I made myself a drink and sat down to assemble what I had. It was a fair bet that my office had been searched too and if they hadn’t found the file that carried Guyatt’s name, his cheque and two or three other entries, they should go back to searching school. I was in a unique bind: I needed more information on Renshaw, Guyatt, Cash and Petersen. With civilians you can always find a source-a neighbour, a relative, a lover-but these men inhabited a closed world.
The only lead I had into Julian Guyatt’s private life was his fondness for New Caledonia. There I had some room to manoeuvre. Ailsa Sleeman, an old friend, has sizeable business interests in New Caledonia and contacts to match. I called her, chatted about old times, and asked her to put out some feelers about Guyatt.
‘I’ll find out what I can,’ she said, ‘and you’ll have to have a drink with us, Cliff.’
‘Us?’
‘I’m nearly married again.’
‘Don’t do it.’
She laughed. ‘Maybe I won’t.’
I had other things to do for the next few days and I did them. I didn’t get in to the office for a couple of days and when I did I found the search had been rougher and more destructive than the one in Glebe. Papers were torn, things were broken and I got angry; my stomach was still sporting a dark bruise. I sat at my desk and brooded. Then I phoned Renshaw.
‘Here’s what I’ve got,’ I said. ‘A deposition from Mrs Guyatt that she was told her son was on leave. A taped conversation with the duty officer to the effect that Cash and Petersen are on leave plus taped conversations from their homes to say they’re not. I’ve got a witness to my being assaulted in the car park and the licence number of a grey Corolla. I’ve got a video tape of your people searching my office. What d’you say, Captain? Are you going to tell me what’s going on?’
Renshaw’s short, barking laugh sounded far too confident for my liking. ‘You amuse me, Hardy. I’ll tell you what you’ve got-nothing! You called Gundagai and Benalla from a public telephone. Neither of your phones, office or home, has a recording device so you’ve got no record of any call to the duty officer here. I’ve never seen you, of course.’
‘I’ve still got a client.’
‘Listen, Hardy, I’ll talk freely since I know you can’t record anything I say. I’ll admit that clumsy mistakes have been made. That’s all I’ll admit.’
‘I don’t think that’ll satisfy Guyatt.’
Renshaw was calm, almost courtly. ‘I think it will. I think his good lady’s satisfied too. Why don’t you ask them? Goodbye, Hardy.’
I’ve heard that tone of voice before; it’s the tone of the fixer, the smoother-out of things who feels that he’s done a good job. I drove to Guyatt’s place of business in North Sydney. It was a busy operation — warehouse, printery and machine division topped by an office space that seemed to be in the process of expanding. I fronted up to a reception desk and told the young woman in charge that I wanted to see Ambrose Guyatt.
‘Yes, he’s oh, have you got an appointment?’
Something about her manner and the bustle of the place suggested newness, innovation. ‘I’ve never needed an appointment to see Ambrose before,’ I said. ‘What’s up?’
She leaned forward confidentially. ‘You haven’t heard?’
‘No,’ I whispered.
The phone rang and she fumbled uncertainly with the buttons on the new-looking system. When she got the call properly placed she smiled at me. ‘New contract. Big one.’
I felt a lurch in my stomach, just below the bruise. ‘Oh, the army thing?’
‘Yes, isn’t it wonderful? Hey!’
I walked past the desk and pushed open the door she’d been guarding. Ambrose Guyatt sat with a phone at his ear in front of a paper-strewn desk. He was smiling as he spoke into the instrument. The smile faded as he saw me come into the room. He spoke quickly and hung up.
‘Hardy.’
‘Mr Guyatt.’
He reached into a drawer of his desk and took out an envelope. ‘What’s that?’ I said.
He beckoned me closer. ‘Cash instead of the cheque,’ he said softly.
I was standing beside the desk now, looking down at him. His thin, dark hair was freshly cut and he was wearing a new suit. I took the envelope. ‘Congratulations on the army contract.’
He nodded.
‘Want to tell me where Julian is?’
‘I can’t.’
‘Secret mission? Something like that?’
‘I can’t say a word.’
‘I understand his mother’s a proud and happy woman?’
His eyes widened as a faint doubt crept in. ‘I think you’d better go.’
‘I will. I’m sorry for you, Mr Guyatt. You’re going to be a very unhappy man.’
‘What… what d’you mean?’
I leaned close to him. I could smell his expensive aftershave and the aroma of cigar smoke. ‘They don’t make these arrangements for things that go right, Mr Guyatt. They do it for things that go wrong.’
He gaped at me as I walked out of the office.
I was right. Ailsa reported to me several days later. The information was fragmentary, hardly to be relied upon unless you had something to support it as I had. Julian Guyatt was part of a small task force that had been infiltrated into New Caledonia to operate against the Kanaks. It had been wiped out in the first exchange. Piecing it all together, the one-time Under-17 100-metres champion had been dead for twenty-four hours when his father first stepped into my office.
Byron Kelly’s Big Mistake
The newspaper Byron Kelly dumped on my desk carried the headline DECOMPOSED BODY IN PARK. That made it a fairly ordinary day in Sydney, but Byron hadn’t come to talk about bodies or parks or for help with the crossword.
‘I’ve got to get it back, Cliff,’ he said, ‘or she’ll ruin me and a lot of others. This time, she doesn’t know what she’s doing.’
It was late on a Tuesday morning in March. We were in my office in St Peter’s Lane, Darlinghurst. Byron was looking a bit crumpled in his expensive clothes. He moved restlessly from the chair to lean on the filing cabinet and try to look through the dirty window. I sat behind my desk; I was less expensive but less crumpled and I knew there was no point in trying to look out the windows.
‘What exactly are we talking about, mate?’ I said. ‘A letter, a memo, a rocket fuel formula, what?’
‘A letter, no, a draft letter,’ Byron said. ‘Michael roughed out a letter to… one of the money men who’d approached him about getting the all-clear for a development. Two things, no three. One, Michael was pissed at the time; two, he thought he was going to get the Department of the Environment and three, it was a bloody joke anyway.’
‘And you showed the letter to Pauline. I suppose you were pissed at the time too?’
‘No. Just angry. It was a bad time for us. The point is, she took it and she’s been saying all over town that she intends to fry me and this had to be the way she’s going to do it.’
‘What do you want me to do?’
‘Talk to her.’
‘I’m a private detective, not a marriage guidance counsellor.’
‘You’re also my friend.’
‘And hers. Don’t forget that.’
‘Jesus! You know what it’s been like with us, Cliff. We love each other and all that but it’s impossible. She’s done this before, used stuff I’ve shown her against me but… ‘
‘Why d’you show her?’
‘I don’t know. Rage, I guess. But this is bigger. There’s some very heavy people behind this development and it’s going through for better or worse.’
‘Where?’
‘Albion Reef, up north. Lovely spot. Was. This’ll fuck it but there’s jobs and money at stake. It just squeaked through an environmental impact study-took some modifications and some palm greasing. You know how it is.’
I grunted. ‘What was in Parsons’ letter?’