Peter Corris - Make Me Rich

‘Your job is to protect my boy. Is that the way you see it?’

‘Yes.’

‘You know, Hardy, a few months ago I would have described myself as the happiest man in Sydney. Now, I feel my life is turning to shit. My boys… Pat going off like that. A man with his brains all over my

… Turning to shit. I’m hoping to pull something out of it, though. I won’t get it all back, I know that. But I want to salvage something. Do you think I’ve got a chance?’

I thought of Pat Guthrie’s graceful walk, the sea poems on Ray’s spick-and-span boat, the neat, purposeful half of Chris’s room. Those things felt solid, despite all the surrounding disarray. ‘Yes’, I said, ‘I think you’ve got a good chance.’

‘Protect my boy. I’ll back you up here. Don’t worry.’

Parker was looking edgy while this was going on. Guthrie moved resolutely back towards him. I nodded to Parker and he and Guthrie exchanged respectful nods.

We asked Guthrie to remove any traces of our presence in the flat. I suggested that he might care to go up to Queensland soon and he said he’d think about it. He turned away from us and from the broken thing on the cement, and climbed the ladder. He went up easily, sure-footed and neat in his movements. Parker and I watched him until we heard the door to the flat close. Parker let out a slow breath that whistled through his teeth.

“What did you tell him?’

‘Relax, Frank. I didn’t even hint that you want to use his kid for bait.’

We both showed the strain on the drive back to Glebe. I was feeling some relief, some apprehension at the conflict coming up between us, some guilt. Why would he tell me not to name names in front of Spotswood if he meant to knock him off? I thought. There was some comfort in that.

I drove badly, skidding on the wet roads and misjudging the turns. Parker was sitting stiffly; he swore when I hit a pothole.

‘Sorry’, I said.

He didn’t speak, but took his hand out of his jacket pocket with the piece of Spotswood’s shirt he’d used as a gag in it. I looked quickly sideways at him; he was chewing at his lower lip, really digging the teeth in.

‘Come on, Frank. You’ve seen it before.’

‘Yeah, I’ve seen it before. I’ve seen them pushed-I’m wondering if there’s any difference.’

It was late when we got back, but Hilde was still up, waiting for Frank. She gave him a kiss and he grabbed and hugged her and they nuzzled each other without caring whether I was there taking pictures or not. I left them in the front of the house and went to make coffee and get out the scotch, what there was left of it.

Hilde came out first and stood in the doorway; she was wearing a white overall and a red tee-shirt; her pale face was slightly pink where it had been rubbed by Frank’s beard.

‘What kind of a session is this going to be, stone-face?’ she said.

‘A hard one.’

‘I think I’ll go to bed.’

‘If we need the woman’s point of view we’ll call you.’

She came into the kitchen, stepped up and kissed me on the cheek-my first such salute from her, or maybe the second. There were no smells of oily water, stale urine and death about her; she smelled of shampoo and toothpaste. ‘Don’t be a shit, Cliff, she said. ‘It doesn’t suit you.’

She went out and they did some wrestling on the stairs; then Parker walked in, looking like a policeman. He took in my coffee-making sourly, pulled out the piece of cloth, went across to the sink and burnt it. The dark wisp of smoke curled up to the roof like a votive offering.

‘Sit down, Frank, and have a drink. We’ve got a problem- call it a conflict of interests.’

He lowered himself into a chair and stuck out his long legs-they stretched halfway across the kitchen. I poured the coffee and we both added some whisky to our cups.

‘Keegan’, I said. ‘I know the soldier in the photo as Keegan. He’s Guthrie’s wife’s first husband-if you can follow that this late.’

He sipped his coffee and seemed to fight for a civil response. ‘That’s one of Collinson’s aka’s-an early one. Let me tell you about Collinson first. To be fair about this you have to have the full picture on him.’

‘Okay.’ I drank some laced coffee.

‘Nothing to smoke, I suppose-cigar, cigarillo…?’

‘Hilde despises smokers. Calls them EC’s.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Emphysema candidates. Get on with it.’

‘Collinson got into the big-time in the Vietnam war days. He was one of the conduits the Yanks used to ship the heroin out of South-east Asia back to the States.’

‘How did they get it down here? — Why bother?’

‘A hundred ways. GI’s and Australians on leave brought it in; vehicles coming down to be serviced; the post; parachutes for re-packing was a good way, they tell me. Well, Collinson was a collection point and he passed it on to people who took it Stateside. Then he got into that angle himself. Why? Australia was thought of as squeaky-clean in those days. What did the bloody Yanks know about the place? Kangaroos and tennis players. Nobody looked twice at stuff and people coming in from here. It’s different now, after the Mr Asia thing.’

‘I bet.’

‘Collinson was in the big money, very big. He used it to expand-supplied girls to the brass, supplied the drugs where they were needed. Did you know that some of the US boys wouldn’t fight unless they had their grass?’

I shook my head.

‘That’s right. Wouldn’t fight. Or they’d collaborate to get it,’

‘Well, some wars are just big arms deals, really.’

‘Yeah. Collinson had more cash than he knew what to do with, and he set up a loans and finance firm to launder it. He’s an accounting genius as well as a crook. One thing led to another; the war ended, and he had these links with organised crime in the States.’

I yawned. ‘Come on!’

‘It’s true-for money-washing mainly; he bought a bank in the Philippines. All this is in the seventies-not the finest hour for legitimate government, you’ll recall. Who could kick? Collinson and blokes like him got away with murder, and millions. But he was smarter than most-didn’t make a splash, kept his head down, confused his identity. He used the phone or intermediaries-no one ever saw him, hardly.’

‘Like Howard Hughes’, I said. I’d heard something of this- with other names and deals-from Harry Tickener. It was something I’d always stayed well clear of: it was the world in which the directors of one company were the principals in another which held major stock in company controlled by the one you first thought of.

‘I wouldn’t know about that’, Parker said. ‘I’m more parochial in my interests. We’ve got a bloody huge file on him. Now.’

‘What about then?’

‘He had some very solid protection-police, government, possibly Intelligence-who knows? He’s still got some of it. His operation got blown by the Marchant Enquiry-did you follow that?’

I nodded. Mr Justice Marchant’s brief had been to investigate Customs Department corruption wherever he might find it. But the thing had got out of hand, and had spilled over into the administration of justice and the workings of the financial system. It was still going on-sputtering into life from time to time-despite high-level efforts to snuff it. A lot of big fish had been caught-and even more had been badly scared.

‘Our information was that Collinson got wind of the Enquiry’s interest in him, and he started to liquidate. He had a partner… hold on, talking’s making me dry…”

He took a sip of his coffee and I reflected on what a strain it must have been staying abreast of all this changing information. And he’d said he was doing other things as well.