think.’
‘That’s all you know,’ she spat. ‘This is a typical piece of Stewie bullshit. He must’ve done some kind of deal to come out of this New Caledonia thing with money and it all went sour on him. Good. Fuck him!’.
She meant it. She was the clean-sweep queen and she was holding all the cards. I hadn’t expected the news about the gym buy to trigger this much reaction but I wasn’t completely surprised. Master was a conman; Lorraine was the kind of woman vulnerable to that kind of man. Neither of them could help themselves. It was time to think of number one.
‘Where does that leave me, Lorrie?’
She caught the sarcasm and it didn’t faze her one bit. She jumped up, went out and returned with her shoulder bag. She dug out her jumbo-sized cheque book, flipped quickly through the manilla folder and wrote a cheque which she put on the table within my reach.
‘Our business is finished.’
I ignored the cheque. ‘Your privilege,’ I said. ‘What about Montefiore and his girlfriend?’
‘Turn them over to the police. And now, if you don’t mind, I’d be glad if you left. I have some thinking to do.’
I got up, folded the cheque and put it away and knocked off the rest of my wine. ‘You know where to contact me if you change your mind.’
‘I won’t.’
I left. She was genuinely distressed and I was pretty sure she’d paid enough for me to let her have the last word.
It’s not often a case blows up in your face quite that suddenly and completely. I drove home in a slightly stunned state. I realised I’d become involved in the Master case to an unusual degree and not just because of the intrigue and mystery attached to it. It was all very well for Lorraine to tell me to turn Jay and Fay over to the cops. It wasn’t that easy. Charging them with what? I was their first port of call, always supposing they made it back. They weren’t pushovers and it was hard to say what frame of mind they’d be in. It depended on how things had gone since I waved them goodbye. They’d have high expectations. Very sticky.
I’ve had clients pull out before for one reason or another and even a couple die in the middle of proceedings. In those cases you’re inevitably short-changed, sometimes stiffed altogether. Not with our Lorraine. Her cheque covered everything I’d run up on my credit cards, paid me for more days than I’d put in and if I cashed in the return flight from Noumea I’d be well ahead. I could use the money, but it gave me an uneasy feeling. I like closure, hate loose ends. There was no way in the world Jay and Fay were going to get twenty-five grand from me. I realised I was starting to think of them as an act, almost a comic turn, and that was dangerous.
The next day I banked the cheque and paid some bills and tried to feel good about that. Over the next couple of weeks I dealt with routine matters-served writs, bodygaurded a corporate high flyer whose business had gone west so that he had more enemies than Rasputin. Nothing happened and he grew in confidence by the minute so that after three days he reckoned he didn’t need me any more. I wasn’t sorry to be released, another day of his bragging bullshit and I’d have pushed him out of a window. I heard nothing from Mrs M.
Then Bali happened and everyone went security crazy as the government and the media played it for all it was worth and more. The phone never stopped ringing with requests for debugging, escorts for school children of diplomats, an armed presence at functions, security training for corporate personnel. I handled it personally as much as I could and offloaded it to other PEAs when I couldn’t. I met a lot of people from different walks of life, of different nationalities, all united in fear. It was a circus and in my more cynical moments I felt I could smell the orchestration, the political opportunism, the massaging of the worst human impulses. But I made money and began to think about a break, some time out from human dishonesty.
Then Lorraine Master rang me.
‘They’ve contacted me, Mr Hardy.’
What happened to Cliff? I thought, but I said, ‘Tell me.’
‘A phone call to the office. A demand for twenty-five thousand dollars.’
‘Him or her?’
‘Him. Jarrod Montefiore.’
‘Have you ever met him? I got the impression from the letters that you knew some of the people Stewart mentioned.’
‘Only Reg Penny, through the yachts. Possibly Gabriel Rosito, I’m not sure. No, I never met Montefiore and I don’t want to. He was very demanding, very threatening. I thought…’
‘You thought they’d contact me and I’d have to handle it somehow. After all, I gave the undertaking.’
‘Yes.’
‘And now?’
I was in my office late in the day with the city slowly going quiet around me. I had money in the bank and no big bills and I’d lost a couple of kilos through keeping busy and hard workouts. I didn’t need any complications and I could feel one heading towards me from the long pause at the end of the line. Lorraine Master wasn’t one for long pauses. ‘God,’ she said. ‘I don’t know. It’s so hard without him. Jasper keeps asking about him. He’s two, almost three. He’s very bright and he’s bound to find out before long. He’ll want to visit him and Stewart won’t allow it. God…’
‘What about the other child?’
‘Inez? She’s six. She’s Lance’s. She adores Stewart. Lance is a write-off. Can’t blame him, he didn’t want a child. She’s become too clinging. It’s a mess.’
‘Where’s this heading, Mrs Master?’
Her sigh came down the line like a harsh wind. ‘I won’t have him back. I know I can’t trust him. But if he was out at least the children wouldn’t suffer. We could work something out. I could help him set up a business or something. Maybe it wouldn’t be too bad.’
She was talking to herself rather than to me and clearly she’d been doing it for some time. I felt like a psychiatrist letting the patient talk and then saying, ‘And what do you think about that?’ I tried to take a different tack.
‘Have you talked to anyone else about this? I mean the problem with the kids?’
‘No. Who would I talk to?’
‘I don’t know. A doctor. Friends?’
The pause again. ‘I haven’t got any friends.’
I could tell she was speaking the truth and suddenly I saw her life in a different light-the big house, the au pair, the yacht, the gym, the office, the wealthy clients, Fiona the champion diver, the Tom Cruise lookalike underling and bugger-all else. I could feel myself being drawn back into it and I didn’t want to go.
‘What about the lawyer, O’Connor?’
‘I spoke to him as soon as I started thinking this way. Before Montefiore phoned. He says he can’t see a way to get Stewart out early.’
‘Has he told Stewart?’
‘I imagine not. He doesn’t like dispensing bad news.’
‘No one does, Mrs Master.’
‘I know, but here’s some for you, Mr Hardy. I want to re-employ you. I want you to pay this creep his money and get the information he has and use it to get my husband released. I’ll pay you whatever you ask.’
15
What do you say? To knock it back would seem like handing in my ticket and taking up another line of work. No way. It crossed my mind that I hadn’t had any unpleasant messages on my computer or been knocked down stairs in the dark since Lorraine’s cancellation. Could I expect that to start again? But then I had to admit I was interested to see how things had worked out with Jay and Fay and Reg. And at least this time I’d be dealing with them on my own turf.
