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 bad 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 amp; 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.’
