By mutual agreement we didn’t sign a contract there and then. I undertook to read the letters and the trial transcript and ask around about Master while his wife made arrangements for having the money available in New Caledonia. She made it clear that if I refused the job she’d look for someone else, which tapped straight into my competitive instinct.
‘You can keep the transcript,’ she said, ‘but not the letters. I only brought the originals to show you they’re genuine. You don’t have a photocopier?’
I waved my hand. ‘As you see. There’s one in William Street close by.’
‘Low overhead.’
‘That’s right. Do you mind telling me how come you’ve got a hundred grand going spare?’
She stood up to a full 180 centimetres in medium heels. ‘Yes, I do mind. But I’ll tell you this-it’s not Stewart’s ill-gotten gains.’
I put the transcript in a drawer, she picked up the bundle of letters and her bag and we went out and down the stairs into St Peters Lane. Her looks and the white suit turned heads as we made our way to the motor showroom where they let me use the copier. I wondered why she wore something like that on a dull day with rain threatening. Maybe she liked turning heads.
I copied the letters and we shook hands. We exchanged cards. Hers said she was a business consultant and carried an office phone number, a mobile number and an email address. I hadn’t got around to putting the email address on mine. She left the showroom. At a guess, her BMW-a Merc maybe-was in a nearby car park.
Chris Rowley, a salesman I sometimes have a drink with and who’s never quite given up on the idea of selling me one of their Saabs, wandered over and gave a low whistle.
‘Client?’
‘Yep. Maybe.’
‘Looks well heeled. Are you on a good earner, Cliff?’
‘Could be, with travel.’
‘Ah, time to replace that clapped-out Falcon with something more reliable?’
‘Overseas travel.’
‘Good luck to you. Don’t forget to pay for the copies.’
I did some calculations as I walked back to the office. If I took the job on it’d be a few weeks at least before I could expect to show any results or admit failure. At four hundred dollars a day plus expenses the cost would rack up pretty high, and New Caledonia was bound to be expensive. Everything French is. But funds didn’t seem to be a problem for our Lorraine. I realised that she’d told me nothing about herself. I was intrigued and it was a fair bet that was part of her plan.
In the office I tidied up a few things I’d left hanging-sent off a few emails, a couple of invoices and paid some bills. I realised that I was clearing the decks for the Master matter. No contract, no retainer-not best business practice, but then I’ve never been known for best practice at business or anything else.
I copied Lorraine Master’s phone numbers and email address into my notebook and looked at the sheets of photocopy paper. There were six letters spread out over a month or so. The handwriting was a big, loopy scrawl, easy enough to read. Immature perhaps. For some reason, maybe because I wanted to get a more objective view of Master before encountering him directly, I put off reading the letters. But I was still detecting. Because you have to see both sides to get the full message on an airmail letter, I had the Masters’ address-Double Bay, and a house not an apartment. Nice. And another thing-the letters probably didn’t contain any passionate endearments or improper suggestions or she wouldn’t have handed them over so readily. Of course there could be others, she might have culled them, but six letters in four weeks wasn’t bad for a bloke.
I put the photocopies and the transcript in a shopping bag and locked up the office. As I went down the stairs I caught traces of Lorraine Master’s perfume and I wondered about the condition of the marriage. A hundred thousand was a lot to spend on someone. Was it an investment? I was going to have to do some digging. I remember a historian telling Phillip Adams on ‘Late Night Live’ that although it was nice to have letters it was better to have them to and from, otherwise you only had part of the picture. In a way, this game is like being a historian or an archaeologist. The whole story isn’t on the surface.
Early spring in Sydney isn’t much different from late winter, which can be pretty much the same as autumn. In the hour or so since I’d been on the street the wind had picked up and was colder. New Caledonia beckoned all the more strongly. I had to walk quite a few blocks before I reached the car and I was glad to get inside. It still held some of the earlier warmth of the day. I drove home to Glebe looking forward to parking a big scotch by the computer and searching through newspaper files on the web for Stewie. Well, looking forward to the scotch.
When I got inside the phone was ringing. I let the machine pick it up.
‘Mr Hardy, this is Bryce O’Connor. I’m Mrs Master’s legal representative and-’
Quick work, Lorraine. I picked up. ‘This is Hardy.’
‘Good. I gather you want to visit Stewart Master?’
‘Well, yes, I-’
‘Would tomorrow suit?’
‘Tomorrow! What’s the rush?’
‘Mrs Master is anxious to get things moving.’
‘Just bear with me a minute, Mr O’Connor. You say you’re Mrs Master’s lawyer?’
‘Correct.’
‘Did you defend Master?’
‘I did. Unsuccessfully.’
‘This is probably a silly question to ask, but d’you think Master’s innocent?’
‘Usually I wouldn’t answer such a question, but yes, I do. This was entirely out of character for him.’
Marvellous how some people can be such accurate judges of character. I should be so cluey. ‘Did you recommend this course of action to her?’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘Not to put too fine a point upon it, I don’t have a high opinion of private detectives. Now, my time is valuable, Mr Hardy. Would a 10.30 am appointment at Avonlea prison suit you?’
From the tone of your voice I’d rather it was you inside to be visited than Stewie Master, mate, I thought, but I agreed and he hung up first to save spending another valuable half second. I dropped the receiver and listened to two other calls that didn’t amount to anything important and went to get the scotch. I like a brisk pace generally, but this was starting to feel like a flat out sprint. Lorraine Master had a no doubt high-price lawyer and a medium-price private detective jumping through hoops. Good going.
I poured the drink and took it upstairs to where I keep the computer in the spare bedroom. I made a mental note to check on Bryce O’Connor because I felt sure I’d have further dealings with him, and on Lorraine Master, naturally. Then I began my trawl for the dope on Stewart Master. In the old days this would have meant visits to newspapers or libraries and fiddling about with microfilms or, still worse, microfiche. Now it’s a comfort-of-your-own-home job with a drink to hand. In one way I like it, in another I don’t. There was something about getting out, rubbing up against people to get what you wanted, that felt good, gave you a feel for things.
The subscription to the Sydney Morning Herald database is another overhead, but a valuable one. I turned up the paper’s coverage of the Master trial and read through the reports carefully. I also studied the photographs and saw that the lensmen hadn’t missed an opportunity to get pictures of Lorraine. She turned up every day in a variety of outfits. Nothing flashy, all designed to show, firstly, how mature and respectable she was and, secondly, how attractive. Would a man smuggle drugs, risk gaol, risk losing me? her appearance seemed to say.
It didn’t do any good. Master, born in Melbourne, arriving in Sydney in his twenties, was a career criminal, the amount of heroin was large and he’d been ‘uncooperative’ with the police. O’Connor, giving him his due, had stressed Master’s non-involvement with drugs and his relatively clean record in recent times. A family man, happily married, a sportsman.
The clincher was Master’s fingerprints on one of the plastic bags containing the dope. O’Connor argued that these could have post-dated the discovery of the bags but two customs officials swore that Master hadn’t touched the bags. O’Connor tried the Mandy Rice-Davies argument-’Well, they would say that, wouldn’t they?’-but it didn’t work. An election wasn’t far off and law and order toughness was the watchword. Justice Mary Pappas wasn’t looking to get her sentences reviewed for softness and she hit Stewie with twelve big ones.
As far as I could judge, Bryce O’Connor QC had performed adequately under extreme difficulties. The surprise was the inept contribution from Master himself. For a silver-tongued conman with an imposing physical presence he came across as limp and unconvincing, insisting that the heroin had been planted. After the report on the sentence there was no further mention of Master. All this had happened nearly six weeks before and I scribbled a couple of questions as I finished the last article and the scotch simultaneously. Why no appeal? And why the quickness of the trial-a few weeks only after the arrest?
My eyes were hurting. I logged off and went downstairs to scramble some eggs and drink some wine. In a moment of weakness I’d bought a case of cheap chardonnay advertised by leaflet in the letterbox. The wine was okay but the offers kept coming by snail mail and email until I was sick of the sight of them. Also, having a whole case of wine ready to hand didn’t help my periodic attempts at moderation.
As I ate, I thought about prisons. I’d been briefly on remand in Long Bay many years before and had visited people there, but not recently. I’d served a short sentence at Berrima for obstructing the course of justice a while back and that was about it for personal experience. I’d heard that things had changed in the prison system but I didn’t know anything about the changes and nothing about Avonlea. Another web search.
I rinsed the saucepan, plate, knife and fork and glass, ate an apple and brewed a pot of coffee. I sorted through the mail I’d brought in and dumped most of it in the bin. I poured the coffee and was about to go up for another computer session when the door bell rang. I wandered down the passage with the mug in my hand and opened the door without turning on the porch light. Didn’t want to look too welcoming. A large figure loomed up and shoved me aside as it bullocked its way inside.
‘Hey!’ I yelped, partly from surprise and partly because hot coffee had hit my hand.
I spun around. My intruder had taken a few strides inside and was leaning against the wall, panting hard.
‘What does she want?’ he shouted.
I don’t take to being brushed aside and scalded. I put the mug down, kicked the door shut, and moved up on him prepared to pay him back. He was a surprise packet. He levered himself off the wall and came at me swinging. I caught a strong smell of alcohol and sweat as his punch missed and his suit jacket swung open. I dropped my shoulder and hit him hard in the sternum. I felt it bend. His flailing hands fell away and I caught him with a solid left to the ribs. All the breath went out of him and he sagged back against the wall, knees buckled. He was a sitting duck and I didn’t have the heart to hit him again. Besides, he was very drunk and I didn’t want him throwing up on me.
He was wobbling, close to tears. He wore a dark suit, blue shirt and red tie like a banker or a politician, except that the tie knot had slipped down below where I’d hit him. I grabbed a handful of shirt and tie and eased him along to the stairs. He didn’t resist and I dumped him on the third bottom stair the way you handle a bag of clothes destined for St Vinnie’s. He reached for the banister and winced. A good rib shot hurts. He was pale and having trouble catching his breath.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said.
‘You fucking should be. Hang on. I’ll get you some water.’
I recovered the mug and swilled down the remainder of the coffee. In the kitchen I filled a big glass with water and took a quick swig of scotch.
‘Here you go.’
No response.
I reached the stairs and found that he’d stretched out with his legs splayed forward and his top half resting comfortably. He was out cold.
I wasn’t copping that. I took careful aim and splashed the water in his face. His eyes opened, he coughed and spluttered and tried to go back to sleep. He was as tall as me and heavier by ten kilos. Younger by at least ten years. Heavy. I hauled him up and dragged him into the kitchen. His head bounced off the doorjamb but just hard enough to trigger some adrenaline, not to knock him out. I placed him so that his head hung over the sink. The first retch started around his ankles and shook him like a dog coming out of water. He vomited hard, drew in a laboured wheezing breath and did it again. And a third time. The kitchen smelled as if I’d dropped a bottle of whisky on the tiled floor, a thing I’d never do. I wet a tea towel and put it in his twitching hand. Still bending over, he wiped his face, dry-retched a couple of times and turned slowly around to face me.
The light in the passage and over the stairs is dim, the kitchen light is a harsh fluorescent. It bleached him and gave him a greenish tinge. Dark stubble showed through the pale, stretched skin; his eyes were bloodshot and pouchy. Some vomit had splashed up onto his shirt. The paper towel dispenser had busted long ago, but I keep a roll in the same spot. I tore off a couple of sheets.
‘Clean yourself up and then you’re going to tell me what this’s all about.’
He nodded and turned on the tap. When he’d finished he ran water in the sink until it was cleanish. Good manners. The coffee sat in a beaker on a hotplate. I poured a mug for myself and held the beaker up enquiringly. He shuddered and shook his head. I handed him a glass and he filled it with water and drank.
‘You better keep that down,’ I said.
‘I will.’
‘How’s the chest and ribs?’
‘Sore.’
‘Good. Who are you and what’re you doing here?’
‘My name’s Tony Spears. I’m Lorrie’s… Lorraine’s husband.’
‘Her husband’s in gaol.’
He managed a thin smile, then thought better of it and set his mouth against his rising gorge. He gulped and his Adam’s apple moved in his thick neck. ‘That bastard’s her third husband,’ he mumbled. ‘I’m her first.’