1
Welcome To South Australia
I bought Trethewin Stables on impulse. Sight unseen. Three days later the stable block complete with the office burned down, and the manager lit out for the high hills. With, it was rapidly revealed, the entire contents of the Stables’ two bank accounts.
So much for the plans of mice and men.
That is, it was an impulse buy by my standards, though in the event negotiations had taken some time. My lawyers and my business associates had all pointed out that okay, I owned a couple of racehorses here in Britain, but training stables weren’t my core business! Fair enough. And out in Australia? True. I went ahead, though.
Trethewin had belonged to the Crozier family; specifically, to old Mr Crozier, lately deceased. It had come to his son, Ralph, who didn’t share his father’s two obsessions, racing and wine. The stables had come as a package: the country house, in which I wasn’t interested, the training stables, officially Trethewin Stables Pty Ltd, complete with the remaining horses that Crozier Junior hadn’t managed to sell off to other obsessed Australian racehorse owners, and the adjoining boutique winery, Trethewin Estate Wines Pty Ltd. The property was in South Australia, described as situated in the Adelaide Hills, and was, according to the Croziers’ lawyer, “an easy driving distance from Adelaide”. Since discovered to be the Australian idea of an easy driving distance, and not precisely in the Adelaide Hills, but in a sheltered valley on their far outskirts.
By now I’d seen the winery’s accounts, and was in two minds about selling it off. I wasn’t much of a wine buff—more the knowing what I liked when I drank it sort. Trethewin Estate, as it was known (its registered trading name, their lawyers had assured my lawyers), produced two red wines: what the Aussies called a Shiraz, that was, a Syrah, which seemed to be its main product, selling well locally but not known much further abroad, and a Cabernet Sauvignon which wasn’t doing too well. Cellar door sales, a local online wholesaler, that was about it. However, the Shiraz sold regularly both to the local online distributor and to a couple of large wholesale concerns within the state. One wine dealer in Sydney also had a regular order, and cellar door sales boomed, if there was any left over to sell there. It might be worth their while ploughing the Cabernet Sauvignon grapes under and replanting with the Shiraz variety. Well—worth my while, now, I supposed.
The combined stud and training stables had once done much, much better. The entire racing world knew Rushton of Trethewin: he’d come second in the Melbourne Cup in his day, which had been about a dozen years back, and been sold to an American owner, for whom he’d done spectacularly well. Old Man Crozier’s last big winner had been River Gold of Trethewin, who’d won the Arc de Triomphe for him. I think it must have been not long after that that the old man had had his first stroke, and that had spelled the end of the Trethewin line. The mare who’d been River Gold’s dam, a lovely bay who was well past her prime but still producing a foal a year, had gone to a rival Australian owner and her first colt for him was now in the training stables of the famous Bart Cummings. The wonderful stallion, River God of Trethewin, had been sold to a New Zealand breeder who’d then sold him on for a rumoured fortune to a stables in Kentucky where he’d now sired several very promising two-year-olds. The stud manager had left, understandably, and the stables had been placed in the hands of the persuasive gentleman who had recently walked off with the dough. Leaving huge unpaid bills all over the state, it emerged.
The Crozier lawyers had suggested “a very good price” if I’d been willing to take over “the estate’s debts” but funnily enough I hadn’t been, suspecting there would be far more than had so far been discovered. Well, yes, I’d been so right, hadn’t I? Though I really don’t think that back then anyone had suspected that the stable manager was a crook. Anyway, before finalizing a price I’d got my people to hire a fellow to do a bit of investigation out there. The report had been (a) that the Croziers believed that they had a Pommy sucker on the line, (b) that Ralph Crozier might have kept the place on, left to himself, but the impetus to sell had come from his wife, a forceful lady who didn’t like to see his dough chucked away on anything but her back, certain details of the jewellery she owned also coming to light, and (c) that the remaining horses were elderly retired racers who were only good for dogmeat. Well, one was a mare, but nineteen if a day, and the others were geldings. The stable manager was reported to be very much liked in the neighbourhood. Bags of charm, was the word. The manager of the winery was “okay, an honest bloke”, but generally recognised as a bit weak. His winemaker? He was good, the estate had never done any good before Old Man Crozier took him on, but he was bloody obstinate and had had flaming rows with three other wineries he’d worked for.
I had put down this verbatim report from the investigator feeling rather thoughtful. Then I’d rung my lawyers and told them to make an offer that was considerably less than Ralph Crozier had been asking.
This had resulted in silence from the seller for a whole month, though the investigator reported, on a gleeful note that came right through the impersonality of the coldly grey email format, that Crozier was looking round madly for another sucker but “no-one would have a bar of it.” And the feed merchant’s language had been unrepeatable. –Not, as it would turn out, a non sequitur: no.
It had taken three months after that for it to sink in with Mr Crozier that no-one wanted his huge liability, that the winery wasn’t worth enough to make up for the rest of the package, and that what the investigator described as the “fancy place in the hills” was too far out of the city over very bad roads “even with a 4WD” to make it a desirable weekend residence. By this time, incidentally, the GFC had hit, and though the Australian economy certainly wasn’t suffering like the British and American systems were, and in fact the Australian dollar was riding high, horns had been pulled in.
So I got the place for my price.
A hollow victory? Something like that, mm.
Apparently one was expected to sit in the front, in an Adelaide taxi. Certainly the Hyatt’s porter was holding the front passenger door open for me. I thanked him, tipped him—I’d been told by various people that one didn’t tip, in Australia, but the man didn’t refuse the fiver—and got in. Yes, well, the seat was pushed well back but I still felt fairly cramped. There had been method in the porter’s madness: clearly the typical small white saloons which served as taxis here—there were several more lined up behind this one—did not have much legroom for backseat passengers. Anomalous, one might have said, in a country which produced as many of the tall, long-legged sort as Australia was reputed to. However.
There was a short silence when I told the driver my destination. The street had an English name, so I couldn’t have mispronounced it. “Er—it is in the CBD,” I ventured.
“Yeah. You could walk there, mate,” was his reply.
We were well into October. Although it was not yet ten o’clock the day was already hot and the sky was a clear, blazing azure. “Could I?” I replied temperately. “I don’t know Adelaide at all, and it is rather hot, isn’t it?”
“Eh? ’S not hot today, mate! Sladed for thirdy-four this arvo!”
All I managed in response to this, given that thirty-eight Celsius is one hundred degrees Fahrenheit, was a feeble: “Wouldn’t that be around ninety Fahrenheit?”
This elicited the tolerant reply: “English, are ya mate? Well, I can take ya there, no sweat, only id’ll haveta be the long way, ya can’t turn right no more.”
“That’s perfectly okay,” I said feebly.
He shrugged slightly but said merely: “Do ya seatbelt up, mate,” and set off.
“The long way” turned out to take us past a multistorey office building surmounted by the name CROZIER in huge letters. Its ground floor was occupied by a large bank. One of the Australian ones which had not suffered in the GFC, thanks to their strictly regulated banking sector. I winced in spite of myself. Rubbing it in with a vengeance. Oh, well, at least I hadn’t been left with the Trethewin debts.
Mr Crozier’s lawyer looked distinctly uneasy, never mind the shiny city offices, smooth city suit, manicured hands and well-cut, conservative hairdo.
“Mr Cartwright?” he said, trying to smile. “Good to meet you at last.”
Not quite sure what the “at last” implied, I returned his greeting, shook hands politely and accepted his invitation to sit down.
He of course immediately immured himself behind the rampart of his large, shiny desk. A very interesting woodgrain: for an instant I contemplated asking him what it was, and then discarded the idea. Ten to one he wouldn’t know and would be annoyed and embarrassed by having to admit it, or he’d suspect that this was some sort of cunning Pommy tactic, intended to put him off his guard. Or both.
“Now, what can I do for you, Mr Cartwright?”
“I was wondering what the position is with regard to the stables’ debts, as I understand there may be a fair amount of resentment in the local community; and whether you’ve heard anything more about the absconding—er—Brownloe, was it?”
“Uh—well, as you know, Mr Cartwright, the agreement was that you wouldn’t be taking over the debts.”
“Yes, I understand that. I should think you must be having trouble ascertaining just what the outstanding bills are, with all the office records incinerated.”
“Well, we can tell from the bank statements what’s actually been paid, of course.”
I just nodded, and waited.
Giving in, he admitted: “There is a lot of resentment locally. The feed merchants in particular—but Mr Crozier has settled their account!” he added quickly. “And all the other accounts that, um, that were genuinely outstanding.”
“That’s good,” I said mildly.
“The, um, the acting manager has had to order in more feed, of course but—uh—I understand that as per your instructions that account was paid immediately.”
It and anything else they had to buy locally. In cash. The acting manager, Leslie Forrest, had reported that the village shop wouldn’t even let him buy bread and milk with a personal credit card. Trethewin Stables’ name was, apparently, mud in them thar parts.
“Yes,” I agreed.
“Ah… there has been some interest expressed in the winery,” he said, clearing his throat.
“Really? By whom?”
“Um—Yalumba,” he admitted.
They were very big in the Barossa Valley, which wasn’t far away, and alongside their landmark wines did a considerable trade in affordable bulk wines. They’d want the grapes, period.
“I see. That would presumably put the winemaker out of a job?”
“Well—I suppose so,” he admitted.
“Mm. I think the place might do better to stay as a boutique affair, but thank you so much for mentioning it. You might send the details to my lawyers, nonetheless.”
He brightened. “Of course, Mr Cartwright!”
“And Brownloe?” I said without emphasis.
“Um—nothing. The police haven’t managed to trace him. Well—arson, I suppose, but it wasn’t a house property and no-one was hurt. The horses were all in the paddock, of course. And the embezzlement—well, I did speak to an inspector from the fraud division but in the scheme of things, I don’t think it comes very high on their list of priorities,” he explained somewhat tautologically.
“I see.” One wondered what huge scams might be going on in South Australia for it to count for so little, especially with that big downtown high-rise with CROZIER on top of it. On the other hand, I had once met Ralph Crozier when I’d come out for the Melbourne Cup. He’d be a few years younger than me—back then in his early thirties, which would make him pushing forty now. He was a strikingly handsome fellow, with a lot of black wavy hair, a warm smile and a pleasant manner which stopped way short of being over-charming. Entirely affable, in fact, but distinctly lacking the force of character which his father had had in abundance. Crozier Senior had been one of those large, red-faced, cheery Aussies whose bonhomous manner completely belies their shrewd business instincts. Well—second-generation syndrome, I supposed. I couldn’t see Ralph Crozier ever standing up to the forceful spouse so feelingly described by my investigator, or, indeed, coming down so hard on the police fraud squad as to make them pull their fingers out. Well—it was his loss, largely, and thank God I wasn’t responsible for the debts Brownloe had run up, but the sums that should have remained in those bank accounts would have gone a considerable way towards bolstering up Trethewin Stables.
“No, I see,” I said. “I was wondering, Mr Ames, do you have any idea why the stables had two bank accounts?”
“Er…” He hesitated but apparently decided there was no harm in telling me. “The accountants think that the fellow was juggling money between them.”
No doubt. My accountant had pointed out pithily that the bank accounts should have been under escrow the moment negotiations began. I didn’t say so. Instead I said: “I see. I’ve instructed my people to close both, of course. May I ask whether you’ve heard of a firm called SA Horse Auxiliaries Pty Ltd?”
“Er—no.” He glanced over at his computer but I said: “Don’t bother to look it up, it appears to consist of a website, period. Well, and a telephone number which has been disconnected.”
The smooth Mr Ames of Jamieson Ames Cohn was now looking very disconcerted. “It— Oh, dear.”
“I think you’ll find, if you check the bank statements, that large sums have been going out to it on a regular basis for the last couple of years.”
“Since Brownloe took over,” he said bleakly.
“Quite. I’d say your accountants need to do more than check to see if the figures balance. There are at least two more names on the bank statements that my fellow reports as ‘suss’. In your shoes I’d consider advising Mr Crozier to change his accountants.”
“But they’re a most reliable firm, one of the biggest in the country, Mr Cartwright!”
“I know the sort,” I said, standing up. “Checking that the figures balance is what they do best. Well—that and making one’s tax returns look unassailable.”
He swallowed hard, but managed to get to his feet.
“Thank you so much for seeing me, Mr Ames,” I said. I nodded to him, and went out.
Twenty minutes later the canny Mr J.G. Hawkes of Hawkes Investigators Proprietary Limited, “We Watch Over Your Interests Like A Hawk”, having urged me to call him Jim, was saying with a snort: “Aw, them! Claim they offer forensic accounting! Huh! Got so big no-one questions them, that’s them, Mr Cartwright, ya don’t wanna have a bar of them. My Clarysse is worth twenny of them: them and their swanky glass-sided offices put together!”
“She certainly is,” I agreed, and he blinked.
“Well,” he said, “just an ordinary accounting course, ya know: no fancy MBA or like that, but she’s sharp as a tack and picks up anythink there is to pick up. She can look at a balance sheet that looks smooth as a baby’s bum and tell you it’s crooked as a dog’s hind leg.”
“She’s doing a great job on Trethewin Stables’ bank statements, Jim: I’d really like to thank her in person, if I may.”
He looked surprised, but said: “Yeah, ’course ya can. –Hey, Lorrae,” he said into his phone, “can you ask Clarysse to pop in, pronto?”
There was a moment’s delay and then the door behind me opened. “Didja want me, Jim?” asked a cautious soprano voice.
“Yeah—come in, Clarysse. This is Mr Cartwright, he’s got somethink to say to ya.”
I got up and turned round. It was only with a great effort that I prevented my jaw from dropping. I was expecting a competent middle-aged woman, about Jim’s own age—perhaps his wife, even. What I was faced with was a small, very pretty Chinese woman who couldn’t haven’t been older than thirty, if that. She was not clad in the sort of smart linen business suit that had adorned receptionist and secretary alike at Jamieson Ames Cohn, but merely a dainty little white lacy cotton blouse, I think they call the stuff broderie Anglaise, and a pair of pale green cotton slacks of the sort that end mid-calf. And tiny gold sandals. True, the outfit was more than suited to the ambient temperature of Hawkes Investigators: Jim Hawkes had greeted me with an apologetic: “The ruddy air-con’s on the blink again: sorry. Ya better take your coat off.” Two minutes on his premises had convinced me that I had better, indeed, so I’d removed my jacket. Jim himself was in a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up, the collar undone and no tie, and still looked hot.
I managed to thank Clarysse—Ms Chong—for her excellent forensic accounting work and she looked pleased but embarrassed and said in an Australian accent which was every bit as strong as Jim’s: “No worries, Mr Cartwright.” And, adding by the by to her employer: “I’ve checked out Mrs Bennet’s land agent, Jim: he’s crooked as a dog’s hind leg, and wanted interstate for pulling the same stunt,” she vanished again.
In her wake Jim and I went over his reports in detail. At the end of it I rubbed my chin and said: “Hmm,” and Jim Hawkes said: “Yeah, well, that’s it, Mr Cartwright. We can figure out what other firms are probably fake, but I can’t tell you to hold out any hope of recovering any of the money that was in those accounts. There’s been absolutely no sign of the blighter.”
“Call me Alex, Jim,” I said, smiling at him.
“Aw—right, Alex. So that’s what they call you? Thought it might of been Sandy.”
“No, it’s always been Alex,” I said.
I’m Alexander Baines Cartwright, though that isn’t why the company is ABC Freight. It was named back in my grandfather’s day. He was Allen Baines Cartwright. He’d gone into the RAF in 1942, when he was eighteen, and risen from a mere A.C.2 to Flying Officer. He and his two best pals, “Bim” Wynters (Barnabas Ivo Michael) and Charlie Harris had wanted to go on flying after the War but the RAF hadn't wanted them. They’d thought about it for a while and then decided to pool their resources. Grandfather had a got a bit from his old man, who was a sheep station owner in Australia who’d made a mint from his wool during the War years. He’d coughed up even though earlier he’d roundly condemned his ex-wife for “hauling the kid off overseas” at the age of fifteen, not to say for letting her English father, who “had a plum in his mouth the size of an orange” send him to a “bloody fancy private school”, read excellent public school, to finish his education. It was at school that he'd met Bim. Bim’s dad was filthy rich even by Grandfather’s dad’s standards, and he was so relieved when at least one of his sons turned out to want to work for a living that he’d coughed up handsomely. Charlie’s dad was a long-distance lorry driver who’d driven an ambulance in London during the War and voted Labour the minute the elections were held. He merely contributed some sound advice, which amounted to never trust anybody with your money or your girlfriend, plus the name and address of a mechanic pal who turned out to be a godsend and worth more than his weight in gold to the fledging ABC Freight. The three friends had looked at their various initials, and then looked at Grandfather’s three initials, realised they had ABC twice, laughed, and decided that ABC had better be it. And, as Charlie’s dad had pointed out over a pint or two, it’d come near the top of the list if anybody was looking for a freight service, wouldn’t it?
They’d started off with a couple of old crates with not much carrying capacity, hopping from small airfield to small airfield, and carrying a fair number of Bim’s dad’s old pals who fancied getting from the golf course to the races and back without being bothered by traffic. But they’d finally acquired an old DC-4 that had more or less had the guts flown out of her, and after their invaluable mechanic had had a go at her they hadn’t looked back. Several more DC-4s had followed, until they had a small fleet and were one of the best known air-freight firms in Britain. Hauling everything from fresh flowers to racehorses, travelling as far as Iceland or Istanbul, as required.
His partners might have been satisfied with that, but Grandfather had bigger ideas and during the 1960s, while Eng-a-land had swung like a pendulum do, he bought up a small trucking company that had a couple of snug little routes, one up to Scotland, taking in Aberdeen and Dundee as well as Glasgow and Edinburgh, and another via the cross-channel ferries to two regular customers, one in Denmark and one in the Netherlands. Whether either the Danes or the Dutch knew about the other was doubtful: they were both large-scale cheese producers. Under his guidance the trucking arm of ABC Freight went ahead in leaps and bounds, finally being bought out in the late 1980s by a rival firm for a huge amount, said by Grandfather to be a fair price but by the pundits to be far more than should have been paid. The profits were ploughed back into ABC Freight’s core business with a view to buying jets for the longer routes, more especially the transatlantic market. By that time, when my dad, Charles Barnabas Cartwright, had already been in the firm for twenty years, Grandfather had reached retirement age but showed no signs of slowing down. Bim and Charlie had both retired—Charlie had been quite a lot older than the other two, and Bim had married a wealthy American woman who considered that flying his little Cessna (and subsequently his Lear jet) was much more appropriate for his father’s son than spending his days poring over flight schedules and balance sheets in an office. The firm had long since gone public; they both eventually sold most of their shares to Grandfather.
At forty-two I’d now been in the firm for almost twenty years: I’d been made to do an engineering degree followed by an MBA, whereas Dad had started work straight from school. Grandfather had had his eightieth birthday in 2004, and died two years later. By that time—he and Dad had both married young, both being only twenty-two when their sons were born—Dad was sixty, and had had enough. He’d been slowing down a lot over the last decade, anyway, and was only too eager to retire with Mum to the pretty house in Berkshire that they’d bought when I was fourteen, and dump the responsibility for ABC Freight in my lap. These days there wasn’t much challenge in it. The firm wasn’t huge, but it was solid, with a sound reputation and a good number of regular customers. As for the family— They say money makes money, and as far as the Cartwrights were concerned this was certainly true. Everything Grandfather had invested in had turned a profit and the profits had kept generating more profits ever since.
His last big coup had been shares in what was then a smallish but, he said, go-ahead shipbuilding firm in Scandinavia. No-one thought he’d ever see a penny from it, but if he wanted to chuck his money away, we didn’t try to stop him. There was plenty left. Then the Caribbean cruise scene really took off and the firm landed a hugely lucrative contract to build revolting multi-storeyed luxury liners. He claimed he'd seen it coming. No-one argued.
When the old bugger died it was revealed that he’d left the lot to me. Not just the shipbuilding shares, no: the lot, including his interest in ABC Freight. He’d earlier put a fair whack in Dad’s name, but… Dad wouldn’t hear of my sharing my inheritance with him and he threatened to disown me if I gave any of it to my sister Sarah or Mum: neither of them had any business sense and couldn’t so much as balance a cheque book, unquote. And Sarah’s husband, Jonnie Brathwaite, was a history don at Oxford with, according to Dad, his head in the clouds. All right, Alex, put a bit in trust for “the girls” if you must, but for God’s sake don’t let them touch the capital! I put a bit in trust, wryly asking myself what he—or I—imagined I was saving the capital for. I wasn’t married, it might as well go to Sarah and her kids now as later.
I had once been married. That advice of Charlie Harris’s dad’s, never trust anyone with your girlfriend, had been so true. Well—never trust a so-called friend with your wife, in my case. In fact, never trust your wife, either. Annabel—it had taken years but I could now think of and say her name without experiencing a red flush of rage—had calmly packed all the glitz I’d given her over three years of marriage and driven off in the Lamborghini I’d bought for her last birthday with one, Broderick Anson, the charming man who’d sold us the charming country house not far from Dad’s place that Annabel had chosen when we got engaged. The roof leaked and the cellar flooded in winter. It had cost me a small fortune to fix the dump up. Broderick himself had taken up residence in “the cottage”, so called, the fully double-glazed and centrally heated house at our gates. A warning sign, on looking back. The purchase price of the bloody house had gone on a villa in Spain. I suppose they went there. I didn’t bother to find out, just divorced the bitch as soon as English law allowed, and sold the damned house and everything in it. Well, not Pooch, the Labrador that she’d thought was “so adorable” as a pup and ignored from the moment his legs started to grow and his muzzle to lengthen.
I’d been twenty-seven when we married and thirty when it ended. Even Mum, who was now in her mid-sixties, same age as Dad, had given up finding candidates to replace Annabel. I’d once overheard Sarah saying: “It’s no use, Mum. You know what Alex is, he’s hard as nails: once he’s made his mind up about something he won’t change it. You’ll never talk him into taking any girl seriously again.” Perhaps she was right. Certainly none of the girlfriends I’d had over the last twelve years had tempted me to consider remarrying.
“Um, sorry,” said Jim Hawkes awkwardly as the silence lengthened. “We can go on looking for the bugger, of course, but I gotta tell you now, it’d prob’ly be chucking your money down the drain. Well—the cops can’t find ’im. Pity it wasn’t an interstate scam, might of got the Federal Police in on it. The SA mob aren’t much chop, but like I toleja, they found ’is car: sold it to a second-hand place here in Adelaide the same day. They reckon he hasn’t bought another, or a plane ticket, at least under ’is own name, but—” He shrugged. “Clarysse thinks ’e might even of taken off overseas on ’is brother’s passport.”
“Oh?”
“Well, there is a brother. Respectable enough, works for the Department of Ag here in town—just a clerk, he’s not a research scientist. She got chatting with the girls that work with ’im. Seems he runs their office sweepstakes and their syndicates for Cross Lotto, but there’s never been anything fishy. Photocopies the forms, ya know, and everyone in the syndicate gets a copy, all above-board. And an office sweepstake’s just a sweepstake, isn’t it? Can’t see how ’e coulda fiddled that.”
Couldn’t you, Jim? I could, and I was damn sure Clarysse could. Not the outcome, no, but it would be very easy to skim off a little from the takings. Who would keep count? The numbers would differ depending on who felt like joining in and who was actually at work that day.
“What?” said Jim, looking at my face.
I grimaced, but explained.
“Yeah, but—it’d be maybe a fiver here and a fiver there! I mean, how many would they run? One for the Cup, of course”—he meant the Melbourne Cup: I nodded agreement—“um, and maybe one for the Adelaide Cup.”
“Uh-huh. Add in the Cox Plate and that’s a minimum of fifteen dollars a year, and quite probably thirty, that nobody’s noticed. How long’s he been with the Department, Jim?”
“Uh… Hang on.” He looked through his notes. “Um, eighteen years,” he discovered in a squashed tone. “Well, um…”
“Two hundred and seventy dollars. –Or five hundred and forty,” I added drily.
“Yeah—is it? Yeah. Well, that’s still not much, even at ten bucks a throw, and I don’t see how we can ever prove he done it.”
“No,” I agreed mildly. “Well, the passport?”
“Um, yeah… Look, I can check whether Brownloe left Adelaide under ’is brother’s name, okay: I’ve got contacts. Only see, whaddif ’e just flew interstate, say to Tullamarine, and then got an overseas flight? Um, if ’e went Qantas I might be able to check… Only not if ’e went through Sydney,” he admitted glumly. “Unless he was stupid enough to book from this end.”
“Uh-huh. Just do what you can, then, Jim. And the passport?”
“Um, well, it’s a bit tricky finding out if a passport’s been issued… We can check whether him and the wife have been on any overseas trips, though. Um…” He eyed me cautiously. “Pretend to be him, apply for one and see what they say?”
“Why not?”
He grinned. “Okay, then! We’ll give it a go! –If you’re sure you wanna spend the money.”
“Yes. I’d like to catch up with friend Brownloe. I don’t like being taken for a mug.”
Jim must have read something in my expression: he gulped a bit but said: “Righto, then: you’re the boss!”
“Good,” I said, looking at my watch. “It seems to be lunchtime; fancy coming out for a bite, Jim? And Clarysse as well.”
“Really? That’d be great!” He leapt on the phone and asked Lorrae to grab Clarysse. –Possibly “Larrae”, I thought dubiously: God knew how you spelled it. It definitely wasn’t “Lorraine”, though.
Clarysse was as thrilled as Jim at being asked to lunch by a client. Was it perhaps not the done thing in Australia? No, that was absurd! Maybe it was just that their usual clients, who must come to them in extremis, were all too het up to think of anything outside their own immediate problems.
They both became very diffident when I asked them to suggest a lunch venue, but finally Jim said tentatively: “Well, me brother-in-law’s work mob had a real nice lunch do—just a small group, ya know—at the Hilton. Only the side bar,” he added hurriedly. “Said they do a real nice warm beef salad.” He looked at me hopefully. “It’s not far.”
“That sounds good,” I said untruthfully—I loathe warm salads, and hadn’t expected to find the things at the other side of the world, especially not in what I’d begun to decide was Adelaide’s desert-hot climate. “What do you think, Clarysse?”
She agreed eagerly and, reminding Jim that it’d be too hot outside for me, got Lorrae to call us a taxi.
Jim was right, it was quite near. The trickiest bit for the taxi was managing getting in and out of the really odd little cul-de-sac which housed Jim’s office in a clutch of strange, huddled little structures that looked as if they might originally have been intended to be flats, but were now, certainly according to the varied notices and plaques outside them, all offices. They weren’t very old, I’d have said perhaps dating from the misguided ’80s: some sort of urban renewal scheme that had flopped? They were constructed largely of wood, and painted in a mixture of fawnish and greenish shades that were not particularly pleasant. Several bits were single-storeyed, others two, and at least one seemed to be three, with a variety of different styles of windows and doors. One section—they were all conjoined round the sides of a tiny courtyard—had an outside staircase, with an office sign visible but scarcely legible at the top of it. Jim’s office was on the first floor of a greenish bit. The odd little courtyard was paved in large, bumpy concrete slabs about eighteen inches square. In Britain it would have been dank and chilly but though it seemed to get very little direct sun and was quite dark, in South Australia it was boiling hot, the heat seeming to strike up from the pavers. It was, as the taxi driver who brought me there had revealed, officially the street of Jim’s office address. “Honey Lane.” Nothing sweet about it. And it wasn’t a lane. My driver had muttered under his breath but he’d made it okay. The taxi Lorrae had called for us did likewise, turning in laboriously from the perilously narrow entrance from “Beehive Lane,” the adjoining tiny street, winding his window down and warning us without preamble: “I’ll haveta back out.”
He duly backed, got into the slightly wider back alley which adjoined this lane, and then had the greatest difficulty in turning so as to get into the main street. He couldn’t go the other way, the thing was another cul-de-sac. The whole set-up was extraordinary, really: we were on the edge of the CBD itself, still technically within it, and all of the main business area of Adelaide, which included most of the chief cultural amenities, was laid out in a neat grid pattern forming a very large square, edged by parklands: it was, barring the odd forbidden right-hand turn, extremely simple and obvious. Jim’s mad little clutch of offices was a complete anomaly. Well—perhaps there’s a quirk in human nature that leads us to defy simplicity and rigidity and burrow into it to build cosy, messy little nests for ourselves?
When we reached the main street we were, alas, faced by busy streams of traffic heading north and south, separated by a set of tram lines. It began to dawn on me that this was perhaps the far end of that no-right-turn road we’d been unable to enter earlier this morning. Running right down the centre of Adelaide’s grid pattern. Mm.
Well—taxis are taxis, the world over. He made it across to the far side and accomplished the U-turn, but to this day I can’t tell you how. My companions seemed unmoved; I was more or less a quivering jelly.
“It’s only just down here: ya coulda walked,” he remarked, braking fiercely before a set of traffic lights.
“Nah, mate: this bloke, he’s English, he’d of flaked, not used to the climate: just out,” Jim explained helpfully.
“Aw, yeah? Come out for the Cup, mate, have ya?” the driver asked in chummy tones.
“Well, on business as well, but yes: I’ll be going to the Melbourne Cup,” I agreed.
“So what’s your money on, then? So You Think?”
It was a New Zealand horse but trained by Australia’s famous Bart Cummings. It would have taken a better man than me to tell an Aussie taxi driver to his face—I was in the front, Jim and Clarysse had insisted on it—that I wasn’t going to bet on it.
“It’s got a very good chance, I’d say,” I said temperately.
“I’m betting on Maluckyday!” said Clarysse brightly. “I mean, ya can’t pass up a name like that!”
“Yeah?” the driver returned. “Know what me wife said, first time Makybe Diva was in it? ‘It’s such a mad name, no horse with that sorta name’s gonna win the Cup, ever.’ So I bunged twenny quid on ’er!”
“Good on ya, mate!” chortled Jim, what time Clarysse, never mind that that had presumably been a hit aimed at her, dissolved in giggles.
“How ’boutchew, mate? Didja back ’er?” the man suddenly demanded of me.
“I had twenty on her, too,” I replied, smiling. Well, yes, I had had. With a few noughts attached. I don’t normally bet that much, but—well, call it a hunch, or good judgment!
“My wife bawled her eyes out, third time she won,” said Jim reminiscently.
“Can’t say I blame ’er,” the driver returned. “Whadda day that was.” He shook his head and sighed deeply. “GO ON!” he suddenly bawled as the large fawnish thing in front of us remained stationary.
“What is it?” asked Clarysse, peering.
“Bloody great ute, covered in dirt, straight from the Outback, never seen a carwash in its puff,” he returned sourly.
Jim leaned forward and peered. “Huge great tarp on the back of it; prolly belongs to one of them serial killers: you wanna watch out, Clarysse.”
“That’s not funny!” she said crossly as we swung viciously to the left into what proved to be a square, I gasped, and the driver wound down his window and bawled “GEDDOUDAVIT!” as the “bloody great ute” wobbled precariously all over the road, and then instead of following the traffic flow and rounding the corner of the square which was nearly upon us, suddenly veered off into a side road, sharp left.
“Jesus!” said the driver as we made the right turn to round the square.
Put it well.
“Here ya go,” he added mildly, drawing in.
I swallowed. “You mean we’re here?”
“This is the Hilton, yeah.”
I tottered out.
The Hilton did us proud. Generous slices of just faintly warm, deliciously juicy roast beef, perhaps a trifle less bloody than I would have preferred, but tender on the inside, just enough crisp edge… The salad itself was fresh, frisky and not slathered in bloody balsamic vinegar, one of my pet hates. Even though this was manifestly just the side bar—it certainly featured a large bar counter and was not very big at all—it came up trumps with side plates with little poppyseed encrusted rolls on them. And tiny packets of butter, as on the plane coming out, but then, this wasn’t really Earthly Paradise, it just felt like it!
“You were hungry,” noted Jim as I laid down my knife and fork and sighed deeply. “The Hyatt laid on one of its poncy does with them little piles last night, did it?”
“Uh—actually the plane was so late that they weren’t serving dinner, Jim. I just had a ham sandwich in my room. But breakfast wasn’t appealing, I must admit.”
“Surely they wouldn’t have silly little piles for breakfast?” gasped Clarysse.
“No. There was a variety of cereals, but I don’t care for them, really. They seemed to be serving them with tinned fruit; I’d have thought— Never mind. There was grapefruit,” I conceded. “Pink.”
“It looks at ya,” grunted Jim.
I gave a startled laugh. “You are so right, Jim! So did their version of poached eggs. Done in rings on the griddle plate, I think. A chap at the next table was having them. Well—more looking at them sadly, really.”
“God,” he said simply. “Cruh-sonts?”
Croissants, my mind translated. “Er—yes; but filled with sliced ham and cheese, don’t ask me why,” I added limply.
“They’re always like that.”
“I really just like toast and marmalade,” I admitted. “With some decent coffee.”
“Ya won’t get that at no poncy hotel, mate!”
How sadly true.
“Never mind, this is lovely!” said Clarysse quickly.
“Yes, it is,” I agreed with a smile. “The best sliced beef I’ve had in a long time.”
“Good!” said Jim in huge relief. “Thought it might be a goer.”
“Absolutely. Chalk one up to the Hilton!”
… Their coffee, which we had in the comfortable lobby lounge, wasn’t bad, either. Oughta booked a room here, as Jim Hawkes concluded.
Next chapter:
https://deadringers-trethewin.blogspot.com/2025/07/next-door-to-outer-woop-woop.html