Peter Corris - Open File

It sounded as if I’d better wear a jacket and mind my manners. I was beginning to see signs of the problems in the Hampshire nuptials. Paul was basically smooth but there were traces of rough edges here and there. And he’d dropped the hint about the questionable paternity of the daughter. Angela sounded genuinely top drawer. Either that or she was a good actress. She didn’t sound like a hysteric. And I was reminded of the quote from Willie Pep, the much-married boxer: ‘All my wives was great housekeepers. They always kept the house.’

My second last call was to Detective Sergeant Stefan Gunnarson of the Missing Persons Division. We’d had dealings before.

‘You again,’ he said.

‘Me again, to help you close a file.’

‘Hah, well, you did once.’

‘Twice.’

‘Have it your way. Okay, who?’

‘A few years back-Justin Hampshire, seventeen.’

‘Shit, a nightmare mother and an absent father.’

‘Clear in your memory, that’s good. Can I come in and see what you’ve got? How about tomorrow, in the morning? As I said to the lady, there’s a lot of ground to cover.’

‘She got you in?’

‘No, I spoke to the ex on the phone. The father hired me. He’s back from the land of the brave and the home of the free.’

Gunnarson snorted. ‘Well, that’s something. We were lucky to get a fax out of the fucker. When you meet the missus you’ll understand why he went twelve thousand fucking miles away. Okay, Hardy, eleven thirty, don’t be late.’

Always good to have a few bookings for the day ahead, even if they were spread out. Gunnarson was in Darlinghurst and Ms Pettigrew was up at Church Point. But I was on expenses, wasn’t I?

I got through to the registrar’s secretary at Bryce Grammar. After a little difficulty, she arranged to fit me in at the earliest opportunity-the morning of the day after next. She confirmed that I’d need parental authorisation.

I had a few small things to clean up and some to put on hold-faxes, phone calls, cheques in the mail. It was late when I got home and the house was hot after the muggy day. I ate some leftover cold chicken and salad and went to bed with the ceiling fan working overtime. I read a few pages of Robert Hughes’s The Fatal Shore. I had English and French settlers on my father’s side, according to research by my sister. Solidly Irish on my mother’s, with a few convicts-cutpurses and streetwalkers, nothing romantic, no land grantees or rum dealers. There was no Hardytown or Hardy Flats, but Hardys’d been here from early on and that mattered to me in reflective moments. I reached the chapter on ‘Bolters and Bushrangers’ and closed the book. The fan clattered a bit but I slept.

Stefan Gunnarson was no one’s idea of a Scandinavian. He was short and dark and he sweated a lot. His division was housed in a series of small connecting rooms in the Surry Hills police complex and it was the usual jumble of makeshift partitions, filing cabinets, desks, whiteboards and stacks of paper. Gunnarson had a cubicle slightly bigger than the others and slightly apart-the only signifier of his rank. He’d told me previously that he reported to people ‘upstairs’ who had carpet on their floors.

My pass was marked with the date and ‘AM’. I fingered it as I sat down opposite him.

‘Will I turn into a pumpkin at twelve oh-one?’

‘That’d be your famous charm at work, would it? You’re wearing a clean shirt and pants and that jacket was dry-cleaned recently. Let me guess. You’re on your way to see the dragon lady of Church Point.’

‘Right.’

‘Good luck.’ He had a thick spring-back folder on the desk and he released the contents. ‘Can’t show you the whole thing for obvious reasons, but I can give you the flavour.’

He sorted through the documents, withholding some and passing others across. I read the initial report and statements from Justin’s mother and sister. A couple of the neighbours had also been interviewed and some of the boy’s friends. The police had followed up on a few of the matters raised-a surf carnival up the coast at around the relevant time, a ski lodge where Justin had stayed a year before he disappeared. A draft copy of his letter of application to Duntroon Military Academy had been found in his wastepaper basket, torn in half. The two pages were now sticky taped together.

Gunnarson watched me as I read through it. The letter was correctly spelt, the grammar was accurate and the points were made clearly.

‘Torn in half,’ I said.

‘What do you do with drafts?’

‘Crumple them or use them as scrap paper.’

Gunnarson shrugged.

I read three faxes from Hampshire in California. In the first he said he was coming back, in the next he claimed to be delayed, in the third he said he couldn’t make it due to business commitments but would write supplying every detail about his son he could summon up.

‘Where’s the letter?’

‘Never arrived.’

‘Did you contact the Californian cops?’

‘You think we’re amateurs? Of course we did. Hampshire was up to his balls in complicated real estate deals. Legitimate but involving. ..’ He snapped his fingers. ‘What’s that finance crap young Warwick Fairfax stuffed up over?’

‘Junk bonds, whatever they are.’

‘Right. But there was no sign he was harbouring a runaway son.’

‘Still, the kid had a passport.’

‘We checked the ports, and I mean sea and air. Nothing. And nothing from New Zealand where he could’ve gone without a passport and used it as a jumping off point, in case that was what you were going to ask. Sorry, but we didn’t feel a need to bring in Interpol.’

I shuffled the papers in front of me. ‘Nothing from the school here.’

‘We talked to some students and some teachers but, you know, private school, sensitive parents, lawyers from arsehole to breakfast. Can’t show you any of that.’

‘But no useful leads?’

‘Nope. The kid shaped up as Master Clean.’

‘So what d’you think happened, Sarge? Speculate.’

‘I haven’t a clue. Like it says, he took off in his Honda on a Saturday morning before anyone else at home got up. He took a few clothes and other bits and pieces. Sold his skis and his surfboard and skateboard and snowboard the week before. The kid was a balance-at-speed freak. It’s a wonder he didn’t have rollerblades and ice skates. He bought petrol locally and that’s the last anyone saw of him or the car.’

‘No bodies’ve turned up, no burnt-out Hondas?’

Gunnarson shook his head. ‘He could be scallop fishing in Bass Strait or riding the fucking rabbit-proof fence.’

‘You don’t think he came to harm?’

‘It’s possible of course, but he was a well set-up kid with a fair bit of money. No history of drugs or dodgy behaviour, and he’d obviously planned it. Turned eighteen within a few months of leaving. An adult.’

‘Did you ask yourself why?’

‘Over and over. The way you will.’

I made some notes from the papers I’d been allowed to see, thanked Gunnarson and left. Way too early for any theories, but not for being thoroughly intrigued.

It was after one pm when I left the police building with my permit well and truly expired. Time to fill in before the appointment in Church Point. It was not an area I was familiar with-I’d have to do some work in the Gregory’s. I decided I’d earned some food and went to a pub in William Street where they did a fair counter lunch. Like all the best old pubs they had sporting pictures on the walls and the bar staff were mature, friendly females.

I bought a middy of Old and ordered the shepherd’s pie. I wished Gunnarson had let me photocopy some of the papers I’d seen but he drew the line at that. He had to protect his arse against any fallout, and that headline about me and threat of a charge hadn’t boosted my standing with the cops. Working fast, I’d tried for a verbatim copy of Hampshire’s faxes but, when I opened my notebook, I found parts of my scrawl hard to read.