It Pays To Advertise

4

It Pays To Advertise

    Jim Hawkes was indirectly the cause of the next piece of fakery to hit Trethewin. He meant well: his contact at the local ABC television station had agreed to do a short piece on the crook Anson/Brownloe/Andrews, on condition that they were allowed to film up at Trethewin. With the horses. I had been under the impression that the Australian Broadcasting Corporation was a national network, not locally based, but Jim explained that nah, each mob did their own local news for the states. Yes (more vaguely), that’d include current events and stuff. National news? Um, yeah, there was some. It was all East Coast stuff, though.

    “Don’t panic, mate, I kept you out of it!” he added quickly. “Said Miss Forrest was a very pretty girl, coping all on ’er ownsome: seemed to hit the right note. Think they’re planning to film it partly down by the horse paddock, with the more sob-stuff in front of the burnt-out stable.”

    My innocent conclusion was: “Well, I just hope they include a nice lingering shot of the bastard’s photo.”

    It didn’t only consist of standing Cassie in front of the burnt-out block or the horse paddock, no.

    “Gonna slather her in make-up,” deduced Christina drily as the poor girl was led off to their big van, looking bewildered. Having come up “to see the fun”, complete with a folding canvas chair, the sardonic old lady now proceeded to unfold it and sit on it.

    They eventually emerged from the van with Cassie’s long fair plait half unplaited and draped over her shoulder so that the curly ends showed charmingly, and with a tucked-in checked shirt, much crisper and smarter than the one she’d worn when I first met her, replacing the clean but unremarkable loose grey tee-shirt she’d been in. And a great deal of eye make-up and rouge.

    The interview was scripted. That is, they told her what to say, made her practise it and then more or less did it. I lost count of the retakes and new takes and etcetera. The interviewer’s bits were then all done from a different angle entirely.

    “How are they gonna put it all together?” wondered Gavin. He hadn’t been allowed to speak on camera, but after a certain effort to tousle his thick, straight hair cutely had failed, had been allowed to stand next to his aunt. “Press up against her, kid, and look sad!” had been the order. Followed by: “Put a supportive arm round him, Cassie!” –It had been first names from the word “go”.

    The actual interview bits were declared more or less satisfactory but they hadn’t got the ambiance. Couldn’t “that man” ride one of the horses? Meaning me, blending into the background in elderly jeans and a baggy tee-shirt, both the former property of Mr Ralph Crozier. The tee, in fact, had been wrenched bodily off Gavin by his aunt, with the pithy statement that it was far too big for him, he looked like a nong, at the point when I appeared downstairs looking much too smart, they’d never believe I was a stable lad. The look was completed by a battered straw cowboy hat. An old one of Gramps’s and—aggrievedly—Gavin had been gonna wear that!

    “Old Milly’d probably let you ride her, mate,” noted the helpful Christina.

    I looked feebly at Cassie. She looked helplessly back at me.

    “Just ride around in the background. Look authentic!” ordered the director.

    “Saddle? Bridle?” I replied, tilting my straw hat further over my nose.

    “The tack was all burnt up when Tony, he set the stable on fire!” Gavin revealed.

    “Bareback, then,” said the director decisively. He himself had “townee” written all over him, being indescribably trendy in black sunglasses which he never removed, black jeans, a tight black tee-shirt with its already short sleeves rolled up further, and a ten-day growth. Plus a baseball cap worn backwards until a girl emerged from the van with a large tube, anointed his nose and said something to him, into the bargain pointing up at the sun blazing in a hard blue, cloudless sky. After that worn frontwards.

    “What about their personal injury insurance?” asked a girl with a clipboard.

    “Shuddup, Sonya!”

    Sonya shut up.

    “Rope? Halter?” I said limply to Cassie.

    “Um, there is some rope in the shed.”

    Yeah, well, next question: would Milly let me?

    “I’ll do it!”

    “Shut up, Gavin,” she sighed.

    “But heck, I can—”

    “No, they want the man,” she said limply.

    “All right, get the stuff from the shed, and hurry up!” ordered the director.

    “Key?” I said to Cassie.

    “I put it back on the bunch after I got the crowbar,” she reminded me.

    “I’ll get them!” Gavin was off like the wind.

    His return was greeted by the director not with gratitude but a scowling: “What took you so long?

    “Up—stairs!” he panted.

    “Never mind that,” said his aunt. She wrenched the keys off him and hurried off, but in two seconds he was by her side.

    “Well, go on!” the director ordered me crossly. “Get the horse, what are you waiting for?”

    Christina cleared her throat.

    “Yes, madam?” I said to her politely.

    “Make a noise like a horse nut?” she suggested.

    “And?”

    “Fling yourself round her neck and hope she won’t make a break for the hills?” She gave the director an acid look. “You’ve never tried to catch a horse in your life, have you?”

    “Look, just do it!” he ordered me angrily.

    Shrugging, I climbed over the paddock gate and approached Milly, horse-nutless, carrotless an’ all as I was. Into the bargain I took my hat off and held it out invitingly, shaking it slightly, as of one with a handful of oats in his hat. “Coo-up, Milly! Good girl! Come on, then, old lady.”

    A certain amount of shouting went on in the background, largely: “Get that!” from the director, but I managed to ignore it.

    The plump Milly flicked an ear and looked at me.

    “Good girl, Milly! Coo-up!

    She wandered away a few yards…

    This could have gone on for a very long time, but the panting Gavin raced up with a fistful of horse nuts, and she came. The horse nuts vanished…

    “Here!” gasped Cassie. “Rope!”

    “Oh, ta ever so.”

    “Um, he doesn’t want us in the shot, Gavin,” she said. “Come on. Alex knows what he’s doing.”

    The steely eye was fixed on me, pinning me to the spot like a specimen of Lepidoptera. “Do ya?”

    “Yes,” I sighed.

    Cassie hauled him away and the mare looked at me mildly.

    “Get on with it!” from the background. “Ride it! … waiting for?”

    So I rode Millicent Rose, one-time winner of three of Australia’s most prestigious flat races, runner-up in the Derby, and dam of the famous River God of Trethewin. With a bloody rope halter.

    They showed the thing the following night. We were in the blue-tartan bedecked “lounge-room.” Good old Christina had brought her friend Johnnie Walker along, bless her.

    “Look! That’s you, Alex!” screeched Gavin.

    “Why are they starting it with— Forget it,” sighed Christina.

    “Ambiance,” I said heavily.

    “Oh, yes. Silly me.”

    We watched dazedly…

    “That was dreadful!” gulped Cassie, when the second shot of the so-called Tony Brownloe complete with the number to ring had dissolved into yet another distant view of typical Aussie rider on typical Aussie horse in authentic Aussie paddock and the thing was over. “I looked like a moron!”

    “I thought it was good!” cried Gavin.

    That pretty much proved it, didn’t it?

    “Have another belt,” said Christina kindly.

    We had another belt.

    “Any results?” I asked Jim cautiously next day around tennish. After Gavin and I had “exercised” Milly and Ring-a-Ding, both of whom were supposedly out to grass, with the aid of more rope and a couple of bits which the kid had salvaged from the ruins but hadn’t thought to mention earlier.

    Thanks to the miracles of modern technology, the bitterness in his voice came over the line all too clearly. “Are you kiddin’, mate? There’s twenny-five million people in this country, and twenny-four million of them saw the thing!”

    “Er… I thought it was only on the local channel, Jim?”

    “The flamin’ network picked it up and run it, not to say copied it to the lot of them and they all screened it! –Horses are news, apparently, with the Cup coming up.” he said heavily.

    “You’re not telling me that those morons realised that was Millicent Rose I was on?”

    “No, Alex, nor did their little mates at ABC central, aka Blinkered Tits United. The flamin’ public did, though! Evidently the channel’s been inundated and any minute now you’re gonna get a phone call asking if they can do a feature on Trethewin!”

    “Don’t they realise the stables are no longer— Forget I spoke. It won’t be my phone they ring, it’ll be poor Cassie’s.”

    “Yeah. Anyway, we’ve now logged five hundred and twenny-two calls from idiots that are sure they might of seen flamin’ Brodie Andrews or someone that looks very like him, only with a beard, or bald, or fatter than in the photo, or walking with a stick but maybe that was an old photo—you name it.” He lapsed into a strange sort of chant, intoning: “He’s been everywhere, man! ’E’s been to ‘Tullamore, Seymour, Lismore, Mooloolaba, Nambour, Maroochydore, Kilmore, Murwillumbah’; not to mention ‘Moree, Taree, Jerilderie, Bambaroo’, and flamin’ Gunnedah!” He broke off, panting. “Sorry, Alex. It’s a song: I’ve been Everywhere, sung by Lucky Starr. Hugely popular in its day, and ya still hear it occasionally, it still raises a laugh. Actually, most of those places are over on the East Coast: we done better than that, we’ve had replies from Esperance, that’s way down the bottom of WA, The Entrance, that’s in Victoria, and flamin’ Katherine in the Territory!”

    “Oh, Lor’. I’m sorry, Jim.”

    “Plus and the cops rung, absolutely ropeable: shoulda (a) consulted them first, and (b) put their contact number up.”

    “Oops.”

    “Yeah, well, I told them, I said: ‘You were supposed to of done it last week, and we haven’t heard a peep outa you!’ What got the reply none of those leads came to anythink.”

    “Right. Anything promising?”

    “Not really: so far the whole bloody mob’s sounded like nutters. Thought we were on a goer with one bloke, he was completely convincing: factual, sensible, y’know? So Clarysse rung the cops. They laughed their heads off. Turns out ’e’s a nutter that rings them every time they put a contact number up, it’s ’is hobby. Likewise the lady who was sure he was her long-lost brother Derek. She’s been ringing the cops for thirty years.”

    Somebody said something in the background and Jim groaned: “No, Liam! For Chrissakes! We don’t answer no enquiries about the horse, goddit?”

    “Just checking!” replied a cheerful voice, uncrushed.

    Jim came back on the line. “Sorry, Alex. ’E’s willing, I’ll give ’im that.”

    “Can I ask what the enquiry was?” I asked, unable to keep the smile out of my voice.

    “Did we know that was Millicent Rose and is she eating well?” he returned viciously.

    “Sorry I spoke.”

    “Yeah, well, it’s getting beyond a joke. Wish we could spare more staff, but there’s a couple of on-going jobs, we can’t neglect them.”

    “No, of course not. Um, well, I’m not doing anything. I was planning to get over to the winery this afternoon, but it won’t run away. Shall I come and give you a hand?”

    “Wouldja really? Thanks, Alex, every little helps. But just bear in mind most of them’ll be misguided or cranks. Though the cranks usually get in early, I think they’re slackening off.”

    “Right. I’ll see you, um, well, around lunchtime, I suppose. Can I bring anything?”

    “Chilled champagne? Caviar?” he replied wildly.

    “Cold beer do you?”

    “Great. Um, ya couldn’t make it a few pizzas as well, couldja, mate? I mean, they deserve somethink!”

    Ugh, in this weather? “By all means,” I said nicely. “Pizzas or anything you think they’d like. Just order it in and I’ll pay.”

    “Great! Thanks, Alex! See ya!” And he rang off.

    “Ooh, was that Mr Hawkes?” asked Gavin eagerly, appearing from nowhere.

    “Were you listening?” I croaked.

    He looked virtuous. “I couldn’t help it: you were talking real loud.”

    Mm. Real loud on what I had fondly imagined to be a secluded corner of Trethewin’s big shady side verandah. Or possibly loggia: its stonework had a slightly Italianate look to my eye and it was more or less enclosed at either end, and its upper storey was definitely a balcony, but “verandah” was the local usage.

    “In that case you presumably learned that I have to go into town to see Mr Hawkes. Please tell your aunt that I’ve gone, will you?”

    “C’n I come?”

    “No, Gavin, it’ll be dead boring, we’ll be answering phone calls for the rest of the afternoon.”

    “Aw, heck. I never have pizza!”

    “Where would it come from?” I replied brutally, walking off and leaving him to reflect on it.

    Moira (not Irish, surname Ferneley) and I were sharing a desk. There were plenty of telephones, all connected to the central switchboard, which was being operated by the efficient Lorrae. Obviously Hawkes Investigators had done this sort of thing before.

    Moira’s phone rang, she picked up, answered it smoothly, enquired smoothly where the caller was speaking from, gulped, and shoved the receiver frantically at me.

    “What?” I hissed, clapping my hand over the mouthpiece.

    “Maroochydore!” she gasped, her own hand going to her mouth, as she collapsed in giggles.

    Oops. Jim had apparently been going about since very early this morning chanting bits of the I’ve Been Everywhere song—a patter song, as Moira, who wasn’t nearly as illiterate as her manner and appearance had initially led me to suppose, had now informed me—and the poor things now all had it on the brain.

    “Good afternoon. May I help you?” I said smoothly.

    The reply was, alas, typical of the calls received this afternoon, and, according to Moira, of most of the ones they’d had all morning.

    “Um, yes, like I told the girl, I’m Deb—Deb Harris, Mrs, and I’m calling from Maroochydore. Um, it’s about this man. His photo was on the ABC. Well, I said to Glenys, that’s my daughter, maybe it wasn’t him after all, but she said you better ring in case, Mum.” In the background a male voice said irritably: “Geddon with it, Deb, this is a flamin’ interstate call, ya know!” Mrs Harris took a deep breath and resumed: “That was Bri, don’t take any notice of him. Well, I just thought you oughta know—and I’m sure it was him, even if his hair is different! It looked blond in the photo,” she added on an uncertain note.

    “Yes, that’s right, he has fair hair, but of course he may have dyed it,”

    “See! That’s just what I said!”

    “Er—yes. What colour was it?” Reddish brown, well, sort of toffee-coloured, she’d have called it. “Thank you. And may I have your number, Mrs Harris? –Thank you,. And can you give me some more details? Where did you see him?”

    “In the shop, of course.”

    Mm, this was not an unusual response. That or “In the supermarket”. “Yes?”

    “It was yesterday morning—and I’m sure it was him!” Expectant pause.

    “I see. About what time?” The answer was not precise or concise but I wrote down “approx. 10.10 a.m.” and asked which shop it was.

    “This one, of course. Ours, I mean. –I’m not tying up the phone, Bri!” she hissed angrily. “Who’s gonna ring us, one of your dumb RSL mates? –Sorry, dear,” (to me) “but ’e’s a real ole Uncle Scrooge. We sell hardware. Maroochydore Hardware and Plumbing Supplies. He’s never been in the shop before, I’m positive—well, of course I’m not on the counter all the time. But it must of been him!”

    “And what did he buy, Mrs Harris?”

    The putative Brodie Andrews had bought “a tube of Selley’s” (precisely what, unspecified) and a puttying knife. At this point there was a loud—and rude—interjection from, presumably, Bri, and she shushed him crossly.

    “I see.”

    “Well, he could of wanted it for anythink!” she said defiantly.

    “Bullshit!” from the background.

    “Or it could of been, like, a cunning ruse!”

    The mind boggled, though, true, several others had run this one up to see if I might salute it.

    “Mm. Thanks so much for calling, Mrs Harris. We’ll check it out.”

    “That’s all right, dear. –Be quiet, Bri!” she ordered the noise from the background which had seemed to incorporate the word “reward.” “Noddall of us are Uncle Scrooges like you, ya know! –Well, bye-bye, dear! I’m sure it was him, mind!” And she hung up.

    “Sorry,” said Moira sheepishly,

    “Not at all.”

    “Um, anythink?” she asked without hope.

    “Judge for yourself. A man looking like him with possibly dyed hair, reddish brown or toffee-coloured.”

    “That’d fit, if he did nick Gary Brownloe’s wife’s hair-dye and if it was a tawny shade,” she spotted immediately.

    Exactly. No flies on Moira Ferneley. (No relation, alas, to the painter John Ferneley, one of the early 19th century’s best equestrian artists.)

    “Yes,” I agreed. “Spotted in Maroochydore Hardware and Plumbing Supplies buying a tube of Selley’s and a puttying knife at approximately 10.10 yesterday morning. Where is Maroochydore, Moira?”

    “Queensland, on the Sunshine Coast. ’Bout a hundred K north of Brizzie. –This’d be at the same time,” she noted drily, “as ’e was over in Hahndorf buying morning tea for himself, the wife, and the mother-in-law at one of them fake German coffee shops;”—I nodded weakly: this was a horridly touristified little village in the hills, much closer to Adelaide: the caller had explained that he’d “doubled back and gone to ground;”—“and definitely down in Hobart with a wife and three little kiddies in a suburban park and bigamists are all like that, no-one ever suspects until it all comes out—that was one of Bryce’s;”— Bryce O’Reilly (presumably Irish descent, accent as Australian as Jim’s or Moira’s) looked up from the next desk and gave us a rueful grin—“plus and up in the Alice suspiciously buying a souvenir digeridoo—they’re completely fake, mate, ya don’t get trees in desert country—with a credit card belonging to a K.G. Mason what he could of stolen, unquote!”

    “Uh-huh,” I agreed, consulting my list. “Also—well, five minutes later, this one was convinced it was 10.15 on the dot—in a place called Parramatta, having his Beamer topped up at the servo, and all these Mafia types, they drive Beamers or Mercs, it’s well known. Personalised number plate, the gentleman noticed it particularly, LANE02.”

    “Right,” Moira agreed. “Paramatta’s in Sydney, Alex, place that has all them dinky little terrace houses, done up to the nines and selling for a bomb these days. You can cross that one off, Clarysse has been onto it: the Beamer belongs to Mrs Lane, the bloke was her chauffeur what’s been with ’er for five years, end of story.”

    Bryce leaned forward, grinning. “Nah! See, ’e transported ’is astral body—”

    “Shut up,” we ordered simultaneously.

    “Bit like in Star Trek,” he noted airily.

    “Pity ’e didn’t get stuck in the blimmin’ transporter like in Star Trek!” retorted Moira crossly.

    “Aw, yeah, someone did, eh? Was that Geordi or the Captain?”

    She shrugged “Coulda been both, the bloody thing was always going wrong. Every time they ran out of plot. –Bugger.” She picked up phone. “Good afternoon, may I help you?” she said smoothly.

    Bryce leaned forward again. “Hey, Alex, I’ve worked it out: it was him in Maroochydore: ’e was buying the Selley’s because that car ’e nicked off ’is cousin, it’s full of rust holes!” He collapsed in sniggers.

    I gave him a cold look. “Thanks for that, Bryce. Having met Gary Brownloe, I can assure you he’d be the last man on earth to let his nice shiny little grey Mitsubishi develop even so much as one rust ho— Blast! Good afternoon, may I help you?”

    At first I thought this one was a heavy breather—they’d had a few of those. But just as I was about to hang up a hoarse voice said: “Is there a reward?”

    “That depends on how good your information is, sir.”

    “Yeah. How much?”

    “That also depends on how good your information is.”

    “I’m not stickin’ me neck out for less than five hundred, mate!”

    My eyebrows rose slightly. This might just possibly be genuine: so far the scammers had been reported to ask for no more than fifty.

    “Go on, then.”

    He hesitated, but went on grudgingly: “I reckon the bugger’s in Noosa. I seen ’im on the beach all week, only ’e’s never been there before, see?”

    “Yes, I see. What did he look like?”

    Like—impatiently—the bloke on the TV! Fair hair, about six foot. Yeah, ya could call ’im slim. Didn’t know one end of a surfboard from another.

    “Oh, I see, it’s a surfing beach?”

    “Yeah! Whaddare ya, mate? Noosa Heads!”

    Okay, Noosa Heads. “Can you give me more details, sir?”

    “Whaddaya mean?”

    “Well, anything else you noticed about him. His clothes, what he was driving, who he was with. That sort of thing.”

    “’Is clothes? Whadda ya think ’e was wearing on the beach?” he sneered.

    Mm. Gavin had informed me that his sunglasses were antique, he’d called them Ray Somethink. “Notice his sunglasses?” I asked.

    “Yeah. So?”

    “Do you have any idea what make they were, sir?”

    “What? No, I bloody don’t! I’m telling you, it’s your bloke!”

    “It sounds very like him,” I replied pacifically. “May I have your name and number, please?”

    Grudgingly he allowed that his name was Bazza, and gave me his mobile number. And no, he never saw the bloke’s car, and he wasn’t with anybody that he’d noticed. And If we caught him and didn’t pay up, it’d be all over the media, so we better.

    “Anythink?” asked Moira.

    I made a face. “Five hundred and if we don’t pay up it’ll be all over the media. It sounded a bit like him. Somewhere called Noosa, or possibly Noosa Heads, and he’s no good at surfing.”

    “Prolly drown ’imself, then, with luck. I s’pose it’s a lead, of sorts.”

    “Well, yes, except that I’ve seen so-called Broderick Anson surfing like a pro.”

    “In England?” croaked the Australian, jaw dropping.

    “Er—yes. Devon. They wear rubber suits,” I said feebly.

    “They’d need to, mate! Look,” she said, her brow wrinkling, “just how cunning is ’e? Would ’e go so far as to get all the way to one of Australia’s best surfing beaches—it’s up in northern Queensland—just to pretend he’s hopeless at it?”

    I rubbed my chin dubiously. “If he thought he was being watched, yes.”

    “But who the fuck’d be watching him up there?”

    “This chap called Bazza, apparently. –I thought that name was a joke,” I added cautiously.

    “Nope. Got ’is number?”

    “Mm. No surname, however.”

    “Prolly a dole bludger,” she said on an indifferent note. “It’s worth checking out, I s’pose. Category 2, Alex.”

    This meant possible but unlikely. I nodded and made a note of it.

    “Yours,” she noted as my phone rang again.

    This one was very young and breathless. “Hey, I think I seen that man that was on the ABC!”

    Oh, God. I asked the questions. As far as I could make out before his mother snatched the phone off him, apologised and hung up, the chap had been the wrong height with the wrong hair—black, in a pony tail—and had been doing nothing more suspicious than walking down Bobby’s street.

    “No?” said Moira.

    “Not unless he’s bought a black wig with a pony tail.”

    “Any wig place would of alerted us PDQ. We already had half a dozen first thing this morning.”

    “That’s rather what I thought, Moira,” I sighed.

    Her phone rang.

    “Bugger! –Good afternoon, may I help you?”

    And so it went on…

    We finally gave it away around six-thirty and adjourned to the nearest watering hole to drown our sorrows.

    “How much can an answering machine actually store?” wondered one, Finn. (Not Irish, surname Hagenbach, first syllable “HAY”.)

    “Shut up,” groaned Jim.

    Grinning, he shut up, and I ordered another round. We deserved it.

    After which a certain amount of culinary discussion took place, and “Hog’s Breath” was chosen for “a decent feed”. On me. Definitely. Everyone protested, but gave in. So we went.

    It sold the thickest, juiciest steaks known to the carnivorous world. None less than an inch and a half thick. Prime rib, they’re known for it, ya don’ wanna bother muckin’ round with anythink else, mate. Golly.

    It turned out it wasn’t an answering machine as such: the phones were “linked to the bloody system” as the system’s proprietor put it, and the answering machine program, if that was the right word for it, had stored sixty-one calls by eight ack emma the following day. I was back at the Hyatt; my phone rang just as I was about to ingest a cup of coffee. Resignedly I agreed to my fate—yes, half an hour or so, Jim, depending on taxis and traffic—and rang off. Damn. I had been intending to get up to Trethewin and have a really good look round the house with a view to disposing of most of its more objectionable contents and possibly considering what might be done to make the remainder less objectionable, after which there was that overdue consultation with the chaps at the winery, who must by now be feeling neglected.

    I rang them. No worries, Alex! Crikey, that many, eh? Well, fingers crossed ya catch the bugger!

    I rang off feeling slightly better, and called Cassie’s number.

    “This is Trethewin. She doesn’t wanna be on the TV.”

    “Gavin, it’s me, Alex!” I cried desperately—too late, he’d rung off.

    I rang back. “Gavin, it’s Alex!”

    “Um, no, hi, Alex, it’s Cassie. Did he cut you off?”

    I agreed that he’d cut me off and she explained that the television people had been pestering them. Not just the ABC—the commercial channels as well.

    “Oh, God. I’m terribly sorry, Cassie.”

    “It’s not your fault,” she said wanly.

    “No, it only feels like it,” I admitted ruefully. “Look, I’m sorry, but I won’t be able to make it back to Trethewin this morning—in fact I think I’ll be tied up all day.” Sourly I elaborated.

    Her reaction was a glum: “I see.”

    Feeling marginally better, I said possibly tomorrow, then, and rang off.

    … Heavy breathing. “Is there a reward?”

    Yes, well.

    We took turns with the recorded messages, as there were still live calls coming in. By the end of the day, in spite of having ordered Chinese at lunchtime for a change, we were all exhausted. Moira thought she had a possible. Category two. Shona Inglis, a girl of about the same age and nearly as sharp-witted, thought she also had a possible. Well, maybe category two. Bryce’s whole lot were write-offs. Liam (not Irish, surname Zwolinski), he who had previously received a tender enquiry after Milly, had copped two genuine heavy breathers, one load of filth, that was the trouble with bloody computers, they couldn’t edit the buggers out, and no possibles. Well, unless ya counted a mad ole bloke that was sure it was him burgling his chook run— Liam was howled down.

    “Pub?” suggested Jim with a sigh.

    We adjourned to the pub.

    The following afternoon I at last got up to the winery, and was given a detailed guided tour, ending up back at the “cellar door”, a pleasant, longish low structure with plenty of restaurant seating as well as a long bar counter, and shelves stacked with bottles. Its row of long sliding glass doors opened onto a terrace sheltered by a vine-hung pergola—which the two young men who ran the winery, Ben Purdue, the manager, and Mike Gilfillan, the winemaker, as well as Ben’s wife, Miranda, who managed the cellar door, disconcertingly pronounced “pah-GOAL-a”.

    We sat down under the vines and Miranda produced large glasses of spring water, plus a bottle of red and a saucer of oily black olives—the latter, she explained, were off their own trees, Christina Evans bottled some for them every year. I gaped at her.

    Miranda was a slim, neat, fair woman with an air of quiet competence. She smiled at me. “She likes doing that sort of thing.”

    “But surely it’s—it’s a very complex industrial process,” I croaked.

    “No! Peasants all over the Mediterranean have been doing it for centuries!” she said with a laugh.

    “Millennia,” corrected Mike. “There are olives in Roman mosaics.”

    “Well, it’s fairly labour intensive, of course, and she only does the ripe olives, I think the green ones might be harder to do. Personally I wouldn’t have the patience,” Miranda explained, “but evidently it doesn’t entail much more than making sure they’re clean and dry, pricking them a bit and salting them, and finally bottling them in olive oil. They’re very salty, Alex, saltier than the commercial ones, but they’re lovely! Try one!”

    I tried one, perforce. Wow!

    “Yeah,” said Ben, looking at my face and grinning. “Better than the average olive in a jar, eh?”

    “Immeasurably, Ben!” I agreed. “Do you sell them to your customers, Miranda?”

    “Heck, no,” she replied in astonishment. “We just put them out—you know.”

    It wasn’t the first time I’d encountered this level of commercial naïveté in Australia, but heretofore it hadn’t directly affected me—or not to my disadvantage.

    “Everybody does, mate,” drawled Mike on a sardonic note. “They’d stay away in droves if they didn’t get free olives. Green ones as well, but they’re bought in. She’s given up on the little bits of cheese, though.”

    “Yes, well, it was costing a fortune!” said Miranda on a cross note, flushing. “They were like—like piranhas, Alex!”

    “Yep,” agreed Mike, not ceasing to regard me sardonically. “With the so-called wine tasting as well. Most of it goes straight down their gullets.”

    “Er—surely not at your serious tastings, though, Mike?”

    He shrugged. “Nah—well, once a year?”

    “And occasionally we get a wine club or a group asking for a special tasting,” added Ben.

    “Yes? How do they hear of you?”

    He looked blank.

    “Um, word of mouth?” suggested Miranda.

    “I think you—we, I should say,” I amended, smiling at them as nicely as I could, “need a website.”

    “I been saying that for yonks,” drawled Mike.

    “Mr Crozier always said we were doing okay,” Ben offered uncertainly.

    Oops. Well, it had to be said some time: it might as well be now. “Not according to your last set of accounts, Ben. The Shiraz sales are propping up the whole of the business, and if you lose only one of your larger customers you won’t turn a profit at all.”

    “It’s our major product,” growled Mike, glaring.

    “Yes. Nevertheless.”

    “But— Well, a web presence’d be a good idea, but how are we going to afford it?” ventured Ben uneasily.

    “A capital injection. But first I’d need to see a detailed marketing strategy, Ben.”

    “Yuh—um—there’s so much competition,” he revealed glumly.

    It was time to bring up the big guns, alas. I hadn’t thought I’d need to so soon. Oh, well: they were in a business, and it needed to be commercially viable. “Yes. Well, there’s been a feeler from Yalumba. They’d take your grapes.” I stopped.

    “Right, and they’d go straight into their bloody ‘The Reserve’ Cab Sav Shiraz and shore up their sodding reputation!” shouted Mike.

    “So I would think,” I agreed drily. “Unless your Shiraz grapes are old vines?” –In which case they’d presumably go into “The Octavius Old Vine Barossa Shiraz” as on the website. I didn’t know if the Yalumba vines were actually pre-phylloxera and frankly wasn’t interested in finding out. But I was interested in testing Mike Gilfillan’s mettle.

    He glared bitterly. “No, they’re bloody not, mate, but you fucking well knew that, didn’tcha?”

    “It was in my investigator’s report, yes, Mike.”

    “By Jesus! No wonder when Cassie reckoned you seemed quite sweet old Christina muttered that in her opinion you were hard as nails underneath!”

    Yes, well, you grew a carapace, not to mention all sorts of defence mechanisms, when you were in business at my level. That or you went bankrupt.

    “Mike, you’re being rude,” said Miranda uneasily.

    “I’m being fucking honest, girl!” he retorted angrily.

    “Yes,” I said mildly. “I can see that. You’re quite right, of course, Mike. But if we can’t make the winery pay its way it may be the only way to go. I’ve no intention of running it as a sort of hobby farm. –Which, before you say anything else, I have gathered that Mr Crozier Senior was doing.”

    They were silent, Mike still looking bitter, Ben looking sulky, and Miranda looking anxious.

    Finally—not altogether to my surprise—it was Miranda who admitted: “Yes, I suppose he was, really. He—he kept telling Ben to—to write things off to wastage, or—or entertainment expenses or something, and he used to give me, um, cash to put into the restaurant.” She swallowed.

    “I see; this shored up the cost of the meals, did it, Miranda?”

    “Mm. We— It’s mostly over summer. We only do meals in the weekends and over the Christmas holidays. And Easter and Anzac Day, of course.”

    “Uh-huh. May I see your latest set of accounts, please?”

    “Yes, sure,” she said glumly, getting up to fetch them.

    “Look, the cellar door’s only a sideline!” said Ben angrily.

    “It’s a sideline which has been eating into your profits, if it’s only been kept going by surreptitious handouts from Crozier. Have you priced what the other cellar door places are charging?”

    “What? No! We haven’t got time for that sort of thing!”

    “Anyway, they’re mostly over in the Barossa,” put in Mike, still glaring bitterly.

    “Yes, which as I understand the geography of the area, is much easier to reach from Adelaide, which is your main customer base.”

    “All right, ya know it all!” he snarled.

    “No, but I’m in the habit of doing my homework. I don’t know anything about winemaking as a profession, Mike, which is why I’d like to schedule a long serious talk with you. Christina gave me a glass of your 2004 Shiraz. I’m no expert, by any means, but it struck me as damn good. I’ve had so-called vintage burgundies which weren’t nearly in its class.”

    After a moment he said, part suspicious, part grudging: “Ya don’t just mean burgundy grapes, do ya? Syrah?”

    “No. Wine from Bourgogne, France. Appellation contrôlée.”

    “Oh. Right,” he said, very disconcerted.

    “We always knew it was a good year, Mike,” said Ben. “Shoulda laid down some more, I s’pose.”

    He shrugged. “Yeah. That woulda lowered the profits even more, though, wouldn’t it?” He gave me a nasty look.

    “Immediately, yes,” I agreed. “But if you’re producing wine of that quality you need to be looking to the future and promoting anything you think is going to be really good. Well, frankly, I couldn’t tell if a new wine was going to be good or not, but I know the experts can. I’m not in the advertising business—”

    “Not half,” muttered Ben sourly.

    “No; but I do know that one can send out Press releases, fliers and so forth. Send them to everyone on your mailing list?”

    Dead silence.

    Oh, God. “You have got a mailing list, I presume,” I said as lightly as I could.

    Miranda had come back and was standing at my side fidgeting nervously, folder in hand. “We had a girl doing it, she was a friend of Jenny Crozier’s, she knew her at school and she needed a job. But we couldn’t pay her much—well, she got room and board, of course—so when she found a permanent job she moved on. She set up a database and everything… It’s very easy to use, but no-one’s got the time, Alex!”

    “No, I see. Sit down, please, Miranda. Let’s all try this bottle and relax. Being taken over is never easy, but I’m not expecting instant miracles. We’ll just take it easy and see what needs to be done before we draw up a decent five-year plan with a real profit at the end of it.”

    “Five-year plan? You can’t predict a vintage, like that! Winemaking relies on the weather, you moron!” shouted Mike, turning crimson.

    “Precisely. That’s one of the most important factors that need to be taken into consideration. Here—take it out on the bottle,” I said drily, handing it to him.

    He stared stupidly at it, dumbfounded.

    “Yes, go on, Mike, open it,” said Miranda in a small voice, sitting down. “It—it’s the Cab Sav, Alex.”

    “Good: I haven’t tried that yet.”

    Mike began to recover himself, stared suspiciously at the label, apparently found nothing to condemn in it, and twisted the screw top viciously. –By this point in time screw-tops were the norm for Australian wines, I’d discovered.

    “You’ll find it much lighter than the Shiraz,” Ben admitted grudgingly.

    “Mm. –Thank you,” I said as Mike filled my glass, avoiding my eye.

    The glasses were all filled, and they were all waiting. I forbore to suggest a toast, just sipped.

    It was dry, lighter than the Shiraz, as Ben had warned me, and to my palate more like a claret than the heavier burgundies.

    “Um, slosh it round your mouth, Alex: you’ll get the flavour better,” said Miranda in a small voice.

    “He oughta know that, if he’s bought a bloody winery!” said Mike angrily.

    I had deliberately refrained from the professional wine-taster bit, which had always struck me as silly and pretentious. Okay if you were a professional, but this was a wine made to be drunk. However, I smiled at Miranda, and duly sloshed. Well, yes. Lightish, not too dry, slight touch of what might be blackberry. I swallowed. Pleasant aftertaste, not sulphur-laden—I’d had a few Australian wines that reeked of it.

    “Well, all I can say, really, is that I like it, I find it very drinkable, and a million times better than the only other Antipodean Cabernet Sauvignon I’ve tried, which was a New Zealand one which I found both far too sweet and too acid. God knows how they managed that. –But I guess you’d know, Mike.”

    “They load their wines with sugar,” he said with distaste. “The acidity is largely because they don’t get the sun we do. Their whites have been a lot better in the past, but they’re starting to go the same way: too sweet. Think they’re aiming at the Chinese market.” He shrugged. “Frankly I’d cut me throat sooner than produce that sort of muck.”

    “Mm.” I sipped some more. “Yes, very drinkable. I’m surprised it hasn’t done a lot better, Ben.”

    He hesitated. “It’s not our major line… Well, the thing is, Cab Sav’s out of fashion, Alex. It was in for ages, only then they started raving about Penfold’s Grange—I mean, of course it was known in the trade, and the wine collectors have known about it for yonks, but it got a huge amount of publicity in the media, and everyone started drinking Shiraz.”

    “And making it. So-called,” Mike put in.

    “I see.”

    “I read an article,” said Miranda, “that said Aussie tastes in wine have changed a lot in the last forty years or so. It used to be all château cardboard, only gradually people started to appreciate better wines… Anyway, that’s partly why Shiraz has got so popular. When it’s good, it’s tremendous.”

    “And even the average stuff can be a lot better than the average Cab Sav,” added Ben. “That can be very thin and acid—unless your winemaker knows what he’s doing,” he added, glancing at Mike.

    “The accolade,” that gentleman retorted sourly.

    “Don’t put yourself down, mate.”

    Mike just scowled.

    Mm. Possibly this was one of the reasons that Trethewin Estate’s wines hadn't done better: Mike Gilfillan was not a self-promoter, to put it mildly. I’d read several online articles about Australian wines by now, and in most of them, certainly the ones that seemed better informed, the winemaker was mentioned by name and more than given his due for the quality of his wines.

    I continued to sip the wine, and glanced through Miranda’s accounts, which were meticulously kept and beautifully presented. After a little Ben said with a sigh: “Aw, go on then, Miranda, love: trot out the macadamias.”

    “Um—okay,” she said with a nervous glance at me. “Um, they’re not from stock, Alex, they’re ours.”

    “Yeah: Dad knows a bloke up in Queensland who grows them—occasionally sends us some,” Ben added.

    “Some!” snorted Mike.

    “Mm, this time he sent a sack. I only hope they’ll keep,” said Miranda on a weak note.

    “In that case I’d like to help you out, Miranda!” I admitted with a laugh.

    “Um—yeah—wouldja? Okay!” she gasped, and dashed indoors.

    I finished reading the accounts and closed the folder, smiling.

    “Are they all right?” asked Ben uneasily.

    “Perfect. Beautifully printed, too.”

    He sighed. “Yeah. She keeps telling me I oughta have a copy of the blimmin’ program… It’d just be another hassle: I haven’t got the time to sit down and learn it up.”

    “Er—you mean her accounts are computer-generated, Ben?”

    “Yeah.”

    “Yes,” said Miranda, hurrying back. “It was the girl I told you about, Jenny’s friend. She said she’d been working with the software for a while now and it’d be fun to make a database for me.”

    “This girl created an accounts database for you?” I croaked.

    “Yes.”

    Jesus! They’d had that sort of expertise on the premises and hadn’t hung on to it? Next question— God, did I even dare to ask if the girl could also have set up a website for them? No, on the whole, not yet. There were other things to clarify.

    “What?” said Miranda uneasily.

    “Sit down, please, Miranda, and let’s have a few macadamia nuts, and perhaps one or two more of those miraculous black olives, and then tell me about your database.”

    She glanced dubiously at her husband, but did sit down, and passed me the dish of nuts. As expected, they were the freshest, juiciest macadamia nuts I had ever tasted. Unsalted, not toasted. Another small Australian producer who didn’t know what he had? More than likely.

    “Now, that database?” I suggested,

    “Um, well, she asked me what sort of things I was writing down and had a good look at the big book Mr Crozier gave me. I suppose it was his accountants, really,” she said dubiously, “but anyway it was a proper accounts book, all ruled up and everything… Um, she said something about footers, I think it was, but I didn’t understand. Anyway, then she laughed and said it’d be a doddle. It’s clever, ’cos she’s got your payments in red and your takings in blue!” she beamed.

    Mike coughed.

    “You coughed, sir?” I enquired smoothly.

    He grinned sheepishly, and admitted: “Well, it seems to work. I did point out that you gotta know which is an expense and which is income before ya choose the red or blue—”

    “Shut up, Mike!” she cried crossly. “Ignore him, Alex! I can show you, if you like. It’s really easy, and when you want to print out like the month’s or the year’s accounts, you just search on the month or the year and click on ‘Print’.”

    “Er—it’ll generate a yearly statement or monthly statement with the one command?” I groped.

    “Yes. She did say something about, um, sorting, was it? Anyway, it does it!” she said happily. “It’s miles easier to work than Ben’s stupid system, only he reckons it isn’t worth the bother of changing. See, I said to Greta—that’s her name—I said could he have a similar one for the winery and she said we could just copy it, um, something about a structure—and it’d be no bother, she could put it on his computer. And, um, something about his suppliers…”

    “My system works okay. I haven’t got the time to muck round changing it, like I was telling Alex,” said Ben grumpily.

    She sighed. “It’d save time in the long run, Ben.”

    Mm. Very typical of small business operators. He couldn’t see when spending a bit of time in the present might save tedious hours in the future. In fact he seemed pretty much incapable of envisaging the future at all. Damn.

    “You’ve done a splendid job, Miranda, and the print-out is excellent,” I told her. “Now, I need to ask you about just one more thing—and it’s not a criticism of the way you’ve kept the accounts, at all. I can see that you’ve paid wages in your busy months: that’d be for serving staff, I presume.”

    “Yes. And sometimes in the kitchen too.”

    Yes, well, that was possibly something we’d have to look at more closely at a later date: find out just what was going where.

    “Fine. And you yourself have been paid regularly, have you? No problems?”

    “No, none at all. We thought, when Mr Crozier died, and then when you bought the business— But we got paid the same as usual,” she replied.

    “It’s automatic,” said Ben. “It comes out of the bank account every month.”

    Uh-huh. In that case the M. Purdue who was being paid monthly must be Miranda, and not, as I’d assumed, a winery assistant to Ben or Mike.

    “Right, that’s what I wanted to know. Now, this is not in any way a criticism, Miranda, but to be sure the cellar door isn’t losing money we need to subtract the amount of your wages from your profit, do you see?”

    “Ye-es… But there’s no place to put that, really. And it isn’t money that I—that I pay out,” she faltered.

    “No. You don’t need to include it in these accounts, but at some stage we need to balance it all. To make it worthwhile running the restaurant and bar at all, we need to know the complete costs, which include employing you. Do you see?”

    “Yes,” she said, swallowing hard and looking down sadly at her accounts. “I do see.” A tear rolled down her cheek. “I didn’t realise… I thought I was doing quite well.”

    Mm. For a little out-of-the-way restaurant that did a few lunches and didn’t serve dinners because they were too far off the beaten track, even the beaten tourist track, she was doing well in that she’d managed to survive at all. Oh, God. How much cash had bloody Crozier actually injected? I had a feeling that we’d never know and that it wasn’t worth pursuing. Well—possibly Jim Hawkes’s Clarysse could sort it out, but I sincerely doubted your average accountant could.

    “I think what he’s trying to say,” said Mike Gilfillan in a hard voice, “is that the cellar door is chucking money down the drain.”

    “Mr Crozier said it was, um, the public face of the winery and a real asset,” said Miranda, valiantly wiping the tear away.

    Yes, and if they had a giant publicity budget it’d be worth it!

    “Yes, that’s why most wineries maintain a cellar door service with a restaurant attached,” I said neutrally.

    “Them that can afford it, yeah,” noted Mike sourly. “I know of half a dozen that only offer tasting and a sit-down. Well, I think one of them works up their tastings in all sorts of fancy ways, blind tastings and God knows what, but no eats.”

    “Yes, but we’re so far out,” Ben objected.

    Quite.

    “Yes: there’s nowhere else to eat round here,” Miranda added.

    Then why weren’t they charging five or even ten times as much?

    “Well, that’s very good,” I said encouragingly. “I’d like you to take a good long look at your prices, find out what other places charge in their restaurants, check out some city prices, too, and based on your current costings, put forward an amended menu with the highest prices you think would be viable at the lowest cost to Trethewin Estates.”

    “Vegemite sandwiches at nineteen ninety-nine a pop so as they can kid themselves they’re paying under twenny,” drawled Mike.

    “Don’t be silly,” Miranda retorted. “Um, I have seen a place that does burgers for about twenty dollars, but that was in town… Sit-down, not takeaway. Most of them aren’t that bad.”

    “No, but you see, they’ll be looking at their overheads, Miranda,” I ventured. “Rent, heating, lighting, air conditioning, service, cleaning, as well as the cost of the ingredients.”

    “And the washing up,” she said seriously, nodding. “Yes. But at least we haven’t got rent!”

    “No, but your clients are used to lunching at places that do have to cover their rent.”

    “But— That’s not very honest,” she said, reddening.

    “All commerce is a rip-off,” noted Mike, very sour.

    “Shut up, Mike! Um, he’s right, though,” she said, still very red and looking at me uneasily.

    “You’re not a charity. Your clients can afford the petrol to drive up here, they can afford to buy wines. It’s a question of your survival, Miranda,” I said flatly.

    The warm terrace shimmered with silence.

    “And of the winery’s, ya mean,” said Ben bleakly, refilling his glass.

    “Yes.” I got up. “I’m sorry that it’s been such a shock to you, but I think it’s only fair to let you know how things stand. The alternatives to making the place pay are to sell it out from under you and let the next buyer do what he likes, or let Yalumba have the grapes and close down the rest of it.”

    Ben tossed off his glassful. “Right. While you sit back and count your millions,” he said sourly. “You’re not the only one that can look stuff up, ya know!”

    “Ben, don’t,” said Miranda, biting her lip. “He’s right, you know he is. Mr Crozier was—was spoiling us.”

    “I suppose he’s at least giving us a choice,” said Mike, grabbing the bottle and pouring the remains into his glass.

    “Yes,” I said. “I am. Think it over. Don’t make any precipitate decisions, give yourselves time to cool down. Don’t rush into anything. If you need a forensic accountant, let me know: I can get you a reliable one. Don’t for God’s sake go to any local firm. –Thank you for the refreshments, they were first-class.”

    And I walked away from them.

    In my wake I heard Mike say on a mad note: “What the fuck’s ’e mean, forensic accountant?” And Ben reply with a sigh: “Don’t ask me, I thought that was something on stupid Yank detective shows.” And nice Miranda add in a trembling voice: “Christina was right: he is hard as nails.”

    Oh, God. What a parcel of innocents! Old Man Crozier hadn’t been doing them any sort of favour, alas, keeping them as—as his pets, really, running his pet little hobby. Would any of them be able to pull their socks up to the extent of running the winery as a viable commercial enterprise?

    … And what the Hell was I going to do if they couldn’t?

    Next day I was still so damn depressed by my visit to Trethewin Estate that when Jim rang me up and said on a jubilant note: “Hey, I think it paid off!” I just said dully: “What?”

    “Getting on the TV! It pays to advertise, eh?” he said with a chuckle. “I think—well, Clarysse does, too—that we got a real lead, Alex!”

    “Oh? Where?” I replied without enthusiasm.

    “Northern NSW: Byron.”

    “What?”

    “Byron Bay. Full of trendies kidding themselves they’re getting away from it all while they bring it all with them. House prices round there are through the roof, ordinary people can’t afford to live there no more and the X-Y-Zee flamin’ generations are moving in with their Internet-based businesses and pushing all the Flower Power people out, that’s Byron.”

    “Jim, what’s the lead?” I said more loudly than I’d intended.

    “Sorry. This dame, she reckons ’e’s been living with her, spinning her a line, charming the socks off ’er—sound familiar? Dyed hair, too, we weren’t wrong about that. She actually used the word ‘tawny’. Liam took the call, ’e almost wet ’imself at that one,” he revealed inelegantly.

    “I see. Well, that does sound promising, yes, Jim.”

    “So I said I’d get on up there, have a chat to her—behind his back, of course. She’s got a mate in some obscure little place a bit further up the coast—so small ya can’t even find it on the map, calls itself Ginger Bay, dunno if they still grow it there or not. Anyway, she can meet us there any time we say. Meanwhile he’s helping out in her boutique, charming all the ladies that come in, skimming a bit off the top as and when, offering the ladies a bit on the side as and when. Think that’s why she dobbed ’im in: she found out, ya see.”

    “Er—Jim, this isn’t just the woman scorned bit, is it?”

    “That’s what we’re gonna check in person, mate. I said to her, could she possibly send us a snap of him, but she said he hates having his photo taken, it’s a genuine phobia.”

    “Oh, ho.”

    “Yeah, exactly, mate! So, you game?”

    “Yes, I’ll come, Jim.”

    I hung up thoughtfully. Mm. Maybe. We’d have to see.

    On second thoughts I rang him back.

    “Jim, there’s something I ought to warn you about. Mind you, it was twelve years back. Bloody Broderick Anson, so-called, kept a nifty little knife in his sock.”

    “What?”

    “Mm. Proper sheath, strapped on, an’ all. I assumed that it was intended to impress his lady friends.”

    “Or not,” said Jim Hawkes grimly. “You got a gun?”

    “Uh—no; they don’t let you bring guns into Australia.”

    “They don’t bloody let ya get hold of them in Australia, either, mate, except that doesn’t stop the heavy mob! I’ll bring mine. –Don’t worry, it’s licensed and I belong to a gun club, tra-la-la.”

    “Good. Got a spare?”

    “Uh—well, between you and me and the gatepost, mate, I might have, yeah.”

    “Bring it,” I said, ringing off.

Next chapter:

https://deadringers-trethewin.blogspot.com/2025/07/up-to-byron.html