The Big Drop ch-7

by Peter Corris

  ‘Jeff, this is Cliff Hardy.’

  He was wearing two pieces of a three-piece suit and had loosened his tie. His thinning dark hair was expensively barbered and his shoes were highly polished. The cut of the pants and waistcoat kept him from looking portly, which he was. His grip was stronger than it needed to be and his palm was moist.

  ‘Hi. Drink?’

  ‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘Red wine?’

  ‘Coming up.’ He went to the corner of the room where there was a bar in vaguely Hawaiian mood-bamboo and wickerwork with two high, spindly-legged stools. Jessie sat down on the lounge and picked up a pink drink from the low table in front of it. Stevenson came back with a glass of red and a can of beer which he popped as he sat down next to his wife. He had a long swig and she took hold of his free hand. As I sat opposite them in the quiet house with my drink in my hand, I saw two things: he was younger than her by a good few years and that was one of her problems; the other problem she was confidently expecting me to solve.

  On the table was a folder that had my name written on it; it would be the memorabilia for sure. I took out a notebook and pen and placed them by the folder. I took a sip of the good red.

  ‘First, does either one of you have any theory, doesn’t matter how way out, about why she left?’

  They looked at each other and shook their heads. ‘She’s a normal, healthy, lovely girl,’ Stevenson said.’

  ‘We never had any trouble with her.’

  Jessie nodded and drank some of the pink mixture. ‘I’ve thought about it for hours. Nothing comes, nothing.’

  I touched the folder. ‘The photographs and such?’

  They nodded in unison and I opened the folder. The photographs ranged over about ten years, chronicling Portia from a gap-toothed kid to a tall, well-proportioned teenager. She had her mother’s features and figure which were good credentials. Her hair shone in the outdoors pictures and there was a sultriness to her when photographed indoors that suggested she knew what it was to be a focus of attention. I murmured ‘Very pretty’ which was probably less than was expected of me, and went on with the other documents. There were a couple of school reports-just this side of glowing; Portia is steady and reliable etc., and a postcard she’d sent from Brisbane. Jessie Stevenson watched me while I read the dutiful message.

  ‘She stayed with my sister,’ she said. ‘Just for a week.’

  I nodded. There was a typed list of names, six females and two males.

  ‘They’re her closest friends,’ Jeff Stevenson said. ‘The Police talked to them all.’ His wife let go of his hand and stroked his arm. He turned his face to her and gave her a stiff smile. She kept her hand on his arm. The telephone number of the school and the names of some teachers were typed on another sheet. There was a photostat copy of the missing persons report the Stevensons had given to the police. It was an official form, listing ages and occupations, and told me nothing new. I returned the things to the folder and closed it.

  ‘Did Portia keep a diary?’ I asked.

  The look they exchanged was uncertain; maybe they were swingers who feared that their daughter had chronicled the frolicking, but the way Jessie hung on to her husband’s arm suggested she was anything but a swinger.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘Why do you ask?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. I just thought with the name-Portia, and everything-and with Jeff being an ad man, there might be a literary leaning in the family. Diaries are useful…’

  ‘Portia was my mother’s name,’ Jessie said frigidly. Jeff was looking hostile, maybe he thought I’d maligned his profession by suggesting that it had anything to do with literature. I still liked the thought, though.

  ‘Are her school books here?’

  Jessie nodded.

  ‘May I see them?’

  ‘The policewoman had a good look,’ Stevenson growled.

  ‘Even so, I’d like a look if I may. And I’d like to see her room, please.’

  Stevenson gently shook off his wife’s hand. ‘That’s okay, of course, you’d want to do that. Drink up, Hardy. Jess’ll show you the room. If you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a couple of calls to make.’

  He got up slowly and drained his can. He wasn’t much over thirty but something was taking a toll of him-self-indulgence or business worries. There were strain lines in his fleshy face and his colour was too high. He moved rather slowly, like an ex-athlete who has stiffened up. I drank some more of the wine, put the glass on the floor, and followed Jessie back down the passageway.

  She pushed open the second door along and flicked the light on. The bedroom was scrupulously tidy, the way no seventeen-year-old could have kept it. The bed was made, the rug was straight, the books were lined up, the cassettes were stacked. The room was already beginning to feel like a mausoleum. I opened a wardrobe and looked at the solid bank of clothes, all neatly placed on hangers.

  ‘She didn’t take many clothes?’

  She shook her head. ‘She was wearing her…’ She choked on it.

  ‘School uniform, I know. Take it easy, Jessie, Let’s have a look here.’

  Portia had one of those student’s desks with a map of the world on it. A few text books were stacked on top of Europe and a pile of exercise books covered Australia. Jessie sank down on the bed and looked at me helplessly. ‘Is there any hope?’ she whispered.

  ‘Sure.’ I turned over the leaves of the books-domestic science; maths, social studies. They were neat and orderly. Another book had a clipping of Robert Redford pasted to the cover. On the first leaf ‘Personal Development’ was printed in bold letters. I showed it to Jessie.

  ‘What’s that?’

  She shrugged. ‘I’ll just go and see if Jeff wants anything.’ She started to get up but I waved her down.

  ‘Hang on, won’t be long.’ I turned over the pages; there were poems and essays and questionnaires-all bland and almost impersonal. No outpourings of the heart here. Near the end of the filled-in pages there were marks on the back of one leaf. The scribble was in a different ink from the writing on the other side. I looked at it for a minute; Jessie looked too.

  ‘Oh,’ she said uninterestedly, ‘I saw that. It’s from a carbon paper put in the wrong way.’

  ‘No, it isn’t. Is Portia a left-hander, like you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Some left-handers can do mirror-writing automatically, without thinking. Can you?’

  ‘I used to be able to, when I was a kid. I wouldn’t have tried to in twenty-five… a long time.’

  I took the page over to the dressing table and looked at the image in the mirror. In an irregular hand, quite different from the rest of the writing in the book, was written: ‘A woman at last! It was wonderful! I knew it would be. We both want more and more.’

  Jessie stood beside me and stared at the mirror. Her shriek bounced off the walls. ‘No! Oh God, no!’

  Heavy footsteps shook the floor and Jeff Stevenson flung himself into the room; beer slopped from another can in his hand.

  ‘What the hell…’

  Jessie leapt for him and clung. She buried her head in his shirt front and sobbed. Stevenson bullocked across the room, carrying her with him. He stared at the mirror and then at me. His high colour flamed even higher.

  ‘Jesus, Jesus, what… what does it mean?’

  ‘I’d say it means she’s got a boyfriend,’ I said.

  ‘Sixteen…’ Jessie sobbed.

  ‘I thought she was seventeen,’ I said.

  ‘Only just.’ Stevenson patted his wife’s shoulder clumsily. I closed the book and put it back with the others.

  ‘Let’s go out and talk about it.’ I virtually had to shepherd them out of the room and to the back of the house. Stevenson remembered his beer can and I re-possessed my red wine. We all sat down again and drank-except Jessie, who gripped her husband’s knee.

  ‘It helps,’ I said. ‘It supplies a reason. It gives us something, someone-to look for. Somebody must know who he is-a friend, someone
in a coffee shop, a pub. Kids have got to go somewhere and there are people who know where they go. Cheer up.’

  ‘I can’t believe it,’ Jessie said. ‘I just can’t believe it.’

  ‘She is seventeen,’ Stevenson muttered.

  ‘But not to say a word. Not to bring him home, even. Oh, he must be so unsuitable.’

  She was upset and confused and her mixed feelings were showing all too clearly-snobbery was strongly present along with the protectiveness and hurt.

  I wrote the message in the exercise book in my notebook, working from memory. I tapped the contents of the folder into neatness. The Stevensons watched me.

  ‘Now, does this give you any clues? Anything come to mind? Something you mightn’t have thought of before?’

  They shook their heads. I put the notebook away. ‘Okay, I’ll take it from here. Sorry, but I’ll have to ask you for a retainer and some sort of letter of authority.’

  Stevenson pulled down his waistcoat and sucked in his gut. ‘Yes, of course. I’ll fix it up. Ah, Jess, I could go a cup of coffee; you, Hardy?’

  ‘No thanks.’

  ‘I’ll make some fresh, dear.’ Jessie jumped up and headed towards a door behind the bar. Stevenson found his suit jacket hanging on a chair, dug into the breast pocket and pulled out a cheque book.

  ‘Umm, Hardy, now you come to mention it, I think I do know something that might help. Five hundred do you for now?’

  I nodded. He spread the cheque book on the bar and wrote.

  ‘I’ll get my secretary to knock up an authority. Put it in the post tomorrow. That do you?’

  I nodded again and waited for whatever it was he was wanted to tell me. He ripped out the slip and handed it to me.

  ‘Hardy, I… ah… didn’t know what to make of this. I only heard it today and it didn’t make any sense. But in view of what you found in that notebook… I didn’t want to say anything in front of Jess.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘Well, I put all sorts of feelers out, of course. People on the road come into the agency, you know. I’ve told them about our trouble. And this guy, he travels about a bit. He said he’d seen a girl who looked a bit like Portia over at a truck depot in Ryde. I don’t know, it’s probably nothing. But you know, the trucks go interstate from there

  ‘What’s the name of the place?’

  He told me and I said I’d take a look there as well as re check with the girl’s friends and teachers and do a thorough local snoop. I said I’d be in touch as soon as I needed anything.

  ‘Or when you need more money,’ he said.

  ‘Yeah, well it would come to that if there’s an interstate angle.’

  ‘Interstate?’ Jessie Stevenson came back into the room carrying a tray with a coffee pot, cups and sweet biscuits. Jeff’s waistline was in for another hammering. ‘What about interstate?’

  ‘Nothing, love. Just talking. Goodnight, Hardy. I’ll show you out.’

  I nodded to Jessie’s brave smile and followed him up the passage. Another too-strong handshake, and I was out in the cool evening air.

  I drove to the trucking yard in Ryde, taking the long way home. The place was dark and quiet, and a fast food caravan was just closing down as I pulled up. The woman who ran the show was tired and impatient with my questions.

  ‘Early night,’ she said. ‘D’you mind?’

  ‘No. What about tomorrow?’

  ‘Big night, open late. Trucks in ‘n out till all hours.’

  ‘Save me a hamburger.’

  She grunted and slammed down the shutters.

  I did the rounds the next day; Castlecrag isn’t known for its low-life hang-outs, but I checked such places as seemed likely to be trysting points. No result. A check of the cab companies that do most of the area’s business drew the same blank. I thought I should wait for Stevenson’s letter of authority before tackling the school, but I phoned the homes of the kids on the list of Portia’s friends and found one of them home with the flu. Her mother permitted me ten minutes with the kid after checking with Jessie.

  The house was a sterile barn, too big for the woman and her two daughters who lived there. I gathered that Dad lived somewhere else. Tammy Martin’s bedroom was pretty much like Portia’s, except that she had more posters of younger guys-Michael Jackson, Christopher Atkins and the like. She sat up in bed with a glow of fever in her young cheeks and asked to see my gun.

  ‘I don’t carry a gun when I’m looking for a seventeen-year-old girl,’ I said.

  ‘You never know.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘Nothin’. Just dialogue.’

  She was bright and wanted to be helpful; she missed Portia and she phoo-phooed the idea that she had a boyfriend.

  ‘I’d have known,’ she said. ‘We were like that.’ She placed her index and second finger together, but she was wrong. I thanked her, said I hoped she’d get well soon, and left.

  It was late afternoon when I got back to the trucking yard. The woman at the fast food bar looked tired already; she nodded sceptically at me when I waved to her. The yard was a big, flat expanse flanked by sheds like small aircraft hangars; a few prime movers and loaded semitrailers stood casting ungainly shadows across the asphalt. A group of drivers leaned on a stack of wooden pallets; they yarned and smoked and looked incuriously at me as I walked across to the office, wedged between two high, wide loading bays. Before I reached the building, one of the drivers detached himself and strolled towards me.

  ‘Help you, mate?’

  I stopped. ‘Well, I wanted to see the boss, foreman or whatever.’ I could see a bespectacled man looking at us through a window in the office.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I wanted to talk to the drivers.’

  ‘You don’t need to ask permission for that, mate. We’re independents here. You want to talk, come on over and talk.’ He jerked his head at the office. ‘He’s nobody.’

  I followed him across to the pallets; there were four men there, all built big and wearing the dusty, greasy uniform of their calling. The man who had approached me simply joined the group and left me to sink or swim.

  ‘G’day,’ I said. ‘Wondering if one of you blokes could help me.’ I reached into my pocket and took out the most recent photograph of Portia-the one that showed her poised and confident in designer jeans, blouse and stylish jacket, standing in front of the Stevensons’ house. I held up the picture. ‘Seen her?’

  One of the men, not the biggest but not the smallest, made a sound like a blocked drain clearing. He spat and reached for the front of my coat. I dropped the photograph.

  ‘I’ve been waitin’ for youse to turn up.’ He pulled me close and swung a short, clubbing punch at my chin. I pulled free and back and made the punch miss. He swore and came at me again.

  ‘Easy,’ I said.

  ‘Go on, Kenny,’ one of the men urged, ‘have a go!’

  Kenny bustled forward and swung again. I took it on the shoulder and gave him a quick tap back. He ducked into it and was hit harder on the nose than I’d intended.

  ‘Fuck you!’ he roared. He came in again, swinging and lunging, and I gave ground until we were clear of the other men and I was sure of my footing. He squared up clumsily and I went under his lead and hammered his left side ribs. He almost overbalanced and I helped him down with a left hook under the ear. He sprawled on the dusty bitumen. The others moved threateningly but I pulled out my licence card and held it up.

  ‘Hold on,’ I said. ‘This is a misunderstanding. Don’t get excited.’

  They hesitated and I crouched down beside Kenny who’d twisted his leg on his descent. I showed him the card.

  ‘This is a legitimate investigation. What did you mean-about waiting for me?’

  Kenny did some swearing then looked across al, the office. ‘That four-eyed nong in there tried to I tribe me to say I’d seen the sheilah. Said someone’d be around askin’. I told him to get fucked and said I’d drop youse. You were a bit good,
but.’

  I took twenty dollars out of my wallet and put it on his chest. ‘A misunderstanding, mate. What’s his name?’

  ‘Polly Adams-there ‘e goes!’

  A small man wearing a dust coat that flapped behind him, ran from the office between the loading bays. I took off like a sprinter from the blocks after him. He had a lead but he was no runner. I gained with every stride and the flapping coat caught on the wire that straggled from the cyclone fence where he had to make a turn. The coat ripped, he slowed down and I got my hand on his shoulder and ran him into the fence, he bounced off it and I pinned him back and held him there. We panted in each other other’s face and I realised that I was crouching and holding him up on tip toe. I felt ashamed; he was about five foot three and weighed around eight stone. I let him down and took two fistfuls of the front of his dust coat.

  ‘Just one question,’ I said. ‘Who told you to get a driver to lie to me?’ I shook him and his head wobbled on his thin neck. His breath smelled of cigarettes-no wind.

  ‘Silly bugger,’ he gasped. ‘He just hadda say it might’ve been her. He’s off to the West in a coupla days. There was fifty bucks in it for him.’

  ‘Who was he?’

  ‘I dunno his name. Met him in the pub this morning. Well, I seen him there before once.’

  ‘Description.’

  ‘Big bloke, tall as you ‘n heavier. Lot heavier. Red face, flash suit. Looked like a cop. I reckon he could be a cop.’

  ‘Bullshit!’ I let him go and he stayed there with his back against the wire; with his eyes and mouth open in fright and his torn coat flapping he looked like a scarecrow. I walked back to the yard. Kenny was leaning against the pallets with a cigarette in his mouth.

  ‘You all right?’ I said.

  He nodded. I picked up the photograph and walked towards my car.

  Five hours later I was in the car and parked fifty yards from the Stevenson’s house in Cammeray. Jeff Stevenson came out, got into a light-blue Holden Statesman and drove away. I followed him. He drove fast but not very well and I had to cope with some ill-tempered drivers he created around him. He ploughed through to Lane Cove West and took a turn off the Epping Road down towards the river. The street was dark and quiet and the Statesman plunged down into a car park under a block of flats that hid behind high poplar trees discreetly illuminated from ground level.