Open File (21 page)

Frank and Hilde got over the glitch I’d caused by roping her into my case. Peter got over Sarah, and by the age of fourteen he could beat Frank and me at pool and was pushing Frank at tennis. Taught by his mother, he became near-fluent in German and was studying Spanish and Italian.

Hans Van Der Harr’s file on Justin disappeared. Tania said Sarah had taken it and probably destroyed it. That might have been right, but Tania was always economical with the truth. In any case, a few years later Van Der Harr was prosecuted for raping a female client while she was under hypnosis. He was deregistered and jailed.

There was no satisfaction to be had from the case and for a time I considered giving the game away, just for a while. No one had ended up happy except perhaps Tania. Was Damien a suicide or an accident victim? Sometimes it’s like that—you don’t know what’s really going on until it’s all over. And not even then.

My usual practice was to put all my notes and other documents on a case in a manilla folder and, when it was over, seal it with masking tape. Detective Sergeant Gunnarson at Missing Persons got onto the Immigration records and discovered that a Justin Pettigrew had left Australia for Singapore one week after Justin Hampshire’s mother reported him missing, and there the trail ended. My case file on Justin Hampshire remained unsealed, open . . .

I rummaged in the box holding the bits and pieces I’d collected in the office, pulled out a roll of masking tape and sealed the file. I sat down and couldn’t help thinking about Justin Hampshire, someone I never met but who had occupied a corner of my mind for years. I hated to think of him dead under a thorn bush in Africa or rotting away in some South American jungle, but that was the likely outcome.

I dropped the folder into the box with the others and took a last look around the room. I hadn’t been there very long but it had grown on me. Hard to say how long Hank would be able to stay. This stretch of King Street was being tarted up quickly, and someone was bound to take over the shop below, spend money up here and raise the rent or need the space.

The wife, who’d prevailed upon Hank to give up PEA work in favour of installing security devices and providing computer upgrade services, had left him for greener pastures, and getting back to the kind of work he liked and did well was a good idea. I’d managed to transfer to Hank a couple of cases I’d been keeping warm while my licence cancellation was still under review. That would give him a start. Best I could do. I left the fax machine—hardly ever used these days—and the
clunky old Mac laptop for his use. I suspected the Mac would find its way into the council clean-up service.

I locked the door and carried the boxes and a bag of garbage down to the car. Call me sentimental, but I’d arranged to have the Falcon put up on blocks in a friend’s unused garage. He promised to start it up from time to time. I knew I’d be back, but I didn’t know when, or what I’d be doing.

No time to think about that now. Frank and Hilde were waiting at Glebe to drive me to the airport. I had a plane to catch.