Peter Corris: Casino

Like me, Scott used a spiral notebook day-to-day, tore the pages out and put them in the file when the case was finished. I couldn’t find his current notebook or any current files. I was particularly interested in cases he had on hand when he’d taken the casino job. Maybe there was some unfortunate overlap, a fatal misunderstanding.

I could understand why Scott hadn’t put his current files on open display. I don’t myself when they contain sensitive information. I take them home and keep them in my bedroom. Maybe Scott did the same. Then again, in my house there’s only me. If someone comes looking for something and is hostile, I’m the only one in the firing line. Maybe Glen, but she can take care of herself. I couldn’t see Scott putting his wife and children in any kind of hazard.

I sat on the desk and stared around the room. No obvious hiding places-no wall safe behind the Drysdale print, no revolving bookcases, no hollow lampstands, no loose floorboards. The police had obviously moved the rug and Frank would have told me if they’d found anything unusual in Scott’s office. The walls and ceiling were gyprocked, the room’s dimensions were uncomplicated and unambiguous. There was nothing in the desk drawers that didn’t belong and the aluminium windows opened onto a straight drop to the street. I remembered Scott telling me he’d had the office painted not long ago and what a nuisance it had been putting drop cloths all over the place. The paint job was fresh and sparkling, so why was there a faint mark on the wall behind the filing cabinet? As someone had once said to me, the place to hide shit is in the barnyard.

I took a grip on the filing cabinet and rocked it to the right. It came up and I could see some manila folders lying on the polished boards, dead centre in the middle of a slightly dusty square. I hooked them out with my foot and lowered the heavy cabinet back into place. I congratulated myself on my powers of detection and sat down at the desk to examine the files. There were only two-business had been slow as he’d said. A Ms Angela Prudence Cornwall had hired Scott to investigate the financial affairs of her fiance, Roger Cruise, before she let him take her down the aisle. Scott seemed to have made very little progress on the matter. Brian Roberts, an Aboriginal Rugby League footballer was in dispute with his club over a requirement in his contract that he not drink alcohol. Apparently the club secretary, Allan Thurgood, was a notorious drunk and Roberts had hired Scott to provide some evidence on this to use as leverage. Scott had staked out a few venues, taken a couple of photographs. It didn’t seem like the stuff of murder and mayhem, but it was something to keep in mind.

I put the files under my arm and left the office. I could hear a soft clicking coming from behind Vita Drewe’s door. I approached it cautiously. I had met her a couple of times and felt I’d lost ground and credibility with each meeting. She was a tall, cranelike creature who favoured collarless shirts, weskits, jeans and Doc Martens. Gina Galvani had nothing to fear from her-she had a large framed photograph of a very soulful Virginia Woolf on her office wall-a certain sign of sexual orientation. The first time I met her, introduced by Scott when she delivered him some typing, she told me that working part-time for a PEA was amusing but sharing a room with two of them was oppressive. I thought she was joking.

‘She’s not,’ Scott told me. ‘She believes men deliberately contrive situations to outnumber women. Especially macho men like you and me.’

‘You, macho?’

‘Laugh if you will. It gets tricky.’

It got tricky the next time I was there. She had another woman with her in Scott’s office, making it pretty crowded. She was trying to persuade Scott to do something for this woman, gratis. Scott was resistant. My arrival broke up the gathering although as far as I could see the numbers were even. I made a remark to this effect and got a visual broadside from Vita that I could still remember. That was months ago. I tapped at her door, cautiously, as I say.

‘Come.’

Interesting choice of word. I opened the door and stepped in. She was staring at a screen as her fingers flicked over the keys. Normal enough, except that she was standing up, and the remote control keyboard was sitting on top of a bookcase at waist height. She inclined her long, narrow head at a chair that just fitted into the available space. Somehow it seemed wrong to sit and I closed the door behind me and leaned back against it. She looked annoyed. Her fingers became a blur and she completed whatever she was doing. The screen froze.

‘Yes?’

‘Do you remember me, Miss Drewe?’

‘Ms. The face, yes. The name, no.’

‘I’m Cliff Hardy, a friend of Scott’s and in the same line of work. I’d like to talk to you about him if you have a minute.’

‘Oh, yes. God, that poor man. Come in. Shit, you’re already in. Typical.’

‘You asked me in. Would you mind… why are you standing up to work like that?’

‘Woman are constantly being put in subservient situations. I do this to remind myself of that fact. I may be working for men, but I don’t have to be bowing my head to do it. I notice you elect not to sit, Mr Hardy. How come?’

I could hear an American twang in her voice, making it harder to judge whether or not she was serious. ‘I’m not staying long, that’s why. I just wanted to ask you whether you saw Scott very much around the time he was killed.’

‘Why?’

‘For God’s sake, he was my friend and…’

‘Don’t get abusive. Stop threatening me.’

‘I’m not threatening you, Ms Drewe.’

‘You’re lying to me. That’s a kind of threat.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You wouldn’t just turn up here out of the blue, throwing your weight around and asking me questions. There must be a reason.’

I stared at her; her brown hair was strained back like a ballerina’s; her eyes were dark and searching and her nose was slightly beaky. She was attractive in an off-beat style, and she wasn’t stupid. I slid sideways, sat in the chair and shuffled, trying to find room for my feet. ‘You’re right. I’m sorry. Let’s start this again. Scott’s wife wants me to investigate his death. She isn’t satisfied with what the police have done and she feels a need to do something herself. I understand that and I want to help her as far as I can. I hope you’ll be willing to talk to me for a while about Scott. I believe you liked him.’

She smiled and the effect on her face was dramatic, opening it up, making her features more generous and seeming to dissipate the pent-up reproachfulness. ‘Well, that wasn’t so hard, was it? Telling the truth and treating me like a fully fledged human being? I like Gina. What happened must be terrible for her. I’ll be happy to help you.’

‘Thank you.’

I was off-balance now and tipped further by her getting up and lifting her drawstring bag from the floor. She wore a cluster of bracelets on her right arm, pushed up beyond her wrist. She released them, one by one. ‘You can take me out for a coffee. I can work without coffee and cigarettes, but I can’t talk without them.’

By agreement, we walked down Norton Street to the Bar Napoli, one of my favourite places. In her Doc Martens, she wasn’t much shorter than me, and she had a long, loping stride. She was dressed exactly right for the weather in jeans, singlet and unbuttoned, loose cotton shirt. As usual, I was hot inside my lightweight suit. I juggled the folders and peeled off the jacket. She ordered a caffe latte and lit up a Kent. ‘This is one of the few places where you can smoke and not feel as if you’re giving everybody AIDS or something. OK, now, Gina’s right when she criticises the police. One of them talked to me for about, like, half a minute, and his questions were so dumb I didn’t give them memory space.’