keep a flat in Petersham, too. I like those grass courts. Do you play tennis?’
‘Not in your league,’ I said. ‘OK, Richmond. I don’t like you but I believe you. Why don’t you grow a moustache? There’s a nice woman in Sydney who doesn’t need to see that face in the papers.’
We were in the hallway, moving towards the front door. He stared at me with his oddly bland eyes. ‘You’re a strange man, Hardy.’
‘I’m in a strange business,’ I said.
‹‹Contents››
The Big Lie
Robert Adamo was a slender, medium-sized man with a slow, disconnected way of speaking. ‘Mr Hardy, I hope you can help me,’ he drawled. ‘I’ve never hired a private detective before.’
‘There’s a first time for everything, Mr Adamo,’ I said. ‘I don’t ask as many questions as an accountant or cost as much as a plumber. What’s the problem?’
He glanced around my office for a moment, which is all the time it takes to register the minimal furniture and non-existent decoration. ‘I want to find someone. That is, I saw her yesterday, but…’
‘Hold on. Who’re we talking about?’ I’d already written Adamo’s name and address on a foolscap pad, along with the fact that he ran a picture framing and art restoration business in Paddington. Then I’d written MP for missing person, and drawn the male and female symbols and a question mark.
‘Valerie Hammond. She’s my fiancee. We were going to be married in two months.’
I scratched out the male symbol. It took a bit of hacking and slashing through Adamo’s reticence and shyness, but I eventually got something I could put down in point form on the pad. Adamo and Valerie Hammond had met when she’d come to collect a painting she’d had framed. They got engaged after six months. The date was set; then Valerie Hammond disappeared. She moved out of Adamo’s house, where she’d been living for three months, quit her executive job with Air France and dropped out of sight.
‘So you had an argument,’ I said. ‘What about?’
‘No argument. Nothing. I asked her to marry me. She said yes. Then she was gone.’
‘What did you do?’ I said.
His long, bony hands were in his lap now, twisting and flexing. They were strong-looking hands, and Adamo himself was a strong-looking-man-straight dark hair, firm chin, high cheekbones. ‘I… I looked for her, but I didn’t know what to do. She took her clothes and she got a reference from Air France. She’s very good at languages.’
It was a better start than some. Adamo was a very well organised guy: he had a recent photograph of his girl, who was a blonde with a high forehead, big eyes and a sexy mouth-165 centimetres, fifty-five kilos. I did the conversions to the old system on my pad. Valerie was twenty-five to Adamo’s twenty-nine; she’d learned French, German and Italian from her Swiss mother, and she and Robert had had a lot of fun in Leichhardt restaurants. His people were Italians who’d come out in the sixties when Roberto was a small boy. He was Robert now, and his Italian was rusty. I got the rest of the dope on Valerie-parents both dead, no siblings, only friends known to Adamo were Air France people he’d already talked to with no result. Valerie Hammond seemed to lead a quiet, very constrained life.
‘Sorry to have to ask,’ I said, ‘but does she have any… peculiarities? I mean does she smoke a lot, or drink or gamble?’ I gave a little laugh to help the medicine go down.
Adamo shook his head. ‘Nothing like that. She is very quiet, a very private person. That’s why I’m dealing with you rather than the police.’
‘What does she spend her money on? She’d be on a good salary with the airline.’
‘Don’t know. We never talked about money. I’m very careful about money. Running a small business isn’t easy.’ His eyes flicked around the office again and I could sense him weighing up incomings and outgoings the way I did myself, periodically. ‘All I can tell you is that she’s careful about it, too.’
I made a note on the pad. ‘She must’ve saved a bit then. You don’t know what bank she used?’
He shook his head. ‘She didn’t have any money.’
‘Excuse me, Mr Adamo, but you don’t seem to have known a lot about the woman you were going to marry.’
‘ Am going to many,’ he said fiercely, ‘when you find her.’
I nodded. His firmness deflected me from that approach. ‘Tell me about seeing her yesterday.’
‘In Terrey Hills. Mona Vale Road.’ He checked his watch. ‘At half-past three. She got in a Redline taxi and drove away. I was in my van. I’d been delivering a picture I’d restored.’
It turned out that he’d tried to follow the taxi but couldn’t do it. I’d have been surprised if he could; following taxis is a lot harder than it sounds. He also didn’t get the taxi’s number, which was disappointing but not fatal. I took the photograph and got addresses and phone numbers and $300 from him-two days’ pay-and told him I’d phone him within forty-eight hours.
‘I love her,’ he said. ‘No matter what.’
‘There could be problems you haven’t anticipated, Mr Adamo,’ I said. ‘Emotional things…’
He shook his head. ‘I deal with artists every day. I know about such things. They’re a part of life. I want Valerie for better or for worse.’
He was serious and I was impressed. He lived in Lilyfield, only a hop, step and jump from Glebe, where I live. I could always drop in on him and take a look at the coop Valerie had flown. Unlikely to be necessary; people can be hard to find, but it’s a matter of categories. Clean-living, good-looking quadrilingual blondes who get reference from their employers aren’t as hard to find as some. It’s not often in a missing persons case that you have the luxury of two clear, fresh trails to follow. As I get older, luxury appeals to me more. I rang Redline Cabs and spoke to a guy I know there who helps me because I once helped him. He undertook to find out from the service dockets which driver had picked up a fare in Mona Vale Road, Terrey Hills, approximately twenty-four hours ago, and to put me in touch with him or her.
Then I rang an employment agency which had once provided me with a typist when I needed one to make up a long and largely fictitious report. Amy Post was the typist; we’d had a brief, non-title, sexual bout and had remained friends. Amy was an executive in the company now.
‘Amy? It’s Cliff Hardy.’
‘God, so it is. Let me guess-you need a physiotherapist who can do bookkeeping and house repairs.’
‘I don’t need anyone. I…’
Amy’s voice went smoky. ‘We all need someone, Cliff.’
‘Sometimes,’ I said. ‘Right now, I’ve got a profile of a person who’s left a job and is looking for another. I’ll give you the details, and you tell me where she goes looking. Okay?’
‘Okay. She, eh? Hmm.’
‘It’s business. A man’s paying me to find her.’
Amy’s voice went professional. ‘Shoot.’
I gave her the details, such as I had, of Valerie Hammond’s age, appearance, qualifications and experience. Amy said, ‘Fluent in all of ‘em?’
‘So I understand.’
‘Half her luck. She wouldn’t need to be out of work a minute. And with a good reference? Shit, she could walk in anywhere and ask for top dollar. Got your pencil sharpened? No joke intended.’
Amy gave me a list of eleven likely employers- airlines, travel agents, convention organisers, consultants. I noted down the addresses and numbers and the names of her contacts at each place. Efficiency was Amy’s god, and that was one of the things that had kept our affair light-she’d sensed that my ramshackle operation ran the way I liked it, and in a manner she couldn’t bear. I drew a line under the last entry and thanked her.
‘Glad to help. Are you sure this chick’s a job of work for you?’
‘Yes. Why?’
‘Nothing. Just that she sounds interesting, and she’d be earning a hell of a lot of money. Bye, Cliff.’
I hung up and thought about what she’d said before dialling the first number. I’d made a dollar sign on the pad when I’d been getting information from Adamo. I underlined it and put another question mark beside it, and the
