Hollis Park was like a London square, with big houses flanking the grass and gardens on two sides. The houses were smaller and more modest on the other sides. The terraces hadn’t been changed too much aside from the odd built-in balcony. The park itself was a bit scruffy and could have done with a thorough renovation.
After my visit to Tania Kramer, I’d looked Hollis Park up in a directory because I was impressed by the place. Apparently it was designed and built by a magistrate in the 1880s. I wondered how he’d made the money. It was a fair bet that he’d occupied the best of the biggest houses himself.
Tania’s place wasn’t the biggest but it had been well maintained and didn’t let the elegant layout down. I parked in a side street and walked through the park. I opened the gate and climbed the impressive sandstone steps to the tiled front porch. The garden was lush and showed signs of being well-planned and cared for. I rang the bell and heard it sound inside the house. I’m a knocker man myself; easier to ignore than a bell.
Tania opened the door. It had been a few years but she was ageing well. A touch of grey in the sleek, dark hair, a few lines, but she still had a lean, upright figure and knew how to dress-white blouse, dark pants, heels.
‘Cliff,’ she said, ‘how nice to see you. Come in.’
I followed her down the broad passage with its carpet runner and wood-panelled walls.
‘Not a bit surprised, are you, Tania?’
‘Not at all. I was expecting you, although you’re here a little sooner than I thought. That was you ringing and not leaving a message, right?’
‘Right. Is Sarah here?’
‘She certainly is, and doesn’t she have a story to tell. You’ve gone out on a limb here, my friend, you and a few others.’
There was no arguing with that. We reached the end of the passage and went up the stairs.
‘A few changes since you were here last,’ she said. ‘I have the top floor all to myself.’
‘I’m the same,’ I said. ‘With the bottom floor as well.’
‘In a grotty little dump in Glebe.’
‘Water view.’
‘Glimpse-through apartment blocks. How’s your wind?’
We reached the third level and there was ample evidence of renovation and money spent. Polished floors, skylights, a living area that had been opened out by the removal of a wall or two.
‘You’ve won a lottery,’ I said.
‘Paid off the mortgage, darling. It’s downhill all the way. Take a seat. I’ll get Sarah.’
The room featured well-stocked bookshelves, a cane lounge suite with padded cushions, big screen TV with VCR and an elaborate hi-fi set-up. No bar, that’d be vulgar; no drinks tray, that’d be pretentious. Tania had taste to equal her ambition and ruthlessness.
‘Hello, Mr Hardy.’
Sarah appeared as if from nowhere. The angry schoolgirl and the tough teenager had vanished. She still wore her denims but at a guess she’d been at Tania’s makeup kit. She looked older, more composed. At least superficially, she’d achieved a new level of sophistication. It didn’t surprise me that a few hours in the company of Tania could produce that. Sarah sat opposite me on the couch and lit a cigarette.
‘I trusted you,’ she said. ‘I don’t anymore.’
‘I’m sorry. Why not?’
Tania came in with a coffee pot, cups, cream and sugar on a tray. ‘You know why, Cliff.’
‘Van Der Harr’s file on Justin. I can explain that.’
‘I’m sure you can.’ Tania gave Sarah an encouraging smile as she poured the coffee. ‘But it’s more than that. I got a leak of your statement to the police. You knew Paul Hampshire doubted that Sarah was his daughter, but you didn’t say anything about it to her when you spirited her away to live with your mate and your ex-girlfriend.’
That was typical of Tania. She loved the obvious, doubted the nuances, made assumptions and treated them as facts. It wasn’t worth your breath to correct her, she didn’t hear anyway. Anyway, she was right that I’d withheld information from Sarah but I didn’t feel bad about that.
‘I didn’t want to add to Sarah’s anxieties,’ I said. ‘She was very vulnerable.’
‘Does she look vulnerable to you now?’
‘What’s going on, Tania? What’s your interest in this?’
Tania took a cigarette from Sarah’s packet and lit it. They exchanged conspiratorial smiles. ‘The story, of course,’ she said. ‘Sarah’s story. There’s a book in this. A best-seller. A lot of money to be made.’
‘You’re a cold-blooded bitch, Tania. Sarah won’t need it. She’ll inherit her mother’s house. It’s worth a lot of money.’
Tania tapped off her ash. ‘Temper, temper. That’s where you’re wrong. Tell him, Sarah.’
‘Angela and I fought a lot. You knew that.’
I nodded.
‘One day we had a real beauty, over school and all the shit she made me put up with. We really slammed into each other. She showed me a copy of her will. She’s left everything to be equally divided between me and Justin.’
‘Who’s been missing for two years and a bit,’ Tania said. ‘But it takes a fair while longer than that to have the authorities declare someone dead, unless there’s some very solid evidence. Means everything would be tied up for quite a while.’
We hadn’t touched the coffee. I drank some now to ease a dry throat. ‘True,’ I said.
Tania smiled. ‘That’s where you come in, Clifford.’
18
It was bizarre. Tania and Sarah wanted me to continue to look for Justin, either to find him or provide good reason to have him declared dead.
‘The story needs an ending,’ Tania said.
‘You mean you need it to do this best-seller.’
‘Same thing. Damn, this coffee’s cold.’
‘Suppose I just chuck it, cut my losses?’
Sarah stubbed out her cigarette. ‘You won’t.’
‘Why did you take off like that, Sarah? I know Tania must’ve sweet-talked you over the phone, but…’
‘I went right off when I saw that fucking file on Hilde’s desk. Like I told you, that dirty bastard copped a feel a couple of times. I couldn’t believe that you’d have anything to do with him.’
‘Listen, I left him whimpering. Didn’t mention you by name, but I pressured him by threatening a charge of molesting an underage female. He was shit-scared. I stole the file because I hoped it might tell me something useful about Justin, but it’s in Dutch. Hilde reads German and she can manage Dutch. I was getting her to translate it for me.’
Sarah nodded. ‘Yeah, I see that now. But with everything going on, and feeling so good about being with the Parkers and then seeing that fucker’s name, I just flipped.’
Tania was wearing a triumphant smile. ‘I can take some of the credit,’ she said. ‘I told Sarah to bring anything she could that might have a bearing on the story. She was going to rip the file to shreds. I told her not to.’
‘Credit?’ I said.
‘Credit. Where d’you think I got the name Kramer from? My father was a German immigrant. I grew up bilingual. I can read Dutch as well as your ex-girlfriend.’
‘Knock it off, Tania. She was never that.’
Tania shrugged. ‘Who cares? The point is, you were right. There is something in that paedophile’s notes that could be useful.’
‘Where’s the file now?’
‘Safe,’ Tania said. ‘You nicked it once, can’t let you do it again. You could be in trouble over that-theft, menaces…’
