‘I should say he was a soldier. He went absent without leave.’
‘For how long?’
‘It’s not clear. Some weeks.’
‘Then he’s a deserter.’
Guyatt shifted his well-padded behind on the unpadded chair I have for clients in my office. What’s the point in making them too comfortable? They might decide that everything’s all right and go away. Guyatt didn’t. Technically, perhaps. ‘You were in the army yourself, I believe. Malaya. You don’t look old enough.’
‘It went on longer than people think. If your son’s a deserter, Mr Guyatt, the military and the police’ll be looking for him. I can’t see… ‘
‘Julian didn’t desert, or if he did he had a good reason. He’s not some little guttersnipe; he’s educated, he’s got background.’
I held the smile in; I’ve seen backgrounds fade into the far distance and guttersnipes come up with the goods. I got out a fresh note pad and clicked my ballpoint. ‘You’d better tell me all about it, Mr Guyatt.’
Like most people feeling their way into a subject, he found it easiest to start with himself. Ambrose Guyatt ran a very profitable business which had blossomed from paper and stationery into printing and copying. He told me that some years before he had worked twenty hours a day keeping abreast of things and making the right moves. ‘That was when Julian was growing up,’ he said. ‘Naturally I didn’t see much of him.’
I nodded and got ready to make my first note. ‘How old is he now?’
‘Twenty. He joined the army nearly two years ago. He was a champion athlete but he… didn’t finish school.’
Guyatt was a short, stocky man with a balding head and a high colour. I’ll swear he almost blushed when he admitted his offspring was a dropout.
I nodded again. ‘Didn’t finish the army stint either. Is that his problem, Mr Guyatt? That he can’t finish anything?’
‘I really don’t know. It’s a terrible thing to say but I can’t claim to know him very well. We hardly spoke in the last years he was at home. Well, he wasn’t really at home. He came in for clean shirts and money which his mother gave him.’
‘Would you have given them to him?’
‘He avoided me. Never came when I was going to be around.’
I sighed. Young Guyatt avoided old Guyatt; old Guyatt avoided questions; I wondered what Mrs Guyatt avoided. ‘Was he on good terms with his mother?’
Guyatt nodded.
‘What does she have to say about it?’
‘She’s distraught. She says Julian loved the army and would never desert.’
I got a photograph of Julian, the licence number of his blue Laser, a few details on his pre-army life and the last date he had performed his duty at Waterloo Barracks. I also got the telephone number of one Captain Barry Renshaw.
‘Step by step, how did it happen?’
‘Julian didn’t do anything about his mother’s birthday. That had never happened before. She rang Waterloo Barracks and was told that he was on leave. That was a lie.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Julian had told his mother he was going to New Caledonia the next time he got leave, even if it was only for a week. He couldn’t have gone. His passport’s at home.’
‘What then?’
‘ I rang and was told that my son had been posted as a deserter.’
I looked at my notes. ‘You spoke to this Captain Renshaw?’
‘No, someone else. I didn’t get his name. Renshaw’s been handling it since, but we’ve really heard nothing. Something has to be done.’
‘I charge a hundred and fifty dollars a day and expenses,’ I said. ‘If I work on this for a month you’ll be up for over four thousand dollars.’
‘Do it. Please.’
I accepted his cheque. After he left, I stared at the photograph until I would have recognised the owner of the strong features, low-growing dark hair and steady eyes anywhere there was enough light to see by. Lately I’d done more debugging and money-minding than I cared for. It was good to have something to do some leg work on. Julian Guyatt hadn’t been in the army quite long enough to throw off civilian contacts. I checked at his last two jobs, hung around the pub he’d frequented and spoke to a girl he’d taken out for a few months. The response was the same everywhere: ‘Like we told the man from the army, we don’t know anything.’
That left Captain Renshaw. I telephoned him and stated my business.
‘I don’t think I can help you.’
‘Don’t you want to find him?’
‘Of course.’ The Captain clipped his words off as if they might straggle and sound untidy.
‘I’ve found a lot of people. I might get lucky.’
‘We’ve tried, so have the police.’
‘You and the police have procedures, Captain. You treat all cases the same, cover the same ground. I can treat it as unique. I can feel around and try to find the handle. D’you follow me?’
‘One silly young man. I hardly think… ‘
‘That’s what I mean. To his father he’s more important than all your Leopard tanks put together. Give me some of your time, anywhere you like, please.’
‘I don’t know.’
I felt I was losing him. I spoke quickly. ‘You tried to find Guyatt by looking into his civilian life, right?’
‘Yes.’
‘There you go. You need a fresh approach. You’re an institutional man and you trust the institution.’
‘What do you mean?’
I drew a breath, the next bit was risky. ‘I’d check on his army life. Discreetly. I was a soldier myself.’
‘Were you? Vietnam?’
‘No, Malaya. Don’t laugh, I’m not Methuselah. Captain, I’m going to look into this one way or another. I don’t leak things to newspapers and I don’t write books. Apart from the bare outlines, my files are in my head. You see what I’m getting at?’
‘I do. Two o’clock, here at Waterloo Barracks. Suit you?’
I agreed and thanked him. Then I rang Guyatt and made my meagre report. It didn’t sound like a thousand dollars worth to me but Guyatt didn’t complain. I asked him about the Laser and he told me that Julian had put a deposit on it and was paying it off from his army pay.
‘What finance company?’
‘Western, I believe. Madness! I lease, myself.’
I gave my name at a glassed-in, wired-for-sound guardbox. A silent sergeant escorted me down concrete paths, through sturdy metal gates and between some squat, undistinguished red brick boxes to a stylish aluminium and glass block. The sergeant led me down a corridor past some busy offices and knocked on a door marked Military Police.
‘Mr Hardy.’ A tall, thin man with sparse sandy hair got up from behind a desk and extended his hand. His face was about fifty years old; his uniform looked brand new.
‘Captain Renshaw.’ We shook hands and I sat in a straight chair by the desk. The room was big enough to hold two other desks, three filing cabinets, a bar fridge and a large bookcase crammed with official-looking publications.
Renshaw pushed a pencil around on the desk in front of him. ‘Probably won’t surprise you to hear I looked up your record.’
‘No,’ I said.
‘Decent enough. See you don’t draw a pension or any benefits. Why’s that?’
I shrugged. ‘Stubborn. Let’s talk about Julian Guyatt. What sort of a soldier is he?’
