‘They got onto us,’ Maxwell said. ‘I never found out how, exactly.’
He waited for me to speak and when I didn’t he went on, ‘Through the lawyers, possibly. It’s usually the lawyers. I got a visit from a very nasty type who did me a considerable hurt. The same happened to the others, I shouldn’t wonder. We all left Sydney for a time. That was part of the arrangement.’
‘Did you get the money?’
Maxwell sniffed. ‘Some of it was paid, I believe. I didn’t see any. We all lost our licences, of course. That was easy for them. And they all got their divorces. Shits.’
‘But you got your licence back.’
‘Ten years later, dear boy, and I had to do some very smelly things to get it.’
‘What about the others?’
Maxwell shrugged. ‘Pike went back into the racing industry in some capacity. God knows what. Probably doping horses. Ross Martin got fifteen years for importing smack. He died in prison. Bourke drowned up at Coolangatta. Fell out of boat when he was fishing. And now you tell me Arch Merrett’s dead. He was a dark horse.’
‘Meaning?’
The bottle was practically empty and Maxwell was looking edgy again. ‘Hardy, you haven’t been stringing me along, have you? I’ve lived with this for twenty-four years.’
‘What d’you mean?’
‘The word was that our lives were forfeit. I was given to understand that I could be snuffed out at any time. It was a threat, of course, designed to keep one’s trap shut, and I complied, believe me. But I always thought that it might happen. That one of those bastards might decide that today was the day.’
‘They’re all dead, Dick. Except one who’s in a hospital and doesn’t remember his own name.’
‘Sons, daughters, associates…’
‘Come on. It’s water under the bridge. No-one remembers. No-one cares.’
He was still suspicious. ‘Except you.’
‘I’m the curious kind. I like to know the end of a story. Besides, I liked Arch.’
One of Maxwell’s eyebrows shot up. ‘Did you? Well, yes, I suppose people did. He was a clever devil. Looked and sounded ordinary.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
Maxwell emptied the last few drops of gin into his glass. I still had half an inch in mine and he reached over and took it. ‘You’ve heard what happened to Pike, Bourke, Martin and me. Tell me, just to satisfy my curiosity, where did Merrett go when he left Sydney.’
‘The Gold Coast.’
‘Is that so? And when he died was he reduced to the status of a servant, like me, or was he in comfortable circumstances?’
‘He was well fixed.’
Maxwell drained the gin and leaned back in his chair. ‘I leave you to draw your own conclusions.’
I thought about it on the drive back to the city. All circumstantial, but it added up: Arch Merrett ratted on his fellow conspirators and got away with at least some of the money and his hide intact. Frankie Bourke went looking for him up north and didn’t come back. Arch had left me the files for my ‘education’, but I think the lesson he wanted to teach me was one I had learned a long time ago.
Gone Fishing
The ‘back beach’ on the east coast of Fraser Island is a wide strip of white sand that runs for 125 kilometres from Waddy Point in the north to Hook Point in the south. The best time to see it is after the tide has wiped out the thousands of 4WD tyre tracks that turn the beach into a kind of temporary two-lane highway. The worst time is in the middle of the day with the sun beating down and the Toyotas and Land Rovers roaring along, scaring the birds and leaving behind fumes and traces of oil and rubber.
I’d seen it at both times and at all times in between for the past four days. I’d put ‘fishing’ on the Application to Camp form I’d lodged with the Parks and Wildlife people in Hervey Bay. I had the permit and all the gear-rods and reels, lines, hooks, sinkers, knives, buckets, net in my Land Cruiser. I also had a portable generator that ran a fridge to make ice for the esky. The equipment had come with the vehicle and I hadn’t touched it, apart from the ice and the esky. My idea of catching fish is to go to Doyles and put a fork in a couple of grilled fillets. I was a fisher of men.
Simon Bucholtz and his brother Alex, nineteen and eighteen respectively, had disappeared in July. They’d gone backpacking to Queensland, taking a break from their university studies after the first semester. They’d called their father from Maryborough to say they were pushing on to Bundaberg, and hadn’t been seen or heard of in the ten weeks since. The police had done all the usual things, including giving up the search. The boys’ father, Horst Bucholtz, had come to me- on the recommendation of a satisfied client- with his slender thread of new evidence, his straw to cling to, his piece of floating wreckage.
‘My friend saw them, Mr Hardy. Eight weeks ago. He was getting a plane on the beach on Fraser Island and he saw the boys just as he got on board. He flew to Brisbane and then to the States. He did not know the boys were missing until he got back yesterday. Even then Bucholtz was a big man, fifty plus and looking it around the eyes and in the way he carried himself. His wide shoulders had a defeated slump that looked unnatural with his trim physique and athletic grace. He sniffed, pulled the shoulders back and got himself under control. ‘Even then, he only mentioned seeing them as a casual afterthought. He was amazed at my reaction. He thought I had gone mad.’
‘I can imagine,’ I said. ‘He knew the boys well by sight?’
A sharp nod. ‘He knows them, yes.’
There’s not much you can do when a desperate parent gets into that positive mode, but you have to try. ‘Even so, eight weeks is a long time for them to be out of touch. I’m sorry, but you have to expect…’
He was all systems go now, imperious. He stopped me with a raised clenched fist. ‘Foul play. No. When I told him what had happened, Claude immediately phoned someone he knows on the island. This man was present when Claude spotted the boys. He says he has seen them in different parts of the island.’
‘Doing what?’
‘Fishing, camping, walking.’
‘When did he see them last?’
The shoulders slid forward. ‘He thinks a month ago, maybe six weeks.’
‘You should go to the police, Mr Bucholtz. They…’
‘No! I can’t understand why they would stay there. They must be in some kind of trouble. The police could make it worse, whatever it is. I want you to find them. Please, find them and find out what’s going on. Then I’ll decide what to do.’
It sounded screwy but interesting. I was upfront with Bucholtz. I told him that before I’d take him on I’d run a check on him, talk with the police and his friend Claude and his contact on the island. He agreed.
I did all that and found nothing to deter me. Bucholtz was a builder and prosperous. His wife had died two years before. Nothing remarkable about the boys-Simon doing Arts at Sydney, Alex doing Environmental Studies at the University of Western Sydney. Missing Persons in Brisbane faxed me a selection of their file which told me nothing useful. Claude Tolbeck, motor mechanic and fisherman, confirmed Bucholtz’s account.
I mugged up a bit on the island during the flight to Brisbane. It was basically built of sand carried north from the rivers of New South Wales and deposited by peculiarities of the currents and waves over thousands of years. It had rainforest and lots of other vegetation, magnificent beaches, crystal-clear springs and was free of rats, mice and all feral animals except the dingo. Timber-getters and mineral sands miners backed by Joh Bjelke-Petersen had been happy to chop and mine it into a moonscape but conservationists, led by John Sinclair of the Fraser Island Defenders Organisation (FIDO), had stopped them. It was now a number one tourist destination.
After I’d spoken briefly on the phone to Tim Driberg, Tolbeck’s contact on the island, and learned that I’d need a 4WD to get around, I gave Bucholtz an estimate of the money he was looking at. It was pretty high-fares to and from, vehicle hire and insurance on top of my daily rate. He couldn’t write a cheque fast enough.