Peter Corris - Lugarno

‘You’re not telling me she was celebrating?’

‘She wasn’t grief-stricken.’

‘Who’d have a family? I should have stayed in the army and rooted whores and looked after number one.’

I could have told him a few things about men who did that but I suspect that he already knew them. Price was smoking and I wished I had a drink — it was that kind of situation. He took what I guessed was another deep drag and then I heard a different noise and he started coughing and I realised he was drinking as well as smoking. He coughed hard and then his voice cut in strongly.

‘All right, Hardy. This is a fucking mess and it might spell an end to my business, but I still want to protect Danni. She’s my flesh and blood and that makes a difference. I want you to find her.’

‘How? Why?’

‘Fuck me! Why? To get her out of the country. How? That’s what you blokes do all the time, isn’t it?’

‘Yeah, but usually with something to go on. All you’ve told me is where she lives and where she skates. That’s it. I doubt she’s still at the pub and you said you didn’t know any of her friends. You’ve tried her mobile again?’

‘Of course. It’s switched off or out of range. God, friends. I don’t know…’

‘She was with two young blonde women today. Sisters or twins.’

‘Wait on, I know them. They are twins. Shit, I can’t think.’

‘That’s not surprising after what’s happened. Look, chances are she’ll come home soon. Why don’t you hang around, have another drink and get yourself together. You’re going to have to do a lot of unpleasant things. And make all sorts of arrangements. Sit tight. If she doesn’t show up try to remember anything you can about the twins. It looked to me as if they were planning to stick together for a bit.’

His voice was bitter. He sounded as if he could swing from sorrow to anger to almost any other state within seconds. ‘To celebrate. All right, Hardy, that’s good advice. I’ll do as you say. I’ll give her till five and if she doesn’t show up I’ll ring you. What number?’

‘I can’t say. You’ve got all three. I’ll get the mobile recharged.’

He hung up and I settled back in my chair. I wondered if he knew about Dr Feelgood. I wondered if he knew Danni and Sammy had been competitors for Jason Jorgensen’s affections. Did he know that his daughter behaved more like a daredevil on wheels than a druggie? I hadn’t told him about the secondment of the female detective to the Jorgensen case and what that might imply. I figured he didn’t need any more bad news just then.

It was early in the afternoon and I’d missed lunch. I didn’t want any but on the way back from getting the mobile from the car I bought a large black coffee, put two spills of sugar in it and made do with that. I drank the coffee slowly and felt it pick me up gradually the way it does. Not for the first time I thought there might be something to this emailing. I’d have far rather tapped out a note about Ramsay and his doings and waited for Tess’s written response than talk about it. I had no idea of her university schedule but I rang her anyway and got the machine. An easy out. I left a message that said I’d learned certain things and would tell her when I could but that I was also busy on another matter.

I updated my notes and my diagrams without getting any flashes of insight into either case. I tidied some files. I emptied the w.p.b. A couple of faxes arrived and I replied to them. Likewise with three phone calls. Hilde Parker invited me to dinner a week ahead and I said I’d let her know. We’re old, old friends who have never been lovers although we came close. She married Frank Parker, once my main man in the police force.

‘You sound tense, Cliff,’ she said.

‘Busy.’

‘Make it if you can. Peter wants to ask you something about surfing.’

I plugged the mobile charger into the mains and made the connection. I killed time. At five o’clock sharp, just as I was expecting the phone to ring, Price walked through the door I usually leave open.

‘I couldn’t stay at home any longer so I thought I’d… No sign of Danni and the mobile still doesn’t answer.’

‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Sit down. How are you?’

He lit a cigarette. I could smell liquor on the smoke he expelled but he seemed sober enough. ‘Ratshit.’

‘Did you have any thoughts about the twins?’

‘Yeah. It came to me just before I left. Gretel and Anna Larson. Danish.’

‘Where do they live?’

‘I don’t know, but I’ve got a phone number. Danni scribbled it down on the telephone book one time and I remembered it being there.’

He read the number off the palm of his hand and I wrote it down. Price didn’t strike me as the sort of man who’d normally write numbers on his hand but I had to make allowances for circumstances. He was smoking pretty furiously, obviously shaken to the core. His colour was bad and he couldn’t keep still.

‘So what’ll you do?’

‘If the name’s not in the book I can crosscheck phone numbers and addresses. One of the tricks of the trade. What’s wrong?’

Price had jumped from his chair and was pacing the small space there was to pace in. He stopped, looked around for an ashtray and I slid the w.p.b. towards him with my foot. He bent and stubbed the cigarette out. ‘I… I didn’t tell you everything when we first spoke.’

‘No?’

‘No. The police are treating Sammy’s death as suspicious.’

“They always do that with overdoses.’

He lit another Camel and blew smoke impatiently in my direction. ‘No. This is to do with the phone call that alerted the emergency service. Someone was in the house. Someone…’

‘Take it easy.’

‘They always suspect the partner, don’t they?’

I nodded. ‘It’s generally a safe bet, but you’re in the clear. You were at work.’

He shook his head. ‘No, God help me, I wasn’t. I was at Junie’s.’

Price dropped his cigarette on the floor and hid his face in his hands. I came around the desk, retrieved the cigarette and stubbed it out. I wanted to comfort him in some way but didn’t know how. I touched him briefly on the shoulder and went back behind the desk. He was wearing an expensive suit like the ones I’d seen him in before, but now his tie was slipped down, the lapels of the jacket were wrinkled from its being thrown somewhere and there was something spilled on the front — at a guess, cigarette ash and whisky. His thick, dark hair was awry; he was one of those men with sinister dark-blue beard shadows, like Richard Nixon, and he was well overdue for his second shave of the day. He looked a mess.

I tried a firm but friendly tone. ‘Marty, you need to go home, swim in your pool, eat something, have another couple of drinks and get some sleep.’

That was a slip — how was I to know he had a pool? But pool owners don’t usually object to people assuming they have them and, anyway, he wasn’t listening.

‘I don’t want to get her involved.’

With adulterers, as I know from personal experience, a statement like that can be code for, I don’t want to be found out. But that didn’t seem to fit Price’s case just now. I made a gesture intended to be sympathetic. ‘The police will want to question her to confirm your whereabouts,’ I said. ‘All being well, it shouldn’t go any further than that. Have you made a statement?’

He looked sullen and in his dishevelled state that gave him an aggressive, threatening appearance that wouldn’t go down well with the cops. ‘Not yet, but they said I’d have to make one. It’s obvious you don’t know who Junie is.’

I was wavering in my reaction to my troubled client — between respect, sympathy and dislike. ‘No, Mr Price,’ I said, ‘I don’t. Should I?’