Free Comeback by Peter Corris Page B

Dom?’
     
    ‘I blew the whistle on Tyson in 2003. I’ve got a flexible conscience but enough was enough. I thought everyone knew that. You disappoint me.’
     
    I’d been in a fugue state for some time after my partner Lily Truscott had been killed, and then I’d gone overseas for a year or so. I’d missed a lot.
     
    ‘And were there reprisals?’
     
    ‘Oh, yes. Physical at first, now more or less just harassment. Unsettling. Tiresome.’
     
    His plate was clean and he poured the last of the wine into his own glass.
     
    ‘Doesn’t put you off your food.’
     
    ‘It did for a time, I can assure you. But it’s an ill wind. I’ve got a comfortable spot now with Harry’s rag. Will there be anything for me in this matter you’re pursuing?’
     
    ‘Absolutely not.’
     
    ‘Thought so. Oh well, better make the most of this. Now I wonder what’s best for dessert.’
     
    I thought over what he’d told me as a way of fixing the information in my memory —thug... heavies... pound of flesh…pressure…fleet of cars…
     
    ‘How many cars in the executive fleet?’
     
    ‘Six.’
     
    ‘What kind of cars, Dom?’
     
    ‘White Commodores. Phil never uses anything else. Crème caramel, I think.’
     
    ~ * ~
     

7
     
     
     
    Sterling Security Inc’s website listed six senior associates: five men and one woman. No photographs. I thought it unlikely a woman would drive around disguised as a bearded man. I faced the prospect of getting a look at the five men to see if one was bearded. Not a strong line of investigation, beards come and go, but it was the best I could come up with.
     
    I was back in the office. Frost’s money had been deposited so that the balance in my account that took a heavy hit from the cost of the restaurant lunch was nicely topped up. I wrote down the five names and did the routine checks to find out more about them, particularly their addresses. No luck with the telephone directory; they were just the kind to have silent landline numbers if they had landlines at all. Mobile phone types for sure. But there are other ways. I’d lost my valuable RTA contact, which isn’t much use for checking on people driving leased company cars anyway, but I still had one in a big credit checking outfit. The information was costly but reliable.
     
    A phone call got me addresses for three of the names: Arthur Pollock, Blacktown; Stephen Charles, Randwick; and Louis Salter, Clovelly. Anton Beaumont and Ralph Cochrane were proving more elusive. But persistence paid off. Beaumont turned up in a newspaper report on a traffic accident in which he was involved and his address was given as Alexandria. He’d been taken to the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital for observation. I was pretty sure Hank could be persuaded to hack into the hospital records.
     
    They say that there’s nowhere to hide these days, but Ralph Cochrane was doing a pretty good job of it. He didn’t appear on any of the databases I had access to and some discreet inquiries among people I thought might know yielded nothing. I could give him some thought. The procedure was going to mean a lot of driving around and trying not to be seen by people who presumably were good at not being snooped on.
     
    ■ ■ ■
     
    There are people who do the easy stuff first. I understand the impulse but I’m the reverse. Get the hard stuff out of the way first. I’d always been like that—at school, in the army and in the profession I’d followed for so long. In the army it passed for keenness and efficiency. My reports spoke of ‘diligence’ and ‘initiative’. It wasn’t really, it was more a matter of doing the hard stuff while my energy level was high. I was easily bored and could get sloppy when I lost interest. As a detective the habit sometimes had benefits and sometimes not. Sometimes hard turned out to be easy and hard. You could never tell.
     
    I wasn’t sleeping well. A matter of loneliness and a feeling that I wasn’t