Peter Corris - The Coast Road

know why. Must ask.

‘Yes, sir?’

I showed him my licence folder, let him discover that I had clean fingernails and didn’t smell of alcohol and asked to see Sergeant Barton. For a minute I thought he was going to get me to fill in a form, but he didn’t.

‘What is it regarding, Mr Hardy?’

Quick study. ‘Arson,’ I said. ‘Possibly.’

He nodded and picked up the phone. ‘Door on your right. Down the passage. First left.’

I went as directed. The building had been worked on over the years to provide private offices. I knocked at the door with ‘Detectives’ stencilled on it, got the call and went in. Biggish room, big windows, skylight, three desks each with a computer, filing cabinets, shelves stuffed with paper, photocopier, wastepaper baskets spewing. The carpet was dirty, likewise the windows. That didn’t mean anything- my office carpet hadn’t been too clean and the windows were opaque unless there’d been heavy rain. There were two men at their desks. The one who looked up was beefy and balding with a bull neck. Had to be Barton. I wondered if his first name was Bruce.

He beckoned me over. ‘Let’s have a look at the credentials.’

I handed him the folder, pulled up a chair and sat down without being asked. He didn’t like it. He didn’t like my licence folder or anything about me. He dropped the folder on the desk where I’d have to stretch to retrieve it. I didn’t.

‘To what d’we owe the honour?’

‘Oh, I’m just letting you know I’m around. In case anything happens. You know.’

‘Smartarse. Specifically?’

He sat very still, didn’t fidget and kept his eyes focused on my face. I got a sense that, while he might have been rigid and narrow-minded, he wasn’t incompetent.

‘I’m working for Dr Elizabeth Farmer.’

‘Oh, yeah? Doing what?’

‘Enquiring into her father’s death.’

He smiled, showing expensively capped teeth. He liked showing them. He’d had good advice about his hair; it was on the retreat but it was dark, clipped closely and didn’t look sad. I noticed that his shirt wasn’t from the bargain bin, nor his tie. His suit jacket was draped on a wooden hanger from a stand behind him. Hung smoothly.

‘On a daily rate, are you? Expenses and all? That’d be a nice money-spinner. Good luck.’

‘Nothing else to say, Sergeant? No doubts?’

‘There’s always doubts. I’ve got more than a few about you.’

I took my notebook out and flipped it open. ‘A witness reported a suspicious person on site before the fire.’

‘So you didn’t check in first before you started snooping around?’

‘Checking in’s the second thing I did.’

For the first time he shifted his considerable weight in his chair. He was either bored or good at seeming to be. ‘Unreliable information. Vague, unsubstantiated.’

‘So much information is, until it’s investigated and… put together with other things.’

His colleague, who’d seemed to be concentrating on his paperwork, shot a look across at us, but dropped his head again immediately.

‘You’re wasting your time and your client’s money, Hardy,’ Barton said.

He pushed the folder across to me. I stood up and collected it.

‘Thank you for your time,’ I said.

‘Not a problem. Make sure your vehicle’s roadworthy.’

I drove into Wollongong and located the offices of the Illawarra Mutual Insurance Company. I was told that Mr Lucas was out of the office. I got his mobile number and rang him. The background noise was unmistakable- Mr Lucas was in the pub. I told him I was a private investigator and his enthusiasm almost welled out of the phone. Meet me? He’d buy me a drink, several drinks.

The hotel was down near the railway station. It was old-fashioned with the stylised beer advertisements showing flappers and men in flannels still in place, though badly faded. You could almost see the ghosts of the weary travellers who’d trudged up the steps from the sunken station to find comfort there. For the time of day there was good activity in the bar of the old kind-drinking and yarning-rather than the new sort-pool and pokies. Lucas had described himself as stunningly handsome with a body like a Greek god. I said I was middle-aged, tall, greying and with a broken nose.

I took a few steps inside and a small, slight young man with gelled fair hair wearing a dark suit that was a bit too big for him hopped off his bar stool and came towards me. He had a schooner of beer in his left hand. He extended the right.

‘You’d be Hardy.’

I shook his hand. A firm, dry grip, stronger than I’d expected from someone his size. ‘I would,’ I said.

‘Good to meet you. Come and have a drink. Had lunch?’

I shook my head.

‘They do a great steak sandwich here. I’ve ordered. Want one?’

‘Sure.’

We reached the bar and he signalled with two fingers to the woman working at the counter-lunch section. She nodded and forced a smile.

‘What’ll you have?’

The orange juice and coffee at the motel and the coffee at Sue Holland’s place were a distant memory. Since then I’d swum, been given the cold shoulder and driven a bit. I hadn’t spent much of Elizabeth Farmer’s money yet. ‘Middy of old,’ I said.

He was about to signal to the barman but I reached over, put a five dollar note on the bar, and gave my order.

Lucas sighed and took a pull on his beer. ‘Like that,’ he said. ‘Okay.’

‘I’ll let you buy the lunch,’ I said. ‘Where can we talk?’

We went through to a saloon bar where the food was served. Using one hand, Lucas deftly gathered up napkins and cutlery and dumped the lot on a table. He went back for salt and pepper and hot sauce. I sat down and worked on my drink.

Lucas patted his pockets and then shook his head. ‘I forgot. Can’t smoke in here now. Probably better. What d’you want to talk about…’ he glanced down at the card I’d put on the table, ‘. . Cliff?’

‘A fire insurance claim you investigated, allegedly.’

He lowered the level in his glass substantially. ‘Are you trying to piss me off?’

‘No. I’m just letting you know there are questions to be asked.’

‘Aren’t there always. I-’

‘I was in your game for a while,’ I said. ‘Quite a few back, but in a small firm, like yours. I know how things work.’

‘Okay. Name of claimant?’

‘Farmer.’

‘Oh, Jesus.’ He expelled a long breath and looked down at his almost empty glass. High heels clacked on the floor. ‘Good, here’s the tucker.’

I let him have his moment of respite as the woman expertly slid the plates onto the table. Two toasted slices of grainy bread with thick slabs of meat between them, surrounded by a mass of lettuce and slices of tomato and beetroot with piles of chips taking up the rest of the space on the plate. A very honest serve.

‘Complimentary glasses of wine, sirs?’ the woman said. She was in her thirties and looked tired, but she was close to chic in her tight black dress, cropped hair and heels.

I nodded. ‘Red, thanks.’

Lucas emptied his schooner in a short gulp and handed it to her, ‘Thanks, Maggie. Same for me.’

I picked up a perfectly crisp chip. ‘Most days, this’d do me for lunch and dinner.’

‘It does me,’ Lucas said.

The glasses of red wine came and it was out of a bottle, not a cask. We ate for a while and then I forced him to meet my eye.

‘Come on,’ I said.

He shrugged. ‘Well, you say you know how it goes.

Some claims you get the word to go full bottle on and some

you don’t.’

‘That was the case with the Farmer claim?’

‘Yep. It’s nothing obvious. Just how quickly the paperwork gets to you, how clear it is that everything’s kosher administratively. A hint that quick clearances are desirable this month.’