Peter Corris - Beware of the Dog

‘Don’t hit him again. Don’t!’

The woman’s voice was close, almost in my ear. I kept an eye on my man but the moment had passed. He lifted his hands protectively and Verity Lamberte stepped between us.

She had lost most of the smartness and dash she’d displayed when she’d come to my office. How long ago was it? It seemed like months. She was thinner, her hair was lank and in trousers, jumper and padded jacket she looked drab. But it was still her. Instinctively, I reached out to grab her arm and stop her from running. But she stood there with no thought of flight. The man pulled out a handkerchief and wiped blood from his face. My punch had caused his nose to bleed.

‘Mr Hardy,’ Verity Lamberte said.

‘The same.’ I gestured towards the man. ‘Who’s this?’

‘My step-brother, Robert. We… we just wanted to talk.’

‘To talk,’ Robert said.

On closer inspection, he wasn’t so big. Only a fraction taller than me and some of the bulk was in his clothes. Still, he’d made some pretty good moves. He was pale-faced and a touch weak-chinned. I was relieved to see that he wasn’t wearing glasses.

‘Talk is right,’ I said. ‘What the hell’s going on here? Where have you been?’

‘Hiding. With Robert.’

‘Great. And what’re you doing here? Don’t tell me you’ve followed me all day like your crazy sister did. I couldn’t stand it.’

She stared at me uncomprehendingly. ‘Karen followed you?’

‘Not Karen, Paula.’

‘She’s not… I haven’t seen her for years.’

Robert put his handkerchief away. His eyes drifted to the albums lying on the nature strip. ‘We came to see him.’ He pointed at the Wilberforce mansion. ‘We thought he might be able to help.’

‘You can’t see him now. He’s asleep.’

‘Maybe you can help me,’ Verity said.

Robert shook his head. ‘I don’t think that’s such a good idea.’

‘I think it’s a great idea,’ I said. I was still holding her arm. I released her and bent to pick up the albums. When I had them under my arm I took hold of her again. ‘Where can we go to talk?’

I drove with Verity in the Land Cruiser following Robert in his Audi. Our talking place proved to be Robert Crosbie’s three-bedroom flat in Bellevue Hill. Robert turned out to be a computer programmer and electrical engineer who’d inherited money from about three different directions the way the rich do. He was a bachelor, running his own small business and very attached to his step-sister, Verity. She had been staying with him since the visit from the police to tell her of her husband’s death. Verity’s mother, who was Selina Livermore before she became Wilberforce (she was subsequently Ashley-Hawkins, I was told), was keeping an eye on the two children. They had temporarily become boarders at their respective private schools which they found a great lark.

‘I loved being a boarder,’ Verity said.

Robert nodded.

I had nothing to contribute at this point, having walked to Maroubra High for five years from our semi. All this information had poured out almost as soon as we entered the flat. Step-brother and step-sister were dead keen to show how solid their family was, how caring and protective. I dumped the albums on the living room table and asked if there was anything to eat. The half sandwich consumed in Katoomba seemed like an experience from another lifetime.

Robert said, ‘Sure, sure,’ and went off to busy himself in his bachelor kitchen.

Verity and I sat in armchairs a metre apart. Although her looks had suffered, for a woman who had lost a husband and a sister and whose kids were on hold, she was bearing up pretty well. I thought she could take some direct action. I said, ‘Did you know he was screwing Karen?’

She shook her head. ‘No. But she was very attractive.’

‘Right,’ I said. ‘I saw her in all her fucking togs. Trouble was.. her hair was on fire.’

She closed her eyes. ‘Do you have to be offensive?’

‘Widow Lamberte,’ I said. ‘I went into that house when it was going up like a bonfire. I got Karen out but she was too badly burnt and smoke-affected to live. I nearly died myself. The cops very naturally wanted to know what I was doing up there with my binoculars and survival gear. I told them, but you weren’t around to back up my story.’

‘I was afraid. The police came and told me there’d been a fire and that Patrick was dead. They didn’t mention you. But I thought… when they heard about you and the bullets and everything, they’d blame me. They’d think I killed them. You know what they do! You know how they falsely accuse people and ruin their lives.’

She was right. There had been a rash of cases of just that kind lately, affecting people of all classes and walks of life. My own insecurities derived from problems within the law enforcement structure.

‘I was so scared,’ she said. ‘I came to Robert and asked mother to help. She told me about Karen when the police told her. That made me even more frightened. I tried to get in touch with you but your phones didn’t answer. I didn’t know what to do, so I just hid here. Robert’s the one who’s held this crazy family together. The only one!’

Robert came back bearing a wooden platter with five different varieties of cheese, dry biscuits, sliced salami, black olives and a bottle of Wolf Blass red.

‘Will this do?’ he said.

I ate and drank, fuelling up, and didn’t say anything at all for a few minutes. Robert and Verity sipped their wine and nibbled.

‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘I was running on empty. D’you know who shot Phillip Wilberforce?’

Both shook their heads.

Robert said, ‘Verity was getting edgy about just… hiding. She thought he might be able to help her to deal with the police, you know? But he was in hospital for quite some time. We waited until tonight to visit. Then we saw you.’

A lateral thinker.

‘Who shot him?’ Verity said.

I took a swig of Wolf Blass. ‘Paula.’

Verity almost dropped her glass. ‘God, does that mean she…’

‘What?’ I said.

‘Had anything to do with Patrick and Karen’s deaths?’

‘Big jump,’ I said. ‘You’d like that, would you?’

Robert put his glass on the table. ‘Hardy…’

‘Shut up. I’ve been hired by your sometime stepfather to find Paula.’

‘That’d be right,’ Verity said. ‘She was the only fruit of his loins. The only one of us he ever cared a fuck about.’

‘Verity!’

‘Shut up, Robert.’

‘Happy families,’ I said. ‘Let’s look at some snaps.’ I opened the first of the albums. Our three heads craned forward as we examined the first page. Four photographs were carefully mounted by means of the old stickdown corners method. The pictures were of children, in twos and threes, grouped around a birthday cake. Robert pulled back sharply.

‘What’s the point of this?’ he said.

I began to flick over the leaves as Verity gazed, rapt. ‘I don’t know. To try to spot something that might suggest where Paula is, or what she might do next.’

Verity laughed. ‘If you really knew Paula you wouldn’t even think that.’

Robert grabbed the second album. ‘I’ll show you something. If there was anyone she wanted to kill it was Verity. Where are they? Yes, here.’

He opened the book at a double-page spread of ten photographs, all of the same subject-a dead dog.

Verity gasped. ‘It was an accident. I didn’t mean to kill him.’

‘He was a nasty vicious brute,’ Robert said. ‘The rest of us were glad you did.’

The dog was a whitish bull terrier. It lay on its side with its tongue hanging out. There was a dark, gaping wound the size of a fist in its neck.