I was out at the Epping address the following day at 8 am on a cold May morning. Kay arrived in the Toyota and took Ms Carroll to two landscaping jobs, one in Lane Cove and one in Warrawee. She hobbled about and supervised, looking unhappy. I had the feeling she wanted to be at the controls of the bobcat or at the business end of the shovel. I did a bit of filming but also used the mobile to ring my contact in the RTA to get a make on the Toyota. It was registered to a home help company in Pymble.
The day warmed up and I left Ms Carroll in the late morning, sweating in skimpy shade, cajoling her subcontractor and arguing with her client in Warrawee. I drove to my office in Darlinghurst and looked up the home help mob in the phone book. Called them and got their rates. Pricey. Ms Carroll needed her income support if ever anyone did.
The day after that followed a similar pattern except that Kay waited for an hour while her client checked in at a physiotherapy clinic at the North Shore hospital. I scooted up there and took a chance by asking a white coat how a person in a cast could benefit from seeing a physiotherapist.
He was a man interested in his work. ‘Woman?’ he said.
‘Yes.’
‘Young?’
‘Youngish, yeah.’
‘Dead keen. Pre-therapy. Looking for accelerated healing advice. What’s the prob?’
‘Aw, broken fibula.’
‘Comfrey,’ he said, and whipped away with his clipboard.
I returned the video camera, carefully pocketing the rental invoice. Back in the office, I tapped out a report on the last electric typewriter left in Sydney. My professional opinion was that Ms Carroll was genuinely injured, virtually incapacitated, and incurring considerable expenses in rehabilitation therapy and other areas to keep her business running. I provided details about the home help she employed and their rates. I included the video tape and totted up and documented my own expenses-mileage, payment to unstated informant, cost of video tape and recorder hire with standard fee plus GST. A nice, neat package to send off by courier (cost also included) to Mr Bryce Carter at Sentinel Insurance.
Two nights later I was having a drink with Charlie Underwood, a fellow investigator who has an office in Bondi Junction. Most of his work is in the eastern suburbs but he likes to slum it in the inner west when he drinks. We talked shop naturally, and I admitted that I’d taken on an insurance job against my own inclinations. Charlie has no such scruples.
‘Growth area,’ he said. ‘I’m up to my ears in ‘em. Bit strange really.’
‘How so?’
‘Get you another?’ We were drinking scotch and I’d only had two. Three was safe enough, four meant a hangover.
‘Be my last,’ I said. ‘I’ll buy.’
We were in the Toxteth on a Friday night and it was busy, smoky and loud with the trots on the TV, the pool tables in operation and voices getting louder because the voices were getting louder. Charlie and I had snagged a table near the door and defended it so far against all comers.
I brought the drinks over. ‘You were saying?’
‘What?’
‘Something strange about insurance jobs.’
‘Yeah, well, no names, no pack drill, but I’ve done a few jobs for this one mob and the subjects are as clean as a whistle. Not a suspicion of a fiddle and there was really no reason to think there would be. You don’t know much about this side of the game, do you, Cliff?’
‘Too pure,’ I said.
‘Yeah, three suspensions and a stretch for obstructing justice. Real pure. Well, insurance companies keep pretty good tabs on their clients and they only investigate claims when they smell something. Otherwise it’s just more overheads. But these squeaky clean ones.. ’ He shook his head. ‘I dunno. What was yours like?’
I sipped some scotch, making it last. ‘Squeaky clean.’
‘Would you like to give me the initials of the company?’
‘S-I,’ I said.
‘Fuck. Same here. I bet it’s the same crowd. Sentinel, right?’
‘I’m not saying you’re wrong.’
‘Look, I was talking with Colin Hart the other day, you know him. Been in the game a while. Does nearly as much of this kind of work as me. He was cagey about the client but I’m bloody sure it’s the same mob. Weird.’
I shrugged. ‘As long as they pay up.’
Charlie looked sour. ‘That’s the problem. I thought I was on a good thing when this stuff came my way but they’re dragging the chain about paying. I put in the hours and the miles and that. I’m not well pleased.’
I finished my drink less happy than when I’d started it. I’d been counting on the Sentinel payment to take care of some bills. Still, sometimes the richer the client the slower the payment. I told Charlie I’d let him know if the account remained unpaid for too long. He nodded, looked worried, and I got the feeling that Charlie might need the money even more than I did. If so, I knew the reason why-the four-legged animals that ran around in Randwick with little men on their backs.
‘How much are you owed?’
‘A lot. Proving the subject’s clean takes just as long and as much effort as the reverse, sometimes more because you have to be dead sure. Colin’s probably into them for more than me and he’s got big problems.’
Normally, I didn’t bother too much about the doings of my fellow workers, but this was getting interesting. ‘Like what?’
Charlie drained his glass and looked ready for another one. He was fidgeting, stressed. ‘Contested divorce, threatened suspension…’
‘For?’
‘Entrapment.’
‘Colin always was a wide boy. Well, I hope it works out, Charlie. Gotta go.’
He looked at his glass again, then at the bar. ‘I might be giving you a call.’
As I left I reflected that his last remark was odd. Charlie always drank in the Toxteth on a Friday night and I mostly did. Why would he need to call me?
The call came five days later. I snatched up the phone hoping it was a client.
‘Cliff, Charlie Underwood. You free tonight?’
‘It’s Wednesday.’
‘Not for a piss-up, this is business.’
‘I could be free. Business between who and who?’
‘You, me, Colin Hart, Darcy Travers, Scott di Maggio.’
I sifted through the names. ‘I know the rest, who’s di Maggio?’
‘Yank. He’s with the Hartley Agency.’
‘What is this? Are we forming a union?’
‘We’re trying to protect our interests. Eight tonight in the Superbowl.’
‘Where?’
‘It’s a Chinese restaurant in Goulburn Street, just over George. Great food. Quiet, least it will be on a Wednesday night. It’s to your advantage.’
I had nothing else to do so I said I’d be there.
The place had an authentic look and feel with laminex tables, Chinese posters on the walls. More importantly, Asian people were eating there. I was late and the others already had food in front of them as well as open wine bottles and glasses. Charlie Underwood introduced me to the only man I didn’t know.
‘Scott di Maggio, this is Cliff Hardy.’
Di Maggio was a heavy-set individual with hooded eyes, greying crinkly hair and a square jaw. Quick nod, brief handshake. All his movements were impatient, as if he was in a hurry to be out of this backwater and home in the US of A.
