Peter Corris - Man In The Shadows

‘I’m sorry,’ she said.

‘For what?’

‘I know that Ian has been giving you a bad time.’

I shrugged. ‘He’s a murderer. It could be worse.’

She shuddered and dropped into the chair. ‘He promised he would stop seeing her. He said he could get clear of all that… mess. He hasn’t done… anything.’

I put a cheque in an envelope and didn’t speak. I searched the desk for a stamp and didn’t find one.

‘A murderer,’ she said.

I nodded.

‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes.’ I looked out the window. The sky was dark and threatening; by the time we got there it’d be raining for sure. I stood. ‘Come on, I’ll show you.’

On the way I filled her in on the Winslow-da Silva connection and what had happened the night she’d told me I had a wrong number. I took her to the building site on the edge of the Darling Harbour development. The rain started to slant down and the light dimmed. We stood where Luis and I had stood a few weeks back and I pointed things out to her. ‘See the crane there? You get the body, in this case it was a Filipino girl named Lela. She’d have been, oh, maybe twenty, and you attach it to this mechanism at the end of the crane. You can release it from the cabin.’ I traversed the muddy landscape with my finger. ‘See the dark smudges, beyond those mullock heaps? They’re holes for foundations and underground installations. They go down a long way. Lot of water in them now. You can’t approach them on foot; it’s all honeycombed under there, not reinforced yet. Are you following me?’

Her face was wet with rain and tears. ‘Yes,’ she said.

‘Okay. You swing the crane out over the hole and you drop the body. You have to be good at it but the men who do it get some practice, courtesy of animals like your husband. Eventually a million tons of concrete and steel complete the job.’

We walked away, both coatless and hatless and soaked to the skin. I hailed a taxi and Barbara Winslow got into it, moving like a shocked accident victim. Abruptly, she wound the window down.

‘I can divorce him,’ she said fiercely, ‘and pull the political plug on him.’

‘Do it,’ I said. ‘Please.’

A month later the Winslow divorce was in the papers. A little after that, Winslow was sacked from Cabinet for misleading the Parliament. An election was coming up and one of the party bright boys, a favourite of the Premier’s, was nominated for preselection in Winslow’s seat. The rain had stopped and the patches of mould that had begun to sprout and spread on my walls retreated and dried out. My suspension period expired and I went back to work.

George Marr was the Credit Comptroller at Partner Bros which, if it wasn’t the biggest department store chain in Sydney, was rapidly getting that way. To me, he looked absurdly young for his job, but that might have been because I was feeling a fraction too old for mine. He was a slightly built, fair character with a fresh complexion. His hair was cut short and I suspected that he put something on it to keep it as neat as it was. His white shirt was as crisp and fresh as if he’d just put it on a few minutes before, although it was 11 am.

‘Mr Hardy,’ Marr said, ‘have you got a Partner Card?’

‘No. I’ve got a Medicare card and MasterCard. I was hoping to limit my card-holding to them.’

Marr raised one fair eyebrow and looked younger still. ‘You don’t approve of cards?’

‘These days I might have a couple I don’t even know about, the way things are going.’

‘Cards are the future.’

‘They’re all right for poker.’

He digested that while I looked around his office. It was neat, stocked with everything he’d need. His secretary was holding his calls and the boldly written entry in the appointments diary open on the desk in front of him showed that I had twenty minutes.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘I suppose that attitude will help keep you objective.’

‘What is the objective, Mr Marr?’

His expression showed that he didn’t like jokes that early in the day; perhaps he didn’t like them at all. ‘The Partner Card enables you to credit shop in any of our stores with a minimum of fuss. The system is completely computerised-high integrity, the most sophisticated data base and… ‘

‘Hold it. You’ve lost me.’

‘It doesn’t matter. There are more than 20,000 card-holders, state-wide.’

‘That’s more than members of the Liberal Party. It sounds wonderful for your… merchandising. What’s the problem?’

‘The card is being forged. The system is being used fraudulently.’

‘Ah.’ I sat back in the comfortable seat and thought about what I’d seen on the way to Marr’s office. I’d passed several million dollars worth of electronic junk on the way to a lift which had flashed by three floors crammed with ‘Home’, ‘Fashion’, ‘Style’ and ‘Recreational’ junk. Partners was organised in ‘Lifestyle Themes’; you set out to buy a box of matches and you ended up with a barbecue.

‘It’s serious,’ Marr said. ‘We’ve lost close to a hundred thousand dollars at last count.’

‘When did you notice it?’

‘At a credit audit a week ago. It was plain to see. The stock balance and credit account ratios… but I wouldn’t expect you to understand the technical details.’

‘You’d be right. We private detectives don’t understand much. The whole of life is a voyage of discovery for us.’

‘Are you trying to be funny, Mr Hardy? I was told you were capable and close-mouthed, not that you were a humorist.’

‘I’m not trying hard. Give me the details you think I’ll understand, Mr Marr, and I’ll try to help you.’

I’m computer-illiterate, but Marr filled me in as best he could. The phony cards had been used mostly in the electronic sub-section of ‘Home’ but also in some luxury ‘Fashion’ sections and in ‘Out-of-doors’ which had lost a prefabricated garage. A lot of liquor had been liberated too but I couldn’t work out whether it came from ‘Style’ or ‘Recreation’.

I scribbled notes while Marr talked. When he stopped I tried to show how sharp I was. ‘I can see how they could walk out with the booze and the VCRs, but not a garage.’

‘No, that was odd.’ He consulted a file on his desk. ‘The garage was delivered to an address where the home owner had no knowledge of it. The home owner didn’t even shop in Partners.’ Marr said this as if it was a matter for deep regret.

‘I’ll need that address,’ I said. ‘Also all the names and addresses on the phony cards and details on the people who could have helped from the inside. You know it has to be something like that, don’t you?’

He sighed, ‘Unhappily, yes. It’s a terrible thing — Partners has the best employee record in the industry, bar none. Well, I’ve anticipated you.’ He slid a sheet of paper across the desk. About a dozen names were listed along with addresses and jobs-Electronics Manager; Credit 2IC; Sales amp; Stock (Liquor); Accounts etc. The names were in two columns, one headed hardware, the other software. I tapped the headings. ‘What’s this?’

Marr’s smile made him look schoolboyish. ‘Our little joke-the “hardware” is the selling staff, who interface with the customers; the “software” is the computing staff, who… ‘

‘Don’t say it. All right, this is the address of the home owner, is it? And let me guess, this is your private phone number at the top. You’ve got an efficient secretary, Mr Marr.’

‘Top computing facilities.’

‘Yeah, well that could be your problem. In the old days you just looked and waited until you could slam the till on the hand in it.’