Saving Billie

I'd done a year of constitutional law in my aborted law course and enjoyed it more than torts or contracts. I seemed to remember that I'd passed it. It was back when there looked to be possibilities of change in Australia, when change wasn't a dirty word. Now it was all steady as she goes.

I was leafing through the accommodation guide with the Amex card to hand when the phone rang by my elbow. I picked it up, not expecting a prospective client to call at home, but it happens. I was prepared to say I was on holiday.

'Cliff Hardy.'

'Cliff, Cliff, it's Sharon. You have to help me. Billie's disappeared.' part two

PART TWO 15

Sharon said she wanted to meet in my office and to get everything on a businesslike basis. I said I'd be willing to help without that because I'd never been happy about the way I'd left things.

'No,' she said. 'Those bastards paid twenty thousand dollars into my bank account. They said it was to help Billie get resettled somewhere and then they… well, I'll tell you when I see you. But I want to use their fucking money to find her.'

She showed up at the office wearing jeans and a Panthers football shirt, sneakers. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail and she hadn't bothered with makeup. There were flecks of paint on the jeans and the shirt. She plonked herself down in the client chair.

'I know, I know,' she said. 'I look like shit. Oh, I've got that bitch's clothes in the car.'

'Let's give them to the Smith Family. She's not exactly my favourite person either.'

'I thought you and her might be…'

'No. Let's hear it, Sharon. What's happened?'

She told me that Billie had come out of the coma and that the doctors had pronounced her well enough to be moved to a private hospital for detoxification and treatment for depression. McGuinness had got in touch with Sharon, told her Billie would be moved to the Charlton Private Hospital in Artarmon if she signed a release form he'd fax to her, and that the money would be paid to her directly.

'Dumb little westie me, I didn't question him and I thought, North Shore, fine. When I tried to check on the visiting hours I found that there was no record of Billie being admitted. Sarah's upset and I don't like seeing my kid upset.'

'What sort of a place is it?'

'Oh, it's the real McCoy-big, hot and cold running doctors and nurses. I can't see it being involved in anything fishy.'

'You never know.'

I told her about Barclay Greaves being behind Lou Kramer's book and my suspicion that there was more to his interest than just getting the dirt on Jonas Clement. 'He's rich with lots of different interests. Could be he's got a piece of this hospital and could… arrange something.'

'Well, that's something for you to look into. It'd be a start at least.'

'What about the police? Abduction's a serious crime.'

She shook her head. 'No way. There're all sorts of warrants out on Billie-for drugs, using and supplying, probably old non-appearance in court things as well. They'd say good riddance.'

'Okay, I'll see what I can find out. But I have to tell you, big money can do all sorts of shitty stuff, cut corners, smooth things out.'

'Yeah, I know. Somehow she got in real deep this time.

I'm facing never seeing her again, I know that. But I feel guilty about what's happened. She was better off with those Polynesians…'

'No. She'd have been dead by now.'

'She might be anyway. I feel as if I've been bought off with this money. How the fuck did they know my bank details?'

'As I said, they can do things. But so can I, sometimes.'

She insisted on signing a contract and writing a cheque. I said I'd keep her in the picture if I got anywhere but she shouldn't get her hopes too high.

She left and I reached for the phone. It hadn't seemed diplomatic to mention it to Sharon, but my first port of call was Louise Kramer. I rang the numbers I had for her and got the answer machine at the home number and a not available for the mobile. I found the number for the Sydney News in the phone book and rang it.

'News.'

'Louise Kramer, please.'

There was a long pause and then the female voice said, 'Are you trying to be funny?'

'I'm sorry, what…?'

'Haven't you seen today's paper? Louise is dead. She committed suicide the day before yesterday.'

I almost dropped the phone. I don't get the papers delivered because I never know when I'm going to be away or for how long and nothing marks a house out as unoccupied more than a pile of plastic-wrapped papers. I went down to King Street and bought the Sydney Morning Herald. The report was on page four. It said that journalist Louise Kramer, thirty-six, had been found dead by the cleaner who arrived on schedule to clean her apartment.

Ms Kramer had been found in bed with a bottle of vodka on the bedside table and an empty vial of sleeping tablets. The police were reported as saying that Ms Kramer had a history of drug abuse and depression, and that the circumstances of her death were not being regarded as suspicious.

Like hell, I thought. I went back to the office and made a succession of phone calls, trading on past favours and associations, until I got on to the detective who'd filed the initial report on Lou's death. His name was Hamilton and he wasn't happy.

'I'm told I should talk to you,' he said. 'Why?'

'Louise Kramer.'

'Suicide, open and shut.'

'Did you know she was working on an expose of a certain very important person?'

'Hardy, I know blokes like you think you can run rings round blokes like me, but you can stick it up your arse. I talked to the publisher who advanced her twelve grand. She said Kramer was way behind schedule, hadn't met a deadline to turn in a few chapters, and they were just about to write her off. Probably contributed to her depression, which, by the way, I checked with her quack. On and off the pills, self-medicating with booze; classic case. Okay?'

I didn't know him, but I could picture him-cynical, probably misogynistic and homophobic, happy not to have to deal with yet another piece of human misery. Couldn't blame him, they see so much of it. I let him have the last word and hung up. Looking back, I'd seen something of that fragility in Lou, but it hadn't registered strongly. Should have. I'd congratulated myself on finding her association with Barclay Greaves and let it go at that.

I should have probed her professional life more closely.

Check out the client, I'd told the students, but I'd only done half the job. As I sat with the Newtown traffic humming under the window and a hot Sydney day developing, I gave Louise Kramer a respectful nod. She was like a lot of people who get out of their depth in the world where money and power rule-game to the last, but I'd be prepared to bet that the Stoli and those pills had been forced down her unwilling throat.

The two obvious candidates were Clement and Greaves, or rather their muscle men. If what Hamilton had said about Lou's progress with the book was right, she seemed to be less of a threat to Clement than it first appeared. But Clement might not know that. In any case, my brief was to locate Billie and that meant focusing on Greaves. I did a web check on the Charlton Private Hospital but learned nothing useful. As Sharon had said, it looked established and respectable. It'd be difficult to contrive a secret admission and cover-up in such a place. Difficult, but not impossible.

I had Greaves's Manly address, but didn't for a moment imagine he'd have Billie tucked away there. The web told me that Oceania Securities' office was in St Leonards. I drove there, parked, and looked the place over. The company occupied the whole of a narrow, four storey freestanding building in a quiet street a few blocks away from the Royal North Shore Hospital. There were getting to be too many hospitals in the case for my liking. There was a small, three-level car park within a hundred metres of the Oceania building and I saw a number of people come out of the offices, head to the car park and emerge behind the wheel. Client parking. Employee parking, too? It seemed likely.