Peter Corris - The Greenwich Apartments

Leo Wise’s conviction had something to do with it as well. He struck me as a shrewd man who’d assess his daughter as accurately as he would anyone else.

We’d left things the day before with an understanding that I’d look at the flat, make some preliminary investigations and see if I thought there was anything he could gain from hiring me. Well, if the police were on the wrong track, there was. I decided that I was interested and I needed to know more about Ms Wise and the Greenwich Apartments and that I needed more of that shrewd assessment. I rang the number listed for Leo Wise Investments Ltd and made an appointment for 11 a.m.

That would take me into the city where I could check with Air Pacific on Tania Bourke. Another call got me a 1 p.m. appointment with the Personnel Manager of the airline.

All I needed to round things off was some line of attack on Mr Anonymous. I looked through his stuff and the photographs again, sifting carefully.

The notebook was battered and creased as if it had been carried around a lot and jammed into pockets it didn’t really fit. The writing was large, squarish and upright. A military man? Bullshit! About 30 pages were written on-no names or addresses, just letters and numbers: Q 104; A 23; K 367; P 245: H 45; T 381 and so on.

There was no pattern to it: some pages just had a number like Q 455 at the head followed by C 34, others had more entries-K 478; P 34; M 16; B 780; F 12; L 78; D 56…

If there were such a thing as private detective school and if I’d been to it, I might have learned something about code cracking. As it was, I knew nothing about such things. I can’t even do a cryptic crossword unless I train and practise at them for a month, building up slowly from the easy ones. I gave up on the notebook. I did find one thing I’d missed the night before. Tucked away in a crumpled tissue that had got into the stuff somehow was a piece of chalk. A school teacher? A billiards player? A pavement artist? I gave up on Mr Anonymous for the time being.

Leo Wise’s office was in North Sydney. Smart man, there’s a great view of the real city from North Sydney. I took the Glebe Island Bridge and followed the freeway up through Ultimo towards North Sydney. My Falcon likes freeways. In common with most old cars, it doesn’t like to stop once it’s got going; it doesn’t even like to slow down too much. A few years ago, when we had a fuel crisis and everyone was driving around in fibreglass eggshells, the Falcon was a dinosaur, but not now.

It was a warm autumn day, almost cloudless with a light breeze. It hadn’t rained for a while so the giant hole they’re scraping alongside Darling Harbour, to be filled up with places that will act as suction pumps for money, wasn’t a sea of mud the way it is in winter. From the freeway I could see the earth-moving machines creeping along on the scoured wasteland. Men in hard hats strolled around. Great to be in outdoors work on a day like this. Or in an air-conditioned car; I was sweating inside my cotton shirt and could feel my cotton trousers beginning to stick to the vinyl. I wound both windows down as I passed the patch of tall buildings Helen calls Little Manhattan. A breeze came up off the water as if it was specially for me and it cooled me down as I crossed the bridge.

I parked near the station and walked a couple of blocks to Napier Street. Wise’s office was in one of those tall buildings that always seem to have good-looking women hurrying in and out of them. These places have pebbled areas in front of them with a few bushes struggling against the pollution, and a set of steps between the doors and the street which the women take without breaking stride. I’ll follow one of them one day to see where she’s going and why she needs the sunglasses on the top of her head.

The reception area of the building was like a brown-out zone in World War II. I groped my way to the noticeboard and practically had to put my nose up against it to discover that Wise Investments lived on the tenth level. The lift took the rest of my body up there quicker than my stomach. When I was reassembled I pushed open the glass door that was covered from top to bottom with the names of Wise’s subsidiaries and associated companies. I wondered if he could recite them all without stumbling. A black woman with an American accent and French clothes told me that Mr Wise would see me now. A young man, groomed like a poodle and wearing a three-piece suit, led me through a vast open-plan office where about twenty people were sitting at desks picking up and replacing telephones. Their conversations appeared to be monosyllabic; they punched buttons on calculators and smiled or grimaced according to the results. My escort knocked on a big door and pushed it open. His wristwatch beeped as he pushed.

‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘Does that mean call Mother?’

He shook his head. ‘New York calling in one minute.’

‘Better hurry, mustn’t keep New York waiting. They might sell you for dog food.’

I walked into the office. It was the size you’d need to play ping-pong in comfortably-two tables, ot course. The carpet was thick and three of the windows were mostly glass. Two of them were covered with drapes, the other looked straight out down Lavender Bay. Wise was sitting behind a desk cluttered with files, computer printout sheets and newspapers. Above and behind him was a large painting of a beautiful dark woman with slightly gapped teeth. I looked at it as I made the trek to the desk.

‘Moira,’ Wise said. ‘Second wife. Carmel’s mother. Sit down, Hardy.’

I sat in a leather chair that felt good to sit in-right height, right back inclination. ‘Any other kids, Mr Wise?’

‘Two from my first marriage. Grown up and gone. Lance is in New York, I don’t know what he does. Pauline drinks and gambles in… where is it, Nice? Monte Carlo? Somewhere like that.’

I nodded.

‘Well, what’ve you got?’ Wise said.

I told him about what I’d found in the flat and about the telephone call. He gave me his full attention, ignored the papers on the desk and the telephone when it rang sharply a couple of times but was picked up somewhere else.

‘Tania Bourke,’ I said. ‘Air hostess at one time. The name mean anything to you?’

He shook his head. I told him about the police belief in the pornographic connection and about the films in Carmel’s bags. I edited out Drew’s commentary.

‘That’s bullshit,’ Wise said angrily. ‘Carmel wasn’t like that. The reverse, if anything.’

‘I have to know a bit more about her, Mr Wise. What does that remark mean, for example? She wasn’t interested in sex?’

He opened his hands like a card player showing he has nothing up his sleeves. His jacket hung on a stand by the door; his shirt cuffs were turned back and his tie was loose. He looked as if he’d worked hard at something every day of his life and was puzzled by people who didn’t. ‘That’s what her mother told me. That’s what it looked like.’

‘No boyfriends?’

‘A couple. Nothing serious. And no girlfriends either, if that’s your next question. Shit, I wish there had been. I wish there had been something except films, films, and more bloody films…’

It sounds stagey but it wasn’t. He was a distressed man not used to showing his distress. I suppose investment consultants don’t as a rule. He clapped his hands to his head and ran them back over his hair. ‘Something to do with that flat is behind this. I was sure of it before and I’m even more sure of it now. Clothes just left there, mystery photographs… That’s your job. Find out what it was.’

‘Okay, but it might not be as simple as that. Carmel might have known…’

‘Look, Hardy. Let me try to make it clear to you. I believe my kid was a good kid who met with an accident. I want the murdering bastard who caused the accident to pay for what he did. I want that. But… an accident, you understand? I want my wife to be able to see it that way. Rule a line under it. Live with it and get on with living. Hell, she could have another kid. She’s not old.’