Open File (10 page)

Barry Templeton was a sworn enemy of Wilson Stafford. He was more intelligent than Stafford, marginally less ruthless, and a lot better company. We met occasionally when I played tennis at White City with Frank Parker. Templeton was a good player and it amused him to belong to the same club as a senior police officer. They got along okay in a wary kind of way and the three of us had the odd drink, with Frank being careful not to let Templeton pay for anything. I wasn’t so circumspect, but I could see Frank’s point, with police corruption always in the news and the media always on the lookout.

Templeton owned a restaurant in Paddington and he was invariably there at night, enjoying the food, keeping an eye on the quality of the service and no doubt doing deals that wouldn’t bear a lot of scrutiny. He’d crossed swords with Stafford over shares in a couple of racehorses and they’d never been reconciled.

Rudi’s, as Templeton’s restaurant was called, was in Oxford Street and was well patronised by people like himself: certain cops and lawyers, journalists, media stars and wannabes. I’d been there a few times, running interference for some hard types who felt in need of a little backup—unnecessarily as it turned out. The food was good, the atmosphere smoky and the wine expensive. The meal was going to put a hole in the money Hampshire had paid me but I wasn’t feeling well disposed towards him at that point. I booked a table for one for nine pm; Templeton dined late.

‘What name, sir?’

‘Cliff Hardy. You might tell Barry I want to have a word with him.’

I went home to shine my shoes, look for a clean shirt and brush down my suit. You have to look your best at Rudi’s. I soaked in the bath for a long time to let the hot water ease the pain in my kidney and below the belt. Sharkey was an expert at fouling opponents and he’d got me with two good ones, but they hadn’t been as solid as you’d expect from a professional. He was fat and slow and lacking a bit of zip. I pissed and didn’t pass blood—Sharkey had lost his touch. I fancied my chances if we met up again on a level playing field. The gun was a worry, though.

I lay in the cooling water and thought about my conversation with Kathy and our earlier encounter. My
reaction was encouraging and confirmed that, again, Sharkey hadn’t done the damage he might have. I shaved, dressed and treated myself to a solid gin and tonic to clean the pipes, stimulate the appetite and console myself. Going out to eat solo isn’t much fun, but with luck the evening would pay dividends. And I remembered that the barramundi at Rudi’s was very good.

Whoever the original Rudi was, he had constructed an excellent eatery. The restaurant was on two levels with outdoor areas on both as well as pavement dining on the ground floor, weather permitting. The tables weren’t too tightly packed and they ran from two-seaters to long set-ups capable of taking up to twenty. I’d specified outside at the back. I knew that was where Templeton usually placed himself, at a table never larger than for four. The chairs were comfortable and the settings unfussy. The piped music was unobjectionable and the waiters and waitresses were brisk and efficient.

I ordered whitebait for starters and the barramundi—always a seafood man when I know it’s good. A bottle of riesling, hold the bread. The place was full or close to it, and the ceiling fans were doing a reasonable job. I draped my jacket over the back of my chair and sipped some water.

‘Cliff, mate, good to see you.’

One of those moments—I knew him but didn’t know his name. I shook his hand and forced a smile.

‘Bryan Harvey, you remember me—from the Amplex business.’ He was still holding my hand and I shook it again
enthusiastically as it all came back to me. Harvey was a Glebeite who’d fought long and hard against a developer’s plan to build units right down to the water on a site left toxic through years of occupation by factories. I was in the fight too, attending meetings and onsite demos. I remembered Harvey walking around with his hand cupped satirically behind his back as one of the councillors talked up the project.

Harvey was so disgusted he ran for council himself and won. In the end, Amplex had to modify their plan to leave a decent space between the units and the water and contribute to the rehabilitation of an adjacent wetland. He said he was off the council now but still fighting the good fight for the environment. I said I was still in the same game. We told each other how well we looked and he went off to join a party of five at another table. Good bloke.

The wine arrived just before the whitebait, as it should, and the barramundi came along exactly at the right time too. Rudi’s prided itself on efficient service of this kind, not easy to achieve in a busy restaurant. I was halfway through the fish when Barry Templeton dropped into the other chair. He’d brought another bottle of the same wine with him and a glass which he filled after topping up mine.

‘Nice to see you, Cliff. Bit sad to see you dining alone but then, I know you’re here on business.’

I raised my glass. ‘That’s right, Barry. I see business is booming. This arm of it anyway.’

‘All arms, my friend, all arms. Now, it’d be nice to chat and I’m glad to see you’re enjoying the fish, but I’ve got things to attend to, so what’s on your mind?’

Templeton was a smoother customer than Stafford. Equally well turned out but he wore his clothes with a more
relaxed air, didn’t need to fiddle with his tie and cuffs. I told him I’d had a run-in with Stafford and about my connection with Paul Hampshire. The mention of the name brought a smile to Templeton’s face.

‘Ah, yes,’ he said, taking a sip of the wine. ‘Mr Under-the-radar himself.’

I dug into the remains of the fish. ‘Meaning?’

‘Tell me there’s some grief in this for Stafford.’

I packed my fork with the last chunk of fish. ‘There might be but I can’t promise. I can’t see the connection yet between what I’m looking into and the beef between Stafford and Hampshire. It’s possible. I can tell you there’s some grief for Sharkey Finn if I catch him without a gun in the right place at the right time.’

‘I’ve no time for Sharkey, but Wilson belongs deep down out beyond the Heads, so possible’s good enough for me. This is what I know.’

He told me that Paul Hampshire was a conman—a floater of get-rich-quick schemes that went wrong but not before Hampshire had skimmed the cream off the top. ‘The thing was,’ Templeton said, ‘although he cooked the scams up here and picked his targets, the location was always somewhere else—New Zealand, Fiji, the Cook Islands, places like that. He specialised in money laundering for people who had incomes they couldn’t account for. A serious problem. He’d launder it until it was pretty well washed away, but always in another jurisdiction. And the targets didn’t really have any comeback if they didn’t want the tax office up their arses.’

‘Sounds bloody dangerous to me,’ I said.

‘Not really. I’m not talking about heavy criminals here or about big sums of money. Nice little earners for Hampshire
though, and he’d always make himself scarce afterwards. Went to America, I believe. I think he’s got dual citizenship.’

‘What about Stafford?’

Templeton laughed. ‘That’s where he made his big score. The way I heard it, Stafford came to him through some intermediary looking like the sort of guy Hampshire was used to. This time it was big money Stafford needed to squirrel away. I don’t know the details. Some kind of currency fiddle. The result was that Stafford lost the dough and Hampshire took off. Somehow it must have dawned on him that Stafford was a different kind of . . . client, so he stayed away. You say Hampshire’s back, eh?’

‘Did I say that?’

We’d both been working quietly on the wine and the bottle I’d ordered was gone. Templeton inspected the other bottle, which was still at a satisfactory level. He poured himself a little more and stood.

‘I didn’t expect you to tell me anything, Cliff, and it’s no skin off my arse. Happy to help make Stafford unhappy, and I know you have a knack of doing that to people.’

‘Thank you,’ I said.

Templeton smiled. ‘I’d like to say the meal’s on me, but why the fuck should I? Say hello to Frank and try to improve that backhand. See you, Cliff.’

I cleaned up the last of the baby potatoes in sour cream and the asparagus, cool but still good. I ordered a long black and, since I’d come by taxi and was intending to go back the same way, I had another solid belt of the wine. Thinking back, I should have had suspicions about Hampshire early on. The bow tie, the display hanky, the toupee. The man was an actor and he’d played to his audience. But I needed the work and the problem he’d presented me with was
intriguing. It still was, but it was running in all sorts of confusing directions.

The morning radio news had a report on the death in Spain of ‘Aussie’ Bob Trimboli, a Griffith drug kingpin who was wanted on various charges, including murder. He’d skipped to Spain and pulled the wool over some official eyes. That’s when he wasn’t greasing their palms. I’d run into him once when I was doing a bit of bodyguarding for a politician who’d had dealings with Trimboli that he’d come to regret. The politician had to confront Trimboli just once more and needed support to do it. The meeting was tense. I disliked them both about equally and I had to hurt one of Trimboli’s offsiders to see my man safe. There was no one happier than me when ‘Aussie’ Bob took off for the Costa Brava.

The bulletin carried a brief follow-up report on the death of a woman at Church Point. So brief as to be almost meaningless—no names, no details—and so bloodless it had all the hallmarks of a tight police clampdown. No invitation to the public to help. The newspaper coverage was much the same.

The Catholic hospice was in Woolloomooloo. It was a small place with only twenty-four patients, if that’s what they were called. The nun who took charge of me was one of the modern type, in ordinary clothes and with only a small cross on a gold chain to show her allegiance.

‘We try to make the surroundings as non-clinical as we can, Mr Hardy,’ she said. ‘Indoor plants, cheerful stuff on the walls and no obsession about tidiness.’

‘And you’re not overloaded with religious symbolism.’

She gave me a smile. ‘Unlike what you no doubt expected. There’s a chapel of course, and a cross mounted in each room, but no bleeding Jesus or saintly Madonnas.’

‘It must be hard with most of them so young.’

‘All,’ she said. ‘Yes, it is.’

We passed a couple of rooms with the doors standing open. I could see people in some of the beds, apparently sleeping. Two young men were playing cards and smoking in a sitting area. They nodded to the nun as we went past but showed not a flicker of interest in me.

‘Many visitors?’ I asked.

‘Not enough. There’s terrible ignorance about the illness. Fear of it, and a lot of shame as well. Some people are afraid to visit in case some sort of stigma attaches to them. Pierre’s along here. I think you’re his first visitor since the corrective services people brought him in, poor boy.’

‘He was at an expensive school not so long ago. Someone must have paid. What about his family?’

‘You don’t know? His father was a fairly important person in the French embassy. When Pierre was expelled from the school he refused to support him. When he learned of his conviction he did nothing. When he found out about his son’s illness he applied for another posting and left the country. Pierre would have been deported on the expiry of his sentence, but that’s not going to happen.’

‘His mother? Surely . . . ?’

The nun shook her head. ‘A member of the order met her. “Hard as iron”, was her judgement.’

The room bore out what she’d said. It was painted in light colours, the prints on the walls looked optimistic and the cross set up above the door was unobtrusive. The room
held three beds—one was empty, someone was sleeping in another and in the third, closest to the window, a bearded man was sitting, propped up by pillows.

‘Your visitor, Pierre,’ the nun said.

‘
En français
,’ he said. ‘You must practise, sister.’

‘He’s teaching me,’ she said, ‘but I’m a bad pupil. I’ll leave you to it. Ring if you get tired, Pierre.’

I approached the bed and held out my hand. He took it and the bones in his hand almost crackled, although I’d put no strength in the grip. His face was skeletal, whittled down to a shell and only given any substance by the beard. He looked at the scrap of notepaper in his other hand.

‘Cliff Hardy, private detective.’ His accent wasn’t heavy but it managed to give the words a flavour.

‘That’s right, Mr Fontaine.’

‘Pierre, please. Take a chair. I am pleased to meet you but you should not be flattered. I would be pleased to meet
anyone
. The gaolers did not tell me why you wanted to see me. They think the dying have no more interest in life. They are quite wrong. We have more interest than ever before. You would be surprised. We read the newspapers from cover to cover and through again. We watch the television news on all the channels.’

I pulled up a chair, being careful not to let it scrape and disturb the sleeper.

‘Don’t be concerned,’ Fontaine said. ‘He’s dying fast.’

He pointed to the other bed; his arm inside the pyjama jacket was stick-thin. ‘Sebastian went last night. The prettiest boy he had been. He spent the last hours looking at pictures of himself taken one year ago.’

For someone who looked so frail his voice was strong and for someone nearing death he spoke with an edge of humour I couldn’t help admiring. I told him about being hired to find Justin Hampshire and that I’d learned of their association at the school.

‘Find Justin?
Pourquoi
? Why?’

‘He went missing. He hasn’t been seen for two years.’

‘Ah.’

‘You spent some time with him just before you ran into trouble, right?’

He nodded and the action hurt him. The look that passed over his face was like a cloud across the moon. He coughed and that hurt as well. I poured water from the jug on the bedside cabinet and handed it to him. He sipped and nodded his thanks.