Peter Corris - The Big Score

‘Why am I not surprised? I’m a busy man, Mr Private Detective. What do you want?’

He had me on the retreat, feeling for the ropes. I could take it on the arms like Ali against Foreman, or come in swinging. I decided against the Ali option.

‘I’m wondering if you had anything to do with Jerry Fowler’s murder.’

‘Who’s Jerry Fowler?’

I studied him. It was a critical moment. If he genuinely didn’t know who Jerry was I’d eliminated one of the ‘possibles’. He’d put the question neither too quickly nor too slowly. Delivered it flat, with all the appearance of ignorance mixed with indifference. I had to make a decision and I made it.

‘Jerry Fowler was a small-time crim of my acquaintance. He came to me a few days back with a story about you having been robbed of a certain amount of money and offering a reward for the identity of the people who robbed you.’

I was watching him closely and he didn’t react beyond a blink and a slight tightening of the jaw, which could have meant something or nothing. ‘Story’s not right,’ he said. ‘I haven’t been robbed of anything.’

‘Haifa million, hidden from the ATO.’

‘No.’

‘I’m not sure I believe you.’

He tried to hold my gaze, couldn’t, and looked down at his empty desk as if he thought something useful might appear there. ‘Believe what you please. I’d like you to leave. I’m busy.’

After a pause I shook my head. ‘You’ve overplayed your hand. Do you know the meaning of the word disinterested?’

That caught his vanity. ‘Yeah, I’m disinterested in everything you have to say.’

I stood. ‘You’ve got it wrong. Look it up. It means uninvolved, having no stake in something. You’re not disinterested in this, Charley. You’re up to your balls in it.’ I dropped a card on his desk. ‘I couldn’t care less about you or your stash or any reward. I cared about Jerry. Get in touch when you’ve thought it over.’

I walked out, nodded to the secretary and left the building. I thought I’d accomplished something, but I wasn’t sure what.

The answer came before I reached my car. My mobile rang.

‘This is Sanderson. We have things to talk about. Come back.’

I wasn’t going to let him get away with that. I told him I had other matters to attend to and that if he wanted to talk he could see me in my office that afternoon. He didn’t like it but he agreed.

I’d left the Falcon in a multi-storey car park-the kind where bad things happen in movies. I was watchful and I had my pistol and the baton in a light satchel that I kept unzipped. Quick-draw Hardy.

A man stepped down from a huge fire-engine red 4WD parked next to my car. Big guy, dark suit. I dropped the satchel and took the baton in one hand and the pistol in the other. He threw his hands in the air.

‘Hey, hey, what’s the problem?’

His pale, flabby face was a mask of innocence. His car keys dropped from his hand and I could see that he was shivering. But you never know. I kept the pistol pointed at him and put the baton on the ground as I picked up his keys.

‘If you want the car, take it. Just don’t hurt me.’

There was a sob in his voice and tears in his eyes. I threw the keys about twenty metres. They clattered against another car. I picked up the baton and the satchel and put the weapons away.

‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘My mistake.’

He stood rooted to the spot, his hands still half raised. I unlocked my car, reversed out and drove away. A quick glance in the rear vision mirror showed him slowly walking to recover his keys.

I knew I’d overreacted and I wasn’t happy about it. I hadn’t even come close to shooting the guy or bashing him, but I should have read the signs earlier-the face and figure, the car. No one intent on mischief drives such a distinctive vehicle. Not for the first time I reflected that I needed a break, a holiday. Maybe Lily and I could go to the Maldives, snorkel in crystal-clear water, eat and drink whatever they ate and drank there, send postcards.

I did some routine stuff in the office, drank coffee, tried not to think how much I’d have liked a couple of glasses of wine. I used the baton as a paperweight-I was starting to get used to having it around. I was standing by the window looking down into the street when Sanderson arrived in a white Mercedes and found a park on the far kerb. He waited for a break in the traffic and crossed quickly and anxiously, moving his head from side to side. He stumbled a little on gaining the footpath. He was a clumsy man with a lot on his mind.

He was breathing hard when he made it up the stairs and was grateful to sit down, no matter how plain the surroundings and uncomfortable the chair.

‘I’m not a well man,’ he said. ‘Heart trouble. I’m in line for a transplant.’

‘Should be out in the fresh air doing something healthy that you like, not sitting in offices.’

‘I like sitting in offices. Let’s get down to it. I asked around about you, Hardy. The word is you’re fairly honest.’

‘Is that the best I rate?’

‘In your game it’s pretty high. You had it right. I was robbed. Close to half a million that I was keeping from the tax hounds. Looking around, I don’t imagine you go out of your way to pay tax.’

‘I pay as little as I can get away with.’

‘Right. Well these bastards who broke in threatened me and the wife and took the money. I couldn’t make too much of a song and dance about it because of the tax angle and because my wife had no idea how much it was. She’d give me hell if she knew.’

‘So you put the word out that there’d be a reward for information.’

‘I did. I spoke to a couple of people. I told them that I had the serial numbers of the notes and that I’d do a deal with the bastards. And that there’d be something in it for whoever pointed me in the right direction.’

‘And?’

‘And nothing. No feedback.’

‘Do you have a record of the serial numbers?’

‘What fucking good would it do? I’m not going to let the banks know I’ve got all this loose cash, am I? But I thought these people mightn’t know that. I thought the possibility of the money being traced just might induce them to cut a deal.’

‘So either the people you used to get the word out didn’t reach the right ears or the ones who grabbed it don’t believe it can be traced and have got on with spending it.’

‘Right.’

He looked old and sick but it was hard to sympathise with him unless he’d been hoarding the money to make a donation to the hospital after his transplant. I doubted it. I told him that Jerry Fowler had somehow got wind of the robbery and the reward and had a line on the perpetrators.

‘But he got killed,’ I said. ‘They got a line on him first.’

Sanderson shook his head. ‘That’s rotten. If I’d known something like that was going to happen I’d have just cut my losses.’

‘Would you?’

He looked at me, his pale, glittering eyes hard behind the lenses. ‘Probably not.’

‘That’s what I thought. Well, I’ve got a client who cared about Jerry Fowler and is willing to spend some money to find out who killed him. I’m going to try, but I’m not optimistic’

‘If you do find out, will you tell me? I’d make it worth your while.’

‘I’ll bet you would.’

‘Would your client want to… proceed legally?’

‘That’d be a complication for you, right? I don’t know.’

I could see Sanderson’s brain working, trying to figure out how he’d cope if the matter was to be played straight. What deals might he strike with cops, lawyers, the tax office? I didn’t like his chances and neither did he. I picked up the baton just to have something to do while he went through the options. The action caught his attention and his already pale face lost more colour.