Between the Devlin and the Deep Blue Seas Read Free Page B

Peregrine’s father saying that, although badly burnt and suffering brain damage, his son was alive and now in a clinic in the South of France where he would probably stay for quite some time. The Van Gogh was destroyed in the blast; thanks for your help anyway, Les. Or as Warren had so succinctly put it, the painting went west and Peregrine went south.
    Norton jogged steadily on with another two things slowly turning over in his mind. One was what he had said to George on Saturday night about how his accountant, Desmond Whittle, had him down as a public relations consultant. That was something he was definitely going to have to do now that he had some time to himself: sort out his financial affairs with Whittle.
    Norton didn’t know too many accountants but Whittle had to be the best in Sydney — he could get Les claims on things that were almost unthinkable. He’d even advised Les to put an old typewriter in the spare room in his house and got him a rebate on it as office space. George had tipped Norton into Whittle and it was the best thing that could have happened to Les as far as making his money legal went, and on top of that Whittle was a pretty good bloke all round. Yet Norton absolutely loathed going over to his office in his unit at Double Bay and talking to him. It wasn’t that he disliked Whittle, it was just that Les abhorred anything to do with figures, book-keeping, numbers, adding and subtracting and just plain arithmetic in general. It almost gave him a migraine. Norton was flat out writing down the date and handling money was simple. You just put it in the bank and left it there. Why spend it if you don’t have to? Coming last in arithmetic in every class he was ever in at school didn’t help much and he always felt embarrassed when he confronted Whittle, which was another reason he saw him as little as possible. Good little bloke that he was, Norton still regarded him as a dentist with a degree in economics.
    But Whittle had been ringing him fairly often over the last few months, saying it was time again to get his affairs in order. There was also something important he had to discuss with Les that he didn’t wish to talk about over the phone. Norton had a good idea what that was too. The second thing that had been turning over in his mind.
    Norton’s big investment. Blue Seas Apartments. About three years previous Les had been talked into buying an old block of flats in Randwick not far from the Prince of Wales Hospital. It was an old run-down block of five flats with a resident caretaker and the whole thing was managed by a real estate agency in Randwick Junction. Norton didn’t particularly want to buy the block, but Price had lined it up for him, a deceased estate, the same as the house he lined up in Cox Avenue.Price along with George Brennan had kept berating him he’d be a mug not to buy the old block of flats. All he had to do was put down a deposit, the rents would pay off the balance, and the land value alone would treble in three years. Price would have snaffled it up himself but he wanted to do a favour for Les, if Les would have a go. So rather than be a mug that wouldn’t have a go, Les had forked out seventy-five thousand dollars, which nearly killed him, borrowed another seventy-five and the next thing between Price, Whittle and the estate agency in Randwick Junction Les Norton was the new landlord of Blue Seas Apartments.
    But that was as far as it went for the big Queenslander. He was not the slightest bit interested in collecting rents, doing maintenance or meeting his tenants. Everything was in the hands of Whittle and the estate agency. Apart from driving past now and again or having the odd beer at the Royal Hotel in Randwick, Norton kept away from Blue Seas Apartments, much the same way he kept away from his accountant. He never told anybody he owned them — the only people who knew were the inner core at the Kelly Club, and even