by Peter Corris
‘Fascinating reading I’m sure,’ I interrupted. ‘But what’s it got to do with me?’
‘Yesterday you made an enquiry at the site, following which you assaulted a member of our staff and later appeared to make common cause with the picketers at Tadpole Creek.’
I looked at Kamenka. ‘It wasn’t much of an assault. More of a nudge.’
‘Certainly actionable if we chose to make it so.’
‘Ah, a threat.’
‘No. Just a piece of information to go along with this.’ He tapped the folder. ‘Read it, Mr Hardy. I don’t know what ratbag organisation you’re working for, but frustrating the work at the site is ill-advised and pointless.’
‘You call that whole thing the site, do you? Isn’t it a whole lot of sites?’
Smith was struggling to keep his patience. ‘We’re trying to treat you decently. Don’t make it any harder.’
‘What puzzles me is why you’re so worried and why you’re taking this trouble. I don’t give a stuff about Tadpole Creek. I don’t care about the Olympics either, although if you could give me some tickets to the boxing I might be interested. Can Mr Kamenka speak, by the way? Or does he just do isometrics inside his uniform?’
Smith sighed and Hargreaves looked exasperated. I didn’t blame him. I was exasperated too. The secretary entered with coffee and we all watched her pour it.
I sipped the coffee. Too strong, bitter.
Smith’s manners were his strong point. He backed down a little, talked about some of the hassles he had with security and implied that he was under some pressure to keep the lid on all difficult situations. His politeness seemed genuine and made me feel better about him. I decided to give a little.
‘I’m working on a missing persons case. That’s all I can tell you and more than I need to tell you. There’s nothing more to it than that.’
‘I’d like to believe you.’
I put the undrunk coffee on the desk. ‘You can.’
‘If that’s the case I might have a proposition for you.’
‘I enter into contracts with clients, Mr Smith. Just like you. I don’t deal in propositions.’
Smith considered this carefully before nodding. ‘I see. Well, just let me lay this out for you and get your reaction.’
Pointedly, I checked my watch.
‘This won’t take long,’ he said. He explained that the Tadpole Creek protest was a puzzle to the Olympic organising authorities and particularly to Millennium Security. He described the creek as ‘a puddle’ of no environmental value, although he admitted that it was an oversight that it hadn’t been included in the original environmentally-sensitive plan.
‘I won’t pretend this has been well-handled,’ he said. ‘When they saw that they’d slipped it up they tried to tidy things away sharpish. Crudely. This protest surfaced and we’re in the spot we’re in now. Somehow they got some mad judge to issue an injunction. It’s crazy.’
‘Look, I’m not really interested. I…’
‘There’s someone behind it,’ Smith continued. Someone with money. That protest is being funded from somewhere. Food, equipment, vehicles, legal fees. Someone’s backing the whole thing and we don’t know who or why.’
I shrugged. ‘You must have the resources to find out.’
‘The way to find out is to get someone inside the protest. It seems you made a big hit with them.’ He opened his satchel and took out a notebook. ‘I’m told you had a long conversation with the sister of one of the leaders. That’s Tess Hewitt, sister of Ramsay. This is after you jumped the creek.’
For my own reasons, I was interested now. ‘Who’s the other leader?’
Smith didn’t need to consult his notes. ‘Damien Talbot. He’s a sort of environmental terrorist – the kind who drives spikes into logging trees. That kind of thing. He’s also got convictions for drug offences and criminal assault.’
Just for a minute I was tempted. I’d heard of Millennium. They were international, of course, wielded influence and paid top money. But I smelt several rats. The theory that I was well-placed to infiltrate the protesters was only half-convincing at best. Millennium should’ve been able to come up with better strategies that that. Then there was Tess Hewitt and the warmth I’d felt from her. Not to be discounted. Also, I’d begun to focus in on the Meg French matter with all its emotional complications and I work best when I’m single-minded. Double-minded maybe. Triple-minded, never.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I’ve got something serious in hand and the protest is very peripheral to it. If that. I’m not interested.’
‘If it’s a question of money?’
‘No.’
Smith sighed and put his notebook away. ‘Then all I can do is advise you to do as you say – leave those idiots to their fate.’
I had to admire Hargreaves and Kamenka. Neither had said a word. Now both stood in mute and effective demonstration that the meeting was over. I stayed where I was.
‘A threat of legal action brought me here, Mr Smith.’
Smith had half-left his seat. Now he stood and moved towards the door. ‘Hardly a threat and I think we’ve resolved the issue.’
‘I like a quiet life, too,’ I said.
‘Do you? I doubt it.’
And that was that. On consideration, Smith impressed me as an honest functionary. Maybe there was a mystery about the backer of the protest. Maybe I could ask Tess Hewitt about it.
The information began to come in soon after I reached my office. Damien Talbot was twenty-six years of age. Born in Petersham, he had suffered a childhood accident that had left his right leg slightly shorter than his left. He wore a built-up boot but walked with a limp. He was 185 centimetres and 75 kilos with fair hair, blue eyes and pierced ears. He had attended state schools in inner Sydney and done one year of an acting course at NIDA then dropped out. Some time later he’d enrolled in a TAFE Environmental Studies course which he’d pursued for two years without completing the required written work. Addresses in Ultimo, Chippendale, Newtown, Marrickville and of course Homebush. He had two convictions for possession of marijuana and one for trafficking in cocaine. He’d served three years on that count, concurrent with a two-year sentence for assault occasioning bodily harm. That was all to do with drugs too.
His driver’s licence had expired a year ago and, as I’d already learned, he was being proceeded against for failure to pay parking fines and for driving an unroadworthy vehicle. He had drawn unemployment benefits periodically but was not currently doing so. I obtained an address for his surviving parent, his mother, in Petersham and details of three bank accounts, all overdrawn. It was difficult to find much on the credit side of Damien’s ledger.
Megan Sarah French had been born in Bathurst at St Margaret’s Hospital twenty-three years ago. Her birth date was given as one day after the date Cyn claimed to have had her child. Her adoptive parents were Rex and Dora French of Katoomba. Megan Sarah French had attended the St Josephine Convent in Katoomba. She was a prefect, leader of the debating team and captain of the netball squad that won the country division championship in her final year. She scored 90.5 in the HSC and matriculated at the University of New South Wales. She’d dropped out of a degree course in industrial relations after two years.
I jotted the information down from the phone calls and arranged the faxes in order as they came in. I drank the whole of a pot of strong coffee and made another as things began to sink in. The confirmation of Cyn’s story seemed to be staring me in the face and I found it hard to adjust to. I’d been hoping, or at least half-hoping, for something to blow the whole idea out of the water, but all I was getting were blocks building towards the same conclusion.
The data continued to flow. Megan Sarah had enrolled in the same TAFE Environmental Studies course as Talbot and had dropped out at the same time. Connection. She’d drawn unemployment benefits at various times and signed on for several re-training programs without completing them. Not good. A couple of credit cards had bee
n withdrawn for failure to meet payments. No prosecutions. She held a driver’s licence but no vehicle was registered in her name. She had never lost any points on her licence, and there was nothing outstanding. No criminal convictions.
It was ambiguous stuff to convey to Cyn and I resolved to edit it. I got the suit wet walking in the rain to the Post Office to consult the Blue Mountains telephone directory. There were three entries for French and one with the initial R. Back in the office, with the suit jacket on a hanger, I rang the most likely number and drew a blank – R was for Robert and he had no knowledge of a Rex. Ditto with the next. The third French was Rex’s brother, Frank, and he was happy to talk to me when I told him I was a private detective.
‘Is the prick in trouble?’ he said.
‘No, I want to talk to him about his daughter, Megan. She’s… ah, missing.’
‘That poor kid.’
This was the second time that expression had been used. “Why d’you say that, Mr French?’
‘Rex and Dora are religious fanatics. First it was Catholicism, strict as buggery. Megan was supposed to be a nun. They tried to beat God into her, made her life a misery and she was a super kid. When she kicked over the traces, wanted to go to university and that, they went nuts.’
‘What did they do to her?’
‘Kicked her out. Then they sold everything they had and joined a bloody cult up here. They get around praying and scratching in the dirt.’
‘I’d like to talk to them.’
‘You’ll have to come up then. There’s no phone out there.’
He gave me directions to a five-hectare property near Mount Wilson operated by the Society for Harmony and Tranquility.
I thanked him. ‘Do you think they’d be in touch with Megan?’
‘Rex? No way. Dora might be. She’s under his thumb but she not quite as crazy as he is. Tell him Frank sent you. That’ll really get up his nose.’
8
It wasn’t a day for the mountains. Sydney was cool and wet, the mountains were likely to be cooler and possibly wetter. I grabbed a parka I keep in the office and headed west. Mentally, I picked through the information I’d acquired about Megan and Talbot. It could be structured not to sound too bad – a ‘crazy mixed-up kids’ gloss could be put on it. But it could be a lot worse in reality, with the drugs and Talbot’s violence factored in. I tried to treat it like any missing persons case – concerned parent, worrying features, bad associations – but the personal aspect kept cutting in, confusing me and making me unsure of my assessments.
The country around Mount Wilson looked bleak in the pale winter light. After a long, hot summer there hadn’t been much rain until recently and the land was parched-looking and damply yellow. Frank French’s directions were good and I located the property easily. It was at the end of a long dirt road and the word that sprang to mind to describe it was neglect. The fences were in poor repair, broken down in spots by the press of branches, sagging elsewhere from wood rot. The driveway to the main building had once been covered with gravel but now the rocky ground was showing through. The rambling main building, constructed from what looked like rough, pit-sawn local timber, immediately struck me as odd. It was huddled down amid trees and shrubs in a hollow as if deliberately trying to avoid the view to the west. If it had been located just a few metres in that direction on higher ground it would have commanded a magnificent outlook over paddocks to forest and far ranges.
The garden beds and lawn flanking the driveway were scruffy. An old Land Rover was parked on a patch of remaining gravel to the left near a rusting pre-fab shed. I stopped dead in front of the building, got out and looked around. No telephone lines, no electricity cables, no TV antenna. Isolation. The right context for dogma and obedience. The place depressed me already.
I suppose I expected white robes and sandals, but the man who met me at the top of the front steps wore a business suit and a business-like expression.
‘Welcome to Harmony and Tranquility,’ he said. ‘How may I help you?’
He was middle-aged, plump, balding, normal-looking, so I behaved normally by showing him my PEA licence and telling him that I wanted to talk to Rex and Dora French on a family matter. I’d put the parka on in the car to keep myself dry on the dash to the building. I took it off and revealed myself in suit and tie. No gun bulge. No knuckle-duster.
‘I believe they’re both meditating. Nothing distressing I hope?’
I made a non-committal gesture which he didn’t like and he liked it still less when I asked him who he was.
‘Pastor John,’ he said. ‘The leader of this community. I’ll make enquiries about Brother Rex and Sister Dora. If you’ll just wait inside?’
He ushered me up the steps and through the door into a room on the left. I had time to glimpse a faded carpet in the hallway, a lack of light, and to smell a musty odour that confirmed my impression of neglect. The room I stood in was bare apart from an old set of church pews arranged around three sides. The window was small and the panes were dusty, inside and out.
After a few minutes a woman came into the room. She was fiftyish, small and tired-looking. Her grey hair was wispy and the cardigan she wore over a woollen dress was ill-buttoned. No make-up, thick stockings, flat-heeled shoes. She stopped one step into the room and looked at me as if I was going to bite her.
‘Yes?’
‘Mrs French?’
‘Yes.’
I went into a quick explanation, fearing that Rex couldn’t be far away. At the mention of Megan’s name she sparked up.
‘Oh, oh,’ she said. ‘It’s been so long. How is she?’
‘I don’t know, Mrs French. I’m trying to find her. You love her?’
‘Oh, yes. Megan is wonderful. The best thing in my life. But Rex…’
‘Her natural mother is dying and wants to see her.’
Her thin, blue-veined hands flew up to her face, almost hiding it. This was too much hard-edged information for her to process. She dropped the hands and looked up at me. ‘The poor woman.’
‘Yes. Do you know where Megan might be, Mrs French? People seem to think she might have a place to go to.’
‘People?’
‘People who care for her. People who want to help her. She’s keeping bad company, Mrs French.’
I could hear some sort of movement inside the house. Rex? I whipped out a card and extended it. She didn’t move and I had to grab one of her hands and wrap it around the card. She clutched it like a child with a toy. I asked her again where Megan might go but she’d heard the sounds herself by now and didn’t reply.
The man who entered the room was big and bulky. He was fair, a redhead who’d turned grey I guessed. His pale skin was blotched with freckles and whitish skin cancers. He towered over his wife and almost shouldered her aside to confront me.
‘You are?’
I told him.
‘Your business?’
I told him.
He sensed that his wife was moving so as to be able to look at me and he pushed her towards the door. ‘I’ll handle this, Dora.’
She shot me a quick, hopeless look and left the room.
‘Megan’s mother was a whore,’ Rex French said. ‘Like mother, like child.’
It took every atom of self-control I had in me not to hit him. ‘That’s not a very Christian attitude,’ I said.
‘The word is be-fouled by your use of it.’
He was sixty or thereabouts, flabby and slack-bodied in overalls and work boots. A decent punch would destroy him but I’d met enough fanatics to know how useless it is to argue with or assault them.
‘You’re pathetic,’ I said. ‘She deserved something better than you.’
‘Leave!’
I had to clench my fists to control the impulse to plant one in that soft belly. ‘I’m going. By the way, your brother Frank doesn’t say hello.’
French snorted. Another sinner.’
‘No, a human being. Not a sack of self-righteous shit
like you.’
‘How dare you,’ he shouted.
Pastor John and two other men entered the room. They looked at me as if I’d shat on the carpet.
‘I’m afraid you’ve upset Brother Rex,’ Pastor John said. ‘I must ask you to leave before you create more disharmony.’
They represented no physical threat but I was repelled by their self-righteous disapproval. I drove away feeling sorry for Megan who’d spent something like sixteen years with Rex French, sorry for his wife, sorry for Cyn and sorry for myself. Sorry.
9
‘Cultists!’ Cyn almost screamed at me. ‘What do you mean cultists?’
‘Apparently they were Catholics…’
‘That’s nearly as bad.’
Religion, dislike of it, was one of the few attitudes Cyn and I had had in common and nothing had changed.
We were sitting in the living room of Cyn’s flat. Contrary to what she’d told me, there were no signs of medication and illness. The flat was elegant, as I would’ve expected. Elegant, but not obsessively so. Cyn had always had good taste and had only let it slip once – when she’d married me. I couldn’t identify the pictures on the walls or tell who’d designed the furniture, but I knew someone had. I can’t tell a leather couch from a vinyl one on sight either, but I was sure what I was sitting on was the real hide. I’d thought it was better to talk face to face with Cyn about what I learned so I’d driven straight to Crows Nest from the mountains. Now I wasn’t so sure. She was working herself up into a fury as she used to do when we were together and I’d transgressed.
She paced the room with energy she’d summoned up from somewhere. ‘Cultists. What sort of a life must she have led? They’re insane, they have group sex. They…’
‘Cyn, shut up! We’ll talk about this rationally or I’ll leave and phone that son of yours and get him to come over and take care of you.’
‘You don’t know his number.’