shit from anyone, including me. I can’t help liking him.’
I’d dealt with Bickford before and more or less trusted his judgement, so I took his money and the case. Three men had robbed an armoured car delivery to a business in the CBD very early in the morning. They’d been masked and were efficient. They didn’t injure the guards and got away with about sixty thousand dollars-probably less than they’d expected. A witness said the mask on one of the robbers had slipped and he identified Frost in a lineup. I went to see Frost in Long Bay.
‘It’s bullshit,’ he said. ‘I was at home asleep. I’ve never worn a mask in my life.’
‘How do you figure it, then?’
Frost was a big, solid man, handsome in a rugged way. He was very calm, which isn’t easy to be when you’re on remand facing a serious charge. I knew because I’d been there. He didn’t fidget or avoid my eyes. He smoked, as so many did back then, including me, but not compulsively.
‘Must’ve been someone who looked like me. Plenty do.’
That was true enough. He said he was alone in the house at the time of the robbery. His wife had just had a premature baby and was still in the hospital with it. He’d been awake for two days through the crisis and was grabbing some sleep.
‘How d’you read it?’ I asked.
‘To be honest, I see it as payback. I’m no angel and the cops haven’t managed to nail me for a few things I have done. They’re causing me grief for something I didn’t do.’
There were a lot of dodgy police back then, many of them capable of framing people and using their powers and the courts to pay old debts.
‘What about the other two?’
He shrugged. ‘No idea who those guys are but I could hazard a guess.’
‘That might help.’
‘No, I’m not a dog, but you know how it works, Hardy. They could’ve green-lighted the job and set me up to take the blame.’
He was right about that. It happened. If it had, the weak spot in the arrangement was the witness. I poked around and got enough on him for Bickford to cast serious doubt on his evidence if the case came to trial. It didn’t. Wheels turned and the charges were dropped. It made me popular with Bickford, who put work my way for the next few years. Frost had thanked me. It made me unpopular with the police but that was nothing new.
The files were arranged in chronological order so I could see that other matters had come along hard on the heels of that one. It had been a busy time and the details had been crowded out long ago. I made some notes, put the old file back in its place, and copied the notes into the Forrest file and then to the memory stick. I fitted the memory stick onto my key ring. It felt like a day’s work so that’s what I called it.
I felt good about Bobby’s case. It had an interesting texture to it. The phone rang as I was about to leave the office. It was Sarah Kelly, a woman I’d met down in the Illawarra on a brief holiday a while back.
‘You said you’d call me,’ she said.
‘I should have,’ I said.
‘When are you likely to be down here again? I want to see you, Cliff.’
I realised that I wanted to see her, too. Badly. Being back at work and on something interesting was all very well, but I needed warmth. Viv had said I was sour. I didn’t feel sour, especially when I heard Sarah’s voice. She was a part-time soul singer and her voice had a special quality.
‘I’m back in business, Sarah. It’s great to hear from you.’
‘Busy, eh, baby? Well get here soon.’
I went to the Toxteth in an uppish mood, didn’t drink too much and Daphne Rowley and I held the pool table until our eyes got crossed.
Sophie Marjoram had an office in Paddington not far from the Five Ways. It was wedged between an art gallery and an antique dealer with a pub just across the street and a coffee shop half a block away. Ideal location. Sophie specialised in all aspects of the film and television business. She was an agent for writers, directors, actors, sound engineers, special effects people, stunt persons, you name it. It was a good niche that enabled her, sometimes, to get quite a few of her clients in on the one film or TV production and guarantee stability and reliability. And lock in good commissions for herself. She didn’t have any of the big names.
‘Don’t want ’em,’ she’d told me when I first met her. ‘Nothing but ego, ego, ego. I’ve had a few on the way up who’ve left me when they made it, and come back to me on the way down. A microcosm of life’s what it feels like sometimes.’
Our appointment was for 10 am. I showed up on time and she was late. She came hurrying along the street, high-heeled boots tapping, flowing skirt flapping and with a mobile phone glued to her ear. Still listening and talking she dug keys out of her bag, opened the door and waved me inside.
‘Fuck you,’ she said and switched off the phone.
‘Another successful negotiation, Soph?’
‘It will be, it will be.’
We went down a short passage to an open plan office holding three desks.
‘You’ve expanded,’ I said. ‘You used to have half this space.’
‘I’m doing okay. I’ve got two part-timers. I get a government subsidy for employing them, would you believe? You ought to be in on it.’
‘I’m just starting up again after a break. Barely enough work for me so far.’
She sat behind the biggest, most cluttered desk and pointed to a chair.
‘Good to see you, anyway. I guess one of my people must be in trouble. Who is it?’
Direct, that’s Sophie, at least when she was sober, which wasn’t always. She was in her fifties, overweight, vividly made up, energetic. She’d done most of the jobs she now handled as an agent herself in her time except for stunting, and she could be hard as nails or marshmallow soft as required.
‘Bobby Forrest,’ I said. ‘Trouble not really of his own making.’
‘It never is. Well, I know how it works. You won’t tell me a thing about it, and I have to tell you everything I know about him.’
‘Not quite like that. He hasn’t committed any crimes, isn’t a drunk or on drugs or a pedophile, as far as I know.’
‘That’s a relief. I can tell you that he’s a good kid. Good actor, a natural. Limited range but he’s working on that. In a way he’s got too many skills. He can do just about anything and the producers use him a lot, but in snatches, if you know what I mean. He’s yet to get any good, solid roles but he keeps busy.’
‘How bright is he?’
‘How bright are any of them? Not very.’
I showed Sophie the photograph of Miranda and asked if she’d ever seen her. She put on glasses and studied it carefully.
‘Chocolate box,’ she said. ‘No, don’t know her.’
‘Is Forrest, let’s say. . prone to violence?’
‘Ah, now we’re getting to it, are we? It’s not what he’s done, it’s what he might do.’
‘You’re talking. Go on.’
Sophie fiddled with the pens and pencils standing up in a jar on her desk. She selected one and ran her fingers along its length. It had an eraser at the end and she used it to bounce the pencil on the desk.
‘As far as I know, Cliff,’ she said slowly, weighing her words, ‘you’re one of the good guys, although your record doesn’t quite show that, I’m told. You’ve cut some corners, trodden on some toes.’
I nodded. ‘Corners that needed cutting, toes that needed treading on.’
‘You always did a good job for me, sometimes under difficult circumstances. You could’ve picked up money talking juicy stuff to the media.’
I didn’t say anything.
‘So I’m going to trust you.’
‘Yes?’
She laughed. ‘Had you going, didn’t I? You thought I was going to reveal some deep, dark secret about
