Peter Corris: Man In The Shadows

‘Are you Hilary Fanshawe?’

She nodded. I wanted her to speak again to hear that sound.

‘My name’s Hardy. I’m a private detective. I’m trying to get in touch with a client of yours.’

I held up my licence and ID photo. She waved me to a chair in the small room. There were photographs everywhere photographs could be put, also magazines and film posters. ‘Bail?’ she said. ‘Maintenance? Loan default? I assume you’re some kind of process server?’

‘No. That’s not much in my line. Do a lot of your clients have that kind of trouble?’

‘Enough. I don’t suppose it’s something good then-an inheritance? I could use a client with some bread. I need investors.’

‘Don’t we all. No, Miss Fanshawe, I don’t deal in good news much either. He came to see me and then matters became rather confused. I want to see him again to straighten things out.’

‘Someone should straighten your nose out. How many times has it been broken? If you were on my books I’d list it. Can you act?’

‘No. Can Gareth Greenway?’

The name hit her pretty hard. She dropped the pencil she’d been fooling with and lifted her head so that some of the loose flesh around her neck tightened. ‘Who?’

‘You heard. Gareth Greenway, one of your clients.’

‘The one that got away.’

‘What?’

She sighed and the flesh slackened again. ‘He could’ve made it, I always thought. He was really good. He lifted a couple of the things he was in from shit to hopeless.’ She smiled; her teeth were as beautiful as her voice. ‘That’s a joke, Mr…?’

‘Hardy, Cliff Hardy.’ I think I gave my full name because I wanted to hear her say it.

‘You’re supposed to laugh, Cliff. God, it’s a double joke really.’

‘I’m sorry, you’re going to have to explain it to me.’

She shrugged. ‘He was good, as I say. With a bit of luck and persistence he could’ve got good parts, made a success. I’d have been pleased for him and pleased for me.’

‘But he gave up acting?’

‘Threw it in.’ She smiled and showed those excellent teeth again. There was a chuckle with the smile this time. ‘So that joke was on me. I hardly made a cent from him. The second joke’s sort of on you.’

‘How’s that?’

‘Gareth gave up acting to be a private detective.’

She really laughed then. The flesh on her upper body shook and quivered and tears ran from her large, green eyes. ‘I’m s.. sorry,’ she said. ‘It just struck me as funny. God, I’m losing my grip. You must have noticed that the phone hasn’t rung and no-one’s called since you arrived.’

‘It hasn’t been long,’ I said. ‘You’re probably in a rough patch.’

‘It’s nothing but rough patches.’ She wiped her face and rearranged it into something like a smile. There was a charming, witty woman in there somewhere behind the blubber. ‘Ah, well, I can always go back to voice-overs.’

‘Is that what you did before agenting?’

‘Yes, and after acting. After I got too fat. I suppose everyone was something before. You were something before you were a private eye.’

I didn’t want to get into that. I’d been a happily married organisation man; sometimes it sounded good. ‘Yeah. Have you got an address for Greenway?’

‘Are you going to cause him trouble?’

‘He’s caused himself trouble already.’

‘What’s be done?’

‘You could call it… impersonating a lunatic’

She clicked her tongue. ‘Gave you a performance, huh?’

I nodded.

‘Told you he was good. Impersonating a lunatic, what a part. Well, I don’t owe him anything.’ She pushed her swivel chair back and swung to her left. Her hand on the file card drawer was narrow, long-fingered and white. I’d heard there were people who made a living from having their hands and feet and ears photographed. I thought maybe she could do that as well as voice-overs, but I didn’t say so. She pulled out a card and read off the address, ‘1b Selwyn Street, wait for it-Paddington. He shared with someone. No phone. Can you imagine that? An actor with no phone? I had to send him telegrams.’

‘I can’t imagine a detective with no phone. D’you think he was serious about that?’

‘He showed me the ad he’d put in the paper.’

‘What paper?’

‘The Eastern Suburbs Herald, I think it was. It was something like Sherlock Enquiries, no, that’s not it. Greenlock Enquiries. Private. Confidential. That sore of thing. Greenlock, you see?’

‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Holmes. Jesus. Did the ad give the Paddington address?’

‘Sorry. Don’t remember.’

‘When was this?’

She consulted an appointments diary on her desk. ‘Three months ago. January 7.’ The phone rang and she almost snatched it up. She crossed her fingers and looked at me. I crossed my fingers too. She lifted the phone. ‘Fanshawe Agency. Roger, how nice. Yes, I think so. Bruno? He’s available I think.’

I mouthed ‘Thank you’ at her; she showed the first class teeth in a wide smile and I left the office.

It was uphill from the ‘Loo to Darlinghurst and I was sweating when I reached my car. I drove to Selwyn Street where there were no parking places. I circled the block without finding a space so I double-parked outside number 1b which was a tiny terrace in a row that had been crimped and cutied like a poodle. A solid knock on the door brought a response from the balcony above me.

‘Yes? What is it?’

I backed out onto the footpath. A young man in a singlet and jeans was leaning over the railing. Sunlight glinted on one long, dangling earring.

‘I’m looking for Gareth Greenway.’

‘He’s not here.’

‘This is the address I have.’

‘He moved out when I learned that I had it.’ There was a bitter edge to his voice; he sounded like the people I used to interview who’d let their insurance lapse before the fire that wiped them out.

‘What?’

‘What d’you think? AIDS. Gareth’s not the caring and sharing type.’

His hair and beard were dark stubble over thin, tightly stretched skin. Bones protruded around his neck and along the tops of his shoulders. He was deeply tanned but he still looked sick.

‘When did he go?’

He shrugged and folded his arms. The upper parts of his arms were fleshless, thinner than the forearms. ‘A couple of months back.’

‘D’you know where he went?’

‘No. Bondi someplace. That’s all. Have you got a cigarette?’

‘No. Sorry.’

‘Doesn’t matter.’ His skull-like face went back into the gloom.

Sometimes I wish I’d get a case that would take me west, to Broken Hill. As it is, I always seem to be heading east, down to the sea. I drove to Bondi Junction where the office of the Bondi Tribune is located. Hilary Fanshawe thought the paper Greenway had advertised in was an Eastern Suburbs rag and it seemed likely that he’d put the ad in a few papers in that area.

Everything is new in Bondi Junction and seems to be getting newer. Some of the people are old but they look as if they belong somewhere else. I had no trouble getting permission to look through back numbers of the paper. These sorts of papers are grateful for any interest shown in them. A bright-eyed young woman took me to a room which was glass on three sides. I was the only reader and everyone who walked in the corridors on all sides looked at me. No chance of making any sly excisions.

I found the ad in the issues for the first two weeks in January. Greenlock Enquiries-discreet amp; determined. Negotiable rates. At least he didn’t claim experience. I wrote down the telephone number that accompanied the ad, thanked Bright Eyes and left feeling that I’d earned lunch and possibly dinner.