Peter Corris - Man In The Shadows

‘She’s distraught. She says Julian loved the army and would never desert.’

I got a photograph of Julian, the licence number of his blue Laser, a few details on his pre-army life and the last date he had performed his duty at Waterloo Barracks. I also got the telephone number of one Captain Barry Renshaw.

‘Step by step, how did it happen?’

‘Julian didn’t do anything about his mother’s birthday. That had never happened before. She rang Waterloo Barracks and was told that he was on leave. That was a lie.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Julian had told his mother he was going to New Caledonia the next time he got leave, even if it was only for a week. He couldn’t have gone. His passport’s at home.’

‘What then?’

‘ I rang and was told that my son had been posted as a deserter.’

I looked at my notes. ‘You spoke to this Captain Renshaw?’

‘No, someone else. I didn’t get his name. Renshaw’s been handling it since, but we’ve really heard nothing. Something has to be done.’

‘I charge a hundred and fifty dollars a day and expenses,’ I said. ‘If I work on this for a month you’ll be up for over four thousand dollars.’

‘Do it. Please.’

I accepted his cheque. After he left, I stared at the photograph until I would have recognised the owner of the strong features, low-growing dark hair and steady eyes anywhere there was enough light to see by. Lately I’d done more debugging and money-minding than I cared for. It was good to have something to do some leg work on. Julian Guyatt hadn’t been in the army quite long enough to throw off civilian contacts. I checked at his last two jobs, hung around the pub he’d frequented and spoke to a girl he’d taken out for a few months. The response was the same everywhere: ‘Like we told the man from the army, we don’t know anything.’

That left Captain Renshaw. I telephoned him and stated my business.

‘I don’t think I can help you.’

‘Don’t you want to find him?’

‘Of course.’ The Captain clipped his words off as if they might straggle and sound untidy.

‘I’ve found a lot of people. I might get lucky.’

‘We’ve tried, so have the police.’

‘You and the police have procedures, Captain. You treat all cases the same, cover the same ground. I can treat it as unique. I can feel around and try to find the handle. D’you follow me?’

‘One silly young man. I hardly think… ‘

‘That’s what I mean. To his father he’s more important than all your Leopard tanks put together. Give me some of your time, anywhere you like, please.’

‘I don’t know.’

I felt I was losing him. I spoke quickly. ‘You tried to find Guyatt by looking into his civilian life, right?’

‘Yes.’

‘There you go. You need a fresh approach. You’re an institutional man and you trust the institution.’

‘What do you mean?’

I drew a breath, the next bit was risky. ‘I’d check on his army life. Discreetly. I was a soldier myself.’

‘Were you? Vietnam?’

‘No, Malaya. Don’t laugh, I’m not Methuselah. Captain, I’m going to look into this one way or another. I don’t leak things to newspapers and I don’t write books. Apart from the bare outlines, my files are in my head. You see what I’m getting at?’

‘I do. Two o’clock, here at Waterloo Barracks. Suit you?’

I agreed and thanked him. Then I rang Guyatt and made my meagre report. It didn’t sound like a thousand dollars worth to me but Guyatt didn’t complain. I asked him about the Laser and he told me that Julian had put a deposit on it and was paying it off from his army pay.

‘What finance company?’

‘Western, I believe. Madness! I lease, myself.’

I gave my name at a glassed-in, wired-for-sound guardbox. A silent sergeant escorted me down concrete paths, through sturdy metal gates and between some squat, undistinguished red brick boxes to a stylish aluminium and glass block. The sergeant led me down a corridor past some busy offices and knocked on a door marked Military Police.

‘Mr Hardy.’ A tall, thin man with sparse sandy hair got up from behind a desk and extended his hand. His face was about fifty years old; his uniform looked brand new.

‘Captain Renshaw.’ We shook hands and I sat in a straight chair by the desk. The room was big enough to hold two other desks, three filing cabinets, a bar fridge and a large bookcase crammed with official-looking publications.

Renshaw pushed a pencil around on the desk in front of him. ‘Probably won’t surprise you to hear I looked up your record.’

‘No,’ I said.

‘Decent enough. See you don’t draw a pension or any benefits. Why’s that?’

I shrugged. ‘Stubborn. Let’s talk about Julian Guyatt. What sort of a soldier is he?’

Renshaw took a file from the top drawer, opened it and ran his eye down the first sheet. ‘Pretty good. No apparent weaknesses.’

‘Specialist?’

He shook his head. ‘No.’

‘Have you got a psychological profile there? Any progress reports? Anything that suggests a reason for desertion?’

Renshaw kept his eyes on my face. ‘Like…?’

‘Gambling, drink or drugs, sex?’

‘No.’

‘Why was Guyatt’s mother told he was on leave?’

‘A mistake. An apology was made.’

I grinned. ‘You’re not being a lot of help, Captain. How about a drink?’

He looked puzzled. ‘What?’

‘There’s a fridge behind you. I thought there might be a beer in it.’

He turned his upper body slowly and looked at the fridge as if he was seeing it for the first time. He reached forward and opened it. The seat of the swivel chair moved slightly. The fridge was empty. ‘Sorry.’

‘Don’t worry. I’d like to talk to a couple of his mates.’

Renshaw consulted the file again. ‘He doesn’t seem to have had any close friends in the service.’ He snapped the file shut. ‘That’s why we looked outside and why I think you’re wasting your time. Unless you have any information which could be of help to us.’

I stared at him… The temperature in the room seemed to have dropped. Renshaw stood; I heard the sergeant’s boots scrape the floor behind me. ‘Goodbye, Mr Hardy.’

As an investigative interview it wasn’t much to boast about, but I had got something. Captain Renshaw didn’t know where the fridge was or that his chair swivelled-he hadn’t spent more than ten minutes in that office before I arrived. If he was a military policeman I was Frank Sinatra.

I wouldn’t say I was encouraged, but at least I had something to bite on. When I checked with the finance company and found that Guyatt’s payments had been made for three months ahead, I had a bit more. I did some more phoning-to the police to check on stolen and recovered cars and to a contact who can tell you useful things about credit cards. Result: several Lasers lost and found but not Julian Guyatt’s, and he hadn’t used his credit cards in the past month.

I slept on it and woke up feeling that I had enough to ring my client and make an appointment to talk to his wife.

The Guyatts lived in Greenwich, which isn’t a part of Sydney I know well. I drove there in fine weather in the mid-morning and missed the street because a tree from a front garden was drooping over it. The place seemed to have more trees per square metre than anywhere else east of the Blue Mountains. I found the street and parked outside the long, low, timber house. Some distance off a car backfired and birds flew up from the trees. The noise they made was deafening.

Mrs Guyatt was a large, heavy-featured woman who had given her looks to her son. She seemed commanding and firm of purpose but she was just the opposite. As soon as I mentioned Julian’s name her eyes moistened.