Peter Corris: The Reward

After an exchange of phone numbers we agreed to a meeting, same time, same place, in two days. I read through the newspaper cuttings that carried headlines like HEIRESS DISAPPEARS, MILLIONAIRES DAUGHTER VANISHES and SOCIETY BEAUTY FEARED DEAD. The photographs brought back sharp memories. Ramona Beckett had not exactly been beautifulall her edges and lines were too sharp and defined for that. There was nothing comfortable and soothing about her the way there is with truly beautiful women, but she had something extra that more than compensated for this deficiency. Sexy wasnt quite the word for her either. You wanted to touch and you wanted her to touch you is the best way of putting it, and when those dark eyes swung your way, you had the feeling that it might be possible.

I could remember our social meetings and our one and only sexual encounter quite vividly, although a lot of alcohol was consumed each time. She was well read and very bright, also funny in a caustic way. On the night that I put the screws on her, we went to her flat in Potts Point after dinner at the Bourbon and Beefsteak, her favourite hangout. We were clawing at each other on the stairs. If she was acting I didnt care. I wanted to touch every inch of her and enter her wherever shed let me. She was wearing a black dress, cut low in the front and back, with thin straps and a short, floating skirt. A black ribbon choker with a pearl set in it emphasised the slenderness of her long neck. Her dark hair fell to her square shoulders and smelled of flowers and tobacco. We were both smokers and our breaths must have been foul with alcohol and Chesterfields, but in those days no-one cared. I could almost span her waist with my hands and her long, thin legs, dark stockings and high heels were sexual signals all saying Go!

I got an erection, sitting there at the desk thinking about it, and got up to break the spell. I tried to remember how Id felt when the story about her disappearance broke in the papers. All the information, such as it was, was there in front of me in the faxes: she was seen in a restaurant in Manly on a quiet Monday night, dining alone. Her car, a white Celica coupe, was found garaged under her apartment block. How she got to Manly, why she hadnt driven, hadnt been determined. She left the restaurant alone and was seen walking towards the ferry and that was about it. The reports that followed were mostly about the lack of progress in the police investigation. There were speculative stories about Ramonas political ambitions and very veiled hints about her methods. Her friendships with prominent political figures were mentioned, but nothing specific, no names.

As I flicked through the sheets the initial reactions came back to me. I had been deeply puzzled that a person with so much intelligence and energy had taken such a bad turning. I had wondered what had made her the driven, ruthless creature she was and had no idea of the reason. We had mostly talked money and politics. Another reaction came back as well, something that had surprised me at the timeI remember laughing hard at some of the things shed said, admiring the shrewdness of other observation. Then there was the intensity of the brief sexual transport: I thought then and still didwhat a waste of an exceptional human being!

The cuttings reminded me that Joshua Beckett had made his initial millions from digging up bits of Australia and selling it overseas. Then he invested in fast food outlets, shopping malls, medical centres and pharmaceutical companies. It sounded as if he had the knack of turning one dollar into a hundred, a hundred into a thousand and so on. His first wife had divorced him early in his career but the custody of their son and daughter was shared. The son, Sean, was thirty-six at the time of Ramonas disappearance and held an executive job in one of Dads businesses. The daughter, Estelle, was said to be developing her own fashion label.

There was nothing much on record about the first Mrs Beckett and the reason wasnt hard to see. Ramonas beautiful mother, Gabriella, nee Vargas, had supplied the genes that shaped Ramona. She was a tall, slender woman with hawklike features and a wide slash of a mouth. At forty-plus when her daughter disappeared, she was twenty years younger than her husband. All news reports described her as distraught, although in the photos I saw I would call her composed. She was the daughter of Tomas Luis Vargas who had been the Spanish Ambassador to Australia in the 1950s, so maybe she had learned a bit about composure.

The story made a big splash in the Sydney papers, especially the tabloids, and even ran for a while in the national press, but it faded when nothing new turned up. It got new legs when the reward was announced but, again, no results, no staying power. Other bad news crowded Ramona off the front and inside pagesPrince Charles visited for the funeral of Pig Iron Bob, three Amanda Marga members were arrested for the Hilton bombing and an aircraft hit a house in Melbourne, killing six members of a family.

I read the cuttings through a couple of times, taking note of the names and trying to build up a picture of the players and their actions. The Beckett family hardly figured, other than photographically. No statement of any interest was reported from any one of them. Detective Sergeant John Hawkins was prominent early. He had the looks for the jobdark, cropped hair, hollow cheeks, immaculate three-piece suit. I have an instinctive distrust of any man whod wear a three-piece suit in Sydney, especially in January and February. Early on, Johnno made all the right noises about our investigations are proceeding satisfactorily and we have several promising leads to follow, then there was a slide to we are calling on members of the public to assist and down to information is being sifted. In the end it looked as if he bored the journalists to death, but that impression may have been prejudiced by the line I was following.

Over the years that followed there had been several follow-up stories and the Beckett case had even made its way into the historical section of one Sunday tabloid, like the Burns-Johnson fight, the Japanese mini-submarines in Sydney Harbour and the disappearance of the Beaumont children. No new data emerged and, reading between the lines, it was clear that Gabriella Beckett had turned away any reporters who had approached her.

I smoothed out the faxes and folded them so that Ramona Beckett, in the classic picturethe one that all the papers ran and was featured over the following years when the story was dusted off and dragged out againlooked up at me. Her forehead was high, but not too high, her nose was hooked but nicely so, her mouth was like her mothersa wide, thin-lipped gash, promising sin. The heavy, hooded eyes seemed to stare and probe into me and I had the strange feeling that she would try to get even with me from beyond the grave. Bullshit, I thought. I put the faxes in a folder and closed the cover on the staring eyes.

When a will is probated, the mechanism is an application to the state Supreme Court from the executor for the go-ahead to put the deceaseds wishes into practice. The document and some supporting affidavits have to be lodged and, after the court grants the request, the whole lot is available for scrutiny by beneficiaries and other interested parties. Strictly speaking, I shouldnt be allowed to look at the documents, but like most PEAs I had an understanding with a deputy registrar who was willing to stretch the definition of interested party as long as it didnt get him in trouble. I rang him and got the reference number which would enable me to avoid the long wait to look at the microfiche register on Level 5 of the Supreme Court building. Hed give me a pass to Level 6 where the wills are filed.

Next I had to locate Harry Tickeners Post-it. I found it stuck to a leaf of my notebook and telephoned the Martin Place office of Wallace Cavendish, solicitor to the Beckett family. I stated my business in guarded, almost cryptic terms to a secretary with an extraordinarily appealing voice, and was told that the man himself was away interstate.