Open File by Peter Corris Read Free Book Online Page A

smokes. I hope you don’t mind.’
    ‘A lot do. The smart ones stop.’
    ‘We live in hope.’ A quick smile and she was off.
    Sarah came into the sunroom wearing white jeans and a black T-shirt with the face of Cold Chisel’s Jimmy Barnes printed on it. She was barefoot but stood several centimetres taller than her mother. The makeup had gone and her long, fair hair was pulled back in a ponytail. She was a good-looking young woman with a generous mouth and big eyes that did not bulge in the slightest.
    I met her in the centre of the room and we shook hands.
    ‘Hello,’ she smiled. ‘I’m sorry about what I said to you the other day. Ronny called and said you’d given him a lift. That was nice of you.’
    ‘It was raining pretty hard and he was sloshing along, but I admit I wanted information from him. That’s what I do. Let’s sit down, Sarah.’
    She sat across the low coffee table from me and looked like the private schoolgirl she was—straight back, knees together. ‘I know,’ she said. ‘Angela told me you’re trying to find Just.’
    ‘That’s right, working for your father.’
    Her ‘Mmm,’ was sceptical.
    ‘I’ve seen a record of the interview you had with the police back then. You didn’t have much to say.’
    ‘I was a kid, and I didn’t know anything.’
    ‘Well, you might have known more than you thought. Justin said something to you about being a soldier of fortune. Ronny told me that.’
    ‘Jesus, that’s right. But I didn’t remember when I was talking to the policewoman. She wasn’t very smart. I don’t think she knew what she was doing, really.’
    ‘So what can you tell me about that?’
    ‘Hang on.’ She got up, hurried out and came back with a packet of Stuyvesant and a lighter. She offered them, I shook my head and she lit up. It was a bit studied but she was getting the hang of it. She moved the squeaky clean ashtray on the table closer and tapped off the minimal amount of ash produced by one draw, the way they do.
    ‘Just was always on about the army and how the Hampshires had fought in every bloody war under the sun. I used to tease him about it and say how America got beaten in Vietnam and how they burnt villages and raped womenand that. It made him angry and that’s what I wanted to do. I loved him, but . . .’ She smoked, tapped ash. ‘You know, brothers and sisters, especially after Dad left and Angela went round the bend. It all got a bit, you know, tense. Anyway, this time I said something like that and he just nodded. Then he swore and reckoned he wanted to do it properly, like a soldier of fortune.’
    ‘Did you know what he meant?’
    ‘Not really. I had some rough idea, from a movie or something. I said what about the army, and he said fuck the army.’
    ‘That’s all? He didn’t mention a country or a place?’
    ‘No, that was it. I thought it was just him sounding off. I didn’t even remember it when that dumb policewoman came along. Did I screw things up?’
    ‘No, I don’t think so. There’s another thing. At Justin’s school I was told that he was friendly with someone named Pierre Fontaine. D’you know anything about him?’
    Her eyes opened wide and she dropped the cigarette on the glass-topped table. ‘Shit!’ She picked it up quickly and stubbed it out half smoked in the ashtray.
    ‘Who told you that?’
    ‘I won’t say, just as I won’t tell anybody else what you’re telling me. Them’s the rules.’
    ‘You must tell the person who’s paying you.’ She wasn’t dumb.
    ‘Well, there I use my discretion.’
    ‘Did Ronny say anything about Pierre?’
    ‘I hadn’t even heard the name until this morning at the school. Should I talk to Ronny about him?’
    She shook her head and the ponytail swung. ‘I wouldn’t.’
    ‘Who is he? Why were you so surprised to hear the name?’
    ‘I was surprised that anyone would say that Just knew him. That guy, Pierre, was done for drugs. He’s the one that supplied Ronny with some