Cooee

by Vivienne Kelly

  Nowadays it’s quite common to call women ma’am. Those infuriating people who ring you up and want your money call you ma’am; so do people behind counters, and ticket inspectors, parking officials, people like that. In those days it wasn’t so usual. It made me feel uncomfortable, as if he was jeering at me up his navy serge sleeve.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ I said, assuming the tone of someone who was trying to be reasonable against mounting odds. ‘I don’t see why you’re conducting an investigation. Why won’t you tell me? If my husband had done something wrong, something criminal, don’t you think I’d know about it?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, I’m thinking you would know about it. So why don’t you tell me what you do know, Ms Weaving?’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Like what does your husband do?’

  I stared at him. Anxiety sprang a level or two and bloomed into panic.

  ‘What is it, ma’am?’

  ‘I’m wondering if I should get a lawyer.’

  ‘If you want to get in a lawyer, Ms Weaving, you’re entitled to. At any point. But I’m only asking about Mr Knight’s occupation, after all. I’m laying no charges. I’m not thinking I’m going to arrest you. I’m not even necessarily thinking I’m going to arrest Mr Knight, when I find him. I’m not thinking of laying charges, at present. I’m gathering information, you see. It’s a friendly chat. You’d be ill-advised, I’m thinking, to call in a lawyer on the basis of me asking you for a friendly chat.’

  ‘Well,’ I said, uncertainly.

  He waited.

  ‘What do you want to know?’

  ‘Principally, I want to know how I can contact Mr Knight.’

  ‘I can’t tell you that.’

  ‘No idea at all, ma’am?’

  ‘Honestly. None.’

  ‘No leads, no possibilities, no friends he might be staying with?’

  I shook my head. ‘I just don’t know. I swear I’m telling you the truth. My husband — my ex-husband I think of him as — didn’t have many friends. I didn’t know them, anyway.’

  ‘How long were you married, ma’am?’

  ‘Nearly five years.’

  ‘You were married for five years and you don’t know any of his friends?’

  ‘Well, I didn’t. It may sound odd. But he was a solitary sort of man.’

  ‘Business associates?’

  ‘I never met them.’

  ‘What does he do, ma’am?’

  ‘He had … business interests,’ I said, desperately. ‘He owned things and he rented them out and he bought things and sold them. He was a consultant. He advised people about investments and ... and things like that.’

  ‘Ma’am, are you aware that you’re speaking in the past tense?’

  ‘It is past, for me,’ I said, kicking myself. ‘I suppose he still does all of those things, but I don’t have anything to do with him any longer, so I think of it all in the past tense.’

  ‘When did you divorce Mr Knight, ma’am?’

  ‘I’m not divorced. We’re separated. I told you that.’

  ‘Are you expecting a divorce?’

  It was a funny question, when you thought about it. Not that I was grinning.

  ‘Yes. I suppose so. I don’t know.’

  ‘So how did he come to leave?’

  ‘We had a quarrel.’

  ‘A quarrel.’

  ‘That’s what I said, yes. It was a very significant quarrel. We’d been unhappy for some time,’ I said, improvising frenetically. ‘It was just … the last straw.’

  ‘And he left?’

  ‘Yes, he left.’

  ‘He just walked out the door?’

  ‘No. He packed. He packed lots of things. And he left.’

  ‘And you’ve heard nothing since?’

  ‘Nothing at all.’

  ‘Forgive me, ma’am,’ he said, with a sudden unexpected gentleness, ‘but that’s hardly likely, is it? I’m thinking, a man isn’t going to walk out of your life as quickly and easily as that, is he? There must be things you have in common, things that needed to be worked out between you both. Money, financial arrangements, so forth.’

  ‘We had separate financial arrangements.’ I could feel sweat condensing and crawling down the back of my neck, down my spine. ‘There was nothing to work out.’

  ‘Your house?’

  ‘The house is mine.’

  ‘You don’t find it odd, that you haven’t heard from him?’

  ‘I didn’t expect to hear from him.’

  ‘Such a final break,’ he said, marvelling. ‘Such a quick, final break.’

  ‘I told you, the marriage had been going wrong for some time. It was just the final thing. The final disaster.’

  ‘And what caused the final … er … disaster?’

  ‘I don’t have to tell you that.’

  ‘You don’t,’ he agreed, almost paternally. ‘So, when you didn’t hear from him, you weren’t surprised?’

  ‘Not at all.’

  ‘You hadn’t thought there might be a reconciliation?’

  ‘It was clear that there wasn’t going to be a reconciliation.’

  ‘And he didn’t forget anything?’

  ‘Forget?’

  ‘When he packed. He didn’t forget anything, and come back for it later.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘An expert packer,’ said Inspector Pritchard, admiringly. ‘Me, now, I always forget something when I pack. Specially if I’m in a hurry.’

  I said nothing.

  ‘And none of your family’s heard from him?’

  ‘No. So far as I know.’

  ‘Mail?’

  ‘I believe he had a post-office box for business mail.’

  ‘So he did.’ The inspector nodded, as if he approved of this arrangement. ‘And it didn’t occur to you to worry about him? When he walked so completely out of your life, I mean?’

  ‘Why should I worry?’

  ‘Why, indeed?’ he agreed. ‘You wouldn’t have thought, for instance, of reporting him as a missing person?’

  ‘Why should I do that?’

  ‘Such an absolutely total disappearance? And you never thought he might have met with foul play?’

  ‘No. Why should he?’

  The inspector shook his head in apparent perplexity and looked down at his notebook, in which he had, from time to time, made tidy and apparently leisurely notes.

  ‘You’ve sold the house, Ms Weaving?’ Of course, he would have seen the real-estate board out the front, with its flamboyant SOLD sign.

  ‘Yes. It was mine. I told you. The house was mine to sell.’ I knew I was sounding defensive.

  ‘Ah. And you’re moving elsewhere?’

  ‘I am, yes.’

  ‘May I have that address, ma’am?’

  I told him. He gave me his card and suggested I might like to ring him if I remembered anything else.

  Not bloody likely, I thought.

  ‘Lovely place,’ he said, looking around as I showed him out.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Cost you a pang or two to move, I should think?’

  ‘I guess.’

  ‘Built it yourself, I understand?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, wondering how he knew that. He smiled at me as if he knew what I was thinking. He paused at the door.

  Go, I was thinking. I was suffused by fear and fury. Just go.

  ‘You’ll be in touch, then. You’ll be in touch if you think of anything. Or if you hear from Mr Knight, of course?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, stopping myself from saying: But I won’t hear from him.

  After he had gone, I tried to stop the sweat and the trembling.
I sat down and closed my eyes and breathed deeply.

  I should have been better prepared. What a fool I was, not to have thought my way through it all. Of course, people didn’t separate like that, not with that kind of suddenness, that abrupt and volcanic rupture. People didn’t just walk out of a five-year marriage and not return, not like that. Both the inspector and I knew that. I should have thought my way through the story more carefully, should have negotiated its twists and turns and sharp treacherous corners with more prudence, more care.

  But he couldn’t prove anything. Nobody could prove anything. Not unless they dug up the back garden. Max had packed and left. He’d walked out of the house. He’d driven his car away. Maybe he’d met with foul play after that. How would I know? I’d have no way of knowing. Anything could have happened. All I had to do was remember that I didn’t know anything, that I had no way of knowing anything.

  Only the day after I’d moved, there he was at my new front door.

  ‘Nice little place, ma’am,’ he said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘A bit different from your last home, though.’

  ‘Yes.’

  He stood there, gazing at me. He wasn’t going away.

  ‘Would you like to come in?’ I said.

  ‘I’m thinking I’d like five minutes of your time, ma’am. If that’s convenient.’

  ‘It’s not.’

  He grinned. Ponderously he came in. We sat on the new furniture (flowered Sanderson linen) in the living room. The cream leather suite had no chance of fitting into this house, and I’d sold it to the new owners of Rain, so it would stay where it belonged. I’d chosen the Sanderson because it was so unlike anything at Rain: time for something completely different, I’d thought.

  ‘A different style of place altogether,’ he observed.

  ‘Yes.’

  He shifted, looked at his fingers. ‘The fact is, ma’am, I don’t know how to raise this matter with you.’

  I tried to give him a look that was stony without being overtly hostile. Neutral, I thought. Be neutral.

  ‘What’s it connected with?’ I asked.

  ‘Well. It’s connected with your marriage.’

  ‘My marriage?’

  ‘Your marriage to Mr Knight.’

  ‘In what way, connected?’

  ‘Well, when did you marry Mr Knight, ma’am?’

  I gave him the date.

  ‘And where?’

  On the beach, I told him. ‘Down Point Leo way.’

  ‘I see. And you’d have the certificate?’

  ‘Of course I do.’

  ‘Would you be able to lay your hand on it?’

  I wondered where the hell I’d put it.

  ‘If I was still in Rain — in my old house — I’d know where it was. I’m not sure, here. I’ve only just moved; you know that.’ I gestured around the room at the cardboard cartons, the piles of books, the mess. ‘Honestly, I don’t know if I can find it. It’s here somewhere. It’ll take me a while to get everything sorted out.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘Why do you want to see it? What’s it going to prove?’

  ‘Ma’am,’ said Inspector Pritchard, ‘since you’ve broken up and all, and since you don’t expect to hear from Mr Knight again, perhaps this won’t matter to you. But it does seem to us as if no legal wedding ceremony took place.’

  ‘No legal ceremony? But I’ve got the proof. I’ve got the photographs; I’ve got the certificate.’

  ‘It seems as if the ceremony may not have been all you thought it.’

  I couldn’t understand what he was talking about. ‘Look, I was there; I was the damn bride. What on earth do you mean, it may not have been all I thought it? I thought it was a wedding. It was a wedding.’

  So he explained it to me.

  Maximilian Knight, he said, had a wife in the US and another in Perth. He had married the wife in the US under another name (Pritchard didn’t say what) some twenty years ago. He hadn’t divorced her. He’d come back to Australia, about twelve years ago, and he’d married the wife in Perth. He’d been Martin Ritter then. She’d been Mrs Martin Ritter. (For reasons I would find it impossible to explain, I was obscurely grateful that she hadn’t been Mrs Max Knight.) He hadn’t divorced her, either. Not that you could divorce someone when you weren’t legally married to her, of course.

  ‘You’ll have to tell me again,’ I said. ‘I’m not taking any of this in.’

  ‘You don’t look well, ma’am,’ he said. I think he was really concerned. It was small wonder if I’d gone grey. I felt nauseous. I needed a drink, but I didn’t want to have one while he was there.

  He told me again. It didn’t sound any better the second time around.

  ‘It can’t be true,’ I said. ‘It can’t be true. Why should I believe you? How do you know all of this?’

  He explained that, too. They’d been looking into Mr Knight. They hadn’t been entirely satisfied about some of the activities Mr Knight had engaged in. There were questions, for instance, about Mr Knight’s bank accounts, about his travel. There were questions about Mr Knight’s name, about his history, about his intentions. Questions hung thickly all around Mr Knight.

  ‘Two wives. Two previous wives. You must be mistaken. You must be mistaken. He told me he was married once. But she died. She died of cancer.’

  He wasn’t willing to admit any mistake.

  ‘Were there children?’

  He wasn’t sure.

  I went to the carton that contained photographs. I was after the photograph of our wedding, the sunset, the beach, the deep mellow light, the photograph beside which Max had stood when I killed him. I found it at the bottom and drew it out. I hadn’t been going to display it.

  ‘Look,’ I said. ‘Look. This is when we got married.’

  Seriously, soberly, he examined it.

  ‘It’s a wedding, isn’t it? See?’

  ‘I can see that it looks like a wedding, ma’am. I don’t dispute that. I don’t dispute that the event took place. I’m only saying, it wasn’t legal.’

  ‘But I have the certificate. There was a celebrant.’

  ‘What was his name?’

  ‘It was a her, a woman. I’ve got a photo of her somewhere, too. Everything was signed, witnessed.’

  ‘I’m sure it was. But what I’m saying, ma’am, is that the ceremony wasn’t legal. It was a con job, I’m afraid.’

  ‘A con job?’

  ‘You don’t have to take my word for it. Go to the registry office. Births, deaths and marriages. It’s in Collins Street, in the city. You go down there and you ask for a copy of the marriage certificate. They won’t have it.’

  ‘But why?’ I asked, stricken. ‘Why? It makes no sense. Why should he go through a charade like that?’

  I think I’d forgotten at this stage that Pritchard was a policeman, that he was lined up on the enemy front.

  ‘He couldn’t marry you. He already had a wife. He already had two wives.’

  ‘But he could have divorced them. He must have divorced them.’

  ‘I imagine the difficulties related to his name.’

  ‘His name?’

  ‘Ma’am,’ said Pritchard in a burst of what seemed very like true candour. ‘You have to understand, that wasn’t Mr Knight’s real name, Maximilian Knight.’

  ‘It was on his driver’s licence,’ I said, as if that proved something.

  ‘Forged.’

  ‘It didn’t look forged.’

  ‘Good forgeries don’t look forged, that’s the thing about them. Or maybe the papers he used for it were forged. See, for a long time we were interested in the activities of Martin Ritter. We were asked by our colleagues in the US to look into Mr Ritter. Mr Ritter was hard to
track. And then, when we did find him, suddenly he wasn’t around. Gone. Disappeared. Phut. So we had to start all over again. It took us quite some time to work out that Mr Ritter and Mr Knight were the same person. Then there was Malcolm Baron.’

  ‘Baron?’ I was reeling.

  ‘Yes. Malcolm Baron.’ He eyed me. ‘So you knew about Martin Ritter, but not about Malcolm Baron?’

  ‘I found an envelope,’ I said, slowly. ‘I found an envelope addressed to Martin Ritter. It didn’t make sense. But, no, I’ve never heard of Malcolm Baron.’

  I wondered briefly if I should mention Matthew Templar, but decided against it.

  ‘Do you still have that envelope, ma’am?’

  ‘No.’ That was true, in fact. I’d burnt it. I’d burnt the pictures of May and Susie, Kylie and Lindy Lou.

  ‘What was in the envelope?’ he asked.

  They talk about people watching like a hawk. Inspector Pritchard’s eye’s were entirely hawklike. Hooded, sharp, bright. Quite at odds with his fubsy and unremarkable face.

  ‘Nothing,’ I said. And then, seized with a curiosity so sharp it bit into me, I asked: ‘What was his real name? Do you know?’

  Pritchard shrugged. ‘We don’t know. I’m almost inclined to say Mr Knight himself didn’t know. There have been so many, you see.’

  ‘What did he do?’

  ‘You mean, what crimes did he commit? You don’t know?’

  ‘How could I know? There was always plenty of money. Heaps of money.’

  ‘I imagine there was,’ he said, dryly.

  ‘He told me — well, I told you what he told me. Consultancies, investment, properties. But you’re saying there were illegal activities.’

  ‘We don’t know the full extent. We suspect him of involvement in a number of illegal activities.’

  ‘Yes, but what sort of illegal activities? Are you saying he was a criminal? Is a criminal?’

  ‘I was hoping you could tell me some of those activities yourself, ma’am.’

  ‘Did he do drugs?’ I ask, baldly.

  Pritchard’s eyes never left my face. ‘We don’t think he did drugs himself, ma’am. We think he may have sold them, though: yes. Not a user. A dealer.’

  He would give me no more information. Well, I had enough to cope with, I suppose. Before he left, looking at me narrowly, he said: ‘I didn’t expect you to be so distressed, Ms Weaving.’