by Peter Corris
‘What?’
‘That it really didn’t matter. Government was in bed with business, business was in bed with government and science didn’t matter a hang. Terry had some hopes that things might change, but. .’
‘Were they working together on anything? Informally maybe?’
She shrugged. ‘Who can say? They rode their bikes for miles in all directions, further than I’d care to drive. They certainly. . looked at things, took photos.’
‘And Henry made drawings.’
‘I suppose so. What are you getting at?’
I told her about the drawings and the mysterious buyer and the one that had slipped through the net. I said I’d show it to her to see if it gave her any ideas. That reassured her about my interest. I asked if I could look at her husband’s workroom-his files, his photographs. She agreed. Then I popped the real question.
‘And I need to do the same with Henry McKinley. Do you know who his lawyer is?’
‘No. But that’s not a problem, Mr Hardy. Not if you agree to follow this up for me.’
I nodded. ‘As I said, I’m not officially engaged. I can look into whatever seems relevant.’
‘I can pay you.’
‘It’s not an issue at this point, Mrs Dart.’
She looked up at me but it wasn’t me she was seeing- it was something or someone else. I caught a flash of a sexual signal, quickly suppressed.
‘Terry had a key to Henry’s house. I have it right here.’
One of the rooms in the three-bedroom apartment served as Terry Dart’s study. It was orderly, with a filing cabinet, bookcases, a laptop computer and printer and the usual jars with pencils and pens sticking out. I opened the filing cabinet, which was only sparsely filled with folders bearing names I didn’t understand. Seismological terms. The books were mostly about that subject and related ones-vulcanicity, glaciation. He’d evidently read up a bit on global warming and alternative energy as well as the water crisis in Australia and elsewhere. The only personal touches were a set of trophies sitting on top of the bookcase.
Josephine Dart had sat in the room’s easy chair while I made my inspection. ‘Terry was very proud of those,’ she said. ‘He said they stood for aching muscles and gallons of sweat.’
Dart had evidently won a couple of long-distance road races and placed in a few more. ‘He must’ve been good.’
‘Good. Yes, when he was younger, but not at the top level. It didn’t bother him. He was a lovely, calm, kind, considerate man from the day I met him until the morning he rode off. It’s so bloody unfair.’
Something about the room bothered me. I opened the drawers in the desk-printer paper, cheque books, invoices, a postcode book, staples, printer cartridges, expended and new.
‘What?’ Mrs Dart said.
‘Something’s missing.’
She looked carefully. ‘Everything’s as he left it.’
It came to me in a flash. ‘Where’s his briefcase?’
She got up quickly. ‘He kept it tucked down between the desk and the filing cabinet.’
The space, wide enough to hold a sizeable briefcase, was empty.
‘Mrs Dart, have many people been in the flat since your husband died?’
She nodded. ‘We had a wake. . a party. My brother organised it. Terry was an only child. Terry would have liked it-they played some of his favourite music- “Bolero” and “The Ritual Fire Dance” and things from Carmen. There were quite a few people-neighbours and from the CSIRO and the cycling club. I didn’t know them all.’
‘Did anyone comment on McKinley not being there?’
‘Of course,’ she said sadly. ‘It was a talking point.’
I asked her if she’d come with me when I inspected Henry McKinley’s house but she refused.
‘I went there quite often. Sometimes with Terry, sometimes without,’ she said. ‘We had some wonderful times together. I don’t think I could bear to see it all empty and. . dead.’
She produced five keys on a ring. I asked whether she wanted some kind of authorisation from McKinley’s daughter or the private detective she’d hired.
‘I thought you were the private detective.’
That was ticklish, but something I had to get used to. ‘I’m more or less retired. I’m just doing this as a favour to Ms McKinley. She was a nurse in the hospital in California when I had a heart attack.’
‘My goodness! You look fit now.’
‘Yes, I’m fine.’
She gave me the keys. ‘I trust you, Mr Hardy.’
You don’t get a lot of that in this business and her remark buoyed me up even though I was sure there were things she wasn’t telling me and that what I was learning added up to bad news for Margaret McKinley.
Henry McKinley’s townhouse was part of a small set of newish places, modelled on the good old Victorian terrace. The architect had done his job well and the houses blended in nicely with the old and new stuff around them. The street was a bit back from New South Head Road and elevated, so that the houses had a view of the water with the trees of the Royal Sydney golf course off to the south. The security wasn’t state of the art but it was adequate. A high, solid wooden gate at street level opened easily with one of the keys on the bunch and there was a security grille over the front door and bars on the windows on the lower level. A balcony ran along the width of the house and I could see greenery hanging down over the rail. The space in front was taken up with the traditional white pebbles and a few largish plants, looking bedraggled, in pots.
Another key opened the grille door and yet another the front door. I waited before going in. I hadn’t been tentative about my approach, but I was prepared to defend it if challenged. No challenge came. The adjoining townhouses were quiet-professionals out earning enough to live there.
Light streamed in from a skylight halfway along the passage that led to a narrow set of stairs. I opened the door to the room immediately on the right. A bedroom. Double bed, neatly made up, the usual fittings, no sign of disturbance. Likewise the sitting room further down. The room suggested a non-fussy person of good taste. The furniture was comfortable rather than stylish. Neither the TV nor the sound system was new and the big, old bookcase with glass doors had the look of something handed down through the family-neither fashionable nor practical, but cherished. Its key stood in the lock. The books inside were a mixture of the very old-a Collins set of Shakespeare’s plays-and the very new-Robert Hughes’s autobiography. There was an emphasis on art and associated subjects-Drawings by Michael Fitzjames, The Paintings of DH Lawrence, a book on nineteenth century photography and three or four studies of Picasso.
The dining room was small but with space enough for a no-nonsense pine table and solid chairs; the kitchen had another skylight and about as much stuff as a single man would need to cook, refrigerate and sit down for a quiet drink. The wine rack held five bottles of red-five more than my ex-wife Cyn had left behind when we split. A door from the kitchen gave out onto a bricked courtyard where everything-flowers, shrubs and herbs-was overgrown. Bird droppings stained the garden setting; leaves had collected around the legs of the chairs and table.
A small aluminium shed occupied a corner of the courtyard. It was padlocked but a smaller key on the ring took care of that. A bicycle was held up on pegs attached to the wall. A heavy plastic cover was draped over it and there were tools I didn’t recognise, cans of oil, jars of something or other arranged neatly on a shelf. Three helmets hung from one peg, three pairs of bike shoes from another. I felt sad about the well-cared-for things a man I didn’t know had left behind him-if that’s what had happened. I re-locked the shed.
I went up the stairs. There was a bathroom with a medium sized spa bath-something you’d need after those bike rides-a shower recess and toilet. At the back was a darkroom, fitted up with the red light, and the printing and developing equipment. The study was in the front. Both of these rooms had been searched, torn apart.
5
No help for it.
I sent off a long email to Margaret McKinley bringing her up to date. Impossible to be optimistic. I told her that I’d located the name of her father’s solicitor and his email address in my search of the townhouse, and asked her to contact him with an authorisation to talk to me.
My solicitor, Viv Garner, didn’t think much of this when I told him what I was doing.
‘I doubt he’ll do it on the strength of an email,’ he said. ‘Give me the details and I’ll get in touch and try to square it all away. Of course that’s what you had in mind when you told me all this.’
‘I’m an open book to you, Viv,’ I said. I gave him the name. ‘I want to get a look at McKinley’s mail in his post office box. No way to tell if whoever searched the house found the key. Maybe he kept it on him.’
‘That’s very tricky,’ Viv said. ‘Takes time. You say she’s hired Hank Bachelor to enquire into her father’s disappearance. You’re involved, of course, but you’ve got no status with the police or McKinley’s lawyer or his employer.’
‘Moral authority,’ I said, and I told him about Josephine Dart.
‘Moral authority’s not worth shit. But you’ll do what you want to do, I know that. I’ll try to smooth out some of the snags. Who do I bill for my time and effort?’
I grinned. ‘Who else but Hank?’
I calculated the time difference and rang Margaret McKinley.
‘Emails can be a bit cold,’ I said. ‘I wanted to talk to you and answer any questions. And see how you’re holding up.’
‘Thank you, Cliff. It’s funny, it’s all so far away but just hearing you makes it seem a lot closer.’
‘Is that better or worse?’
‘I’m not sure. You say the police and the lawyer are the next people to approach. What about Dad’s employer?’
‘I think we need to know as much as we can about the circumstances before tackling them. Our initial approaches, like yours, haven’t got anywhere.’
‘I was so sorry to hear about Mr Dart. I know how fond Dad was of him.’
‘Like brothers, his wife said.’
‘What do you make of her?’
I realised that I hadn’t formed a clear opinion. ‘I suppose you’d say she was vibrant, also sad and angry. She wants to hire us to look into her husband’s death. . which she’s sure was murder. She could be right.’
‘Would that be a conflict of interest?’
No way to dodge the question. ‘Not if the two matters are related.’
‘You think my father’s dead, too, don’t you?’
‘Margaret, I think the best hope is that he found he was in danger of some serious kind and has gone into hiding.’
‘That doesn’t sound like Dad.’
I thought, but didn’t say: Or that someone is holding him to force him to do something.
She picked up on the pause. ‘God, I know it looks bad, but I’m still hoping.’
‘It’s all speculation. I’ll tackle the lawyer. Hank will give you his email address and you should alert him to what we’re doing. Depending on how that works out, we’ll gee up the police and the media to get busy.’
‘This is all going to cost a lot of money. I can raise-’
‘You’re not to worry about that. I can cover the cost for now and we can sort things out later, depending on the results.’
‘Why would you do that?’
‘For selfish reasons, mainly.’
‘I don’t follow.’
‘I’ll explain another time. Meanwhile, please just do what you’ve been doing-authorising things and people- it’s all you can do for now. Oh, I’ll get Hank to scan this drawing of your father’s I mentioned and send it. See if it means anything to you. How’s the weather?’
‘Like always. Thank you, Cliff.’
I rang off. She was a smart woman and the explanation for why I was putting in the time and the kilometres wouldn’t have been hard for her to grasp-I was grateful to her for providing me with a chance to do the sort of thing I’d done for more than twenty years. It was work I enjoyed, mostly, and which I’d done well, mostly. I hadn’t come up with any ideas on how to occupy myself for the rest of my life, which, according to the medicos, was a good long stretch if I looked after myself. Certain avenues were blocked and others-golf, monitoring my investments, hobby farming-didn’t appeal. For now, I didn’t have to think about it. Selfish, as I said, and not something you want to parade with a loved, missing father at the centre of things.
I emailed the bits and pieces of information I’d collected so far to Hank.
Horace Greenacre had an office, or rather a suite of offices, in Double Bay, above the boutiques and bijou shops of various kinds. It was accessed through a heavy glass door at street level with his name etched on it and a deep-carpeted staircase. Over the years I’d had a few clients in the suburb and, despite their money and/or their pretensions, their problems turned out to be much the same as people’s everywhere-deceit, greed, love, hate. But solicitors there are more specialised than those in less affluent areas. They tend to deal in family trusts, quiet transfers of assets and the briefing of QCs when their clients get into trouble-which they do.
Viv Garner had smoothed my path, so I was ushered into Greenacre’s office by his secretary with more deference than I’d encountered in lawyers’ precincts in the past. Strangely, being an ‘associate’ of a licensed PEA and a client and friend of another member of the legal profession earned me more respect than being a private detective myself.
Greenacre was in his fifties, impeccably groomed and suited with a trim figure that suggested gym membership and diet tonic with his gin. Although Viv must have told him about my being drummed out of the profession, Greenacre didn’t let on. He got up from behind his desk to greet me a few steps inside the door and shook my hand.
‘Mr Hardy, I’m very glad to meet you. I’ve been worried about Henry for some time. Can’t reach him. Come in, come in and let’s talk. Viv Garner has a very high regard for you and of course I’ll help in any way I can. Have a seat.’
He went behind his desk but slid his chair partly out so that it wasn’t a complete barrier between us as I took a chair off to one side.
‘Mr Greenacre, I’ll be blunt-’
‘Horace.’
An old trick, always works-interrupt the flow, allow a second to size a person up. ‘Horace, are you telling me you’ve had no communication from Henry McKinley for nearly two months and have no idea where he is?’
Greenacre wasn’t fazed, or not much. He picked up a sheet from his desk, looked it over and put it down. ‘I resent the implication but I appreciate the need to ask the question. The answer is no.’
‘Thank you.’
‘I’ve had a communication from Margaret McKinley, several in fact. Again, singing your praises. She asks, authorises you might say, me to answer any questions you might have. I’m prepared to do that, up to a point. Fire away.’
‘In his last meeting with you, whenever that was, did McKinley express any concerns, doubts about the work he was doing, worry about his personal safety?’
‘No.’
‘Were you involved in the contractual arrangements he made with Tarelton Explorations?’
‘Henry showed me the contract. The remuneration was handsome and the undertakings the company made to provide research facilities and staff seemed generous. I thought some of the restrictions were severe-limitations on what could be published and a long period after the expiry of the contract whereby Henry couldn’t do much of anything at all. The sort of thing leftists want to impose on former government ministers and the like, but Henry said he was happy with the arrangements and I saw no reason to advise him otherwise.’
‘The contract was to run for. .?’
‘Five years.’
‘That seems a long time.’
Greenacre shrugged. ‘They evidently valued his contribution.’
‘Do you know anything about what that might have been?’
‘No. The de
tails of Henry’s professional work are way beyond me.’
‘Me too. Last question. McKinley’s will. Any strange bequests? Anything surprising?’
Now he displayed some professional caution. ‘What are you getting at?’
‘The man’s disappeared. There are signs of some sort of. . disturbance in his affairs. Let’s face it, he could be dead. I need to know if his will reflects anything unusual in his past, especially the recent past.’
‘I thought you’d ask that and I checked the will. This is tricky. I certainly can’t go into details while Henry’s whereabouts are unknown.’
‘I’m not asking for details.’
He took up another sheet of paper. ‘Printout of Ms McKinley’s email,’ he said as he reread it. ‘Just making sure I understand her instructions precisely.’
I wondered what she’d written, not that I was ever likely to know. This man played strictly by the book. He put the sheet down and shook his head.
‘There’s nothing unusual in the will. Just exactly what you’d expect.’
‘I assume Dr McKinley had investments?’
‘Substantial.’
‘Who handles his financial affairs?’
He shook his head. ‘Before answering that I’d need further instruction.’
I thanked him and left Hank’s card asking him to get in touch if any information came his way. Horace didn’t like me one little bit, but he wanted to keep Margaret McKinley as a client in the hope of doing business with her. To that end he was prepared to be polite to me. Just.
My car was still up on blocks in a friend’s garage awaiting a final service and tune-up, and I’d caught a cab to Double Bay. I hadn’t been away more than six months but Sydney traffic seemed to have got worse, if that was possible. It was stop, start and crawl for long stretches and the new tunnels didn’t seem to have had any good effect. On the return trip, glad I wasn’t driving myself, I had plenty of time to think about the next move. Two options-get the police on the job or tackle Tarelton Explorations directly.