Open File (17 page)

‘You mean you need it to do this best-seller.’

‘Same thing. Damn, this coffee’s cold.’

‘Suppose I just chuck it, cut my losses?’

Sarah stubbed out her cigarette. ‘You won’t.’

‘Why did you take off like that, Sarah? I know Tania must’ve sweet-talked you over the phone, but . . .’

‘I went right off when I saw that fucking file on Hilde’s desk. Like I told you, that dirty bastard copped a feel a couple of times. I couldn’t believe that you’d have anything to do with him.’

‘Listen, I left him whimpering. Didn’t mention you by name, but I pressured him by threatening a charge of molesting an underage female. He was shit-scared. I stole the file because I hoped it might tell me something useful about Justin, but it’s in Dutch. Hilde reads German and she can manage Dutch. I was getting her to translate it for me.’

Sarah nodded. ‘Yeah, I see that now. But with everything going on, and feeling so good about being with the Parkers and then seeing that fucker’s name, I just flipped.’

Tania was wearing a triumphant smile. ‘I can take some of the credit,’ she said. ‘I told Sarah to bring anything she could that might have a bearing on the story. She was going to rip the file to shreds. I told her not to.’

‘Credit?’ I said.

‘Credit. Where d’you think I got the name Kramer from? My father was a German immigrant. I grew up bilingual. I can read Dutch as well as your ex-girlfriend.’

‘Knock it off, Tania. She was never that.’

Tania shrugged. ‘Who cares? The point is, you were right. There is something in that paedophile’s notes that could be useful.’

‘Where’s the file now?’

‘Safe,’ Tania said. ‘You nicked it once, can’t let you do it again. You could be in trouble over that—theft, menaces . . .’

‘Van Der Harr wouldn’t risk the exposure.’

Tania shrugged. ‘You never know, and it wouldn’t look good if I chose to write it up that way.’

I almost had to admire her. She’d missed her calling—should have been in ASIO or some other dirty tricks outfit.

‘Nothing to say, Cliff?’

‘You’re doing all the talking.’

‘Justin told the psychiatrist that he knew his father had enemies.’

‘I know that. Van Der Harr said so.’

‘Did he give you a name?’

That hit home. Tania and Sarah looked pleased with themselves and I thought back to my meeting with Van Der
Harr. Something stirred in my memory. What had he said?
At first I thought it was a delusion . . .
I’d been so keen to get the file and get away from him that I hadn’t followed through on what his statement implied.

‘No names,’ I said. ‘I doubt Justin could’ve found out anything like that.’

Sarah gave me a dirty look. ‘Justin was very smart.’

‘Right,’ Tania said.

I was getting tired of the fencing. ‘There are a lot of people smarter than me in this world, Tania, but you’re not one of them. Why don’t you just come out with it and let me decide whether it’s worth anything or not.’

Tania shook her head. ‘No, we want to make sure you’re going to follow this up and give it all you’ve got. A lot depends on it—not just the book and Sarah’s inheritance, but other things as well.’

‘Like what?’

‘I hear there was talk of suspending your licence. You’re on thin ice, I’m told. Stealing a doctor’s files, threatening him, doing dodgy deals with the cops . . .’

It was time to try a bit of divide and rule. ‘You’ve already played that card, Tania. If Justin’s smart, so is Sarah. She knows that it was a good move for her to go to the Parkers. You won’t manipulate her into making life hard for them.’

Tania betrayed doubt for the first time by reaching for another cigarette. ‘I . . . we . . . just want to make sure . . .’

‘I want to find Justin as much as you do. I’ve done a lot of work on what threw him off beam and, believe me, what he found out was enough to shake anyone up. Particularly a youngster who’d been fed so many lies.’

‘What?’ Sarah said. ‘What?’

Tania could see what was happening and she tried to
recover ground. ‘You should have looked through Van Der Harr’s notes more closely, Cliff. Sure they were in Dutch, but didn’t you notice the name Wayne Ireland?’

I hadn’t noticed. Monolingual, I’d been completely put off by seeing pages of handwriting in a foreign language.

Tania recovered ground well. ‘Some detective,’ she said.

I turned to Sarah. ‘You said you told Justin about Ireland.’

She nodded.

‘So he knew about him and your mother but why would he think that Ireland and Paul Hampshire could be called enemies? Hampshire knew nothing about Ireland.’

‘Now you’re talking like a detective,’ Tania said. ‘That’s what you’ve got to look into. Did Justin go to see Ireland and if he did, what happened next? See? This is the stuff the story needs and we need to know to find out what happened to Justin.’

‘You’re assuming a lot,’ I said.

Tania took a deep draw and blew out the smoke in a theatrical stream. ‘Fucking right I am.’

I hated to admit it, but she’d opened up a legitimate avenue of enquiry. It wasn’t like Tania to delegate, though. I asked her why she didn’t try to get to Ireland herself. She stubbed out her cigarette and looked uncomfortable, but just for a second.

‘That man is a complete arsehole,’ she said. ‘I interviewed him once about something to do with his portfolio. Talk about a sleaze. He was all over me. Those ALP shits are all like that—half pissed on beer most of the time, with their haitches and their somethinks and everythinks.’

‘Doesn’t sound like your cup of tea, or Angela Pettigrew’s, for that matter,’ I said.

‘Oh, he’d smoothed off a lot of the rough edges. Bit of a chameleon, really. One thing with the merchant bankers and another with the union brothers. He knew some heavy types, all right, and he told me about them. But he was always a pants man. A bit too pleased with himself for me. I was lucky to get away with my bra on.’

Sarah thought that was funny and laughed. Tania didn’t and scowled at her. Divide and rule. Tania’s politics and class prejudices were showing. Always useful to know. Time to go, nearly, with one important thing to clear up.

‘What’s Sarah going to do?’

Tania smiled sweetly. ‘I’ve already spoken to Sarah’s aunt on her mother’s side. Sort of half-sister, half-aunt. She doesn’t want to be involved but she says she’ll endorse my submission to social services for Sarah to stay here.’

‘What about school?’

‘There’re plenty of schools around here.’

‘I want to stay with Tania,’ Sarah said.

I got up. ‘I’ll make your excuses to Hilde.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Sarah said. ‘I . . .’

‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘I’ll see myself out, Tania, and be in touch. Tell you what—better get in a pool table.’

It was a cheap shot but they’d irritated me. Tania’s agenda was plain to see and she didn’t give a shit about finding Justin except as a chapter in her book. Sarah was a different proposition and difficult to read. Growing up with an indifferent father and a mother leading a double life had to have an effect on a young person’s outlook and behaviour. She appeared to be coping well with the pressures, but that only raised the question of when she might crack.

I stood outside the house looking over the park as two kids threw a frisbee around with considerable skill. I hadn’t seen a frisbee in a while. Another fading fad.

When I got back to the office I found that Tania had faxed through a brief translation of the relevant passage in Van Der Harr’s notes:
Subject says intends to contact father’s enemy named Ireland to cause father harm. Agitated, disturbed, delusional?
That was pretty much in line with what the psychiatrist had told me. It could prove useful or be a dead end, but one question persisted: how did Justin come up with the idea that Ireland was Hampshire’s enemy?

I sat down with my notebook and went through my usual routine of referring to the notes of interviews and scribbled comments, writing down names, boxing them in, joining them with arrows or dotted lines according to the strength or weakness of the connections. It usually ended up like a dog’s breakfast and wasn’t helpful, but this time it was. The connection between Justin and Ireland ran through Ronny O’Connor and his father, Michael. Not strong, but there.

Tackling Wayne Ireland was going to be difficult and it was important to test Van Der Harr’s suggestion that Justin was delusional. Was he just mixing up his mother’s
adultery with his father’s many failings? Or had he come across something solid? Michael O’Connor was scheduled to be a witness against Ireland when he came to trial. That could be a long time off. If Ireland was acquitted, O’Connor was a sitting duck, up for a perjury charge. He must have lost his job. Couldn’t be happy, maybe willing to talk, but there was no chance the police would tell me where he was.

Contacts are everything in this line of work and, while I didn’t know anyone in charge of the government car pool, I did know the boss at the place in Paddington where they were serviced. He was a fan of old Falcons and I’d been referred to him when it looked as though the state of mine might be terminal. It wasn’t: Todd Hawker brought it back to life at a cost almost equal to its value overall.

I bought a six-pack of Reschs Pilsener and drove to Paddington, parking in one of the bays reserved for cars being worked on.

‘Hey!’ a mechanic working close by shouted.

‘I’m here to see Todd,’ I said. ‘Won’t be long.’

He ducked his head back under the bonnet and fiddled with something. The workshop was busy, with three cars up on hoists and machinery running. To get to Todd’s office you have to step over tyres, gear boxes and other car parts and try to keep yourself clear of grease and oil slicks. Todd wasn’t a desk wallah; he wore overalls and got them and himself dirty. He was sitting at his desk totally absorbed in a batch of invoices. I entered quietly and put the beer down in front of him.

He looked up. ‘Oh, Christ, Cliff Hardy with baksheesh. What is it, a master cylinder again?’

‘Nothing mechanical, mate,’ I said. ‘A tiny scrap of information.’

He broke the plastic wrapping, pulled out two beers and pushed one towards me. We took the tops off and touched bottles.

‘Information?’

‘You know Michael O’Connor—drives for Wayne Ireland, or did.’

Todd drank a third of the beer in a gulp. ‘I know him. A real prick. What’s he done?’

‘This and that. I need to talk to him. Got an address?’

Another gulp lowered the level. ‘Why would I have an address? I don’t send him any fuckin’ invoices. The government pays for the work on the cars—you and me, that is. I’ve got a home phone number, but.’

I was enjoying the beer, taking it more slowly. ‘That’ll do.’

Todd finished his drink, got a notebook from the drawer and thumbed through it. He found the number and I wrote it down.

‘You say he’s a prick. Anything specific?’

‘He asked me to inflate the price of the work on his boss’s car. Said he could get it passed and we’d split the difference. I told him to fuck off. A few of them come it, but he was a bit persistent. Tried it on with the petrol, too. Greedy bastard. I only do the government’s cars. Another mob does the Opposition’s. I bet it happens with those cunts. Me, I’m public spirited.’

‘And like you say, we pay for it. Labor’s in trouble, though. What’ll you do if the Liberals take over?’

‘No worries. They’ll take the work off me for sure. I’ll switch over with a bit of luck.’

I thanked him, we talked politics briefly and I left. It’s not easy these days to find a telephone booth with an
intact phone book but I got lucky a few blocks from Todd’s garage. Intact enough, anyway, for me to check on the M O’Connors. There was a column and a half of them, but the phone number did the trick. Michael, the admitted conniver or the alleged blackmailer, father of Ronald, lived in The Rocks. Very nice, and handy to Parliament House.

I drove to The Rocks, found a parking place and fed the meter. I drew five hundred dollars from an ATM, just about the last of Hampshire’s retainer.

O’Connor’s sandstone cottage was in the shadow of the bridge in what looked like a heritage-protected, rent-controlled area of the precinct. Maybe a perk of his job. Right time to catch him because if that was true he’d be leaving soon. I hadn’t rehearsed my approach—sometimes spontaneity was the way to go. The cottage sat straight on the street. I used the knocker and when the door opened I was looking at Ronny.

I had a foot and a shoulder inside as he stepped back. ‘Gidday, Ronny old son,’ I said. ‘Your dad in?’

‘The fuck do you want?’

I kept moving so that I was completely inside. ‘What kind of a way is that to talk to the bloke who gave you a lift and a packet of fags?’

I pushed on down the passage and he retreated. ‘And belted me and dobbed me in to the cops.’

‘It was just a tap, and when Sarah’s mother was killed I didn’t have any choice about talking to the cops. For what it’s worth, I told them I was sure you hadn’t done it.’

Ronny wasn’t at his best: he was unshaven, probably under-slept and he smelled of beer and dope, but he wasn’t without some spirit. ‘Why not? I hated the bitch.’

‘You’re not the type, and don’t try to be the type, you won’t make it. I want to talk to your father.’

‘He’s crook.’

‘I imagine so. He’s facing goal. Does he need money?’

Ronny wasn’t so out of it not to respond to that. ‘Yeah, I suppose.’

I’d kept him moving and we were in a living area now, with a door off it and a kitchen further down. Michael wasn’t the neatest keeper of a heritage home. The place was a junkyard of decaying furniture—a couch with a tangled blanket, empty bottles, collapsed wine casks and dirty clothes.

‘Just out of interest, how come you went to Bryce Grammar and were up around there?’

He shrugged. ‘My mum paid and I lived with her on and off. Another stuck-up bitch. Got any smokes? I’m out.’

‘Where’s your father?’

He pointed to the door. I handed him a five-dollar note. ‘I won’t hurt him. Give me half an hour.’

‘Do what the fuck you like.’ He took the money and he was gone.