Salt and Blood Read online

  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 six grandsons.

  The Cliff Hardy collection

  The Dying Trade (1980)

  White Meat (1981)

  The Marvellous Boy (1982)

  The Empty Beach (1983)

  Heroin Annie (1984)

  Make Me Rich (1985)

  The Big Drop (1985)

  Deal Me Out (1986)

  The Greenwich Apartments (1986)

  The January Zone (1987)

  Man in the Shadows (1988)

  O’Fear (1990)

  Wet Graves (1991)

  Aftershock (1991)

  Beware of the Dog (1992)

  Burn, and Other Stories (1993)

  Matrimonial Causes (1993)

  Casino (1994)

  The Washington Club (1997)

  Forget Me If You Can (1997)

  The Reward (1997)

  The Black Prince (1998)

  The Other Side of Sorrow (1999)

  Lugarno (2001)

  Salt and Blood (2002)

  Master’s Mates (2003)

  The Coast Road (2004)

  Taking Care of Business (2004)

  Saving Billie (2005)

  The Undertow (2006)

  Appeal Denied (2007)

  The Big Score (2007)

  Open File (2008)

  Deep Water (2009)

  Torn Apart (2010)

  Follow the Money (2011)

  Comeback (2012)

  The Dunbar Case (2013)

  Silent Kill (2014)

  PETER

  CORRIS

  SALT AND BLOOD

  This edition published by Allen & Unwin in 2014

  First published by Bantam Books, a division of Transworld Publishers, in 2002

  Copyright © Peter Corris 2002

  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 the Copyright Agency (Australia) under the Act.

  Allen & Unwin

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  Crows Nest NSW 2065

  Australia

  Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100

  Email: [email protected]

  Web: www.allenandunwin.com

  Cataloguing-in-Publication details are available

  from the National Library of Australia

  www.trove.nla.gov.au

  ISBN 978 1 76011 026 0 (pbk)

  ISBN 978 1 74343 807 7 (ebook)

  For James Hall, once again, who helped to get it all started.

  Thanks to Michael Dilli for information about surfing, to Michael Brown for help with geography and to Jenny Coopes who made a comment about Elvis she may not recall. Thanks also to Jean Bedford and Carl Harrison-Ford.

  PART 1

  1

  I met Glen Withers in a Paddington pub near the Victoria Barracks after she’d been to her second AA meeting for the week. She runs her own private enquiry agency in the eastern suburbs. We were lovers, never were enemies; now we’re friends.

  ‘How was it?’ I asked.

  ‘Loads of fun. Michael told us all about his recipe for making battery acid drinkable.’

  ‘I hope you scribbled it down. What’ll you have?’

  ‘Soda and bitters, no lime.’

  It was Thursday night and busy. I’d grabbed a table in the partitioned-off, no-smoking area, but I had to go into the battle zone to get the drinks. Scotch and ice for me. Two at the most. Glen could walk home from here but I wouldn’t be going with her and I’d have to drive back to Glebe. It was after nine o’clock and the noise level was going up the way it does as the alcohol level rises. The crowd was youngish and mixed—men and women and a few indeterminates, gays and straights. Here and there I spotted a face old enough to remember Bob Menzies and six o’clock closing. Not many; some wouldn’t even remember Bob Hawke.

  I pushed my way back to the table, keeping the drinks clear of shoulders and elbows and waving hands. Glen always insisted on our meetings taking place in full-on drinking situations, to keep her on her toes. We touched glasses.

  ‘Thanks, Cliff,’ she said. ‘Still like that stuff, do you?’

  I examined the contents of my glass. ‘I’m glad it exists,’ I said.

  ‘Mr Enigmatic.’

  ‘That’s me. How’re you doing? D’you miss it?’

  ‘Less and less. It’s nice to have the time and space for other things. I didn’t for a while.’

  We sipped our drinks and let the noise wash around us. Danger time. We’d get to feeling comfortable together. Close even. Consider the possibilities. Weigh up those feelings against the loneliness. I took a solid slug and broke the mood.

  ‘So,’ I said. ‘Here you are looking ten years younger in your sobriety and as I’m ten years older than you that puts twenty years between us. What can I do for you, Glen?’

  ‘Stop being a clown for a start.’

  Good punch, I thought. That gives her the points she needs. ‘What’s this about?’

  It was a familiar pattern. We lurched between affection and hostility and found ways to get along well professionally and adequately otherwise. We put work each other’s way and what with the GST and the intrusion of big international agencies into the field, the pie was shrinking for the smaller players. Glen smiled; a fine network of lines fanned out from her eyes and deep grooves appeared in her cheeks. Her fair hair, cut short, had silver streaks; she wore a black silk shirt, jeans and a grey leather jacket, no jewellery. If you were scouting for women perhaps you wouldn’t notice her right off, but if you did look you’d look again.

  ‘I’ve got a client,’ she said. ‘Or rather I’m trying to land one.’

  ‘I know the feeling. “I just want your advice, Mr Hardy. I’m not sure that I actually need a private detective but …” Trying for free service.’

  Glen shook her head. The fair hair bounced and I wanted to stroke it, smell it. ‘No,’ she said. ‘It’s not like that. Money’s not a problem.’

  ‘I love that phrase—“money’s not a problem”. It’s just that my lips have difficulty forming the sounds.’

  ‘I told you to stop clowning.’

  Her telling me to do things had broken us up in the first place. Water under the bridge. I nodded and finished my drink. One to go.

  ‘This guy came to see me. Warren Harkness, a lawyer. I rate pretty well with lawyers these days, Cliff. Better than you, I bet. They think they can keep the lady investigator under control, which is what they want. Naturally. Warren’s got a brother named Rodney who’s due to be released from a mental institution. A private facility. Rutherford House. Ever heard of it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Up Bilgola Way. Very exclusive and expensive.’

  ‘Money’s no object.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘The Harkness family got Rodney … installed there seven y
ears ago. He cracked up after his wife left him, taking their kid. He got on the grog, went through a lot of money, did some damage to the family business, became psychotic, so they …’

  ‘Who’s they?’

  ‘Right. Ah … his mother and this brother—Lady Rachel Harkness and Mr Warren, middle name St John.’ She pronounced it Sinjin.

  I didn’t. ‘St John?’

  ‘Don’t start with your anti-establishment rap. Okay, they’re very rich. Property.’

  ‘That’s the best kind of rich I always think. Harder to steal. And what’s your involvement and where do I come in?’

  ‘Get yourself another drink and I’ll tell you. Your tongue’s hanging out.’

  ‘That’s just in expectation of hearing you saying Sinjin like that again.’

  Glen had only drunk half of what was in her glass so it was just another Scotch for me. Cheap date. I made it a double. There’s something about people going to AA meetings that makes me drink more. When I got back to the table Glen had her notebook out and was flicking over the pages. Her fingers were long with closely trimmed nails. No rings. She glanced up and saw me looking.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You’ve got nice hands.’

  ‘Good line but I don’t put them around men’s dicks anymore. I’ll shake with you when we finish if you like. This is how it is—the Harknesses want me to try to find Rodney Harkness’s wife and kid. They’ve got ideas of reuniting them.’

  ‘What does Rodney think about that?’

  ‘He doesn’t know about it. He doesn’t get out for a couple of days.’

  ‘Cured, is he?’

  Glen shrugged. ‘They hope so but they’re not sure. They’re not the ones behind getting him out. Apparently some civil liberties lawyers got involved. Took his case on as a natural justice issue and filed papers and got reports and a court order. The Harknesses want me to find out about that as well.’

  ‘Here’s to civil liberties and two jobs,’ I toasted her. ‘Nice going.’

  ‘Three,’ Glen said. ‘They also want someone to keep an eye on Rodney for a while to make sure he doesn’t start drinking, or to help if he goes nuts again. I thought you might take it on.’

  ‘Do you get the other jobs if I don’t?’

  ‘I don’t get them unless I provide someone for the minding job. I don’t want just anyone, I want you.’

  That was Glen. She had a way of getting me on the back foot. After all the rows we’d had I was always looking for an edge with her, like trying to get her to admit she needed me now. And she usually outmanoeuvred me just like this.

  We talked it over for a while but I knew I was going to agree. I had nothing else substantial on hand and this could be a few weeks of steady work at my standard rates, subcontracted by Glen. It beat process serving and escorting suits to meetings with other suits and I’d always wanted to meet someone with St John in their name.

  ‘Tell me Rodney’s a St John, too.’

  ‘I don’t know. You’ll have to find out. Are you in?’

  I said I was interested and Glen said she’d get the paperwork to me tomorrow. In an effort to stay in the race, I’d recently invested a decent cheque in home and office PCs and signed up for the web and email but this was just about the first occasion to use it properly.

  We said our goodbyes with kisses on the cheeks outside the pub with the bright young things still sparking inside. I watched her walk away in her designer jeans, low heels and sporty leather jacket and felt a chill through my body although it was September and a mild enough night, with slightly chilly wind gusts. I wanted to run after her and say, Fuck all this. Let’s sell up and go to the Central Coast and open an agency together and make enough to live on and catch fish and stay brown all the year round. I took one step or maybe I just thought I did. Then she was out of sight and I was turning around as if in response to her disappearance and I could see the faded blue of my Falcon parked a hundred metres away.

  By the time I’d reached the car, reality and the cold breeze had cut in, dissolving the nostalgia and the sentimentality and diluting the alcohol. I started the car and let it warm up and I was already thinking about the problems of dealing with someone who’d been shut away for seven years.

  Home alone. It wasn’t late and I wasn’t sleepy. I took a walk around the block to induce sleep. The last three hundred metres of Glebe Point Road on the right-hand side going down to the water are undergoing massive development. An up-market apartment complex is replacing the warehouses and boat yards. A working area of the bay has had its time and the water is more valuable now as something to look at. The painting-by-numbers advertisement for the complex stresses the view as the selling point. The developers promise walkways and grass plus a fountain and it’ll probably look okay, but I’ll miss the boat yards. If I sold my terrace I could probably buy two apartments—live in one, rent the other and be set for life, except that it’d feel like death.

  Back inside, I only looked briefly at the Scotch bottle before making a pot of coffee. I went upstairs to the spare bedroom where I’d set up the computer and turned it on. I heard the coffee perking and went down to fill a mug. I’m told there are people who can sit down at a computer without anything to eat, drink or smoke but I’m not one of them.

  A bit of a trawl turned up some Harkness data. Warren St J was a partner in Beams, Harkness and Trezize, solicitors in the city. Nice website. Not exactly touting for custom but letting the world know they were around. Harkness Holdings Ltd was a publicly listed company with interests in commercial and residential property in Sydney and Melbourne and with a solid share value. Sceptic that I am, I wondered immediately why such a well-heeled character would deal with a one-woman detective agency. Why not one of the internationals with their Dick Tracy wrist walkie-talkies and lapel badge cameras? I sipped coffee and thought about it. Three possibilities: one—referral. Maybe Glen had done good work for someone Harkness knew. Two—security. The bigger the show the more people in the know. Three—containment. In my experience clients sometimes went for a small outfit so they could feel in control.

  I wondered whether Glen had got herself a website yet. Sure enough: The Glen Withers Agency—former Detective Inspector NSW Police; BSc (Newcastle), BJuris (Monash); Captain, Army Reserve. Confidential enquiries discreetly conducted, blah, blah. Nice photo. I stared at the screen and tried to imagine my own home page: Hardy Investigations—Second Lieutenant Australian Army (campaign ribbon, mentioned in despatches); LLB (NSW) discontinued; twenty-plus years’ experience. I saw my battered, broken-nosed phiz cold-eyeing back at me and shook my head. Bad move.

  I finished my coffee and was about to log off when an idea occurred to me. I called up the search engine and tapped in Rutherford House. There was a fair amount of Rutherford this and Rutherford that but I got to it before too long. It was amazing how such a glossy, up-market, hi-tech website could convey so little warmth. The grounds and buildings looked nice and the medical staff had every qualification under the sun. The place had government certification and high- profile patrons and endorsements but something about the design and layout of the information struck me as chilling. I had no doubt it cost a fortune to be treated there, but for all the pictures of garden beds and recreation areas it still gave off the atmosphere of a prison. I printed out the page with the staff list and bookmarked the site.

  Before switching off I checked the email, not expecting anything. There was a message with an attachment from withersg. The contract, no doubt. She’d probably drawn it up beforehand. Sure of her man. The message read ‘Thanks, Cliff.’ There we were, in the inner west and the eastern suburbs, connected by computer but far, far apart.

  2

  In the morning I printed out the contract and read it through. I’d get my retainer from her and she’d meet my ongoing daily rate and expenses. The document contained no details of the case so I was signing on simply on the strength of what Glen had told me. Glen and I had worked in tandem like this a few time
s before, sometimes with her as the principal and sometimes me, without any trouble. But those times we’d only signed a contract halfway through the job or at the end or not at all. I wasn’t happy about signing such an open-ended contract up front. All this high-tech formality. I brooded about it and Glen rang me as I was brooding.

  ‘I thought you could sign it and fax me back.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I reckon I should know a bit more about it before committing myself.’

  I could feel her impatience coming down the line but she composed herself, obviously with an effort. ‘Tell you what, I’m scheduled to meet Lady R and her son this afternoon at the family home,’ she said. ‘I’d like you to come along so they can see how reliable you look. And you can look them over and decide.’

  ‘Okay, I’ll brush up on reliability. Where and when?’

  When turned out to be 3 p.m. and where was a large house with a Mediterranean villa look to it set in what appeared from the street to be half an acre of forest in the middle of Bellevue Hill. I drew up in the Falcon behind Glen’s Pajero. A high brick fence enclosed the grounds and the only entrance was a narrow walk-through gate with heavy security. No driveway. I got out of my car and leaned in at the Pajero’s driver window.

  ‘Where’s the entrance to the underground car park?’

  ‘I was told about that. They don’t have cars. There’s a delivery entrance off the side street that runs along the east boundary of the place. Weird, huh?’

  ‘You mean Warren lives here with his mum?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Where’s dad?’

  Glen busied herself collecting her shoulder bag and checking in it for her professional bits and pieces. ‘I imagine we’re going to find out about him and Rodney and other stuff. All I know is he’s dead. Let’s have a look at you. Are you presentable?’

  I stepped back and she got out and looked me over. A navy blazer, blue shirt, dark slacks and shoes, no tie. I’d shaved closely and washed my hair which was still more dark than grey. Glen was wearing a black pants suit, low heels, white silk blouse.