Peter Corris - Open File

She speculated about whether Wayne or Damien Ireland had killed Angela Pettigrew, implying that her truncated interview with Wayne suggested he was the guilty party.

‘Why did you go that way?’ I asked her when we met up two days later.

‘Kept the cops and the DPP happy and made for better copy. First state minister of the crown to commit a murder since the ex-minister Tom Ley in the forties. Similar in some ways, with mistresses and all that, but better, Wayne being in office at the time.’

In a sidebar to one of her articles she’d made a play of the Thomas Ley affair and his nefarious dealings, including a murder, after losing his ministry and parliamentary seat in New South Wales when in England in the 1940s.

‘You don’t miss a trick,’ I said.

‘A woman in this game? Can’t afford to.’

That meeting took place after I’d had a talk with Sarah at Tania’s house. Tania told me that the girl wanted to see me to ask about Justin. I told Sarah that Wayne Ireland had provided him with a passport and some money-something Tania had only hinted at-and that he must have left the country.

‘Lucky bugger. That’s what I’d like to do. Where did he go, Mr Hardy? To do what?’

‘I think you know the answer to that question.’

‘To be a soldier.’

‘Yeah. I’ll try to get the records searched, but he could’ve gone almost anywhere with a passport and some money. Lots of jumping-off points to other places. Lots of wars going on with opportunities for mercenaries- Lebanon, Angola, Nicaragua

‘You think he got killed?’

‘No way to tell. If he’s alive and okay somewhere, eventually it’s odds on he’ll hear about what happened here. I never heard of an Australian overseas who didn’t check back in some way, sooner or later.’

Sarah was smoking furiously and she lit another immediately after stubbing one out. ‘If he hears about all this shit he probably wouldn’t want to come back. He didn’t care about me.’

‘You don’t know that. He was very distressed and not thinking clearly.’

She shook her head. ‘I told you-we had a fight and I told him about Angela. I wish I hadn’t.’

‘Sarah-’

‘Go away. Fuck off. I don’t ever want to see you again.’

We were right back where we’d started and now I was sure she wasn’t acting.

I was given a hard time by the coroner at the inquest on Paul Hampshire. Shouldn’t you have taken steps to safeguard your client given the earlier events of the day? Shouldn’t you have registered more details of the vehicle that struck him? Etc. Etc. The coroner was a soft-looking man in a tailored suit and my guess was that the only violence he’d ever have witnessed was from the sidelines in a Kings versus Shore rugby game.

Paul Hampshire’s body was unclaimed for a time until some members of his old unit heard of his death and organised a service and a cremation. I went along out of a sense of responsibility, but not guilt. It was a sad affair for a man whose life had been pretty sad.

Things didn’t improve. Tania didn’t write her book but her articles got her a full-time job on one of the tabloids and her career prospered. On legal advice she withdrew her application to have Sarah put in her care and an aunt -a half-sister of Angela’s-took over the job on the understanding that they would live in the Church Point house until the seven year period needed to declare Justin dead was up. By then, Sarah would be an adult and able to claim and dispose of her inheritance.

It didn’t work out that way. Sarah and the aunt didn’t get on and Sarah linked up again with Ronny O’Connor. They took as many valuable items from the house as they could manage, sold them, and used the proceeds to buy a motorbike. They went to Queensland and two years later they both OD’d in a Fortitude Valley squat.

About the time I got that news, from a friend in the PEA game in Brisbane, I met up again with Sharkey Finn. In a pub. But Sharkey had gone badly downhill from the grog and being dumped by Wilson Stafford, and when he challenged me his mate held him back and persuaded him not to be stupid.

The one bright spot was that Kathy Petersen came to Sydney at Easter. We went to the Blue Mountains and to the Central Coast and wined and dined and made love in a variety of places, including my house in Glebe, the Newport Arms hotel (where we joined in a celebration of the ALP’s win in the federal election), and among the rocks at the south end of Maroubra beach. She went back to the coast and I visited her and it was still good, but she met another teacher and they transferred to a school further south and that was that.

Frank and Hilde got over the glitch I’d caused by roping her into my case. Peter got over Sarah, and by the age of fourteen he could beat Frank and me at pool and was pushing Frank at tennis. Taught by his mother, he became near-fluent in German and was studying Spanish and Italian.

Hans Van Der Harr’s file on Justin disappeared. Tania said Sarah had taken it and probably destroyed it. That might have been right, but Tania was always economical with the truth. In any case, a few years later Van Der Harr was prosecuted for raping a female client while she was under hypnosis. He was deregistered and jailed.

There was no satisfaction to be had from the case and for a time I considered giving the game away, just for a while. No one had ended up happy except perhaps Tania. Was Damien a suicide or an accident victim? Sometimes it’s like that-you don’t know what’s really going on until it’s all over. And not even then.

My usual practice was to put all my notes and other documents on a case in a manilla folder and, when it was over, seal it with masking tape. Detective Sergeant Gunnarson at Missing Persons got onto the Immigration records and discovered that a Justin Pettigrew had left Australia for Singapore one week after Justin Hampshire’s mother reported him missing, and there the trail ended. My case file on Justin Hampshire remained unsealed, open…

I rummaged in the box holding the bits and pieces I’d collected in the office, pulled out a roll of masking tape and sealed the file. I sat down and couldn’t help thinking about Justin Hampshire, someone I never met but who had occupied a corner of my mind for years. I hated to think of him dead under a thorn bush in Africa or rotting away in some South American jungle, but that was the likely outcome.

I dropped the folder into the box with the others and took a last look around the room. I hadn’t been there very long but it had grown on me. Hard to say how long Hank would be able to stay. This stretch of King Street was being tatted up quickly, and someone was bound to take over the shop below, spend money up here and raise the rent or need the space.

The wife, who’d prevailed upon Hank to give up PEA work in favour of installing security devices and providing computer upgrade services, had left him for greener pastures, and getting back to the kind of work he liked and did well was a good idea. I’d managed to transfer to Hank a couple of cases I’d been keeping warm while my licence cancellation was still under review. That would give him a start. Best I could do. I left the fax machine – hardly ever used these days – and the clunky old Mac laptop for his use. I suspected the Mac would find its way into the council clean-up service.

I locked the door and carried the boxes and a bag of garbage down to the car. Call me sentimental, but I’d arranged to have the Falcon put up on blocks in a friend’s unused garage. He promised to start it up from time to time. I knew I’d be back, but I didn’t know when, or what I’d be doing.

No time to think about that now. Frank and Hilde were waiting at Glebe to drive me to the airport. I had a plane to catch.