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  Melanie Hastings was a businesswoman importing Taiwanese-made clothing, screens and decorative fans. She was in comfortable, but not affluent, circumstances. She apparently vanished while on a skiing trip. A storm had blown up and her party had got into difficulties. The party consisted of Ms Hastings, a friend named Brenda Costello and their guide and instructor, Helmut Manne. The guide and Ms Costello made it to a hut but no trace was found of Melanie Hastings. Her life had been insured for four hundred thousand dollars, and the beneficiary was her friend Ms Costello.

  ‘That was the clever part,’ Tom Cooper said.

  Cooper was an American who’d come to Australia after visiting on R & R during the Vietnam War. He’d married an Australian and set up a go-getting, fast-tracking, low-overhead insurance business, among other things. He’d taken Melanie Hastings’s business because the insurance ‘product’ he was offering included very high premiums. Cooper didn’t employ a full-time investigator, and he’d contacted me on the recommendation of a satisfied client. He was brash and ambitious and not given to any sentimentality.

  ‘What’s that Aussie expression? Means spotting a sucker.’

  ‘She saw you coming,’ I said.

  ‘That’s it.’ He sat back in the chair in his austere office and laughed. You couldn’t help liking him. The pay-out would hurt him badly, but he was sort of enjoying the dramatics. That’s rare when big money is involved.

  I’d worked for an insurance company in the past, mainly as an investigator of arson claims. This was beyond my experience. ‘You mentioned cleverness,’ I said.

  ‘Right. It didn’t take long for the cops to find out that Brenda and Helmut were an item. Motive for disposing of Melanie obvious, but there was no evidence. Not a single person thought there was any hostility between the two dames. Both Brenda and Helmut passed lie detector tests—for what they’re worth: Did you kill Melanie? No. Needle doesn’t jump.

  ‘It’s a fucking snowfield. What’re the cops going to do? They wait until the snow melts, although it’s a cool summer and it doesn’t melt all that much and they keep making the artificial stuff. They dig around. Nothing. I’m looking at a big loss, a doozy. Won’t break me but won’t help.’

  ‘Don’t seven years have to elapse before someone can be declared dead?’

  Cooper thumped the desk. ‘In theory! But a good lawyer can work around it and guess what Brenda’s profession is?’

  ‘I get it,’ I said. ‘So they’ve pulled it off. Too bad.’

  ‘Oh, no.’ Cooper wagged his finger. ‘Ever seen the movie Double Indemnity?’

  ‘Of course,’ I said. ‘A few times.’

  ‘I’ve had a feeling about this all along. I knew something was wrong but I couldn’t put my finger on it. But now I have.’

  ‘You’ve got me interested and I can charge you for the time, but I can’t see how I can help you.’

  He snapped his fingers and the red braces he wore over his whiter-than-white shirt and let go his infectious grin. ‘Brenda was the beard.’

  He meant, as anyone who’s seen a Woody Allen film or read American fiction would know, that the real relationship was between Melanie Hastings and Helmut Manne and that Brenda, as we’d say here, was a front.

  ‘How d’you know that?’ I said.

  ‘I don’t know it. I feel it. I want you to find out if it’s true.’

  So I dug as deep as I’d ever done into the backgrounds of all three people—talking to neighbours, friends, clients, acquaintances and conducting surveillance on Brenda and Helmut. Their relationship looked pretty tepid to me, and my enquiries revealed that Helmut’s type was nothing like Brenda, who was dark, sturdily built and athletic. Helmut preferred the slender blondes who had need of his strength. That description more closely fitted Melanie. It wasn’t an exact fit, but Melanie had the added attraction of money. Helmut had had a few gigolo episodes in his time.

  All this was suggestive and nothing more until one of the acquaintances happened to mention Melanie’s interest in plastic surgery: ‘I mean it was crazy. She wasn’t old. She didn’t need it. But we were drinking, fooling around. She said there was someone in South Australia who could do it without needing a referral from a doctor.’

  Mike Trent, a colleague, if we PEAs can use that word, in Adelaide knew about Dr Heinrich Manne and things began to fall into place. He was Helmut’s uncle. I flew to Adelaide and, with Mike’s help, broke into Manne’s office. His files contained before and after pictures of his clients and I had no trouble spotting Melanie Hastings. She was living in a flat in the suburbs, keeping a very low profile.

  I flew back to Sydney and told Cooper all about it.

  ‘I knew it. Am I good or what?’

  ‘Brilliant, but you’ve got a problem—extradition.’

  ‘Say what?’

  ‘If she’s arrested in South Australia she’d have to be extradited to face the charges here. That could take a while. A lawyer could really tie it up, especially as there’d be questions about identity.’

  ‘Jesus wept. So what do we do?’

  We turned our minds to ways of luring her back to Sydney. We couldn’t make any use of Brenda or Helmut because that’d be sure to spook her. In desperation, Cooper suggested an outright kidnap.

  ‘That’d really give the lawyers a field day.’

  ‘A field day?’

  ‘You’re going to have to learn the lingo, Tom. A picnic.’

  ‘I get it. Well, my news is that Brenda’s applied to have the will probated. They tell me that’s the way to speed up the process of getting Melanie declared dead. That’ll put me under pressure to pay up, so I might just have to take the lawyers’ heat.’

  As it turned out Melanie, now calling herself Marci Holden, was heading back to Sydney without being lured. Mike Trent was keeping a watching brief and he saw her go to the agent handling her flat and, posing as a prospective tenant, found out when she was leaving and her destination. He stayed in contact and let us know when she was on her way to the airport.

  Tom and I had spoken to the detective in charge of the initial investigation and put him in the picture more or less day by day and now hour by hour. He arranged to arrest Melenie aka Marci on her arrival and Tom insisted that I be there to see it went smoothly.

  ‘I don’t trust cops,’ he said.

  ‘This one’s all right,’ I said. ‘I think.’

  ‘Be there.’

  That’s what I had to finish off before taking on Paul Hampshire’s case. I met up with Detective Sergeant Philip Harper and saw him arrest the woman who had a more shapely nose, tighter skin, blonder hair and a slimmer figure than the original Melanie. It went as smoothly as a Navratilova forehand.

  Tom Cooper congratulated me when I phoned him and said he’d pay me as soon as he’d straightened out some accounting problems. I’d heard that before and I’d used up his retainer. I had a quiet celebration with a few mates in the Toxteth pub, but, with a mortgage to pay, office rent due and liability insurance always a burden, I had to press on with the next earner.

  The following day, I rang the serviced apartments in Rose Bay and asked for Hampshire. The concierge, or whatever he was called, tried the number with no result. At least I knew he lived there. I rang the number Hampshire had given me for his ex-wife. The woman who answered had the sort of voice that conjured images of pony clubs and garden parties. I stated my business.

  ‘Well at least and at last he’s doing something. What do you want from me, Mr Hardy?’

  ‘A meeting, a discussion, details about Justin. Your authority to interview people at the school . . .’

  ‘Couldn’t you have got that from him?’

  ‘I forgot to ask.’

  ‘That’s not encouraging.’

  ‘There’s a lot of ground to cover, Mrs Hampshire.’

  ‘Pettigrew, Ms—I’ve gone back to my maiden name.’

  ‘Are you still living where you lived when Justin was with you?’

  ‘Yes, why?�
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  ‘I’d like to look at his . . . things.’

  ‘The police looked at them. They weren’t any help.’

  ‘I’d be looking from a different angle. And I’d like to have a talk with Sarah if possible.’

  ‘Are you expensive, Mr Hardy?’

  ‘Not particularly.’

  ‘Pity. Very well. Sarah will be home from school at three thirty. Shall we say four o’clock tomorrow?’

  It sounded as if I’d better wear a jacket and mind my manners. I was beginning to see signs of the problems in the Hampshire nuptials. Paul was basically smooth but there were traces of rough edges here and there. And he’d dropped the hint about the questionable paternity of the daughter. Angela sounded genuinely top drawer. Either that or she was a good actress. She didn’t sound like a hysteric. And I was reminded of the quote from Willie Pep, the much-married boxer: ‘All my wives was great housekeepers. They always kept the house.’

  My second last call was to Detective Sergeant Stefan Gunnarson of the Missing Persons Division. We’d had dealings before.

  ‘You again,’ he said.

  ‘Me again, to help you close a file.’

  ‘Hah, well, you did once.’

  ‘Twice.’

  ‘Have it your way. Okay, who?’

  ‘A few years back—Justin Hampshire, seventeen.’

  ‘Shit, a nightmare mother and an absent father.’

  ‘Clear in your memory, that’s good. Can I come in and see what you’ve got? How about tomorrow, in the morning? As I said to the lady, there’s a lot of ground to cover.’

  ‘She got you in?’

  ‘No, I spoke to the ex on the phone. The father hired me. He’s back from the land of the brave and the home of the free.’

  Gunnarson snorted. ‘Well, that’s something. We were lucky to get a fax out of the fucker. When you meet the missus you’ll understand why he went twelve thousand fucking miles away. Okay, Hardy, eleven thirty, don’t be late.’

  Always good to have a few bookings for the day ahead, even if they were spread out. Gunnarson was in Darlinghurst and Ms Pettigrew was up at Church Point. But I was on expenses, wasn’t I?

  I got through to the registrar’s secretary at Bryce Grammar. After a little difficulty, she arranged to fit me in at the earliest opportunity—the morning of the day after next. She confirmed that I’d need parental authorisation.

  I had a few small things to clean up and some to put on hold—faxes, phone calls, cheques in the mail. It was late when I got home and the house was hot after the muggy day. I ate some leftover cold chicken and salad and went to bed with the ceiling fan working overtime. I read a few pages of Robert Hughes’s The Fatal Shore. I had English and French settlers on my father’s side, according to research by my sister. Solidly Irish on my mother’s, with a few convicts—cutpurses and streetwalkers, nothing romantic, no land grantees or rum dealers. There was no Hardytown or Hardy Flats, but Hardys’d been here from early on and that mattered to me in reflective moments. I reached the chapter on ‘Bolters and Bushrangers’ and closed the book. The fan clattered a bit but I slept.

  Stefan Gunnarson was no one’s idea of a Scandinavian. He was short and dark and he sweated a lot. His division was housed in a series of small connecting rooms in the Surry Hills police complex and it was the usual jumble of makeshift partitions, filing cabinets, desks, whiteboards and stacks of paper. Gunnarson had a cubicle slightly bigger than the others and slightly apart—the only signifier of his rank. He’d told me previously that he reported to people ‘upstairs’ who had carpet on their floors.

  My pass was marked with the date and ‘AM’. I fingered it as I sat down opposite him.

  ‘Will I turn into a pumpkin at twelve oh-one?’

  ‘That’d be your famous charm at work, would it? You’re wearing a clean shirt and pants and that jacket was dry-cleaned recently. Let me guess. You’re on your way to see the dragon lady of Church Point.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Good luck.’ He had a thick spring-back folder on the desk and he released the contents. ‘Can’t show you the whole thing for obvious reasons, but I can give you the flavour.’

  He sorted through the documents, withholding some and passing others across. I read the initial report and statements from Justin’s mother and sister. A couple of the neighbours had also been interviewed and some of the boy’s friends. The police had followed up on a few of the matters raised—a surf carnival up the coast at around the relevant time, a ski lodge where Justin had stayed a year before he disappeared. A draft copy of his letter of application to Duntroon Military Academy had been found in his wastepaper basket, torn in half. The two pages were now sticky taped together.

  Gunnarson watched me as I read through it. The letter was correctly spelt, the grammar was accurate and the points were made clearly.

  ‘Torn in half,’ I said.

  ‘What do you do with drafts?’

  ‘Crumple them or use them as scrap paper.’

  Gunnarson shrugged.

  I read three faxes from Hampshire in California. In the first he said he was coming back, in the next he claimed to be delayed, in the third he said he couldn’t make it due to business commitments but would write supplying every detail about his son he could summon up.

  ‘Where’s the letter?’

  ‘Never arrived.’

  ‘Did you contact the Californian cops?’

  ‘You think we’re amateurs? Of course we did. Hampshire was up to his balls in complicated real estate deals. Legitimate but involving . . .’ He snapped his fingers. ‘What’s that finance crap young Warwick Fairfax stuffed up over?’

  ‘Junk bonds, whatever they are.’

  ‘Right. But there was no sign he was harbouring a runaway son.’

  ‘Still, the kid had a passport.’

  ‘We checked the ports, and I mean sea and air. Nothing. And nothing from New Zealand where he could’ve gone without a passport and used it as a jumping off point, in case that was what you were going to ask. Sorry, but we didn’t feel a need to bring in Interpol.’

  I shuffled the papers in front of me. ‘Nothing from the school here.’

  ‘We talked to some students and some teachers but, you know, private school, sensitive parents, lawyers from arsehole to breakfast. Can’t show you any of that.’

  ‘But no useful leads?’

  ‘Nope. The kid shaped up as Master Clean.’

  ‘So what d’you think happened, Sarge? Speculate.’

  ‘I haven’t a clue. Like it says, he took off in his Honda on a Saturday morning before anyone else at home got up. He took a few clothes and other bits and pieces. Sold his skis and his surfboard and skateboard and snowboard the week before. The kid was a balance-at-speed freak. It’s a wonder he didn’t have rollerblades and ice skates. He bought petrol locally and that’s the last anyone saw of him or the car.’

  ‘No bodies’ve turned up, no burnt-out Hondas?’

  Gunnarson shook his head. ‘He could be scallop fishing in Bass Strait or riding the fucking rabbit-proof fence.’

  ‘You don’t think he came to harm?’

  ‘It’s possible of course, but he was a well set-up kid with a fair bit of money. No history of drugs or dodgy behaviour, and he’d obviously planned it. Turned eighteen within a few months of leaving. An adult.’

  ‘Did you ask yourself why?’

  ‘Over and over. The way you will.’

  I made some notes from the papers I’d been allowed to see, thanked Gunnarson and left. Way too early for any theories, but not for being thoroughly intrigued.

  It was after one pm when I left the police building with my permit well and truly expired. Time to fill in before the appointment in Church Point. It was not an area I was familiar with—I’d have to do some work in the Gregory’s. I decided I’d earned some food and went to a pub in William Street where they did a fair counter lunch. Like all the best old pubs they had sporting pictures on the walls and the bar staf
f were mature, friendly females.

  I bought a middy of Old and ordered the shepherd’s pie. I wished Gunnarson had let me photocopy some of the papers I’d seen but he drew the line at that. He had to protect his arse against any fallout, and that headline about me and threat of a charge hadn’t boosted my standing with the cops. Working fast, I’d tried for a verbatim copy of Hampshire’s faxes but, when I opened my notebook, I found parts of my scrawl hard to read.

  The food came and, as I ate and drank, I stared at the notes I’d made of the faxes. There was a formality about some of the phrases—‘busy as I am’, ‘anxious to assist’, but also a defensiveness—‘I raised my son to be resourceful’, ‘he may need a period of relief from his mother’s excessive protectiveness’.

  I was finishing up when Gunnarson walked into the pub, looked around, spotted me and came over.

  ‘Thought I might find you here,’ he said.

  ‘You’ve found him and I’m out of a job.’

  ‘Funny. No, Hampshire contacted the wife, she contacted social services, who contacted us. He’s way behind on his maintenance payments for the daughter.’ He put a card beside my plate. ‘Here’s the number to report his whereabouts. I’ll leave it up to you.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Two reasons. I suppose you’ve got a fighting chance of finding the kid and that’d clear a case for me and be good all round. And I’m divorced with an ex from hell. My guess is, that Hampshire bitch would gouge his eyes out and sell them to get square with him.’

  He nodded and walked away. I put the card in my pocket and thought about what Gunnarson had said as I strolled back to the car. The last thing I needed was Hampshire under economic stress—bad for him, bad for me, bad, potentially, for Justin. Not a big ethical dilemma, but I needed to hear Angela Pettigrew’s story before making any hard and fast decisions. I filled the tank and kept the receipt to go on Hampshire’s bill. Three days for the cheque to clear—that could have a bearing on things. Hampshire had mentioned investments—I hoped his stocks were rising.

  I hadn’t been over to the north side for some time and, as always, they’d shifted the lanes on the bridge so that I had to keep my wits about me to be in position for the turn-offs. Midafternoon and the traffic was light, which made it easier. I picked up Pittwater Road in North Manly and just kept on going, with Joni Mitchell on the cassette player: