The Undertow by Peter Corris Page A

adept at putting people at their ease. Handy talent. She gave me a form to fill in and I did it with a mixture of fact and fiction. I gave my profession as security consultant, owned up to a few minor operations, mostly to repair injuries, and ticked the ‘facial’ box in the question about ‘areas of concern’. I wrote truthfully that I was a nonsmoker but less truthfully that my drinking was limited to ‘occasional social’.
    The receptionist looked the form over and gave me one of her toothpaste advertisement smiles. ‘Dr Lubitsch will see you in a few minutes, Mr Hardy.’
    I nodded and sat in a chair that allowed me to look out a window. She went away with the form and came back quickly to resume her place behind the desk where she must have been doing something though it was hard to tell what it might have been. As I’d suspected, the clinic was on the top level and the view was all I thought it would be. I picked up a couple of the magazines from the rack, but the view was more interesting. I got an eyeful of the river and watched one of the big passenger catamarans churn past. A buzzer sounded and the receptionist stood.
    â€˜This way please, Mr Hardy.’
    I followed her down a passage. She knocked at a door, pushed it open and ushered me in. The room was large and light, probably one of the largest and lightest in the building. Its occupant was sitting behind a big steel and glass desk, studying my form. He half stood, then sat down heavily in his leather chair and gestured with his head for me to take the other chair.
    I’d decided on a direct approach. I ignored his instruction, locked the door behind me and went to his desk. I flicked the off switch on the intercom and disconnected the phone. He rose and I pushed him down hard. Lubitsch may have been a big man twenty-odd years ago when Roma Brown knew him briefly, but he’d shrunk vertically and expanded horizontally. He was twenty kilos overweight and his belly pushed out his spotless clinician’s coat. He wore a crisp white shirt under it with a dark tie and dark trousers. He was bald, apart from grey fluff around the sides, but at least he hadn’t committed the Belfrage-style comb-over.
    â€˜What the hell d’you think you’re doing? You must be mad.’ He reached for the switch on the intercom and I rabbit-chopped his wrist.
    â€˜Shut up, sit still and listen and you won’t get hurt.’
    â€˜What do you want? There’s no money here.’
    â€˜I said listen.’
    I told him that I knew he was Karl Lubeck and that he’d worked doing illicit plastic surgery with a Dr Gregory Heysen who’d been jailed for conspiracy to commit murder. Also that he’d taken files from the doctor’s office to conceal their activities. And that he’d subsequently profited from the money that had been paid to the murderer of Dr Peter Bellamy before becoming the pimp for a woman named Pixie Padrone.
    He was already pasty-faced from spending too much time indoors, but he went still paler. Had a shot at bluffing, though.
    â€˜Preposterous,’ he said.
    I took a camera from my pocket, raised it and took a photo of him there in his chair with the fear in his eyes and his mouth slack.
    â€˜What . . . what’s that for?’
    I studied the image on the screen and nodded. ‘Pretty good. The media’ll want a picture when I tell them what I’ve just told you and provide proof.’
    I looked around the room with its black filing cabinets, bar fridge, teak bookshelf, framed degrees, photographs and paintings. ‘You can kiss goodbye to all this, unless . . .’
    He sighed but seemed to recover some poise. ‘How much?’
    It seemed too quick and too easy a surrender, and I remembered Belfrage saying that Lubitsch would take reprisals. It wouldn’t do to underestimate him, flabby though he was. He’d come a long way and showed resourcefulness. But