Make Me Rich (15 page)

“What happened?” I said.

Parker stood beside me; his skin was pale under the blue beard and his mouth was drawn into a hard line. “Caught his foot on one of the nails, he bloody near took me with him. Shit, this is a mess!” He patted his pocket, feeling for the cigarettes he no longer used. “Not that he was any bloody loss. He saw a few off himself.”

I stared at him, wondering. But it didn't seem like the sort of thing Parker would do. To the law though, it wouldn't make much difference—by abducting Spotswood we'd put ourselves in jeopardy.

“What's this Guthrie like?” Parker snapped.

“You saw him. He's good. This is bad, Frank.”

“It could be worse; he was drunk, he fell, he's dead. Who's going to care? You reckon Guthrie could sit pat?” Paul Guthrie had asked for action and now he had his share; I was sure he wanted to see the whole thing through. This was pretty rough, but I remembered his anguish at his perception that his family was under threat.

“I think I can square him,” I said. “But I'm going to have to let him in on a few things. I'll also have to tell him who you are.”

“Here he comes,” Parker said. “Go ahead.”

Down the walkway, Guthrie was hurrying out of the shadows towards us.

“Listen,” Parker hissed. “You can't tell him about Collinson. I want to flush him out as much as ‘Bully' Hayes does.”

14

Guthrie looked down at Tiny Spotswood's body. He swallowed hard, pulled off the knitted cap, and ran his hand through his hair.

“He fell,” I said. “I'm sorry to involve you in this, Mr Guthrie.”

“I asked you to,” he said. “Did this man have anything to do with what happened to Ray and Chris?”

“Not directly. I can't say that. But the people he's associated with are at the centre of it. He knew something about it.” I turned towards Parker. “This is Frank Parker, Mr Guthrie. He's after Catchpole for a different reason. Our paths have sort of crossed.”

Parker and Guthrie nodded at each other, warily.

“We're going to have to ask you for more help, Mr Guthrie,” Parker said quietly. “Looks very quiet tonight. Is anyone likely to have seen us here?”

Guthrie shook his head. “No, very dead tonight.” He suddenly heard what he'd said and looked down at the corpse again. He clamped his jaw tight and looked up at me. “What do you want me to do?”

“Something pretty hard,” Parker said. “Just do nothing. If someone finds him tonight, just act as you would if you'd never seen him or us. If it works out that you find him in the morning, just do the same. You don't know anything. Can you do it?”

Guthrie looked at Parker as if he was a horse in the
yearling ring. He grabbed my arm and moved me away. “Hang on, I want a private word with Hardy.”

He drew me away into the shadows.

“Who is he?”

“He's a cop. Or was. This Catchpole business has cost him his job and his reputation. He's out to get Catchpole and some others. He's a good cop—and an honest one.”

Guthrie pondered it, then nodded. “That'll do me. If you say he's okay I'll take a chance on him.”

“It doesn't have to be a life-long pledge. If things got really sticky for you, of course you could talk freely—and we'd back you up. But we need some time now, and some secrecy. A session down at police headquarters could blow the whole thing.”

“Why?”

“Not secure.”

“You can't trust the police?”

“Hard to—not all of them, anyway. I trust Parker, though.”

“Your job is to protect my boy. Is that the way you see it?”

“Yes.”

“You know, Hardy, a few months ago I would have described myself as the happiest man in Sydney. Now, I feel my life is turning to shit. My boys … Pat going off like that. A man with his brains all over my … Turning to shit. I'm hoping to pull something out of it, though. I won't get it all back, I know that. But I want to salvage something. Do you think I've got a chance?”

I thought of Pat Guthrie's graceful walk, the sea poems on Ray's spick-and-span boat, the neat, purposeful half of Chris's room. Those things felt solid, despite all the surrounding disarray. “Yes,” I said, “I think you've got a good chance.”

“Protect my boy. I'll back you up here. Don't worry.”

Parker was looking edgy while this was going on. Guthrie moved resolutely back towards him. I nodded to Parker and he and Guthrie exchanged respectful nods.

We asked Guthrie to remove any traces of our presence in the flat. I suggested that he might care to go up to Queensland soon and he said he'd think about it. He turned away from us and from the broken thing on the cement, and climbed the ladder. He went up easily, sure-footed and neat in his movements. Parker and I watched him until we heard the door to the flat close. Parker let out a slow breath that whistled through his teeth.

“What did you tell him?”

“Relax, Frank. I didn't even hint that you want to use his kid for bait.”

We both showed the strain on the drive back to Glebe. I was feeling some relief, some apprehension at the conflict coming up between us, some guilt.
Why would he tell me not to name names in front of Spotswood if he meant to knock him off?
I thought. There was some comfort in that.

I drove badly, skidding on the wet roads and misjudging the turns. Parker was sitting stiffly; he swore when I hit a pothole.

“Sorry,” I said.

He didn't speak, but took his hand out of his jacket pocket with the piece of Spotswood's shirt he'd used as a gag in it. I looked quickly sideways at him; he was chewing at his lower lip, really digging the teeth in.

“Come on, Frank. You've seen it before.”

“Yeah, I've seen it before. I've seen them pushed—I'm wondering if there's any difference.”

It was late when we got back, but Hilde was still up, waiting for Frank. She gave him a kiss and he grabbed and hugged her and they nuzzled each other without caring whether I was there taking pictures or not. I left them in the
front of the house and went to make coffee and get out the scotch, what there was left of it.

Hilde came out first and stood in the doorway; she was wearing a white overall and a red T-shirt; her pale face was slightly pink where it had been rubbed by Frank's beard.

“What kind of a session is this going to be, stone-face?" she said.

“A hard one.”

“I think I'll go to bed.”

“If we need the woman's point of view we'll call you.” She came into the kitchen, stepped up and kissed me on the cheek—my first such salute from her, or maybe the second. There were no smells of oily water, stale urine, and death about her; she smelled of shampoo and toothpaste. “Don't be a shit, Cliff,” she said. “It doesn't suit you.”

She went out and they did some wrestling on the stairs; then Parker walked in, looking like a policeman. He took in my coffee-making sourly, pulled out the piece of cloth, went across to the sink and burnt it. The dark wisp of smoke curled up to the roof like a votive offering.

“Sit down, Frank, and have a drink. We've got a problem—call it a conflict of interests.”

He lowered himself into a chair and stuck out his long legs—they stretched halfway across the kitchen. I poured the coffee and we both added some whisky to our cups.

“Keegan,” I said. “I know the soldier in the photo as Keegan. He's Guthrie's wife's first husband—if you can follow that this late.”

He sipped his coffee and seemed to fight for a civil response. “That's one of Collinson's aka's—an early one. Let me tell you about Collinson first. To be fair about this you have to have the full picture on him.”

“Okay.” I drank some laced coffee.

“Nothing to smoke, I suppose—cigar, cigarillo …?”

“Hilde despises smokers. Calls them EC's.”

“What's that?”

“Emphysema candidates. Get on with it.”

“Collinson got into the big-time in the Vietnam War days. He was one of the conduits the Yanks used to ship the heroin out of South-east Asia back to the States.”

“How did they get it down here? Why bother?”

“A hundred ways. GI's and Australians on leave brought it in; vehicles coming down to be serviced; the post; parachutes for re-packing was a good way, they tell me. Well, Collinson was a collection point and he passed it on to people who took it Stateside. Then he got into that angle himself. Why? Australia was thought of as squeaky-clean in those days. What did the bloody Yanks know about the place? Kangaroos and tennis players. Nobody looked twice at stuff and people coming in from here. It's different now, after the Mr Asia thing.”

“I bet.”

“Collinson was in the big money, very big. He used it to expand—supplied girls to the brass, supplied the drugs where they were needed. Did you know that some of the U.S. boys wouldn't fight unless they had their grass?”

I shook my head.

“That's right. Wouldn't fight. Or they'd collaborate to get it.”

“Well, some wars are just big arms deals, really.”

“Yeah. Collinson had more cash than he knew what to do with, and he set up a loans and finance firm to launder it. He's an accounting genius as well as a crook. One thing led to another; the war ended, and he had these links with organised crime in the States.”

I yawned. “Come on!”

“It's true—for money-washing mainly; he bought a bank in the Philippines. All this is in the seventies—not the finest hour for legitimate government, you'll recall. Who could kick? Collinson and blokes like him got away with murder,
and millions. But he was smarter than most—didn't make a splash, kept his head down, confused his identity. He used the phone or intermediaries—no one ever saw him, hardly.”

“Like Howard Hughes,” I said. I'd heard something of this—with other names and deals—from Harry Tickener. It was something I'd always stayed well clear of: it was the world in which the directors of one company were the principals in another which held major stock in company controlled by the one you first thought of.

“I wouldn't know about that,” Parker said. “I'm more parochial in my interest. We've got a bloody huge file on him. Now.”

“What about then?”

“He had some very solid protection—police, government, possibly Intelligence—who knows? He's still got some of it. His operation got blown by the Marchant Enquiry—did you follow that?”

I nodded. Mr Justice Marchant's brief had been to investigate Customs Department corruption wherever he might find it. But the thing had got out of hand, and had spilled over into the administration of justice and the workings of the financial system. It was still going on—sputtering into life from time to time—despite high-level efforts to snuff it. A lot of big fish had been caught—and even more had been badly scared.

“Our information was that Collinson got wind of the Enquiry's interest in him, and he started to liquidate. He had a partner … hold on, talking's making me dry …”

He took a sip of his coffee and I reflected on what a strain it must have been staying abreast of all this changing information. And he'd said he was doing other things as well.

“Barratt,” he went on. “CB Holdings Limited—Collinson and Barratt. That's where I came in. Don't know why, but Collinson killed Barratt. Maybe they argued about the
wind-up, or maybe Collinson didn't want anyone around who knew as much as Barratt did. There was a suggestion that he sort of threw him out as a decoy, scapegoat; call it what you like. Anyway, he shot him. Barratt was worth peanuts by then. That's a year or so ago; Collinson's thought to be in Australia, in Sydney even. But no one knows where.”

“What's ‘thought to be' mean?''

“Phone calls get made—they've been recorded. Things still get done.”

“Why wouldn't he skip?”

“Don't know. Thinks he's safe? Got a woman? He's sick? Scared of flying? Don't know.”

I'd finished the coffee and scotch and was thinking about another. I decided against it. I hadn't even had my say yet. I poured some coffee, straight.

“You seem to know a hell of a lot about him.”

“Might sound that way, but I don't know. I've got facts and dates and figures, but I don't feel that I understand him. Don't know what makes him tick.” He flexed his fingers. “They put me in charge of a task force.” He snorted. “Task force! We didn't come up with anything solid so they disbanded us. Then they disbanded me.”

“You're taking it personally, Frank. I don't blame you, but look at it from my angle. Hayes and Catchpole are using young Guthrie as some sort of bait. Let's say they're corrupting him, really screwing him up. All that to get at Collinson, who doesn't mean a dog's fart to me.”

Parker drained his cup and gave himself a short whisky. He didn't respond, didn't even blink as I went on.

“I know what you want. You want to let Hayes and Catchpole get on with it. Flush Collinson out—just so long as you're there when he surfaces. You won't care who gets hurt.”

“I suppose that's about it.”

“I can't let that happen. My job is to unravel the Guthrie kid's problems and straighten him out. Maybe I can do that just with a good heart-to-heart, knowing what I know now.”

“I doubt it.”

“I've got the Brisbane stuff to work with, remember. Hayes did a job on Ray Guthrie's brother—got him hooked on junk, it looks like. That'll count for something.”

“If that kid'll confirm it.”

“I think he will.”

“You have to consider the hold Dottie Williams might have on him. That could be bloody strong—he's just a kid, Dottie could be his dream woman.”

“Yeah.”

We faced each other silently across the table; Parker rubbed his bristle, moving his hand tiredly in a clockwise motion.