Richard sighed. He’s a great radio and TV performer and knows how to sigh, even into a telephone. ‘I’m too intrigued to hold back. I accept your risible terms. Alistair McLachlan had a very big eastern suburbs practice. He committed suicide the hard way twenty-four years ago. The cops said he must have nearly ruptured his soft palate with the gun muzzle. He left a lot of very unhappy people behind him. Cliff?’
‘I’ll call you,’ I said.
There were no current listings for Pike, Bourke or Martin as private enquiry agents. That didn’t necessarily mean they weren’t still active-working for big security firms or trading under names like Ace Detective Agency. But I had never heard of them and, from the sound of Arch’s notes, they were contemporaries of his-highly strung men with chequered pasts and some very bad habits. The odds against them still being around were long. But Dick Maxwell was still around and still working, after a fashion. What’s more, I knew where he was. The problem was whether to take him a packet of Earl Grey tea or a bottle of Beefeater gin.
I bought both and drove up to Springwood in the Blue Mountains, where Maxwell had got himself a job as ‘security manager’ of an estate owned by Peter Blain, a wealthy man who had made a lot of enemies. Blain was tough, but getting along in years. He was also a homosexual which was probably how Dick Maxwell got the job. When sober, Dick Maxwell could do a decent job, but he hadn’t been sober very much in the last ten years. One month you’d hear that he’d taken the cure, was going to AA and drinking nothing but tea with lemon; the next you’d see him in the Journalists’ Club, spinning yams, lying his head off, totally pissed.
I drove past the Lindsay house, where the tourists’ cars were parked higgledy-piggledy all along the track, down deeper into the valley. The Blain estate was vast-a high drystone wall fronted the unmade road and the twenty or so hectares of cleared land were surrounded by dense bush. I pulled up outside the elaborate iron gates, a small one for people on foot and a big one for motor traffic, both set in a stone arch, remote-controlled and electrified to the hilt. Birds circled overhead, then settled back into the trees. Some of them whistled and called and were answered from, deeper in the forest. I sucked in deep breaths of the cool, clean April air. Every time I go to the Blue Mountains I think the same thing: What the hell am I doing, living in that city shithole when this is all here and available? Then I go back to the shithole and it throws a lot of very confusing answers at me.
The booth behind the small gate was empty but there was a squawk box to talk into.
I pressed the button. ‘Cliff Hardy to see Mr Maxwell.’
Maxwell’s fruity tones came through: ‘Clifford. How nice. What would it be about, this unexpected call?’
‘Arch Merrett,’ I said.
The pause at the other end spoke volumes. ‘Ah, well, I don’t quite know…’
Peter Corris
CH20 — Forget Me If You Can
‘He’s dead, Dick. He left me some files and you know what an inquisitive type I am.’
‘Best to let old Archie rest in peace, don’t you think?’
‘No, I don’t. Let me in, Dick, or I’ll make a hell of a lot of trouble. I can see a greenhouse through the gate here. How about I put a few thirty-eight slugs into it for openers?’
‘You, ah… wouldn’t have a drink on you by any chance, would you?’
‘Beefeaters,’ I said. ‘Half bottle.’
The buzzer sounded and I pushed open the smaller of the two gates. I tramped up a gravel path that ran beside the bricked driveway. The house was a huge, rambling two-storey affair, all windows, stone and wood, half-covered in creeper. I was still a hundred metres from it when I saw Maxwell coming down the path. He was wearing country squire gear-tweed jacket, drill trousers, boots-and carrying a shotgun. I stopped and took out my pistol. Maxwell stopped, too. We were both out of effective range, but I fancied my chances better than his. As a target, he was approximately twice as wide. Maxwell stared at me for a few long seconds, then he broke open the gun and came forward with it hanging limply over his arm.
‘Cliff, old love! What a pleasure. How’d you like my country seat?’
‘Very nice, Dick,’ I said. ‘I like your attention to security, too.’
He jiggled the gun. ‘Force of habit. I’ve got nice little digs around the side here. Come along and we’ll have a natter.’
We followed the path past the greenhouse to a long walkway, bordered by flowers and topped by a pergola draped with vines and creepers. Maxwell had a small cottage set at a short distance from the house.
‘Servants’ quarters,’ he said as he opened the door. ‘Not that I’m complaining.’
I went through into a neat living room, rather dark on account of the small windows which were half-obscured by creeper, but comfortably furnished. Maxwell took two shells from the gun, closed it up and rested it against the wall. He was looking at me closely and I produced the flat bottle from my pocket as I put my. 38 away.
‘Splendid.’ He bustled away into the deeper gloom and returned with two old-fashioned crystal glasses. ‘Good gin likes its own company best.’
I put the bottle on the low table in the middle of the room and sat down. ‘Like you, Dick?’
He was already turning the cap. ‘Perforce, these days,’ he said.
‘I want to talk about the old days.’
‘Cheers.’ Maxwell drank a double slug straight off and poured again.
I took a sip. ‘Don’t get pissed on me, Dick. It won’t work.’
‘There’s not enough in this little bottle to get me pissed. And there’s nothing else on hand. I’ve been drying out.’
I didn’t say anything, didn’t feel any guilt. A drunk finds reasons to drink, that’s the way it is. I got up and went through the cottage to the kitchen. The refrigerator held milk, yoghurt, low-fat cheese, fruit juice and diet soft drink. I found a plastic iceblock tray in the freezer, flexed it and filled a bowl with ice. On the way back to the sitting room I glanced into the bedroom-single bed, spartan fittings, not Dick Maxwell’s style at all. In the front room the level in the bottle was much lower and Dick was slipping the shells back into the shotgun. I came up quietly and put the muzzle of my. 38 into his fleshy neck.
‘Don’t be silly, Dick.’
‘For me, not for you.’
‘Don’t be silly.’
‘They’ve sent you, haven’t they? They’ve kept their word after all this time.’
I put my pistol away and relieved him of the shotgun. I set the bowl of ice on the table and steered him back to his chair. ‘Dick,’ I said. ‘I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about. As I told you, Arch Merrett left me his files. Your name came up in the last one. A divorce case. I know something about it but I want to know more. It’s idle curiosity, that’s all.’
Maxwell’s hand shook as he poured himself more gin. He added a couple of ice cubes and his tremor rattled them against the sides of the glass. ‘I wish I could believe you.’
‘You can. Tell me about you and Arch and Pike and the others.’
‘It all went wrong.’
That didn’t surprise me. There was something too flash about the scheme as outlined in Arch’s notes-too many people in the know, too many to square. ‘How?’
‘Every bloody way. From the word go. Pike was supposed to copy…’
‘The discretion statements, I know. Just tell it, Dick. If I get lost, I’ll ask you for directions.’
It took him a while and the rest of the gin, but I got the full story. Photocopy machines were slow affairs in those days, requiring careful handling. Pike’s broke down and he was late getting the documents back to the court. This put the clerk under some kind of pressure and he talked to someone who talked to someone else. When the time came for the boyos to put the screws on, they met with delays and confused arrangements that taxed their nerves and stretched the bonds of friendship.