‘No.’
‘OK. I’m bloody busy but if you can get here quickly I can give you — ’
‘Listen, Mr Price, is this matter important to you or not?’
‘Of course it is.’
‘Right. Well I’ll be there as soon as I can and our business’ll take as long as it takes.’
I hung up and started the car. His office was in Bankstown, no great distance, and I was there inside the half hour. The business centre had a scrubbed up look as if it had all recently been renovated. The railway station had had a complete make over and was now super-modern with lots of glass and aluminium, fresh paint and elegant paving. Asian faces dominated in the streets and a good number of the stores had their names and signs printed in Asian languages. The High Fliers had flown as high as the tenth floor in a Cubist-style green glass building named the Bankstown Civic Tower. Several of the floors were taken up by municipal offices and others housed the usual run of professionals and a couple of dot coms whose names gave no indication of their business. You could get just about anything done there from your tax return to treatment for your ingrown toenails. Price had a small suite of three rooms and a modest reception area, all outfitted in fake teak panelling. Pot plants.
The receptionist was everything she should have been and more — young, pale, with Dusty Springfield eyes and a pointed chin that made her better than pretty. Pink silk blouse. I gave her my name and she said she’d see if Mr Price was free. She lifted the phone, but as his door was only three strides away I thought I’d save her the bother. I went past, knocked and walked in.
‘It’s not the girl’s fault,’ I said as she hovered in the doorway just behind me. ‘I barged in.’
Price was sitting behind a desk about the same size as mine but about fifty years younger. Unlike mine, it held a computer, In and Out trays and all the
paraphernalia of a busy executive. He was in his shirtsleeves and looked harassed. ‘It’s OK, Junie,’ he said. ‘It’s OK.’
Junie gave a sigh of relief and closed the door. I sat down in a chair near the desk and tried to figure out what was surprising me about the office. It was conventionally appointed with a serviceable grey carpet, some nondescript prints on the walls along with some framed certificates and citations. The desk, two chairs, a bookcase with more magazines and folders than books and a photocopier. Then I got it. The air, conditioned to a comfortable temperature, was clear. No ashtray on the desk. Probably accounted for the harassed look.
‘Given it up?’ I said.
He nodded. ‘Trying to. Did it once, I can do it again. What’s up, Hardy? You scared young Junie out there.’
I gave it to him between the eyes. ‘Jason Jorgensen has been murdered. Strangled. Dumped in the Georges River at Lugarno.’
He was shocked to the core, or he was a better actor than Brando. His face lost colour and his jaw dropped. He reached for the cigarettes that weren’t there and when he realised their absence he made two hard fists and put them on the desk in front of him. ‘Murdered!’
‘Right. I saw him yesterday and gave him my card. It was found on his body. The police paid me a visit first thing this morning.’
Another chance to check on how genuine he was — would the threat of my seeing the police erase the shock? It didn’t. ‘That poor kid. Do they know why or who…?’
I shook my head and watched him while he processed the information. The phone rang; he unclenched one fist, picked it up and spoke without looking at the instrument. ‘Take a message, Junie. No calls for a while.’ He hung up and sat back in his chair helplessly. ‘I can’t believe it. I saw a bit of him while Danni… A nice kid. What did you think of him? God, could it have anything to do with this business?’
Price was scoring points with me. His concern about the dead boy looked authentic, and he hadn’t yet transferred his attention fully to how it might affect him. He was getting there, but not straight off. I told him I’d found Jason a bit dim, and hadn’t got very much out of him. I said I didn’t know whether his death had anything to do with the Prices, but I hoped not.
‘What else?’
I shrugged. I had thoughts on that, sparked by the expensive car and suit and Stankowski’s throwaway remark that Jason might not have been as squeaky clean as he looked, but I saw no reason to tell Price. He fidgeted with things on the desk, got himself back under control and then it got through to him. ‘You say the police got to you. What did you tell them?’
‘Next to nothing. No names.’
‘Can you do that?’
‘Not for long if they don’t come up with something. If they run out of ideas they’ll come back at me.’
‘And then?’
I explained that our business wasn’t confidential in the legal sense and that they could search my records if it came to that, or they could charge me with obstructing justice, which would force me to talk.
Again, this was the sort of thing he could handle; propositions, possibilities, options. Then he surprised me. ‘What if Jason’s death is connected to the drugs thing? It’s likely isn’t it? If your enquiries turned up evidence on who killed poor Jason… I don’t mean to sound opportunistic, but it’d give me something more to work with. You follow?’
I had to sit back and think about that. Trying to get the dirt on some suburban drug pushers was one thing, investigating a murder was quite another. Price saw me hesitating but misinterpreted it.
‘I know it’s more than we contracted for, but I can make up any differences.’
I was tempted to tell him about his wife’s infidelity, just to lay all cards on the table, but I resisted. ‘It’s not that.’
‘What, then?’
‘Jason was worried about talking to me. He said he’d been threatened.’
“There you are.’
‘No. He made a slip of the tongue. He said she had threatened him. She.’
‘Who?’
‘I don’t know. Your daughter or maybe your wife.’
‘Sammy? That’s ridiculous, and Danni’s just confused and stumbling around. She’s in bad company probably.’
I wasn’t sure about either of those conclusions but I let them pass. I told Price I’d keep the cops at bay for as long as I could and that I had a police contact who might be able to fill me in on the drug boys’ operations in the Georges River area.
‘Good. Good. That sounds very professional’
And that’s fuckin’ patronising, I thought. Price was the sort of client who won and lost points with me by turns and I tended to react to how the ledger stood at the time.
‘So what’ll you do now?’ he asked.
‘I’ll follow Danni for a bit. Is she likely to be at home?’
He shrugged. ‘Who knows?’
‘Where else then — friends, interests?’
‘Friends, I have no idea. Interests — would you believe rollerblading and skateboarding? She goes to this skateboard park in Kingsgrove, or she did. I picked her up there a couple of times when her car was in dock. It’s near the railway station.’
‘Just out of interest, why’re you located here? It’s not exactly the business hub of Sydney.’
‘There’s more going on here than you’d think, particularly among the Asian community. I can speak Chinese. Studied it at university. Some of our best clients are Asians. They’ve got some good ideas. Keep you on your toes.’
I nodded, stood up and winced as my bruised stomach twinged sharply.
‘What’s wrong with you?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Come on, Hardy, I did a stint in the medical corps. You’re hurting.’
‘Pulled a muscle in the gym,’ I said. ‘Stay off the smokes. ‘
I went out and apologised to Junie for my high-handedness earlier. She nodded but couldn’t contain her
