The Dying Trade (21 page)

I scouted around the fence until I found what I was looking for—a small cottage in the northeast corner of the grounds. It would have been a city trendy's dream, sandstock bricks, double fronted and without obvious signs of later improvements. A man was standing in front of the cottage doing nothing in particular. At that distance he looked old, bent over a bit, and there was a pipe smoking gently in his face. He had his hands and a good part of his arms deep in the pockets of a pair of old khaki overalls. I stuck my head up over the spears.

“Gidday,” I shouted.

He stood like stone. I shouted again with the same result. He might have been deep in reverie, but it seemed more likely that he was hard of hearing. I looked around for something to throw and found a piece of rotten branch. I heaved it over the fence and it landed a bit off to one side of him. He took the pipe out of his mouth and looked at it. Then he put the pipe back and looked at it again. I reached down for another piece of wood to throw when he made a slow turn in my direction. I stood there with the wood in my hand feeling foolish. I gave him another hail and he ambled over to the fence, scuffling his feet in the damp leaves. He made it to the fence in pretty good time given that he wasn't in a hurry.

“Didn't mean to startle you,” I said.

“You didn't startle me, mate.” His voice was the old Australian voice, slow and a bit harsh from rough tobacco and a lifelong habit of barely opening his mouth when he spoke. I handed him one of my cards through the fence and brought a five dollar note out into the light of day.

“I'd like to ask you a few questions if you've got the time. There's a quid in it.”

He stuck the pipe back in his mouth. The hair was classical, a brutal short back and sides and his ragged moustache, yellow from tobacco had nothing in common with the modish Zapata model. He was one of the old style of tie-less Australians, one without a collar to his shirt so how could he wear a tie? He inclined one ear towards me, but his faded blue eyes were sceptical.

“How long have you worked here, Mr . . .?” I bellowed.

He shuffled back. “Don't have to shout mate,” he said, “I can hear orright. My name's Jenkins, Albie Jenkins and I been here since the war.”

He didn't mean Korea.

“Since 1945?”

“Forty-six. I got demobbed at the end of forty-five and this's the first job I took, been here ever since. I went through all of it, unnerstand? Middle East, New Guinea and that.”

“I see, like this job do you?”

He appeared to be thinking about it for the first time. He took the pipe out, looked at it and put it back again.

“Dunno,” he said slowly. “S'orright, crook pay but a place to live, they leave ya alone. You weren't old enough to be in it, were you?”

“No, I was in Malaya though.”

“Where?”

“Malaya.”

“Oh yeah, against the Japs?”

“No, later, against the communists.”

He shook his head. “Never heard of it.” He wasn't interested, the only real wars had been those with the Germans and the Japanese. I asked him if he remembered a dark boy who would have been at the institution in the 1960s, but he didn't have a clue. He explained that he didn't have much to do with the kids. He said that they'd be able to help me up at the office and when I told him they wouldn't he shrugged as if that settled it. I handed him the five dollar note to unsettle it.

“Who's in charge here now?”

“Bloke named Horsfield, soft bugger if you ask me.”

“He's new is he? Wasn't here when you came?”

He sparked up and drew hard on the pipe, the smoke surged up into the trees that grew along the fence. Then the pipe
died abruptly. He took a pull, found it
dead and knocked the ashes
out against the fence. He waved it about for a minute to cool it, re-packed it from a leather pouch and got it going again. I waited while he did it.

“No,” he chuckled through the spittle, “when I came it was the Brig, tough joker, ex-army, kept everyone in line and they bloody loved him.”

“When did Horsfield take over?”

“Five, six years ago.”

The big question. “Is the Brig still alive?”

“Yeah, course he is. He'll bloody live for ever, he was out here for something or other last week. Had a yarn with him, 'bout the war.”

“What's his full name?”

He scratched his chin. “Jesus, I'm not sure, just think of him as the Brig. Easy find out though.” He jerked his thumb back at the cottage. I pulled out another five and it went through the fence. He tucked it along with the other one into the bib pocket of his overall and shuffled off to the cottage. I stood at the fence gripping the iron until it occurred to me that I must look like one of our primate cousins who didn't quite make it to civilisation, suicide and the bomb. I let go the fence and dusted off my hands and tried to think of something else to do with them. As usual, a cigarette seemed the only answer and I rolled one and had it going by the time Albie came back. He looked down at the sheet of paper he was holding and read off it very carefully: “Brigadier Sir Leonard St James Cavendish.”

I couldn't see much problem about finding that in the phone book. I reached through the fence to shake his hand, he obliged but he was very out of practice.

“Thanks, Mr Jenkins, you've been a great help.”

“Orright, so've you. I'll be able to have a decent drink for change.”

He shambled off through the leaves. I finished my cigarette and ground the butt out into the concrete in which the iron spears were embedded.

I stopped at the first phone booth I saw and called the Brig. He lived in Blackwood, not far away, but you don't just drop in on Brigs. A gentle female voice answered and confirmed that I had the right residence. I gave my name as Dr Hardy from the Australian National University and told her I wanted to consult the old soldier on a point of military history. She said she'd ask her husband and I stood with the silent phone in my hand for about five minutes feeling guilty and exposed. She came back and told me that Sir Leonard would be delighted to see me and would ten o'clock the following morning suit. I said it would, got my tongue around “Lady Cavendish”, hoping that was right, and thanked her. I drove back to the hotel. The rain had started again. I had a Scotch and wasted the time watching the news on television and watching the rain pissing down on the churches.

I had a shower and went out at 7.30 to look for the laminex cafe where I'd eaten a brilliant steak on my last visit to Adelaide three years ago. I could still taste the steak and the carafe of house red had been like Mouton Rothschild compared with the swill we buy in the east. I found it at the end of one of Adelaide's narrow, quiet, wet main streets. I ordered the same food and drink and experienced that feeling when eating alone—that everyone is looking at you with pity whereas in fact no one gives a damn. I combated the feeling by reading Forsyth's
The Dogs of War
which I'd bought at a news-stand opposite the hotel, and I learned all there is to know about equipping a mercenary force while I worked through the meal. It was better than spreads I'd paid three times as much for in Sydney, but when I got outside the cafe that cool drizzle reminded me that I was a long way from home. I walked fast back to the Colonial and worked on the Forsyth a little more. I went to sleep and had a long, involved dream about Uncle Ted and his two-up games at Tobruk.

CHAPTER 26

I skipped breakfast in the hotel's lounge-dining room in favour of a quick research job in the Barr Smith library at the University of Adelaide. Cavendish got a mention in Lean's
Official History of Australia in World War II.
He'd been in on Wavell's North African offensive in 1941, with the Ninth Division at El Alamein and he was there at the capture of Wewak in May 1945. There was one obvious question—why didn't he go on to Borneo? But there was plenty to ask him about the New Guinea campaign and his assessment of MacArthur whose reputation is a bit on the decline at present I gather. The morning drizzle had cleared when I left the library and the traffic was moving quickly along the roads which were drying out by the minute. It took me three quarters of an hour to get to Blackwood.

He either had a private income, or Brigadiers' pensions can't be too bad, or he'd done all right out of flogging off army jeeps for scrap metal, because Sir Leonard St James Cavendish wasn't feeling the pinch. He lived in one of the better houses in a neighbourhood which comprised mostly hundred foot frontages and tennis courts in the back yard. Adelaide doesn't have the same amount of old, gilt-edged money as Melbourne or the new, flashy stuff of Sydney, but there are plenty of people in the city of churches who've put it together at some time and are watching it grow. Cavendish's house stood on a corner block with frontages on three streets so the high, white painted brick wall was enclosing a tidy parcel of prime residential land. The house was a mock Tudor job with lots of stained wood strips, sitting well back from the road in a leafy setting. The whole effect made me wonder why the Brig had taken on the directorship of an orphanage—a multinational oil exploration corporation seemed more the style.

I parked the car on the street outside the house. That still left room for two buses to drive side by side down the middle of the road and not scrape the Jaguars cruising along on either side of them. A high iron gate was hinged to brick pillars with plaster crests on them. Bands and blobs of colour were bright against the faded white background and there was a Latin inscription under the crest. I saluted it all with the manila folder full of blank paper I was carrying. A stroll from the house down to collect the milk and papers at the gate would set you up nicely for breakfast. The house had a long, low verandah in front of it with some sort of thatch on top. I pushed the bell beside the heavy oak door and it opened almost immediately. A small wisp of a woman held the door open. She couldn't have been more than five feet tall and she seemed to be having some trouble keeping control of the door in the draught. Her hair was white and her face was wrinkled and beautiful like an old parchment. Her voice was the one I'd heard on the phone.

“Dr Hardy?”

“Yes.”

“Please come in, my husband is on the back terrace reading the newspaper. He's looking forward to your visit. Would you like some tea?”

I thought it might be in character to accept even though I detest the stuff. She showed me down a long passage hung about with paintings which looked pretty good and some interesting Melanesian weapons. We went through a big sun porch lined with books and she opened a wire door out to a flagstoned terrace. A man was sitting on a garden chair positioned so he could get some sun through the tips of the trees. He had the
Advertiser
spread out on the table in front of him and he folded it up and got to his feet as I approached.

“Good morning, Sir Leonard, it's good of you to see me.”

We shook hands.

“How do you do, Mr Hardy. Please sit down.”

He pointed to a chair on the other side of the table and I took it. He was a bit blimpish, clipped moustache and plenty of colour in his face. His voice was quiet and soothing to judge from the few words he'd spoken, not the snarl a lot of army officers acquire or affect. He had on a white shirt, open at the neck, grey trousers and an old corduroy jacket. He wore slippers but had none of the appurtenances of old age—hearing aid, glasses, walking stick; he looked about sixty although he was actually seventy-one.

“Well sir,” he said, “so you're a military historian?”

“No, I'm a private investigator.”

“I see.”

“You don't sound surprised.”

He smiled. “I'm not, except at your coming clean so quickly.”

“I had an idea I couldn't fool you.”

He smiled again and nodded. “I'm flattered, you were quite right, you didn't fool me. There is no Dr Hardy in History at the ANU. My son's a Fellow there you see, and I have the current calendar in there among my books.”

He pointed to the sun room. As he did his wife came out carrying a tray with tea things on it. She put it down on the table, poured milk into three heavy enamel jugs and swilled the stuff about in the pot.

“I'm sorry Dr Hardy, I should have asked, do you take milk?”

I nodded and forced a smile while fighting down nausea.

“And sugar?”

I shook my head.

“You've lost your tongue,” she said, “I hope you two haven't fallen out.''

The Brig reached across for his tea and cupped his hands around the mug. ‘No, no. Thank you my dear. No, we haven't fallen out. Mr Hardy isn't a military historian as I told you. It turns out he's a private investigator. Now he's going to drink his tea and tell me all about it.”

“How interesting. Drink your tea, Mr Hardy.” She pulled a pencil from her apron pocket and reached for the paper. “I think I'll do the crossword while you sort it out. Don't mind me.”

She'd known me for a fake before she'd opened the door and she'd played it as cool as Greta Garbo. I sipped the tea. It all tastes the same to me whether you make it in muslin tea bags or boil it up in a five gallon drum. I swallowed a minute amount and kept my hands around the mug as if I might possibly go back for more.

“I'm sorry about the deception,” I began. “It was very important that I see you and I wanted to make sure you'd give me a hearing. I thought the military history device would get me in.”

“I don't mind about the deception young man, lived with it all my life, in the army and after. I'm mildly interested in military history, not a fanatic though. War's uncivilised. Trouble is, a lot of people enjoy it. I like that remark by the man who
would
be a colleague of yours if you were an historian. ‘War is hell, and army life is purgatory to a civilised man'. Good, that. Where did you get the idea I'd take the military history bait?”

“From Mr Jenkins out at the orphanage.”

“Talked to Albie did you? Well you got the wrong end of the stick. I yarn to him about the war for his sake, not mine.”

“I can see it now. You would have seen me anyway?”

“Probably. See anyone who wants to see me, might be interesting. Which brings us to your business.”

He'd handled it pretty well as I guessed he'd handle most situations in his life. The woman worked away at the crossword, the cryptic, making good progress. They looked like a comfortable couple with affection flowing strongly between them. The incongruity between the house and the job he'd held for twenty-five years still puzzled me though.

“Yes, I hope you can help me,” I began. “I'm investigating a family matter in Sydney. It's very confidential and complicated. There's at least one murder involved, possibly more. A lot of money too and the happiness of several people who've done nothing wrong. I believe that a young man who grew up in the orphanage here is at the centre of it. I've come over to get more information about him, to help me get on with the case in the best way.”

“What sort of information?” There was still no military bark to the voice, but some of the gentleness had gone out of it. He was looking intently at me. I had his attention, his co-operation was still to be won.

“I'm not sure, almost anything, your impressions of his character for one thing. What I really want to understand is how he came to do the things he did.”

“You will have a choice about how you proceed in the matter? Your subject didn't actually commit murder?”

“I believe I will have a choice. No, I'm pretty sure he didn't kill anyone and isn't directly responsible for a death.”

“Very well, so far so good. You'll understand that I'm reluctant to talk loosely about the St Christopher boys. It's hard for anyone who hasn't spent a lot of time in such a place to understand what a handicap most orphans start out with. First, who are we talking about?”

“I'm sure you're right, Sir Leonard,” I said. “The man I'm referring to is named Ross Haines. He's twenty-three and he spent his first fifteen or so years in the orphanage. He found out who his mother was and he's been operating at close quarters to her and her family for the past few years. His grandfather, his uncle and a friend of his uncle are all dead and Haines' activities are some sort of key to their deaths, the causes. His grandfather's widow and his own mother have been harassed and assaulted, attempts have been made on their lives. Haines' motive appears to be revenge on the family that disowned him at birth, or before birth even. The family money may be a consideration, there's a lot of it, but that's a cloudy part of the affair. I'm retained by a Miss Sleeman, Haines' grandfather's widow, a second wife. I have the backing of Haines' mother, but she doesn't know about her son's involvement. It's very delicate as I said. A lot of people have been hurt and some more will be, that's inevitable. My client is in hospital, she was assaulted and tortured. I can show you a letter which establishes my standing with my client. Apart from that and my professional documents, you'll have to take me on faith.”

I handed the letter and my licence across to him and he studied them closely for a minute or so. His wife had finished the crossword and was listening intently. Cavendish looked up.

“Don't you like tea?” he said.

“No, I hate it.”

He smiled and handed back the papers. “You should have said so. But never mind, you're direct enough and your eyes don't slide around all over the place. Been in the army ever?”

“Malaya.”

His nod might have been approving, but remembering the quote he'd spouted before I couldn't be certain.

“I'll help you as far as I can,” he said. “Have you any more to add at this point?”

“No. I'll be grateful for all you can tell me about Ross Haines. If you remember him at all.”

He leaned back in his chair and let the sun strike his face. The veins were intact and the high colour was healthy. I decided that it probably came from gardening and walking rather than the bottle. He crinkled his eyes a little with the effort of memory. “I do, very well indeed,” he said. “And there's a good deal to tell. Haines was in the orphanage for fifteen years or so as you say. He'd been adopted after birth but the parents parted within a year of taking him and he came to us. He also had a slight deformity of the shoulder. It was corrected by an operation when he was three or four, but parents want perfect children so he stayed in the orphanage. He was fostered once but the people returned him after a couple of months. He was uncontrollable. This was when he was about six or seven. He wouldn't go to school and played merry hell when he was dragged there—wild tantrums, totally negative and destructive attitudes. The couple who took him on were pretty rough, they knocked him about a bit, but I expect he gave as good as he got. After he got back to us he was changed, quiet, cooperative, worked well at school. He was very bright. A bit unnerving really, he was glad to be back at the institution.”

“Did he ever give you trouble after that?”

“Yes, he did. In two ways. He was very mild and amiable, some of the others would tease him, run him ragged for days. He'd let this go on longer than you'd think flesh and blood could stand then he'd turn on them and thrash hell out of them. He was big for his age and strong. Then he'd go back into his shell.”

“How often did this happen?”

“Oh, I suppose half a dozen times. He put one boy in hospital but he'd been unmercifully teased, persecuted really and had shown great restraint. It was impossible to discipline him for it. He was in the right.”

“What was the other way he gave trouble?”

“It was strange. Haines was very able in his studies and he excelled in a variety of sports—beautiful cricketer, natural talent. The sporting ability is very important with these lads, get them into teams, have them travel, meet people. Builds up their confidence.”

“But Haines wouldn't be in it?”

“That's so, he wouldn't play in teams outside the orphanage grounds. In home matches of football and cricket he'd score goals and runs all over the place, but he wouldn't play the away matches. Dropped him from the teams as discipline, all that, made no difference. He hated stepping outside the place, excursions were a nightmare to him, eventually we stopped taking him. He'd stay behind and read or train for some sport or other. Probably haven't made it clear: he was a great reader, read everything and he retained it. They wanted him for a television children's panel game, brains trust sort of thing, you know?”

“Yes, I think they're ghastly.”

“Just so, but some children thrive on them in a way. Haines went white when it was put to him, he refused to consider it. He was violent.”

“How did the suggestion come up in the first place?”

“Haines had been entering competitions in newspapers, puzzles and general knowledge things. He was an omnivorous newspaper and magazine reader, devoured the things. Won prizes all the time.”

“What sort of prizes?”

“Book vouchers mostly, money too, small sums. It was banked for him. The newspaper people must have talked to the television people, same crowd I expect, and they approached us about him. Well, he reacted as I told you, he threw things, went into one of those rages that he used to display in fights. And he stopped entering competitions, never touched them again. He seemed to ease back on everything, he'd pass his subjects at school and do respectable things with the bat, but all the brilliance was gone. Sometimes it would flash out, so would the ungovernable temper, it was all still there but he kept it completely under control. He could probably have got a scholarship to go on studying but he had a horror of competing. He opted to go to work at fifteen or so, gardening I think it was?”