Peter Corris - Master's mates

‘You’ll find him in Holland, at the Hague. He got some sort of job in the War Crimes Tribunal.’

‘When was this?’

‘Soon after he got ten to twelve for Stewart Master.’

Trying to be a good citizen, I’d taken a bus into the city. As I left the Martin Place building that housed O’Connor’s firm I felt in need of exercise and decided to walk home to Glebe. Sometimes I’ve found that walking, if I can strike a good rhythm, can help with thinking. Not always, sometimes I just get tired. I strolled down to Goulburn Street and bought take-away chicken and salty fish from the Super Bowl, my favourite Chinese restaurant. More Asian faces than Anglo-Celt but Australian accents all around. Up through Ultimo into Glebe. A few years ago all the streets were littered with overflowing skips as the terraces were renovated or pulled down for facsimiles to go up in their place. There’s less of that now as the area settles down into its gentrified state. There are still ungentrified patches though, like my house.

I had a quick beer in the Toxteth, bought a bottle of red and went home to watch the TV news, eat and study the trial transcript, maybe get my tongue around a few French phrases. ‘Good evening, are you alone?’ ‘May I join you?’ ‘Would you like to…?’

The news consisted of more posturing about Iraq and I turned it off before the program finished. I put the take-away in the microwave and went upstairs to fetch the transcript. I poured some wine and sat down at the kitchen bench. The door bell rang. Not again, I thought, but it was a courier with the card that would allow me to tap the hundred thou.

Trial transcripts make frustrating reading. There’s too much legal quibbling holding up the action, the same ground is gone over and over again and there’s a kind of sterility coming off the pages because you don’t get a sense of the audience. Throw in the spectators and bit players and you can get the sort of stuff that works so well in plays and films and novels. Without it, dullsville. The newspaper reports were still fresh in my memory and this helped to flesh things out a little. Now that I’d met O’Connor I could see him in the role and there had been artists’ sketches of John L’Estrange, whose name hadn’t stuck with me, and of the judge. And of course, although she didn’t participate, Lorraine Master was there in my imagination.

Another frustration arises from the questions that come to your mind as you read. You want to be there to ask the witnesses questions that seem important to you but apparently didn’t to the learned counsel.

As I turned the couple of hundred pages, skipping the dull stuff, I thought I could see what O’Connor meant. John L’Estrange had presented the case against Master in a straightforward manner that seemed to say, Look, no tricks. This is all above board. Judge for yourself. Likewise, the judge’s summing up had been scrupulously fair, without frills or flourishes. Reading between the lines, you could get a sense of her law-and-order agenda as reported in the newspaper, but there was nothing the defence could point to as untoward.

I closed the binder and sat back with only one phrase coming to mind: a very neat package. I’d put my notebook beside the transcript but when I’d finished reading I only had three names written down-Salvatore Verdi, Colin Baxter and Detective Senior Sergeant Karl Knopf. Verdi and Baxter were the customs agents who’d inspected Master’s bags and detained him. Knopf was the forensic examiner who’d analysed the heroin and done tests on the packaging. There was no reason why any of them would be willing to talk to me and possibly nothing to be gained. But you never know. Ten to twelve was a heavy sentence and if any one of them was surprised by what resulted, they might have started thinking… Besides, I had two days before my flight and had already talked to the principals, so it was time to try the supporting cast.

As I finished the wine and poured another glass, I realised that I hadn’t turned the microwave on. I do that. I sometimes take out mugs of coffee and find them stone cold. I heated the food and ate it slowly, enjoying it and the wine and regretting that there was no one to share it with. The murder of my one-time partner Glen Withers some time back, following not long after the death from cancer of Cyn, my ex-wife of many years earlier, had rocked me more than a little. It wasn’t that I thought myself a Jonah, or that I didn’t feel a surge when an attractive woman came into view-like Lorraine Master-it was just that I sometimes wondered what the point was. In my experience sexual attractions, even love, were very transitory.

As I rinsed the dishes I remembered something I’d heard on the radio, maybe from Robin Williams on ‘The Science Show’, that in all creation only some kind of flatworm is truly monogamous and that’s because it fuses with its partner first time up in coitus. Bad night ahead, Cliff, I thought. Go out and find some company.

I found it at the Toxteth, where else? Daphne Rowley, who runs a printing and photographic business in Glebe and has provided me with false IDs from time to time, was playing pool in the pub and gave a cheer when she saw me.

‘A down-in-the-dumps PI named Cliff Hardy,’ she whooped. ‘I’m drinkin’ for free tonight.’

She was right. We played for drinks and she won. I’ve beaten her on occasions, but only when I was up and being positive, as they say. Down and drinking, she whipped me. We ended up over brandies as the pub emptied. Daphne would be collecting her dogs from outside the pub.

‘Tough case, Cliff?’

‘Not so bad,’ I said. ‘I’m going off to New Caledonia in a couple of days.’

‘Fuck you,’ she said.

‘Not original, Daph, I heard that earlier today. Just can’t remember who from.’

The hangover was mild compared to some, but enough to need dealing with. I drove to the Redgum Gymnasium and Fitness Centre in Leichhardt and did a moderately hard workout on the treadmill and the machines. Then into the sauna to sweat out the toxins. Feeling a bit light-headed but better, I came out to find Peter Lo doing curls with impossibly heavy free weights. Peter is Balinese and built low to the ground. I’d say that he’s all bone and muscle except that would suggest he hasn’t got a brain. In fact he has an excellent one. After climbing to a senior rank in the police force working in the forensic branch he’s recently taken leave to do a doctorate in criminology. His thesis was something to do with justice and society.

‘Hi, Dr Lo,’ I said as he paused between curls.

He sighed and flexed his fingers inside his sweat-soaked mittens. ‘If I had a dollar for everyone who’s said that.’

‘Sorry, Peter, I’m not at my best this morning.’

‘Yeah, I saw you head for the sauna. Heavy night?’

‘Not so bad. Can I buy you breakfast?’

‘You mean, “I need your help”, right?’

I nodded.

‘Bar Napoli. Twenty minutes.’ He sucked in air and his chest expanded like a balloon. He reached for a heavier weight. I couldn’t bear to watch and went off to shower and dress.

Meeting Peter was no coincidence. Where I make it to the gym three times in a good week, he’s there five mornings a week. They say that’s too often but it’d be a brave man who’d tell Peter Lo that. I was sitting down with a black coffee and two plain croissants when he strode in. I signalled to Luigi, who brought Peter his standard order-black coffee and raisin toast, no butter.

‘Let’s dispense with the prelims, Cliff. The thesis is going okay, the wife and kids are fine, I bench-pressed a hundred and twenty-five kays this morning. Personal best.’

‘I’m glad to hear it. How are your relations with your former colleagues?’