering services; holiday resorts that tied in with an interest in cruise ships, recreational boat and plane operations and ecotourism.

‘I’m a very wealthy man,’ he said after this silence, ‘but since my daughter disappeared I’ve felt like a pauper. Can you understand that?’

‘Not sure.’

‘I understand you have a daughter.’

‘I do,’ I said. ‘But I didn’t know about her until she was almost an adult. We’re very close now and I have grandchildren, but it all feels more like … a friendship than the kind of attachment you’re talking about.’

Juliana had got her looks from her mother, who had died of cancer when she was five. Fonteyn was barely of medium height and heavily built with a high colour. At a guess he kept the flab under control with exercise, diet and steam baths and would always have to. He had a good head of hair above a fleshy face that sagged in spots.

‘You may be lucky in that,’ he said. ‘But my situation is very different. I couldn’t believe that a creature as wonderful as Juliana could be created by me and I cannot accept her loss.’

I nodded. He must have spent thousands on having flyers printed and distributed and on full-page newspaper ads and television spots. He’d announced a $250,000 reward for any information leading to the whereabouts of his daughter.

‘Other than that … inability to accept,’ I said, ‘is there any solid evidence that she’s still alive?’

He hadn’t touched his coffee. Now he picked up his cup and drained it in two gulps. ‘I’m encouraged,’ he said.

‘How’s that?’

‘Every other investigator I’ve spoken to has been so eager to get the commission that they haven’t asked that sort of basic question. The answer is no. I established a website people could contact with information but all I’ve had are crank theories, false sightings and foul accusations.’

‘Accusations?’

‘Of course. As you must know, the first suspect in a case like this is the father. I don’t know how often that turns out to be true, but you wouldn’t believe some of the unspeakable suggestions sick minds out there have made.’

‘Juliana showed no signs of disturbance … dislocation?’

He hesitated. ‘A couple of years ago I would have said none. She was a happy, well-adjusted child who got on well with me, her brother, Foster, and her stepmother. There were the usual mood swings at puberty, tiffs with friends, food fads and the like but nothing … troubling. But then she seemed to become moody and bad-tempered all the time. Nothing we did was right. We didn’t worry too much about it, just waited for her to grow out of it …’

‘I’ll be honest with you, Mr Fonteyn. The likelihood is that your daughter was abducted opportunistically and has been killed and disposed of.’

‘No!’

‘But just perhaps not. Just perhaps something else happened. The trail, if there is one, is very cold and well-trodden but I’m willing to make a preliminary … provisional investigation.’

‘Provisional?’

‘If I think I can’t make any progress I’ll tell you so the minute I decide, and I’ll only charge you pro rata.’

‘You can’t imagine that I’m concerned about your charges.’

‘No, but I am. I don’t exploit people and you’ve laid yourself wide open for exploitation from your … emotional attitude. It’s no wonder you’ve come under suspicion. You’ll remain that way while this case is open.’

‘D’you mean you’ll regard me as a suspect?’

‘Of course.’

‘Jesus, you’re direct.’

‘There’s no other way. Have you changed your mind?’

Despite the air-conditioning he was sweating in his collar and tie with his suit coat buttoned. He reached for a napkin that had come with the coffee and blotted his forehead.

‘Not at all,’ he said. ‘You’re a difficult man to deal with, but I suppose that’s a good thing in your profession.’

‘I think so,’ I said. ‘I have to tread on toes, starting with yours.’

For the first time he smiled. ‘I think I can see how that plays out. Keeps you off the A-list though.’

‘Right,’ I said.

2

I told Fonteyn I’d send him a contract that’d stipulate my usual retainer and daily rate plus expenses and the terms I’d outlined. Before I left he went to a filing cabinet and pulled out the largest set of material—notes, photographs, newspaper clippings and DVDs of television treatments of Juliana’s disappearance—I’ve ever received from a client. It was all in a box file, centimetres thick, with a padded section for the discs and photographs. A quick glance showed me that the list of addresses and telephone numbers that began the file covered two closely typed sheets.

My first stop on the way home was the Fonteyn house in Vaucluse. It was a warm day in February and I stood on a high point north of the house and used binoculars to get the details. Two storeys of white brick on a large block, most of an acre in the old money, with trees, shrubs and flowerbeds all artistically placed. From my vantage point I could only get a glimpse of the edge of the balcony that afforded the residents a view of the water. It looked to be wide enough to have a game of table tennis without risk of losing the ball.

A metal staircase zig-zagged down the cliff to the jetty and the beach. A motor launch, modest in size compared to some you see and with a dinghy attached, was moored at the jetty. Bordered by rocks at either end, the small, white-sand beach was inaccessible except via the house or by water. That water, this being Sydney Harbour on a perfect day, was similarly perfect.

The house had the usual high brick wall with a wide security entrance—a booth with a heavy gate was set into the wall. It had a tiled roof and no doubt everything needed in the way of intercom connection and CCTV. Getting in there wouldn’t be easy unless you were wanted.

I drove to Chelsea College in Bellevue Hill. The property sprawled along a stretch of high ground a couple of blocks back from the bluffs. Again, top security all around and high maintenance: tennis and basketball courts, a hockey or soccer field, and if that long, low building sparkling in the sunshine didn’t house a swimming pool, a gym and a squash court I’d be very surprised. The school itself seemed to comprise several buildings connected by covered breezeways. Architect-designed structures, no demountables of the kind I’d spent the greater part of my schooldays in.

My meeting with Fonteyn had been at 11.30 so after that and my check on the house it was past 1.30 and school was back in. I made my surveillance quickly. These days, checking out a school through field glasses is a sure way to attract attention and trouble.

Fairly or not, in the current climate of anxiety about child abuse, teachers come under scrutiny. I thought it likely that some would be mentioned in earlier investigators’ reports, and I wanted a look at their work situation.

There was a large car park shaded by trees and difficult to see in detail. After some fiddling with the focus I realised that it was divided into two sections—one for staff and one for students. I laughed out loud when I saw this. About a dozen or so boys in my final year, including me, drove cars to school. No girls did. We parked them well away from the school because we were all unlicensed, we were all under age, and at least half of the cars were unregistered. The rest were ‘borrowed’ without parental permission. I drove a battered Falcon a mate and I had ‘restored’. We shared it until it suffered a fatal collapse. I’ve been a Falcon man virtually ever since.

The teachers’ section held mostly family sedans, SUVs and station wagons. The students’ area, containing about twenty vehicles, featured new looking VWs, hatchbacks and sporty models of one kind or another. I couldn’t help wondering what kind of car Fonteyn would have bought Juliana when she got her P plates—maybe a modest little Alfa.

Driving home I admitted to myself that I’m prejudiced against the rich. They are too few to have so much when so many have so little. I didn’t really want to take the Fonteyn matter on, even though I’d liked him well enough and his treatment of me had been fine. But I needed the work and the money. Then there was the elephant in the room. Fonteyn had made it clear that the reward was still on offer. Two hundred and fifty grand would make me solvent and able to pick and choose my jobs. The rich have their uses.

It was a Tuesday. A lot of my cases have begun on Tuesdays. The client thinks it over hard on the weekend, makes the call on Monday and sets up a Tuesday meeting. Rich or not so rich, the pattern is the same. I’d been to the gym on Monday as usual and felt virtuous. I’d taken my grandsons Jack and Ben for an early dinner in Newtown at the Italian Bowl: spaghetti bolognaise for them with heaps of parmesan cheese, pesto gnocchi for me and gelato after—for them. One glass of white with the food and a short black while they wolfed down the gelato. Then I took them back home to receive the gratitude of my daughter Megan and her partner Hank for having given them an hour and a half off. More virtuous feelings and so to bed, as whatsisname said.

Next day, I spent the morning cleaning the decks for a clear field to look at the Fonteyn case. I spread the contents of the box file out over the desk, covering most of the surface, pushing the Mac screen and keyboard aside to make space. There were several photographs of Juliana, including the one that had appeared in the press, on letterbox flyers and on TV. It was a full-length shot of her in mid-stride wearing jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt, carrying what looked like a gym bag and with her mane of honey-blonde hair slightly disturbed by her movement and the wind.

It was a spontaneous, unstudied picture that somehow captured the essence of her beauty—her youth and yet the beginnings of something else, her innocence but also a potential for experience. She was a young Charlotte Rampling, a junior Maria Sharapova.

Reports by other investigators bulked large along with hundreds of newspaper clippings, printouts of blogs and transcripts of radio reports. There were printouts of messages on Fonteyn’s web page, some of which had been followed up to no result. There were printouts of several rancid tweets speculating about Juliana’s lubricity and Fonteyn’s sexual predilections.

Particularly offensive was something I imagine must have given Gerard Fonteyn nightmares. A photo of a life-sized cardboard model of Juliana, based on the familiar photograph, had been erected at various points around the eastern suburbs. One of these had been graffitied and mutilated in a way that could only be described as demented. Accompanying the picture of this atrocity were police statements about their investigations of what they termed an ‘incident’, meaning deposits of sperm on the cutout, which had been analysed without anything being learned. Following this, the models had been quickly withdrawn.

I worked through the newspaper coverage and saw the story slowly diminish in importance as other triumphs and tragedies appeared—flaring up as a reporter took an interest, dying away, being revived again to mark six months and a year after the disappearance, and finally stopping altogether.

David Cork, a reporter for the online news survey The Dark Side, appeared to have stayed with the story the longest. I checked with the list and his name and mobile number were there. I flicked through the previous investigators’ reports and saw that, with one exception, they were useful only in identifying people worth talking to, backgrounding Fonteyn, his son and second wife and the servants but not coming up with anything that cast any light on what happened in broad daylight on that December day. The exception was an investigator’s interview with Juliana’s brother, Foster. His attitude was described as ‘uncooperative and abusive’.

The names of teachers, friends, a tennis coach and a maths and physics tutor were listed. Juliana got high marks in all subjects except maths and physics, for which she expressed an extreme distaste. I’m with her. I assumed all these people had been interviewed by the police and that contact was my obvious starting point.

Detective Superintendent Rupert Seymour, head of the Missing Persons Division of the police service, was in charge of the case—a measure of the weight Fonteyn could swing. I didn’t know him but I had a card to play—Frank Parker, a former Deputy Commissioner, stood high in the esteem of the service and was an old friend of mine. Our friendship, bruised and battered by my indiscretions, was still intact, if slightly more distant than it had once been. I was confident Frank could get me access to Seymour.

It took the best part of two days and several phone calls to set that meeting up. I spent the time working through the file and watching the television reports. I also did some research of my own on Fonteyn. He was English of French Huguenot extraction and had met an Australian student when they were both doing degrees in chemistry at Cambridge. He married her, came to Australia and devised a skin cream that took the cosmetics world by storm.

Fonteyn had translated that success into an interlocking empire, as I knew from the press coverage at the time of his daughter’s disappearance. My probing revealed that he had topped up his first-class bachelor’s degree with a PhD earned inside two years while simultaneously earning an MBA. He’d rowed for Cambridge and had successfully participated in a mass swim of the English Channel. His then wife, also holding a first-class degree, had been the model for early promotions of his skin cream. Even on the dusty screen of my Mac her image glowed.

I turned up to the Darlinghurst police headquarters on time, respectably dressed and prepared to be deferential to the big brass. There was no need, as I had just a few minutes with Seymour. He explained that he’d only been nominally in charge of the investigation to placate Fonteyn and that Detective Inspector Tom Cartwright had done the heavy lifting.

Seymour introduced me to Cartwright and we went from a large, well-appointed office to a smaller, plainer one. Cartwright was in his late forties, tall and spare with a dry, humourless manner. After a short, mock fossick, he produced a file, not as thick as the one I had from Fonteyn, from a drawer, put it on the table in front of him and brought his fist down on it quite hard. Obviously I was not going to see inside it. He’d been briefed on what I wanted.

‘You’re wasting your time, Hardy,’ he said.

‘Oh? Why d’you say that, Inspector?’

‘The father did it.’

3

‘It’s obvious,’ Cartwright said. ‘The man was obsessed with her, worshipped her. He thought she was the reincarnation of his first wife.’

‘How did you learn this?’

He deliberated whether to answer but eventually did. ‘From the son.’

‘Is he a reliable source?’

‘And the stepmother.’

‘Same question.’

‘We got a psychologist in.’

I’d seen a couple of doctors’ names on Fonteyn’s list. I wondered whether one of them was the psychologist and that made me wonder how much of the police investigation had been made available to Fonteyn or the earlier investigators. I asked Cartwright whether he’d cooperated with them.

‘Minimally,’ he said. ‘You seem to be a special case, having Frank Parker’s support, but I can still use my discretion about what I tell you.’

‘Fair enough. Just a few questions then. Wasn’t Fonteyn at work all day?’

Again he paused to consider. ‘He can come and go from his office whenever he likes without anyone necessarily seeing him. His secretary was off sick. He could answer the phone or not as he pleased. There was no one to keep tabs on him for most of the day. Besides …’

‘Besides what?’

Cartwright seemed keen to convince me that I should go away and not bother him. ‘It’s not entirely clear when the kid was last seen. The servants didn’t clock in until mid-morning. The wife had been out late the night before and slept in. So, apart from the father, who said he’d seen her at breakfast, there was no verifiable sighting of her from the evening before when, again according to the father, she went to bed early.’

‘This expression “veg out” she’s said to have used. Who supplied that?’

‘The father again, allegedly quoting her.’

‘What about the son?’

‘What about him?’

‘When did he last see his sister?’

He consulted the file. ‘The night before, like the father. The son took off at sparrow-fart the next day. Has his own car.’

‘She didn’t phone or text or whatever else they do?’

‘No.’

‘Was that unusual?’

He shrugged. ‘Apparently not. She wasn’t a great one for the … social media. She read a lot, especially in the holidays, and was serious about her sports She valued her sleep. I wish I could say the same of my kids.’

‘What d’you think happened?’

‘I don’t like to think.’

From the way he spoke I could tell that he’d taken the matter seriously; he’d worked at it and it had worked on him.

‘You’ve wrapped it up in your own mind, Inspector. You must have a theory.’

He sighed and leaned back in his chair, bringing his hands to his head to stroke his thinning hair as if he knew the case had eroded and reduced him. ‘Fonteyn has a boat. He’s a strong, fit guy and there’s a very, very big stretch of water right on his doorstep.’

I absorbed this. ‘What were your impressions of Fonteyn?’

‘I only met him once, briefly.’

I stared at him. ‘But you were the investigator. You must have reported to him on progress, or lack of it, got the list of names and so on.’

‘I got the names but I didn’t report to him. I reported to the Super, who reported to Fonteyn.’

He spoke with some heat. Clearly he’d resented the kid-glove treatment Fonteyn had received.

‘Did he do a lie-detector test?’

‘He passed it. The guy’s a near genius, I’m told. People like that can beat the polygraph.’

I nodded. ‘But you met the stepmother?’

‘Again, briefly. That was pretty hands-off as well.’

‘But your impression?’

His thin mouth turned down at the corners. ‘Icy, top-drawer type. No time for the girl or her brother. Riding the gravy train.’

‘So you think Juliana’s dead?’

‘I do. I’m sorry, sounds like she was a good kid for someone born with the silver spoon, but that’s what I think.’

‘And you don’t believe we’ll ever know for sure who did it?’

‘Not unless she pops up, trussed with Fonteyn’s old school tie.’

‘The heat’s off. If he did it why would he hire me at this late stage?’

He went to the file again and flicked through several documents until he found the one he wanted. He did it impatiently, weary of being questioned. I’d got everything I’d get from him. ‘Talk to the psychologist, this Dr Anna Rosen. She’ll fill you in.’

He read off a mobile number and slammed the file shut. I thanked him and left. We didn’t shake hands.

I was intrigued but not convinced by Cartwright’s certainty. It could’ve been based on frustration at not making progress with the case, or resentment at the subsidiary role he’d been forced to play. It certainly wasn’t based on an assessment of Fonteyn. From the sound of things, he’d not spent much more time with him than I had. I needed more information to get my bearings in the case and there were choices to be made about where to find it.

When in doubt, have a drink. I’d caught a bus that had dropped me a longish walk from the Darlinghurst HQ because I needed the exercise and parking around there is impossible. I wandered back to Crown Street and found a wine bar that provided sandwiches and light meals. I ordered a BLT and a glass of red and sat looking out at the passing parade—the suits, male and female; the youngsters, pale and dark, some tattooed and pierced, others more conformist; the old, discernibly slower than the young but many looking happier.

‘Hello, Cliff. What are you doing in these parts? Reminiscing?’

Ruby Thompson lowered her ample backside onto a chair at my table. Ruby was the madam of a Kings Cross brothel whom I’d had hands-off dealings with back when I had my office in St Peters Lane. Ruby was a fund of knowledge about the working girls and in those days, when I was dealing with the ‘faces’ of the area, she was very useful. I never allowed her information to get back to the street and once or twice I did her favours and we became friends.

‘No, Ruby. I’ve just come from visiting the cop shop. Can I buy you a drink?’

‘Got a drop coming, thanks anyway. How’s things?’

‘Tight, as the actress …’

‘Don’t. It’s not funny at my age. I heard you’ve got a couple of grandkids.’

‘Now how would you know that?’

‘Never mind. Boys or girls? How old?’

‘Boys, ah, eight, I think, and about three and a bit, roughly.’

‘Typical. I’ve got a couple as well. One of them wants to be a doctor, would you believe. Jesus, what I’ve seen of doctors …’

‘What you’ve paid them.’

‘Yes, well anyway, this one’s got his heart set on being a doctor but he’s weak at maths. That’s what brings me here … oh, thanks, love.’

A small carafe of white wine and a modest sandwich had arrived. Ruby, a bit over-dressed as always, shook off the silk scarf she’d been wearing over a silk dress with ruffles and shimmering gold flecks, and watched me as I poured her wine.

‘Ever the fucking gentleman,’ she said, ‘but never the …’

‘Let it go, Rube. We had this out long ago.’

Ruby swallowed most of the wine and I topped up the glass. She took a bite of her sandwich.

‘Yeah, yeah, well I have to hire the kid a maths tutor from the coaching joint in Riley Street. Not cheap, I can tell you.’

I raised my glass to her.

‘Ruby, darling, he’s lucky to have a granny like you.’

‘Right. And just think how useful it’ll be to have a bloody doctor in the family.’

Just a chance remark but, after Ruby made short work of the meal, I reflected that a tutor would be one-on-one with a pupil for at least an hour at least once a week, maybe more. And possibly for a fairly long period, if the need was great. Money wouldn’t have been a problem. Who better to know things other people might not know?

Fonteyn’s list showed that Juliana’s tutor was Ambrose Hastings. A landline and a mobile number were given for him. I checked the white pages and found he lived in Bondi. I couldn’t see Juliana riding her bike from Vaucluse to Bondi so Hastings must have done his tutoring at the house. Even better; that would give him access to the brother, stepmother and the servants and, possibly, the girl’s room. Then again they might have done their work by the pool or in the games room or the gym, which I was sure would be in the house somewhere. I imagined a billiards table, card-playing set-up, a dartboard, a rower and other exercise machines—things we all need.

It was 3.00 pm on a Friday. What does a maths tutor do on Friday arvo? I had no idea. I rang the mobile.

‘Hastings.’

‘Mr Hastings, my name’s Hardy. I’m a private investigator hired by Gerard Fonteyn to look into the disappearance of his daughter. You could call him to …’

‘No need, I’ve been through this before. You want to talk to me, I suppose.’

‘I do, if you could tell me where and when.’

‘Well … I must say that’s better than some of the summonses I’ve had. I’m at home in … Bondi after a rather hard week. You could come here and I could give you some time, I suppose.’