By Peter Corris
Archie Merrett lived in a Glebe flat a few streets away from my place. I used to see him pretty often in the pub. We’d have a drink or two, pass the time. Archie had plenty of time to pass and he appeared to have lots of money to spend as he was doing it. He was about sixty-five when I first met him ten years ago; he had no hobbies apart from the horses and drinking, and he said he’d come back to Sydney after retiring and living on the Gold Coast for a time.
‘It was all different in my day, boyo,’ he told me almost every time we talked. ‘We earned our dough.’
I’d nod and drink some beer and try to catch what he was saying above the noise of the television. He was usually saying the same thing.
‘What’ve you done today, Cliff?’
‘Served a summons or two, collected a debt, held a guy’s hand while he had a meeting with some people he’d never met before.’
Archie’s old eyes, peeping out between puckered wrinkles, would light up. ‘Any trouble?’
‘No.’
‘Different in my day.’
‘When you were all boyos.’
‘You can laugh, but it used to be a tough racket.’
He was referring to the private enquiry agent business which he’d been in from the time he got back from New Guinea in ‘46 until his retirement about twenty years later. In those days, according to Arch, most of the work was in divorce—although Arch preferred to call it ‘matrimonial’.
‘It scarred a man, Cliff, all that climbing in and out of windows, taking photos, going to court and hearing the terrible things men and women said and did to each other. It put me off marriage, I can tell you.’
I liked to hear his stories about the Fifties when I’d been body-surfing, boxing and thinking about girls and adventures in foreign parts, so I’d often egg him on with a remark like, ‘Ruined a few suits too, eh, Arch?’
A throaty, fifty-a-day chuckle. ‘You bet. Did I ever tell you about the time I was under a bedroom, down with the cat shit and spiders, with a stopwatch in my hand.’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Well I was. I’d got a bit of stick from a judge about being vague in my evidence and I’d decided to go scientific. I was going to time those bloody bed squeaks—so many to the minute.’
“What happened?’
‘Bloke must’ve weighed twenty stone, wharfie he was, and this little slip of a woman. Don’t know how she survived it. Anyway, I’ve got the stopwatch out and the torch on and I’m counting the squeaks and suddenly the whole bloody lot’s coming down on top of me. Bloody borer in the bearers.’
Arch’s wheezes and gasps would overwhelm him for a few minutes until he caught enough breath to light another cigarette. Then he’d tell me about the time he was out on a window ledge and felt a sneeze coming on, or when the grandmother kidnapped her baby grandson from her Protestant daughter-in-law so she could have him baptised as a Catholic. I liked Arch and his stories. The emphysema and circulation problems got him in the end, of course. I visited him in hospital a few times. They put a hole in his neck and took off one of his legs. Then he died and I missed him.
A few weeks later I was surprised to get a call from a solicitor who said he was the executor of the estate of the late Mr Archibald Ronald Merrett, deceased as of 1/5/90. It took me a second for the name to register.
‘Arch,’ I said. ‘Oh, yes. What can I do for you?’
It turned out Arch had left his case files to ‘my friend and confidant, Mr Clifford Hardy, for his education’. The solicitor sent them round the next day—three cardboard boxes which had formerly contained bottles of Reschs Pilsener and were now jammed full of manilla folders, some bulging, some containing only a single sheet. I stacked the boxes under the stairs and didn’t look at them for months until I was laid up with a sprained ankle, the result of jumping for a smash that Yannick Noah couldn’t have reached. Just for something to do, I dragged out the boxes and started reading. I forgot about the ankle and the pain and about how I had to be careful not to take too many pethidines with alcohol. I could hear Arch’s ruined voice talking to me from the pages. Especially when I got to the last file in the third box. It was a thick file: transcripts of interviews, memos, photographs, receipts. I read it all through. There was also a tape. I put it in the machine, poured out a glass of white and sat back to listen. I’d heard old Arch tell a hundred stories, but it was an eerie feeling to hear him telling one last yarn ...
* * * *
Alistair McLachlan gave me the drum. He was the solicitor representing Mrs Thelma Lucan-Paget in her divorce action against her hubby, George. Thelma had the goods on George— notes, receipts for presents, a hotel bill. The core was Mrs Beatrice Butterworth.
I said to McLachlan, ‘Uncontested, Mac?’ He didn’t like being called that. He didn’t like me, full stop. But he knew I did good work. ‘Not clear at this stage, Merrett. Probably. There’s a lot of property involved. No children, thank God. But things to be sorted out.’
Gravy for you, boyo, I thought. McLachlan told me what he wanted—a series of photographs plus an affidavit. My job was to snap George and Bea leaving her flat at Rose Bay, going to dinner or whatever they were doing that evening, toddling back to the flat, closing the door. The pictures had to be timed and annotated: 27/2/66—8.30 p.m.: subjects entering Romano’s ... I was happy to do it. A nice clean one. No lock-picking, no bribing hotel employees, no stealing bedsheets. On the evening appointed, I loaded up the old Ashai Pentax and headed for Evans Road, Rose Bay.
Medium-sized block, older style, garden courtyards on the ground floor, balconies on the upper levels. Beatrice Butterworth’s flat was at the back; it had both features—a small balcony and a landscaped courtyard. The balcony would have had a nice harbour view—say, thirty grand, all up. There was a wide driveway that was marked out in parking spaces, six of ‘em, one for each resident. Bit tricky if you were pissed to park and unpark, but otherwise okay. I’m back there, behind a tree, camera at the ready, super-fast film, and the door opens. A bloke answering the description I’d been given— heavy build, balding, fleshy face—comes down the steps with this good-looker on his arm. She was twenty years younger than him, say thirty, blonde, wearing a blue silk dress, a real sort. A pleasure to take her picture. They sidle up, chatting and laughing, to this silver-grey MG sedan. I took another picture as he helped her in— great legs she had, take your breath away.
Off we went towards the city. I was following in my FE. I had a sense that there was something wrong but I couldn’t put my finger on it. They went to this Greek joint in Elizabeth Street, overlooking the park. I’m close behind them. They give each other a peck—I snapped that, nice shot—and go in. Nothing to do now but go and have a couple of beers and a counter tea, pick ‘em up again on the way out. Starters, mains and afters, bottle of plonk, coffee, what are we looking at, hour and a half? I moved off and, again, I got this feeling that worried me. Didn’t know what it was, probably imagination. An hour later and I was back there, too nervous to eat. I’m jotting down times and places in my notebook, sniffing around. Couple of smokes and here they come again. Christ but she was beautiful, like a film star, and fat George could hardly keep his hands off her. Didn’t blame him. Anyway, I got a good kiss shot with his hand on her bum. I skedaddle around and through the park so I’m ready to follow them back to Rose Bay, and that’s when I twigged. ‘Arch,’ I said to myself, ‘we’ve got company.’ He was good, very good. A little bloke, nothing special about him—sports jacket, open-neck shirt. But I saw the camera as he got into his blue Mini and I realised that I’d seen the car before—in the street at Rose Bay. I also had something you need in this game, call it intuition: I knew this bloke and me had been working the same side of the street. Tricky situation. He must’ve seen me. I’m five ten, not skinny, and this was an uncontested. How careful did I have to be? Only thing to do was pretend I hadn’t seen him, play along, and see what happened.
Back to Rose Bay. George scrapes his MG on the brick wall of the flats and they both get out laughing. What’s a few hundred bucks to George? I drove on. I hadn’t quite finished the job but what the hell? I was more interested in the bloke in the Mini. I parked further up the street and came back quickly on foot. Lucky. George and Bea were having a smoke out in the open, looking from the street down towards the water, before going in to co-respond. The little bloke got a shot of George lighting her up. Then he looked around nervously. He was looking for me but he had no chance. He raced around the back when they went down the drive and got a picture of Bea opening the door to her flat. Nice work. It occurred to me that if I grabbed his camera I’d have the best series of sneak photos since the world began.
I scooted away back to the street and crouched down behind the Mini. When he put his key in the lock I came up behind him and gave him the old forearm-bar. It works particularly well on little men, cuts off the wind and the resistance. In New Guinea we used it on Jap sentries, before slipping the knife in.
I said, ‘Put the camera on the roof of the car. Leave the key in the lock and stay very still. If you don’t, I’ll break your bloody neck.’
He does what he’s told, very meek and careful. I slid my hand away long enough to get inside his jacket and grab his wallet. Then it was chin up again and don’t move a muscle.
‘Let’s talk,’ he said. ‘I’ve been waiting for you. We’re in the same game. I’m Ted Pike.’
‘What game would that be, Ted?’
‘Private enquiries. My ticket’s in the wallet.’
I let him go and grabbed hold of his car keys and the camera. He turned around slowly and faced me—pale, pixie features, bat-wing ears, a face only a mother could love. But not distinctive. He stood about five foot six and would’ve weighed about nine stone. Slip in anywhere, you’d never notice him. I took my time opening his wallet. He wasn’t going away, not with me in charge of his car and his camera and his cash. He had a fair bit of money in his wallet and his PEA licence. Besides, he’d been waiting for me.
‘So,’ Ted said. ‘Do we talk?’
‘You talk, I’ll listen.’
He sniffed. ‘Tough guy. This is a matrimonial, right?’
I nodded.
‘I’m on Mrs Butterworth. Her husband wants a divorce. You know the drill, he needs repeated acts of infidelity.’
‘No, he doesn’t. He only needs the one. She needs repeated acts. Besides, Butterworth’s wasting his money. I’m on the bloke, Lucan-Paget. His wife’s citing Mrs B as co-respondent. The divorce isn’t going to be contested, so your bloke’s got his cause, cut and dried.’
‘That’s not the way I hear it,’ Pike said.
I gave him his things back and we shook hands. ‘I’m Archie Merrett, Ted. Hope I didn’t hurt you. I think we better have that talk.’
The pubs were closed. We went to a club Pike knew in Darlinghurst and started to compare notes. He knew a lot more about what was going on than me, and some of the names he started dropping were big ones—newspaper bigwigs like Alexander Farfrae, doctors like Molesworth and Hamilton, politicians like Redding, Bothwick, the judge. Lucan-Paget as I already knew, was a vice-president of the AJC; Mrs Butterworth’s husband, although I hadn’t made the connection until we started chatting like this, was Sir Peter, chairman of Allied Industries Proprietary Limited.
‘Interesting,’ I said. ‘I like to move in the best circles. Now tell me what you meant when you said you were waiting for me.’
‘Not you, yourself, Arch,’ Pike said. ‘I mean, I didn’t know who you were. But we knew there’d be someone working for Mrs Paget-Lucan.’
‘Lucan-Paget,’ I said. ‘Who’s we?’
‘I’ve got some mates I think you’d better meet. All good blokes. I’m sure you’ve heard of some of them. Ross Martin? Frankie Bourke?’
They were PEAs. And not the most ethical ones either. I got a sniff of it then, but Pike wasn’t about to tell me any more. He suggested a meeting at the club the following night. I agreed and asked him if I could have a couple of his shots of the happy couple.
He grinned. ‘I wasn’t taking pictures, Arch. Like I said, I was waiting for you.’
There were five of us at the club the next night—me, Pike, Bourke, Martin and Dick Maxwell. Bells would have started ringing in the heads of any cops or lawyers who saw us together, but it wasn’t that kind of a club. Pike, as I discovered, was a sly type, always looking for an angle; Martin and Bourke were both ex-cops, resentful, lazy and dishonest; Maxwell was a queer and a drunk with family connections to some top people. I was an old soldier with short wind and starting to put on weight. Getting past it. An unholy bunch. We ate a bit, particularly Maxwell and Bourke, sailed into the beer and the Scotch, wrapped ourselves in cigarette smoke and got down to it.
Pike and Maxwell laid it out. This bunch of filthy rich eastern suburbs snobs had all started rooting each other’s wives. The men were all boardroom and club bar chums; the women were all younger than the men. Things got out of hand and thoughts turned towards divorce. The problems were, the disputed custody of a fair number of kids, a hell of a lot of property involved, reputations at stake in areas like the law and politics where reputations mattered, and a fair amount of bitterness. Naturally, these types tended to have the same lawyers, or at least members of the same firms. Things got sticky.
‘The chaps attempted to stitch things up neatly,’ Maxwell said. ‘Make arrangements, come to agreements, one gentleman to another. Worked well up to a point.’
I said, ‘I never heard a whisper until I got my little piece.’
Maxwell nodded. ‘Right. That’s one of the things that worked. All very hush-hush, nothing in the papers.’
Pike grinned, showing that he’d reached the good bit. ‘But the women weren’t having a bar of it. They got their own lawyers and that’s where nasty, low-life types like us come in.’
‘Speak for yourself,’ Martin said, and got a laugh.
Dick Maxwell said, ‘He was, dear boy’ and got another laugh. Maxwell and Pike went on to explain how a deal had finally been put together by the nobs and the lawyers. A clutch of men and women had agreed to become the official co-respondents so that none of the people who couldn’t afford to be named would be.
‘That’s not right,’ I said. “The solicitor told me Mrs Butterworth would be cited as the correspondent in Lucan-Paget vs Lucan-Paget, and that the divorce would be uncontested.’
‘Who’s the lawyer?’ Maxwell asked.
‘Alistair McLachlan.’
‘When you go and see Mac with your snaps, Archie old love, you’ll find out things have changed a trifle. I imagine Mrs Butterworth needed a little pressure to bring her into line. That’s what all of us have been doing—getting the goods on this one and that so that the shysters can apply the screws.’
‘Right,’ Pike said. ‘The upshot’s something like this: Redding will divorce his wife but he won’t cite the judge. He’ll cite Joe Blow, who’ll get a pay-off.’
Maxwell chortled. ‘I’d like to meet him—Joe Blow.’
Pike ignored that and went on, ‘Mrs Molesworth will divorce the doctor, but she won’t cite Mrs Hamilton, the other doctor’s wife…’
Maxwell took a big swig of gin and exploded into laughter. ‘She’ll cite Henrietta Head, or May Kum, the Chinese…’
I laughed along with everyone else. Maxwell wore green suede shoes, hung around gymnasiums and drank neat gin as if it was iced water, but he was a funny bastard until he got nasty and then got too pissed to move. Pike lit a cigarette from the stub of the last, a temptation I’ve always avoided, and went on with his report.
‘Farfrae’s paying a bundle to keep out of it. His missus has got terminal cancer. He’ll be on the loose soon anyway, but if there was a scandal just now, some of his churchie kinfolk would grab his company off him.’
‘Who’s he been rooting?’ I asked.
Bourke waved a forkful of spaghetti. ‘Everybody.’ He leered at Maxwell. ‘Boys, even.’
Maxwell smiled. ‘Hence his generous contribution to the fighting fund. Ted?’
‘They’ve got together a heap of cash,’ Pike said. ‘To pay the dummies, square a couple of the lawyers, buy off this person and that. A quarter of a million, we’re told, and plenty more where that came from.’
I lit a smoke and tried to sound casual. ‘Who’s holding the kitty?’
‘Terry Farmer of Soames, Farmer & Cain,’ Maxwell said. ‘We’ve got an arrangement, Terry and I, although it’s not quite what Terry thinks.’
‘Iron each other’s silk hankies, do you?’ Martin said.
Maxwell had drunk enough to turn snaky. ‘You chaps in your flannel pyjamas with your winceyette wives,’ he snapped, ‘don’t have any idea how much fun an interesting piece of fabric can be.’
‘Easy, Dick,’ Pike said. ‘Frankie’s a poofter basher from way back. He can’t help it. We all know this couldn’t have worked without you.’
‘What couldn’t have worked?’ I said. ‘All I see’s a bunch of PEAs collecting their fees and sitting around getting pissed. Nothing special about that.’
‘We’re going after half of the fund,’ Pike said. ‘A hundred and twenty-five thousand—twenty-five grand each. We were just waiting for the last man to come aboard. Glad it was you, Arch.’
I said, ‘Why?’
Ross Martin put his big fists on the table. He wore rings on several fingers, as some of the people who’d had face-to-face dealings with him had cause to regret. ‘You can’t afford to turn it down, Arch. Like the rest of us, you’re not young, you’re not getting any quicker. I’ll bet London to a brick you haven’t got any gilt-edged investments.’
I looked around the table but I didn’t even have to think about it. Not really. Didn’t even have to remember the supercilious tone of McLachlan and his kind, and the late cheques and the cheques that bounced and the accounts that were never paid at all.
‘Right,’ I said. ‘How?’
Dick Maxwell had mopped his flushed, damp face with a silk handkerchief which he stuffed back into the pocket of his Harris tweed sportscoat. Pissed, but holding himself together, he lifted his glass. Somehow, Maxwell’s glass always seemed to contain an inch or so of gin. ‘To the Commonwealth Matrimonial Causes Act, 1959 to 1965,’ he said. ‘To the right honourable convention of the discretion statement.’
* * * *
That was the end of side one. Arch had enclosed a copy of the Act in the file. The Act had been in force when I began working in private enquiries, and I’d done a bit of divorce work back then—more the serving of papers and checking on assets sort of thing than photograph-taking, but a bit of that as well. Then the law was changed in the early Seventies and we had no-fault divorces of the kind that Cyn and I got. It was interesting to read over the relevant bit of the old legalese again:
A discretion statement in respect of adultery committed prior to the petition shall be filed-
(1) with the first pleading by the spouse
(a) seeking dissolution ...
(b) seeking judicial separation . . .
(2) with the application for custody by a respondent (not otherwise required to file a discretion statement) who seeks custody of a child of the marriage.
(3) in respect of adultery committed by a spouse in respect of either of the above two proceedings between filing of the petition and its hearing (as soon as practicable after its commission) unless in a prior discretion statement the applicant has stated that he is living as man and wife with the person referred to in the discretion statement.
In such discretion statement the applicant shall set out:-
(a) particulars of adultery since marriage or particulars of subsequent adultery;
(b) circumstances leading up to its commission; and
(c) grounds on which the court is asked to exercise its discretion.
And so on.
What this meant was that all the people bringing divorce actions had to lodge with the court a detailed list of their own infidelities. Mostly, these statements were not read by anyone. They were lodged simply to comply with the law, but sometimes a judge who smelled a rat, or took a dislike to one of the parties, would take the statements into consideration. Then the feathers might fly. I filled my glass again. By way of penance, I did a few of the excruciating exercises the physiotherapist had recommended and turned the tape over ...
* * * *
We had a few more meetings in different places. McLachlan played it just the way Pike said he would—paid me, even thanked me, but there was no follow-up. The last get-together we PEAs had was in one of the Lebanese joints that had opened up in Surry Hills. Funny food.
Dick Maxwell said, ‘The legal eagles’ve got the whole thing stitched up like a Savile Row suit. The divorce hearings are going to come on to coincide with some interesting criminal cases, and there’ll be some subtle misspellings in the lists published in the Farfrae press.’
Ross Martin shook his head. “These people have got the world licked. My fuckin’ wife took me for every cent. And I haven’t seen my kids for five years.’
‘Justification for every man here, if needed,’ Maxwell said. ‘Personally, I find the idea of going to bed with the same person for fifty years obscene, but…’
‘Shut your gob,’ Bourke said. ‘I’m a Catholic. All this divorce business’s so much Protestant bullshit. The man says what’s what and confesses his sins. The woman and the kids do what he tells them. That’s it.’
‘Right, Frankie,’ Pike said. ‘Which brings us to the next point of business. And this’ll be news to all of you blokes except me and Dick. We’ve worked it out—eight hundred bucks apiece.’
I think every one of us sat a little straighter in his chair. I knew I’d have a fair bit of trouble laying my hands on eight hundred quickly. I could do it, just, but I’d be stretched. I assumed it was the same for the others, but I was getting the hang of the scheme now. “For the clerk of the court,’ I said.
Pike nodded. ‘Right. Four grand’s a lot of money to a bloke like that. And what’s he got to do? Turn a blind eye for an hour or two. Nothing’s missing. No harm done.’
‘Unless the bigwigs decide to get heavy about it,’ Martin said.
Maxwell slowly took out a packet of black Balkan Sobranies and lit one. It looked like he was enjoying his affluence already. ‘They won’t. When they find out that someone knows everything about who was up who, they’ll pay like little gentlemen. I know these people, believe me.’
‘Eight hundred gets you twenty-five grand,’ Pike said. ‘Tax free. That’s better than thirty to one.’
Everybody looked at everybody else for a time. We hid behind our drinks and cigarettes. Eventually Frankie Bourke nodded and Ross Martin followed suit. They didn’t look altogether happy though, and I think I was talking for both of them when I opened my trap. ‘It sounds all right,’ I said. ‘No, it sounds bloody good. And possible. I just…’
‘We’ve got the details worked out, too,’ Maxwell said quickly. ‘The timing, method of approach
‘I’m sure you have,’ I said. ‘But you interrupted me, Dick. I just wanted to say that if you and Ted have got any idea of pulling a con on Ross and Frankie and me you’d better forget it. You’d both be in hospital for a very long time.’
Bourke said, ‘Not in hospital. Somewhere else.’
Maxwell said, ‘I’m hurt. But point taken.’
Pike sat very still. ‘Frankie knows the court from his police days. He can look things over and make the contact with the clerk, name of Patterson.’
Bourke nodded.
‘My office is in the Rocks. Hop skip and a jump from the court. I’ve hired a photocopying machine.’
‘A what?’ Martin said.
‘You’ll see,’ Pike said. ‘We’ll copy the documents and get them back quick smart. Then Dick will make contact with the marks through his lawyer mate.’
‘Dick and me,’ I said.
Everyone nodded. If we’d been more friendly we’d have clinked glasses. But we weren’t friends—just partners in crime, which is an altogether more serious thing.
* * * *
And that’s where the tape ended. There were some scribbled notes on the conversation pinned to the bill from Azim’s in Elizabeth Street—kebabs, kefta, felafel, hommos, salad and bread, Turkish delight, $22.90—not bad for five.
I couldn’t leave it there. I had to know. I phoned Arch’s solicitor with some politely framed enquiries about his late client’s circumstances. Not polite enough. The solicitor must have had a deep distrust for our profession. He probably feared I would challenge the will on the basis of something I’d found in the files. I did my best to reassure him, but all I got out of him in the end was that Arch had owned his substantial waterview apartment outright and had some quality investments. His estate had gone to a relative. The solicitor wouldn’t say who.
I could almost hear Arch’s harsh, cracked voice gently mocking me. ‘You’re an investigator aren’t you, boyo? Investigate!’
‘Right, Arch,’ I said. I wrote down all the names and tried to assemble information about them. I knew that Sir Alexander Farfrae, the press baron, and Colin Redding, the politico, were both dead. The Who was Who told me that George Lucan-Paget was dead too. I’d never heard of the doctors, but neither was listed in the current register—presumably gone to join ordinary mortals. A couple of phone calls got me the unhelpful intelligence that Sir Arthur Bothwick, the judge, was alive, but in a nursing home suffering from advanced Alzheimer’s.
The women were all said to have been younger, therefore probably still around, but a quick check on a couple of them showed several subsequent marriages and name changes. Too complicated, and it was unlikely that they would talk to me, anyway. That left the lawyer, Terry Farmer, and the private dicks. I rang Richard Adcock who runs a magazine called Seneca, which is dedicated to keeping law-makers and lawyers in line.
‘Hello, Cliff Hardy, private eye,’ Richard said. ‘About as popular as ...’
‘Don’t, Richard. Please don’t. Terry Farmer. What d’you know?’
‘Interesting. What do you know?’
‘Nothing. I’m looking into something that happened a quarter of a century ago. So far, everyone’s dead.’
‘Send out for a ouija board, Cliff,’ Richard said. ‘Farmer’s dead, too. Of AIDS last year. One of the oldest victims.’
‘Shit. Alistair McLachlan?’
‘Barrister, solicitor or what?’
‘Solicitor.’
‘Hang on.’
I was at home, nursing the ankle. I judged I had time. I limped to the kitchen and tapped the cask of white. When I returned Richard was back on the line—waiting, very keen.
‘Cliff,’ he said. ‘We’re going to have to go tit for tat on this.’
‘It’s ancient history,’ I said.
‘I like a good story.’
‘I’ll buy you lunch and tell you all, when I’ve got to the bottom of it.’
‘What if I want to print?’
I thought about it—about Arch and the big names involved. Some of that old power might still be lurking about and Arch had deemed me his ‘friend and confidant’. ‘Maybe,’ I said. ‘I can’t promise.’
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…’
‘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.
‘They got onto us,’ Maxwell said. ‘I never found out how, exactly.’
He waited for me to speak and when I didn’t he went on, ‘Through the lawyers, possibly. It’s usually the lawyers. I got a visit from a very nasty type who did me a considerable hurt. The same happened to the others, I shouldn’t wonder. We all left Sydney for a time. That was part of the arrangement.’
‘Did you get the money?’
Maxwell sniffed. ‘Some of it was paid, I believe. I didn’t see any. We all lost our licences, of course. That was easy for them. And they all got their divorces. Shits.’
‘But you got your licence back.’
‘Ten years later, dear boy, and I had to do some very smelly things to get it.’
‘What about the others?’
Maxwell shrugged. ‘Pike went back into the racing industry in some capacity. God knows what. Probably doping horses. Ross Martin got fifteen years for importing smack. He died in prison. Bourke drowned up at Coolangatta. Fell out of boat when he was fishing. And now you tell me Arch Merrett’s dead. He was a dark horse.’
‘Meaning?’
The bottle was practically empty and Maxwell was looking edgy again. ‘Hardy, you haven’t been stringing me along, have you? I’ve lived with this for twenty-four years.’
‘What d’you mean?’
‘The word was that our lives were forfeit. I was given to understand that I could be snuffed out at any time. It was a threat, of course, designed to keep one’s trap shut, and I complied, believe me. But I always thought that it might happen. That one of those bastards might decide that today was the day.’
‘They’re all dead, Dick. Except one who’s in a hospital and doesn’t remember his own name.’
‘Sons, daughters, associates…’
‘Come on. It’s water under the bridge. No-one remembers. No-one cares.’
He was still suspicious. ‘Except you.’
‘I’m the curious kind. I like to know the end of a story. Besides, I liked Arch.’
One of Maxwell’s eyebrows shot up. ‘Did you? Well, yes, I suppose people did. He was a clever devil. Looked and sounded ordinary.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
Maxwell emptied the last few drops of gin into his glass. I still had half an inch in mine and he reached over and took it. ‘You’ve heard what happened to Pike, Bourke, Martin and me. Tell me, just to satisfy my curiosity, where did Merrett go when he left Sydney.’
‘The Gold Coast.’
‘Is that so? And when he died was he reduced to the status of a servant, like me, or was he in comfortable circumstances?’
‘He was well fixed.’
Maxwell drained the gin and leaned back in his chair. ‘I leave you to draw your own conclusions.’
* * * *
I thought about it on the drive back to the city. All circumstantial, but it added up: Arch Merrett ratted on his fellow conspirators and got away with at least some of the money and his hide intact. Frankie Bourke went looking for him up north and didn’t come back. Arch had left me the files for my ‘education’, but I think the lesson he wanted to teach me was one I had learned a long time ago.