‘You wouldn’t.’
‘You’ve climbed your last wall.’
I increased the strain on his arm to just short of breaking point. Sweat broke out on his face.
‘Okay, okay’
I escorted him to a quiet spot under the grandstand and we had a talk. Not much to it. Stevenson had hired him to steal the pearl, helping out by disabling the alarm system and pointing out the most accessible window. Five grand for the job.
‘I figured it was an insurance job, you know how it is.’
‘Where’s the pearl?’
‘I ditched it according to orders.’
‘Jim.’
I was thirty centimetres taller than him, ten kilos heavier, and clearly not in a good mood. He was backed up against a metal post. I flipped his hat away and pushed against his forehead so that the metal bit into the back of his head.
‘It’s in my car. In the upholstery.’
I let him watch the next race and collect his winnings. As we walked towards the car park, the question in my mind was: Why did Stevenson hire me if he didn’t want the pearl to be found? Why not just let sleeping dogs lie?
Petersen dug the pearl on its ribbon, all sealed in a plastic bag, from the back seat upholstery and handed it to me. Then he gave me the answer to my question.
‘Guess I’ll have to do what I said I’d do,’ he muttered.
‘What’s that?’
‘Use the ticket he gave me to fly to Perth. I’m my own worst enemy. Couldn’t resist a flutter against these bloody bookies.’
I don’t like being taken for a ride by a client, so I made another call on Quentin James to talk things over. I’d agreed to pay him a percentage of my bonus, so he had a stake in the matter.
‘Very considerate of you, Cliff,’ he said, turning the pearl over in his pudgy hands. ‘As it happens I’ve worked out what was troubling me. And by the way, the leak about the missing pearl came from Stevenson himself. Quite contrary to what he told you, the publicity would add value to the painting, pearl or no pearl.’
‘Okay, but I still can’t see why he wanted it to go missing.’
James pulled down a book from his dusty shelves. ‘You have to understand how the art business works. At any one time there are three or four versions of a valuable painting in circulation, or out of circulation. They all have provenances, documents and so on. Now here is a photo of that particular Galliard. It was taken over fifty years ago. The picture was in private hands then and now Stevenson claims to have it. No doubt he has proof of its authenticity, but…’
He opened the book to show a high quality photograph of the woman in the black dress. He produced a magnifying glass. ‘If you look closely at your pearl and then at the one in this photograph, you’ll see that they’re rather different. Slightly different shape and colouring. Yes?’
‘Mmm, yeah, I guess so,’ I said. ‘Therefore Stevenson’s picture’s a fake. Or this one is.’
‘Doesn’t matter,’ James said. ‘As soon as doubt arises the damage is done. My guess is that Stevenson twigged to the problem and couldn’t afford to display the pearl in case someone made this same comparison.’
‘He won’t be well pleased when he gets it back then.’
‘Correct, but he’ll honour your contract.’
‘Oh, he’ll honour it all right, and you’ll get your cut, Quentin. But aren’t you concerned that he was trying to pass off a fake picture as the real thing?’
James shrugged and lit a cigarette from the butt of the previous one. ‘Not at all. They’re both beautiful pictures and, my boy, the art business is a racket.’
SOLOMON’S SOLUTIONS
I need a bodyguard,’ Charles Marriott said.
I said, ‘Why?’
‘Because I think my life is in danger.’
‘All our lives are in danger,’ I said. ‘Nothing surer.’
He looked at me through his wire-framed glasses and stroked his short, gingery beard. He was a tall, spindly individual with narrow shoulders, a pasty face and a slight stoop. He didn’t look the sort of man who should fear for his life, barring accidents, until he was near his three-score-and-ten. Quiet type. Safe. But his eyes were busy. They darted around my office looking frightened. I can understand why you’d look frightened in my office if you have phobias about dust, draughts and old furniture, but not otherwise.
Marriott stopped fiddling with his facial hair and brought his scared gaze around to fix on me. ‘I’ve been told you like to joke to upset people. You don’t need to do that to me. I’m upset already. I need help, Mr Hardy, and I’m willing to pay for it.’
I wondered who’d told him that and whether it was true. I couldn’t think of a recent client with that kind of analytical capacity, but his response got my attention.
‘If I can help, I will, but everybody who employs me pays the same-a retainer variable according to how long it looks like the job’ll take; two hundred and fifty a day, GST included, plus expenses.’
He nodded. ‘So can I consider you engaged?’
‘No, not quite. I’ll have to hear what’s on your mind first. If you’ve been importing heroin freelance from the Golden Triangle and the Triads and the Yakuza are after you, I’ll have to pass.’
My father used to say that only men with weak chins grew beards. He continued to say it after I grew one, and I’ve got as much chin as anyone needs, but I still tend to look at bearded blokes with the thought in mind. Marriott s beard was wispy, but it grew on a solid chin. ‘When do the jokes stop?’ he said.
I pulled myself up straighter in my chair. ‘Now,’ I said. ‘Tell me why you feel in danger?’
‘What d’you know about the IT industry?’
I moved my hand across the surface of my computerless desk. ‘Nothing.’
‘Nothing at all?’
‘You’d better assume that. I doubt I know anything worth knowing. Is IT your game?’
He stroked the beard again. ‘Interesting choice of words. It was a game at the start. A bloody exciting game, but it’s turned into something else.’
I nodded. ‘The money’d do that.’
He gave a respectful nod and told me that he’d started up a dot com with two partners a couple of years back. They were all computer studies graduates from the University of Technology and couldn’t wait to become players.
‘We were full-on computer nerds. Especially Mark and me. Totally into it.’
‘Surfing the net,’ I said, just to be saying something.
He looked at me as if I’d dribbled on my chin. ‘Way beyond that. We were all good programmers and lateral thinkers.’
I persisted. ‘Hackers.’
He looked exasperated and I raised my hands in apology. ‘I’m sorry. That exhausted my vocabulary. I was just getting it over with.’ The truth was, computers bored me and I wasn’t feeling as if this was going to be my sort of thing. But he plugged on, which meant that at least he was serious.
‘I’m talking about Steve Lucca, Mark Metropolis and me. We formed Solomon Solutions and went at it. We did a fair bit of Y2K bug stuff, remember that?’
‘Yeah. Didn’t worry me too much.’
‘Bit of a scam, really. But we made some money and so we had some capital behind us to go for the big stuff.’
‘Which is?’
‘Database financial consulting.’
‘You’ve lost me.’
‘Solomon is now just about the best in the southern hemisphere for accessing financial information worldwide and forecasting government and corporation policies, company profits and share movements.’
‘Ah,’ I said. ‘Bucks.’
‘Big bucks. You have to pay to use Solomon to get our advice and forecasts, which are bloody good, and when you do, Solomon can monitor your transactions and take its commission on successful deals.
‘We developed this brilliant software, you see. It’s all automatic, and your user fee goes up, but we sweeten the pill by having the commission we take go down as your business progresses. It’s all geared to exchange rates, of course.’
I was starting to get interested. As someone who thinks stockmarkets and futures trading and currency speculation ought to be illegal, I was aware that I was radically out of step with the times. I dimly grasped what Marriott was saying, enough to understand that it sounded like being allowed into the mint with a U-haul van.