Peter Corris - The Big Score

‘I don’t want to sound heartless, not with a man on the brink…’

Perhaps his true colours were showing now. ‘But you will,’ I said.

‘Just so. The commercial value of this property, given its… provenance, and the possibility of continued criminal involvement, is very considerable. The advances for true crime, non-fiction books can be large, with the film or television potential to be considered. What do you propose to do now, Mr Hardy?’

‘It’s probably better you don’t know.’

‘Let me guess. You’re going to break into the McCafferty residence. I foresee a stunning introduction or preface if you succeed. I trust my verbal agreement with Theodore Baldwin is still in place. I have taped copies of the phone calls. Can’t be too careful.’

I left feeling a bit less friendly towards Weiss than I had at first. But he had the experience in this and you have to respect that.

There are two ways to break in to a house-you have to be either bold, just walk up and do it, or bashful-try to talk your way in. I decided to be bold. I’d taken a good look at the front of McCafferty’s house on my first visit and I didn’t think it’d present any problems. There was a simple Yale lock and no sign of an alarm. The place was rundown and neither the owner nor the tenant seemed inclined to spend money on security.

I drove to Homebush in time to see Ted Davis, the neighbour, drive away in a battered Cortina. The street was quiet with only a few lights showing. I went through the gate, unshipped my picklocks, held a pencil torch between my teeth and had the door open inside half a minute.

I closed the door quietly and stood still to allow my sight to adjust to the gloom. A little light was seeping in from the street through broken slats in the front room’s blind. I worked my way down the passage and turned on a low-wattage light towards the back section-it wouldn’t show from the street and the fence on the freestanding side of the house was high.

I used the torch to probe into the two small bedrooms, sitting room, kitchen and bathroom. The place was dirty and untidy. The kitchen smelled of tobacco smoke and fried food. Two chairs had been overturned in the sitting room and there were a couple of broken bottles and glasses that seemed to have been swept from the table, perhaps by whatever implement had been used on McCafferty. The spattering on the floor and one wall was dried blood.

Other than that, there was no sign of any particular disturbance, no evidence of a search. That gave me heart. The second bedroom held a wardrobe containing various items of clothing including a wrinkled corrections officer’s uniform. A battered overnight bag, crumpled to about a third of its normal size, was shoved into a strut of the iron bed frame. I pulled it out and found I’d been wrong about the search. The bag was padlocked but had been slit open. It contained a pair of socks and a change of underwear. I inspected it closely in the beam of the torch. There were a couple of very small round pieces of foil, a scrap of plastic cling wrap, more fragments of foil and under the loose cardboard base of the bag a mostly decayed white pill. It was pretty clearly Col McCafferty’s drug-smuggling stash, now in the hands of others. So where was the manuscript?

There were no bookshelves, no desk, no filing cabinet, nothing to suggest that McCafferty had ever had a book in the house, let alone a typescript. I searched the bedrooms with no result-no creaking floorboards, no sealed-off fireplaces. The kitchen was the least appealing space, with its smells and the film of grease over the surfaces. It was one of those rooms in which you’re reluctant to even breathe. But the laminex table was piled with a stack of tabloid newspapers, and a thick wad of A4 paper, fastened by a bulldog clip inside a manilla folder held together by rubber bands, was sitting near the top of the pile, with only a few newspapers lying haphazardly over it.

I opened the folder and read in typewritten upper case, ‘MY LIFE OF CRIME amp; THEIRS’. Another rule of breaking and entering is-get out quick. I restored the rubber bands to the folder, turned off the light and left the house. Mission accomplished, and all quiet on this western front.

On the drive back I began to feel that things weren’t as wrapped up as I’d thought on finding the manuscript. My certainty that the assault on McCafferty had to do with his drug dealing would be useful to DS Rule, but I wasn’t prepared to impart that knowledge just yet. On the evidence of the dates on the newspapers, McCafferty had been in possession of the manuscript for some days before he was attacked. Why the delay in passing it on to Weiss when he must have been on a promise of a reward for delivering it? Was he contemplating or in the process of dealing with someone else? And what of Weiss? McCafferty’s name had rolled off his tongue easily after my brief mention of it. Which side was he playing for, apart from his own?

I stopped in Newtown at a twenty-four hour copying joint and made two copies of the manuscript. I put one copy in a hiding place in the car-a virtually undetectable slit in the upholstery that self-sealed with velcro. Although it was late I phoned Rosemary Kingston, told her I had the manuscript and wanted to bring it to her.

‘I thought you were supposed to give it to this agent?’

‘I’m not sure I trust him.’

‘In that case, come on over. I was watching a late movie anyway.’

‘Your bill’s not going to be that high,’ she said as she let me in. ‘What-petrol money, a few phone calls?’

‘I had to grease some palms, but you’re right. It wouldn’t be much if it was really all over.’

She ushered me into the flat and poured me a scotch.

‘It isn’t over? You wouldn’t be trying to inflate the account, would you? Sorry, I don’t really think that.’

‘Think what you like. I’ve barely earned the retainer as things stand, but there’s something off about it all.’

‘What do you mean, Cliff?’

‘I don’t know. It’s a kind of instinct. Anyway, thanks for the drink and here’s the book.’

She took the package and opened it. ‘Hey, it’s supposed to be written on a typewriter. This is a photocopy.’

‘I don’t trust anyone, including myself,’ I said.

I went home and although it was late I made myself something to eat, poured a drink and turned over the pages of the original manuscript. The prose was racy, the structure was artful and, superficially, the tone had a nice blend of contrition and defiance. Some of the names of officials, politicians and media types mentioned were familiar, but without doing a close reading I couldn’t see the book as a crime Krakatoa-more of a fizzing catherine-wheel with bits of mud spinning off it. There was a bit too much self-aggrandisement, a touch of religion, an obeisance to the conservative law and order agenda. I went to bed.

I slept on it but didn’t come up with anything new. I told myself I’d done my job. I took the original manuscript to Phillip Weiss, who practically slavered over it. I kept the third copy for no good reason. I submitted my invoice to Rosemary Kingston and received prompt payment. Case closed.

But of course it wasn’t. Theo got out not long after and he rang me with his thanks and the news that he’d got a high five-figure advance from a publisher.

‘Good one,’ I said. ‘You’ll be on TV soon.’

He laughed long and loud and I found out why when Rosemary Kingston stormed into my office with the sort of anger that only a deceived and jilted woman can muster.

‘I want my money back!’

‘I don’t think so. We had a contract. Why?’

‘That bastard,’ she said. ‘The book’s a fake. After they’d paid over the advance, someone more cluey took a look at it and found out that it’s a total pinch from an English true crime story, with just the names and the local details changed.’