Beware of the Dog (2 page)

‘Don't be snaky, Cliff. Your mortgage on this place must be down to nothing by now. Business is bad. You need something else to occupy your time and energies. I'm only trying to help.'

I put my arm around her as we leaned against the fibro wall of the outside laundry and bathroom. ‘I know you are, love. And you're right. No kids, credit cards under control and I own the car, such as it is. There is a bit of mortgage left, though. I had to buy Cyn out, remember, and she hiked up the price.'

‘The dreaded Cyn,' Glen murmured, ‘I wonder if I'll ever get to meet her?'

‘Don't see why. I haven't met her for over ten years.'

There wasn't much to say to that, but when Glen
proposed that I talk to Dan Sanderson about lecturing to his students I couldn't think of any way to refuse. Glen had a knack of being right in advance of me finding she was right. I was getting used to it.

As I drove to Darlinghurst I was thinking that she'd been right again—after all, I'd enjoyed the time with the students and had been offered another spot. I could have scooted around the streets to Glen's flat and waited for her but we had our rules. That night we were meeting for a meal in Glebe before going to my place and such arrangements were sacrosanct. I hadn't been into the office for two days and there was always a chance that someone had slipped a note under the door asking for my help in finding lassiter's lost reef. I parked beside the church wall in St Peters lane and entered the building for what must have been the three thousandth time.
Stop it,
I thought.
You'll be counting the number of stairs you've climbed next, multiplying fifty-eight by three thousand. You're doing it already. Knock it off!

There was nothing interesting under the door, where one of the other tenants, an iridologist, shoves my mail. That could mean a lot of things. The iridologist might be sick, or she might be pissed off with me for not availing myself of her services, or there just might not be anything interesting coming my way. The thought depressed me and I sat at my desk watching the sun go down at around 4.30. It was the shortest day of the year, still three hours to seeing Glen and dinner time. There was only one thing to do.

I'd had one glass of red from the office cask and was thinking about a second when the phone rang. I grabbed it with relief.

‘Hardy Investigations. Cliff Hardy speaking.'

‘I thought you might be there. You have a lonely look.'

A woman's voice. Familiar. Who?

‘Are you sure you've got the right number?'

‘I'm sure, Mr Hardy. This is Paula Wilberforce. I looked you up in the book. I'm sorry if I alarmed you this afternoon.'

‘You didn't alarm me, Mrs Wilberforce.'

‘I think I did. Anyway, I wanted to apologise and to make it clear that nothing you tell me would ever be attributed to you in print. I'm simply asking for help, Mr Hardy. Like one of your clients about whom you spoke so eloquently today.'

Put it down to the early sunset or the wine or the total absence of anything interesting to do beyond the few routine jobs I had on hand—the upshot was that I agreed to allow Paula Wilberforce to interview me in my office the following day at 11.00 a.m. She sounded pathetically grateful, but I could see her blue eyes glittering. The woman was dangerous, even over the phone. I was thinking better of it as soon as I replaced the receiver, but what could I do? The snaky side of me said that it was Glen's fault for getting me into the academic racket in the first place. It would give us something interesting to talk about over dinner. I drew off another glass and stared through the window at the lights of the city. The angry traffic noises and the static of men and machines in conflict drifted up to me. Suddenly, I wanted to be up at Whitebridge, at Glen's cottage overlooking the ocean with the lights of Newcastle away to the north and the sound of the waves on the beach. And I couldn't just up stakes and go because I had Mrs Wilberforce to see tomorrow and Dan Sanderson's second class
to talk to the day after that.
To hell with it,
I thought.
Maybe I should do a PhD—Dr Cliff Hardy, Senior Lecturer in Detection and Personal Mismanagement …

The knock at my door was sharp—anxious or angry. I called out, ‘Come in' and stuck the glass in the top drawer. A woman entered from the gloom of the passageway. She was smartly dressed in a navy suit with a red blouse. As I eased up politely from my chair I saw that she was wearing nylon stockings and sneakers. She saw me looking and smiled. ‘I'll explain,' she said. ‘You're Mr Hardy.'

I nodded. ‘Cliff Hardy. Please sit down. Your name is … ?'

‘Verity Lamberte. You'd better write it down. The Lamberte has an “e” on the end.'

I wrote the name on a pad and added ‘35, dark brown, shoulder length, wedding ring, 170 cm'—you never can tell with women, they can change their appearance in all sorts of cunning ways. Verity Lamberte was a vital, attractive sort of woman, a little too sharp-featured to be called good-looking, but with the confidence in her manners and gestures that good-looking women often have. She sat in my client chair, very composed and relaxed, with a big leather holdall on her lap. She unzipped the bag and held up a pair of expensive-looking high-heeled shoes. ‘I wear these to work and take them off the minute I can.'

I nodded. ‘I would, too.'

She smiled. ‘I was told you were a wit.'

I was starting to like her and to wonder if she'd fancy a glass of cask red. ‘Who by?' I said.

‘Barbara Winslow. The other reason I came in my runners is that I didn't like the look of this building
of yours after dark. I've got some Mace in my bag but I wouldn't like to have to deal with some lowlife while wearing high heels.'

‘I hope you locked your car.'

‘I did, and set the steering lock and the alarm.'

‘That should do it. You seem to be ready for anything, Mrs Lamberte. Are you sure you need a private investigator?'

She put her hand into the bag and pulled out a package wrapped in brown paper. It was about the size of a thick paperback book and it had been sealed with masking tape. The package had been opened and the tape was now only partly holding the paper down. She slid it across the desk. ‘Have a look at this.'

I released the tape where it was gripping and folded the paper back. Inside a lot of wadding consisting of strips torn from a newspaper, were six pistol cartridges—.357 magnums, Winchester brand.

‘That was posted to my husband,' Verity Lamberte said. ‘I believe he is planning to kill me.'

Mrs Lamberte told me that she and her husband, Patrick, were on the way to getting a divorce. The lawyers were working on a settlement.

‘There's quite a lot of property involved and, unfortunately, custody questions. We have two children.'

‘How long were you married, Mrs Lamberte?'

‘Ten years, five good ones and five very bad. Michelle was born in the happy time, she's eight. Shane is only four. We've been separated for six months. I'm claiming custody of both kids.'

‘You referred to your work. What do you do? And what does your husband do?'

‘That's diplomatic. Not many men would put the questions that way around.'

‘I'm learning,' I said.

‘Patrick is … listen to me. I'm a partner in a small travel agency. I used to be an air hostess. We specialise in business travel. Patrick's an architect and he has interests in other things.'

‘I gather the divorce isn't amicable?'

‘Far from it. In the last few years before we separated we fought about everything.'

‘Such as?'

‘Money, me working, the kids, drugs, lovers real and imagined.'

I leaned back in my chair. ‘That's a rich mixture. Perhaps you'd better tell me about this package and we can work back from there.'

‘Right. Well, we … Patrick … God knows what you say under these circumstances. We have four acres in the Blue Mountains, at Mount Victoria. I heard that Patrick had been spending time up there so I knew he must have built some kind of a house. The land was worth about thirty thousand and that's how it appeared in the preliminary settlement documents, so I went up there yesterday to check it out. Sure enough, he'd built a nice little timber and glass cabin looking out over the valley towards Bell's Line of Road. D'you know the mountains, Mr Hardy?'

‘A bit. It sounds pretty good.'

‘It is. I'd say that property would be worth five times as much as Patrick has stated. That kind of fraud is typical of him.'

‘You searched the cabin and found the bullets?'

‘No. God, no. I wouldn't do anything like that. I'm trying to play it very straight so as not to give him anything he can use to challenge the custody claim. That's why I'm here.'

‘Go on about the bullets.'

‘I went into the Post Office for some change to make a phone call. I'd only been up to Mount Victoria once or twice, and not for at least five or six years, but the woman in there recognised me and gave me the package. As you see, it's addressed to my husband.'

A label on the package read: Lamberte c/- PO Mt Vic 2765.

‘Not exactly,' I said.

She shrugged. ‘Well, I was never
there,
for God's sake. It had to be for him. I think that's why she gave it to me—to be malicious. They must know what Patrick does up there.'

‘What would that be, do you think?'

‘He's a very attractive man physically. He knows it and uses it.'

I was beginning to get a picture of the Lambertes' marriage. The woman was telling her story well with a certain amount of conviction, but, as with war, truth is the first victim of marital conflict. I had to feel for explanations other than the one Mrs Lamberte had jumped to. ‘Perhaps your husband has taken up target shooting?'

She looked at me pityingly. ‘Mr Hardy, he's threatened my life on more than one occasion.'

‘In front of witnesses?'

‘Yes.'

‘Why don't you go to the police?'

‘For the same reason I didn't break into his bloody love nest. Patrick's the professional. He can afford to hire the high-power legal help. I'm working on a shoestring, relatively speaking. If I … overstep my rights, invade his property, level false charges, Patrick will try to show that I'm unstable, an unfit mother. I can't take that risk. The only chance I have to get custody and a fair division of the property is to play strictly by the rules. But I'm afraid.'

I studied her closely. Every hair remained in place but there was an intensity and force in her voice that might have been her way of showing fear. It's one of the tricky aspects of the job—something I didn't tell the students about—judging whether a person
you've met for the very first time is telling you the truth. ‘People say things they don't mean,' I said. ‘I do, you do, everyone does. What makes you think your husband means what he's said?'

‘Look, Mr Hardy, I don't want to sound unfeeling, but Patrick Lamberte is a shit. He was a spoiled brat, an indulged adolescent and a boy wonder. He had it very, very
easy.
He bowled me right over, I admit it. He propositioned me on a flight to London and we were screwing in the Dorchester a few hours later. He established his architecture firm when there was tons of work around and money to burn. The recession has hit him really hard. He's got problems every way he turns. All I want to do is make sure that my future and that of my kids don't go down the drain when he does.'

‘I get the idea,' I said. ‘If you take half of the assets now, he's finished.'

‘Possibly. It's a very delicate business. If there was any scandal now the creditors could close in. Everything could be lost. If it's all done quietly there's a chance Patrick could restructure. I'm afraid he doesn't see it that way, though. He's irrational.'

‘You mentioned drugs.'

‘Patrick uses cocaine. It's one of the things that brought him unstuck.'

‘I'd have thought you could make some mileage out of that in the custody matter.'

‘I don't want to. If that came out the whole financial house of cards could come down. You can see how tricky it all is. Barbara said you were a discreet and intelligent man.'

Discreet and intelligent,
I thought.
Wait till they hear I'm a tertiary teacher.
I'd helped Barbara Winslow
unravel a difficult relationship with her politician husband. I suppose you could say I was discreet. I'd also been well paid. ‘
What do you have in mind for me to do,
Mrs
Lamberte?'

‘Watch my husband. See if he meets with shady characters or seems to be plotting something. He's due to go up to Mount Victoria in four days. You could keep an eye on him. See if he tries to collect the package and how he reacts when it's not there.'

I was intrigued and I had another idea about what to do with the package, which only goes to show how intelligent I am. I told Mrs Lamberte that I'd accept her case and charge her five hundred dollars as a retainer. She wrote out a cheque without blinking. I got her address and that of her husband and the name of the lawyer who was acting for her. That about concluded our business. I gave her a receipt, locked the package and her money in a drawer of my desk and offered to escort her to her car. She refused and I was relieved. Gave me a chance to finish my drink.

‘So, how did it go?' Glen said.

We were sitting in a Thai restaurant in Glebe Point Road. I don't care for Thai food much but Glen does and we went Italian the last time we ate out. I was thinking about the Lamberte bullets. ‘How did what go?'

‘The talk at the college, what d'you think?'

‘Oh, it was fun. I enjoyed it. Dan was happy.'

‘I thought you were going to be nervous.'