Read Matrimonial Causes for Free Online Page A

toolittle sleep. Only one cure. I’d brought a flask of brandy from the house and I headed for the coffee shop to mix up some medicine.

6
    The airport was beginning to feel like a better place to operate from than my office. It had coffee, a toilet, wash basins, telephones, parking space and it cost nothing to hang around there. I phoned the number Virginia Shaw had given me and got a cool female voice on the line.
    â€˜Andrew Perkins and Associates. Juliet Farquhar speaking.’
    â€˜Miss Farquhar, my name is Cliff Hardy. I’m a private investigator. I’d like to see Mr Andrew Perkins as soon as possible, please.’
    â€˜In what connection, Mr Hardy?’
    â€˜In reference to Miss Virginia Shaw.’
    There was a pause. I imagined her buzzing through to put the question to the boss. It didn’t sound like the kind of operation in which people actually got up and walked across the room to do things. It occurred to me that I should know where Perkins and Associates was or were. I started to hunt in the telephone directory.
    â€˜Mr Hardy, are you there?’
    I’d dropped the book and was scrambling forit when she spoke. A page tore in my hands and I swore.
    â€˜
What
did you say?’
    â€˜I beg your pardon. I’ve … spilt my coffee. Yes, Miss Farquhar?’
    The coolness was positively chilly now. ‘Mr Perkins has no client by that name. Perhaps you have the wrong information. There are a number of legal practitioners named Perkins.’
    â€˜I’d like to see him anyway.’
    â€˜Mr Perkins will be out of Sydney on business for the next few days. Perhaps you could call back next week?’
    â€˜Perhaps.’
    Thank you.’
    She hung up. I continued my search without doing further damage to the phone book The office of Andrew Perkins and Associates was in Phillip Street. Where else? I knew the old buildings where the legal eagles had their chambers—rabbit warrens of twisting corridors, steel-cage lifts and solid oak doors. A man could barricade himself inside a place like that, or slip out very easily if he knew his burrow well. It was beginning to look as if I’d have to make a call on Mr Perkins at home. That would take some work I wondered if Miss Shaw had anticipated his non-cooperation. I wondered whether he had come to her, or vice versa, when he was her ‘client’. I wondered a lot of things.
    Pleasant as it was, especially with the prospect of the bar opening soon, I couldn’t hang around the airport any longer. I drove back to the city with only the intrigue of the Shaw matter andthe comfort of a couple of hundred bucks in the bank to keep me from feeling jealous and deserted.
    I hadn’t gone into the private enquiry game without some preparation in the form of a long talk with Ernest Glas, who’d been a private eye since he got back from World War II. Ernie had been an MP for most of his stint, although he’d seen some action here and there. Along with a few tips about getting through locked doors and extracting information from neighbours, he’d had one critical piece of advice.
    â€˜Cultivate a relationship with a policeman, boy,’ he’d said. ‘Better still, with a couple of policemen, and the less they know about each other the better, if you get what I mean.’
    I already had a friendship with Grant Evans, who I’d served with in Malaya. It had proved useful while I was working in insurance, but I hadn’t tried to widen my net. Maybe this was the time. I drove to the Darlinghurst station and asked to see Detective Colin Pascoe. The desk officer recognised my name from the paperwork attached to the Meadowbank killing.
    â€˜You armed?’ he asked.
    â€˜No.’
    â€˜We had a fuckin’ nutter in here yesterday. Yugoslav, as you’d expect. Pulled out this fuckin’ great gun and threatened to kill everyone unless his missus was brought back to him.’
    â€˜I