Free Open File by Peter Corris

might find out or I might not, but you have to get yourself ready for bad news.’
    ‘Not knowing is just constant bad news. I’ve got some stocks I can sell. That won’t get me out of all of the holes I’m in but I’ll raise enough to be able to keep paying you. I want you to see this through right to the end, whatever it is.’
    I nodded. ‘Sorry, but I’ve got one more kick in the guts for you. Angela’s dobbed you in to the welfare people for not paying child support. They’ll refer it to the cops who’ll be on the lookout for you. I’ve gone out on a bit of a limb there, told the cop I’m in contact with that I didn’t know where you were.’
    ‘Why did you do that?’
    I shrugged. ‘You’re paying me, for one thing.’
    ‘From what I’ve heard of you there must be more to it than that.’
    He’d touched on something that Cyn had never understood—the sheer interest a case like this set up, the way it got under my skin, into my head and needed to be resolved. But it wasn’t something I wanted to talk about. I took out my notebook and consulted it, just to have something to do, to let that thought drift away. ‘I haven’t heard your side of the story,’ I said. ‘In my experience there usually is one. Did you pay child support?’
    ‘Not always . . . when I could. But I paid Sarah’s and Justin’s school fees all the way and I signed the house over to Angela. There’s very little mortgage on it and Angela has some money of her own. Is she . . . all right?’
    ‘Yes and no. Sarah’s a problem and the place looks a bit rundown. But I’d say she’s pretty tough. Losing you and Justin rocked her, but I suppose she thinks she’s fighting back. She is, in a way. She was helpful to me and now she’s trying to get back at you. I know you went to the States on business. Why did you stay?’
    He grimaced. ‘I fell in love, or thought I did. I wish I hadn’t. Some client you’ve got, Hardy.’
    ‘I’ve had worse,’ I said. ‘One came at me with an axe. Got anything left to drink?’

8
    I had a couple of weak scotch and waters with Hampshire, partly because I was ready for a drink and partly to see how he was handling his liquor after an apparent binge. Seemed all right. I advised him to move in case the authorities got onto any of the people he’d contacted to trace him. He said he would and that he’d get in touch with me as soon as he had. I told him his retainer would hold me on the job for a while and he repeated his promise to keep me in funds to the end.
    I walked around Rose Bay for a while, for the exercise and to allow the blood alcohol level to drop. A lot of the big old houses had been converted into flats but not all. There was a lot of money here in bricks and mortar and, as up at Pittwater, in boats. I speculated about what the land occupied by the Royal Sydney Golf Course was worth—too much to calculate. Cyn’s father had been a member and he’d told me the yearly dues which, at the time, amounted to something like half of my annual income. It was probably much the same now.
    I went home and dealt with the mail and the phone messages—nothing that couldn’t wait. It was getting ontowards that time when I had to decide whether to scramble eggs or go out to eat or just buy some takeaway. A constant question. Sometimes I thought that the solution in the sci-fi books or for the astronauts—a pill containing all the necessary nutrients—would be the solution. But they never seemed to wash it down with a good red or white.
    Gunnarson rang while I was mulling it over. He told me he’d arranged for me to see Pierre Fontaine the day after next.
    ‘He can see anyone he wants to.’
    ‘Why’s that?’
    ‘He’s in a hospice in Woolloomooloo. He’s dying of AIDS, they reckon.’
    I went up Glebe Point Road to my favourite Italian and had lasagne and a salad and a couple of belts of the house chianti and a long black. It was raining when I left and I got soaked on the