The hostel notice board had a special place for photographs of missing persons. Anxious relatives would call in and put them up. The missing persons were mainly Australian and aged from twelve upwards. The older often had a history of mental illness. The younger had often run away with a friend.
One day, Joan (not her real name) came to see me saying there was a young man in the hostel with photographs of children. Joan was staying with us following a bad experience with drugs in a hippy commune and had an eagle eye for suspicious characters.
"He says he's helping find kids that have run away from home."
"Do you believe him?" I asked.
"I don't trust him." Joan shook her head.
I peered through the veranda blinds and saw what she was talking about. A skinny young guy with floppy blond hair was talking to some of my guests. He looked no more than seventeen. As I watched, he picked up a plastic folder, slipped it neatly under his arm and walked from the hostel. I could have mistaken him for a Seventh Day Adventist looking for converts.
Joan thought the police should be informed. I agreed there was something suspicious about the young man but didn't want to bother them. She persisted and I phoned a contact in the CIB (Criminal Investigation Bureau). He shared Joan's concern and gave me a number to phone. That evening, the young fellow put in another appearance. I phoned the number and a middle-aged lady dropped round with a bundle of religious tracts and a small camera.
A week passed and the young man booked into the hostel. I phoned my CIB contact and was informed that the guy was dinkum (Aussie for genuine/okay/alright). His investigations were genuine and he really was finding runaways. I asked if he was connected with the police and failed to get a reply. As I was putting down the phone a voice in the background said: "He's older than he looks."
I don't think the remark was intended for me.
The young guy's name was Clarence and he pronounced it in a way that sounded very French when he was trying to chat up Joan and the other girls. We know it was his real name because the girls took a look in his wallet while he was swimming. It contained a driving licence with his photograph and date of birth. He was twenty and came from Melbourne.
The girls were living in one of my apartments. They helped in the hostel and had part-time jobs in town. They regarded Clarence as a pest. He was a couple of years younger than they were and looked even younger. His clear aim was to get them into bed and his powers of seduction were pathetic. The skinny little guy was forever trying to impress them with stories of his life.
He told them how he had been headhunted into the police while still at school and sent to police academy. There he was assigned to a twenty-five-year-old female undercover agent who taught him things not found in the training manual.
The lady's daytime instruction covered the use of nunchakus and other martial arts weapons. In the evening they went back to her place and practised positions described in her illustrated edition of the Kama Sutra. After that they headed into town to investigate the drug scene. He made a point of saying he preferred older women.
The girls found him irritating. His sexual advances were gauche and his tales ridiculous. But they were not totally unbelievable. That was why they had peeped in his wallet. He claimed to be a private detective. They decided to do a private detection job on him.
To their surprise, his highly accented name checked out and so did his age. They got a further surprise when they heard him trying to chat up a French girl in French. They had previously thought that his claim to speak the language was no more than a silly affectation.
In the end, they decided that Clarence had been the toy boy of an older woman. A cougar had taught him the mechanics of sex and he had emerged from the encounter with a burning desire for a repeat performance. Who was this woman? Could she possibly be a police officer? Was there any truth in what he said? One evening they confronted him.
"Clarence, are you still in the police?"
He gave his usual self-assured smile and said circumstances had obliged him to sever his connections with the force. An undercover investigation had gone badly wrong and caused a lot of embarrassment.
"Did you get the sack?"
Clarence said he had not been sacked. Instead, he had been counselled. A panel of senior officers had informed him that he was going to be posted to a remote part of the Northern Territory where the women wore big boots and kept their own company. He'd taken the hint and handed in his resignation.
In all, Clarence was with us for about a month. He came and went: staying a few days then taking off. I spoke to him on a number of occasions but could never penetrate his cloak of mystery. The problem was his multiple personalities. He called them "personas" and spoke about them in a very professional way.
In the hostel, his persona was the suave guy with the French name and seductive voice. He'd come nowhere near to mastering that one. His model was entirely wrong. Males might be impressed by stories of a crazy woman who whirled nunchakus and had sex in impossible positions but the girls were not.
He was having far more success with his working persona, which took advantage of his youthful appearance. He was able to pass himself off as a sixteen-year-old if he dressed the part. That way he could frequent places where kids on the run hung out. When he located one, he'd take photographs and send them to relatives so that they could take "appropriate action".
His language was always precise when he talked to me. He never used a silly French accent or told stories that might not be believed. I guess I was seeing his professional persona. One day I remarked that his detective work would make good training for a police cadet. I was fishing for information and he knew it. All I got in reply was a knowing smile.
I estimate that over 100,000 people stayed at our hostel during the fifteen years we ran it. I remember no more than a couple of hundred. Some made a deep impression on me and Clarence was one. I have included him in two of my novels: Curtin Express and The Missing Miss Mori.