officer in a government department when Scott had met her and he’d boasted of her languages, wide reading, extensive travel experience and sophistication. Surely she wasn’t going to come in with a weapon and express that hatred I’d glimpsed? I dismissed the idea, but it lingered worryingly around the edges as I brewed a pot of coffee, rinsed out two mugs and set out the sugar and the long-life milk. I was as nervous as a first-up parachutist when I heard her footsteps in the passageway.
I opened the door before she could knock. ‘Come in, Gina.’
I won’t say she gave me a friendly smile, but it wasn’t the maloccbio either. She didn’t appear to be carrying any weapons. She walked into the office and sat in the client chair without brushing it down or testing it for soundness, indicating some kind of confidence in me. She put her bag on the floor and crossed her legs. She wore a royal blue blouse with a darker blue skirt. Her fair hair was tied up inside a black scarf and she wore dark tinted stockings with black shoes, medium heels. I made all these professional observations as I was negotiating my way behind my desk.
She looked directly at me and took off her large-lensed sunglasses to reveal eyes hollowed by lack of sleep. ‘First off, Cliff,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry for the way I behaved the day of the funeral.’
‘Forget it,’ I said. ‘Times like that, no-one’s keeping score.’
She smiled and her oval face suddenly became longer and more attractive. She wasn’t beautiful, but she had something much more important. I guessed that any man lucky enough to have her would think she was beautiful, which is all that matters.
‘That’s the kind of thing Scott would say,’ she said. ‘Why do Australian men always talk in sports metaphors?’
I shook my head. ‘I don’t know. Would you like some coffee?’
‘Yes, please. I remember how you looked when I walked past you. All the colour went out of your face and I thought you were going to drop your glass. You left then, didn’t you?’
‘Yes. Glen said it was a rude thing to do. She was right. Milk? Sugar?’
‘A bit of both, thanks. I blamed you, of course. You got him the job. I was out of my mind with grief and very mixed-up. You’d given him a job you hadn’t wanted yourself and he was dead within… ‘
I put the mug on the desk in front of her and took mine back to a defensive position. ‘I went through all those thoughts myself, Gina. It wouldn’t be natural for you not to have had them. I wish I hadn’t made that call, or that I’d called somebody else, or that I’d taken the bloody job myself. But…’
‘I know. It’s useless to think that way. Does no good at all. I don’t blame you now, I want you to know that.’
‘Thank you. Drink your coffee.’
She took a sip but she hadn’t come to drink coffee or to talk about the past. She hauled up her bag, opened it and took out a long, bulky envelope. It had the look of recycled paper- something from the good guys, the pure at heart.
‘This is from Sydney Casinos. They say they took out an insurance policy on Scott. Standard procedure for senior executives. The payout is $200,000. They deduct about twenty to cover costs of their own, but there’s $180,000 for the girls and me. What d’you think of that?’
I drank some of my fast-cooling coffee and resorted to the standard psychiatrist’s ploy. ‘What do you think of it, Gina?’
‘I think it’s a bribe. I think they’re saying-take this, Mrs Galvani, and shut up.’ She touched her headscarf and smoothed back a few errant strands. I guessed that she wasn’t used to having her hair constrained. ‘It’s funny. It’s really funny.’
‘What’s funny?’
‘I can’t afford not to take the money. We didn’t have anything saved and the mortgage on the Rozelle house is pretty heavy. It wasn’t going to be a problem with that money Scott was suddenly getting, but… I can’t go back to work for a while and I have to be very careful about what I do.’
Gina, Scott had told me more than once, was a ‘thinker’. She had obviously been doing a lot of it lately. I drank some more coffee and let her talk, sensing that getting to whatever she’d come to me for would take some time. She tossed the envelope onto the desk like someone throwing money into a poker pot. Big pot. She told me that the Galvanis were looking for a pretext to take the twins away from her. Gina wasn’t a Catholic. Her parents had no money and the Galvanis had all the economic and moral clout.
‘I need this money. I can’t survive and raise Scott’s children the way he would have wanted without it.’
‘Take it, then,’ I said. ‘Corporations cover their insurance with other insurance. It’s all one big tax-deductible scam.’
She snorted derisively. ‘I know that. Government departments do the same. Everybody insures against everything so that no pain can ever be felt. No economic pain, that is.’
I nodded. She was getting to it now.
‘I’m taking the money, and there’s no strings attached. No-one’s telling me how to spend it.’
‘Good.’
‘So I want to hire you to try and find out who killed him. Will you do it, Cliff?’
4
I tried to talk her out of it, using the usual arguments. But she put the obvious question and I had to admit that the police weren’t encouraging.
‘I’ll tell you what it’s like,’ she said fiercely. ‘It’s as if his body hadn’t been found. You’ve heard about how that affects people, how they live the rest of their lives in a sort of limbo. That’s how it feels. I’ve got a sister who had a baby when she was fourteen and had it adopted. She’s twenty-five now and she says a day doesn’t go by when she doesn’t think about that baby. And in case you’re wondering, yes, she got married and she’s had two children. Doesn’t change it.’
Uncomfortable territory for a middle-aged, childless, unmarried Australian male who expressed himself in sporting metaphors. I tried to think of other objections, but I knew she’d have them covered.
‘Look,’ she said. ‘Scott and I used to talk about his work. He talked a lot about you, too. He said you were weak on analysis but good on persistence and results, and that’s what counted. I know what investigation’s like. I know it can cost a hell of a lot of money and that it doesn’t always resolve things. I’m putting pressure on you- because he was your friend and you got him the job-but I’m not saying you have to find the killer. That’d be unrealistic. I said try, remember? If I know we tried it’d help.’
I wondered if it would. I could have given her chapter and verse about the people who hired men like me to get their revenge. Some got ripped off, some saw no result at all. Others had the experience of discovering who had done them wrong but finding no legal remedy. A few had the satisfaction of having their enemies brought to court only to see them being acquitted on a technicality or being given a sentence they regarded as ten times too light. A very few got what they sought.
Her question came out of nowhere. ‘You’ve had a couple of wives, haven’t you, Cliff?’
‘One, and a few near misses. Lucky women.’
‘Scott was a wonderful husband. I thought I was so lucky to have him and I did everything I could to keep him happy and in love with me. I stopped smoking the day after I met him because I knew it disgusted him. I didn’t go around the house in jeans and sloppy joes all the time because I think that makes a man lose interest. He liked to make love in the afternoon, so I… He wanted kids but not a whole houseful like his brothers. When the twins came I thought, How can things go this well…?’
She was close to breaking but she struggled against it. She drank some of her coffee, a brave act in itself, and wiped her tears away with the back of her hand. Businesslike. No fishing for tissues, no props.
‘OK, Gina,’ I said. ‘I’ll do what I can. You’re right about one thing, it could cost a lot of money. But there’s another side you haven’t thought about.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Investigations don’t always turn out the way you expect. I don’t just mean they lead nowhere. Sometimes, things come up people would rather not have known about. Do you know what I’m saying?’
