through to him as fast as the fibre-optic cables allowed.
‘Mr Hardy is it? I understand you might have some information about my wife?’
That was encouraging. The voice was thin and strained with the rasp that comes from smoking thousands of cigarettes. ‘Not exactly, Mr Nickless,’ I said. ‘But I’m sure we have something to talk about. I might mention the name George Cousins.’
‘I want to see you straight away,’ Nickless said. ‘Right now. I’ll pay you for your time. Please. I’m in Pyrmont.’
‘I’ve got the address but it’s after closing time. Your office…’
‘Will be open, I assure you. Please come at once. I’ll be waiting for you.’
12
Pyrmont has undergone a facelift and experienced a comeback recently. There’s a nice mix of renovated business and residential buildings and the beginnings of a community life-I mean places to eat and drink and talk, especially drink. There’ll never be much in the way of public space and the air quality will never be good, but that applies to a lot of Sydney. The cityscape makes it better looking at night than in the daytime, but the transport arrangements are good and property prices will rise and rise. I knew people who squatted there in the old days and some who paid laughably low rents. Not any more.
The office of Nickless Homes Inc. Pty Ltd was in Harris Street. The block had the Dunkirk Hotel at one end and the Duke of Edinburgh at the other. There were newly planted plane trees along one side, an outdoor cafe with chrome tables, a vegetarian eatery and Thai restaurant, giving the street a sophisticated, cosmopolitan look. The traffic was thin at that hour but would be heavy for most of the day. Parking space minimal.
The company’s office was in a renovated three-storey terrace, one of several in the street that had been turned over to business. That seemed a bit incongruous to me until I got inside and discovered that one of their models was an artful reproduction of the classical Victorian terrace. I was met at the heavy glass security door by a young woman who took me up two flights of stairs to the executive area. The two bottom floors seemed to be where the work was done. The various home styles were depicted in elegant blown-up photographs beside the stairs and on the landings. Some were up on stilts, Queensland style, others were rambling affairs on slabs. There was the terrace, there were yurts and even a tree house. That amused me and I laughed.
‘Sir?’ the woman said.
‘The tree house.’
‘It’s very popular. Mr Nickless said you were to go right in.’
Rex Nickless might not have looked too impressive on the jetty down at Bingara in shorts and deck shoes, but he looked the part in a suit behind a big teak desk in his flash office with big windows affording a magnificent city view. He got up as soon as I walked in the door and came quickly towards me around the desk, hand out. ‘Mr Hardy. Thanks for coming so quickly.’ We shook and I got a surprise. He was small to medium sized, soft in the middle with receding hair and an advancing double chin, but his hand was hard and rough. This was a man who’d done a lot of manual work in his time. His blue eyes were clear and his skin was good. He looked his age but as if he had a few useful years left in him. I accepted his invitation to sit down in a leather chair and saw no reason not to also accept his offer of a drink. He operated the bar efficiently and put a solid Scotch on the rocks in my hand. He took his mineral water back behind the desk.
‘Used to drink like a fish when I was a builder’s labourer,’ he said. ‘Six-pack at lunch and a couple at the smokos. Knocked it off a few years ago, apart from an occasional blow-out.’
‘Slow and steady, that’s me,’ I said.
‘I admit I did a bit of a quick check on you after I got your call. Asked around. The consensus is you’re good at what you do. I like that. I’m good at what I do as well.’
The sun was going down and the view behind him was starting to take on a Hollywood glow. The Scotch was top of the range and under the right circumstances I could’ve just sat there and enjoyed everything. Instead, I made some sort of modest reply and suggested that we get to the point.
‘I think I can put some business your way,’ Nickless said.
‘Hold on. Not so fast. We’ve got a bit of ground to cover first.’
‘You’re right. I’m anxious. I won’t beat around the bush. You’re looking for George Cousins. So am I.’
‘I know why I’m looking for him. I don’t know why you are or if our interests are the same.’
‘Good point. What else can it be but some criminal matter? Cousins kidnapped my wife. Or at least I thought he did. I paid a ransom of fifty thousand dollars.’
I looked around the office-expensive carpet, polished wood, Swedish furniture. I tasted the Scotch-single malt, no change out of ninety bucks for a bottle.
‘Not that much for a wife for a man in your healthy financial state.’
He sighed. ‘You’re right. It was all very fishy from the start. Hold on.’ He broke off and hit a button on his intercom. ‘You can go, Nadine. Thanks. See you tomorrow.’
I drank some more Scotch and waited. I wasn’t impatient. It amuses me to watch people deal with their overheads.
Nickless drained his mineral water, loosened his tie. ‘Fuck it,’ he said. ‘I’ll join you.’
He topped me up from a bottle with a label I didn’t recognise and poured himself a solid jolt. He took a swig and seemed more relaxed immediately. ‘Okay, it was like this. I hired Cousins as a deckhand
… ‘
‘In Bingara, couple of months ago.’
He raised his glass, signifying agreement. ‘Right. Well, I thought Stella really didn’t like Cousins, especially when he turned up all cut and bruised the way he did. I was wrong. Last to know and all that crap. The long and the short of it’s this. We went up the coast and called in at places where our houses have been built-Byron Bay, Stradbroke Island, Noosa and north. Stella and I were getting along all right. I know I’m a mug, redneck like me marrying a beautiful woman, but I wasn’t a complete mug.’
‘I don’t follow.’
‘You’ll see. Anyway, we got to Port Douglas and Stella went shopping and disappeared. Then I got a note saying that if I wanted to see her again I had to cough up fifty thousand. The envelope also contained some of her hair and big bits of her fingernails, like they’d been cut off right down. Stella was very proud of her nails. That got to me and I paid up. As you say, I can find that kind of money without too much trouble. Well, Stella turned up, all distressed and hysterical and Cousins vanished like smoke. A doctor sedated Stella and we flew back to Sydney. Two days later she was gone again and she’s hired a high-price lawyer to handle the divorce. I reckon they were in it together.’
I shook my head. ‘It’s not clear to me.’
Nickless finished his drink, thought about another, decided against. ‘We had a prenuptial agreement that limited what claims Stella could make on me if we split up. She’d get bugger-all really. She had no money except what I gave her. Suddenly, she can afford an up-market lawyer. Where’d she get the money?’
‘He might be doing it on a contingency basis.’
‘He isn’t. I checked. He’s been paid a fair bit up front. Now I’m going to have to negotiate because those prenuptial things aren’t watertight. She’s going to take me for a fair swag. Okay, more fool me. But I’ve got a good bloke on my side and I’ll wear whatever it costs me within reason. Stella’s a greedy bitch, but I knew that. Also she’s too dumb to have worked the scheme out. What sticks with me is Cousins’ part in it. He dreamed it up and they shared the money.’
‘You’re guessing.’
‘Yeah, but I’m guessing right. Anyway, he can keep the bloody money. What I want is a statement from him that Stella was in on it with him. That’ll give me some leverage when we get around the table with the fucking lawyers.’
I was thinking fast. It sounded as if I’d have to go to North Queensland to track Clinton and I didn’t want to finance that myself. When it had all seemed reasonably close to home, I’d considered getting Wesley to re-hire me,
