Peter Corris - Forget Me If You Can

I’d pressed a lot of buttons that morning and tapped into the sources we private enquiry agents have for finding out your golf handicap and whether your ingrowing toenail is on the left foot or the right. When I got back to the office in the mid-afternoon (no abusive phone messages, no newsprint fax), I hauled in the catch and came up with nothing useful. If anything, the information seemed to confirm what had been denied by my experience the night before, that Liz Richards and Marion Jacobi, who was a qualified physiotherapist working from the flat, were lesbians. They belonged to the same gym, went on holidays together and shared the household expenses. But they signed no letters to newspapers, subscribed to no lesbian publications and didn’t put on sequins or leather for the Gay Mardi Gras.

I tapped the office cask of white wine and sat down to think things over. In New South Wales sexual harassment claims were sometimes made to the Anti-Discrimination Board which then attempted to conciliate the matter. Liz Richards hadn’t gone that route. She’d filed a civil suit which, if successful, put her in line for heavy compensation from the offender. That was the root of Tommy’s trouble. When he’d come to me he’d talked of cases where a quarter of a million dollars had been awarded to the victim.

‘I operate on a margin, Cliff,’ he’d said. ‘Something like that would put me out of business.’

There’s no way to insure against it and the allegation is difficult to defend. I rang my lawyer, Cy Sackville, to get the benefit of his encyclopedic legal brain and the news wasn’t good. Most such cases were settled out of court to avoid the adverse publicity. To Tommy, a hefty out-of-court settlement would amount to the same thing as a judgment against him. I wished I’d taken the whole thing more seriously at the beginning and hadn’t let myself be diverted by the abusive caller. There were many ways Ms Richards could have found out about Tommy’s strategy and cooked up one of her own. Angrily, I drained the third glass and headed out into the late afternoon.

I picked up Liz Richards when she left the office in Bondi Junction and followed her home. I was driving with three glasses of wine inside me on an empty stomach which was a stupid thing to do, but I did it. I ate slices of pizza as blotter as I drove. The flat was in a biggish block that overlooked the Showground and Moore Park. Nice view. I parked, ate and watched. The same two men the women had spent the previous night with arrived with bottles. It got dark. I could see shapes moving past the windows. They dimmed the lights. I left them to it, whatever it was.

I locked the car, climbed out, pushed open the gate on its one good hinge, all done on automatic pilot. I was tired and frustrated, looking forward to a shower and drink. The key was in my hand, centimetres from the lock before I realised that the door was ajar. My hand dropped and I felt a splinter from the jemmied jamb stick deep into my palm. The surprise and sharp stinging pain brought me to full alertness. I eased my. 38 out of its holster, crouched and pushed the door open enough to sidle through. Nothing happened, so I went in, keeping low and darting across into the open doorway of the front room on the right.

The house was quiet. I waited for a full minute, then stepped out into the hall. The hall light was on and so was the light on the stair landing and the one above that. She was hanging from the top balustrade. The ivory coloured lace wedding dress she wore was stained and soiled. The angle of her neck was cruel and unnatural; her face was dark and swollen and her eyes and tongue protruded clownishly. But in the harsh light I recognised her. I knew who she was, or who she had been twenty years ago.

Blood was still dripping from my hand when the police arrived and it was an edgy business for the next hour or so. I explained that I knew the dead woman as Susannah Morgan. I had met her long before when I was working as an insurance claims investigator. She had made a claim for a fire she’d clearly started herself. She’d also made a claim on me although I’d barely exchanged ten words with her. I’d forgotten her entirely-partly a matter of not thinking much about the things I’d done before I’d become a private detective. It was hard to believe that such a hatred and self-destructive force had festered for all that time, but when the cops entered her house they found news clippings about me, photos taken with a long lens, letters pinched from my mailbox. She had been receiving treatment for paranoiac schizophrenia for years and apparently had recently stopped taking her medication. They found my fax on her bed with blood, spittle and shit smeared over it.

Liz Richards was successful in her action against Tommy Aarons. The settlement put him out of business and he now works as a security guard for wages. On reflection, I think he was railroaded and I never had the heart to send him an account. I think Ms Richards discovered that I was on the job and she and Ms Jacobi threw up a smokescreen for those two nights. A setup. All in all, it was one of those episodes you try to forget. But can’t.

‘I’ve got to know, Mr Hardy.’

‘You remind me of that Clint Eastwood movie,’ I said. ‘Where Dirty Harry doesn’t remember whether there’s any bullets in his gun and the punk says, “I gots to know”. Did you see it?’

‘No,’ Sean Trumble said. ‘I…’

‘Harry pulls the trigger and the gun’s empty. Good scene. It always gets a laugh. You ought to see it.’

‘Why are you telling me this? I came here to hire you to do an investigation.’

I fiddled with a paperclip on my desk. No need to worry about scratching the surface. The desk hasn’t got a surface. Trumble, a prosperous-looking type in his fifties, sat uncomfortably in my client chair. The chair was only partly to blame for his discomfort. He had a problem.

‘I’m trying to laugh you out of it,’ I said. ‘Don’t do it. From what you’ve told me I can guarantee you that it isn’t worth the grief.’

‘I’ve got to know. If you won’t do it I’ll go to someone who will. It’s just that I’ve been told you’re honest and capable.’

Put it like that and what could I say? If I could have dissuaded him altogether I would have felt that I’d performed a service, but business wasn’t so good I could afford to turn away a client who’d just cross the road and get someone else to make him unhappy. I got him to sign the standard form and took a cheque from him. Then I took notes, trying to get the names straight and spell the addresses correctly. Basic efficiency. He’d been pretty efficient himself, coming equipped with photographs and documents. I assembled a considerable file on the matter before I’d put a foot through a door. Because physical resemblance was at the heart of the trouble, I studied Trumble closely as he got to his feet and reached for my hand. He was medium-tall, about 180 centimetres and a bit overweight at around 85 kilos. His suit was expensive and his curly grey hair was styled rather than just cut. Square jaw, slightly crooked nose, deep-set blue eyes with crow’s feet. He wore the air of a well-polished rough diamond.

We shook hands, he lifted his smart trench coat from the back of the chair and went out. I settled back to look over the documents and consider what I’d let myself in for.

Sean Trumble had served in Vietnam, two tours as a volunteer. He was a fervent anti-communist who loved soldiering and at that time there was plenty of work around for men of this persuasion. With his long-term mate, Lee North, also a Vietnam vet, he went off to Angola as a mercenary to fight against the Marxist MPLA. Just before leaving he married Clara Moon, his childhood sweetheart. North was best man.