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Who was Hope O'Lachlin? Or more appropriately, why was her birth certificate here? Who was in the Brisbane flat? I could find that out.
The goat nuzzled me. I did not have time to stay around there. I went back up the stairway to get the key, ignored the papers and mess, and, locked the place. I hung the key from a nail in the laundry. I found the goat feed and gave them heaps, leaving them near the house and vegetable garden. I pulled a trough under the overflow of the tank and filled it up with a hose.
As I got in my car and drove away I had the silly thought of the goats leaping inside that half-finished dairy house and eating all those papers I had left as I found them. I wondered if they, like dogs, sensed ghosts and other spirits, well, I felt decidedly spooked. I needed information on electronic banking, and I knew where to go to get it.
The actual chaos I found at Featherstone's half-finished mansion-in-the-mind's-eye was yucky internal muddle surfacing in profligate abandon: a physical depiction of 'I don't care about the consequences I want something now', or, just horrible carelessness with someone else's stuff. My gut feeling was that the ransacking had been occasioned by my investigation. Money is a sore spot with most people. Number two feeling was that whatever was searched for was found and the state of the place was mere mess-making. Used cheque books. Cheque stubs. Whoever it was did not want me justifying cheque stubs with bank statements. If Jill wanted Meghan's money, she had only to take it out of the card account. I gathered that Megs would give darling Jill anything she wanted.
Alison sits at Neil Waughan's computer trying to tat the strings of her fraying personality into a doily, into one viable piece. A circle of perfection. The face of the screen changes with the alacrity of her forefinger and the click of the darting mouse; web pages dissolving and building images. Her seeking ship docks in one of the harbours of her brain as if her quest is Homeric. Then she is hunting down the back lanes and alleys of a virtual city. To her side on his workstation is the cryptic crossword at which, every now and then, she glances. Or stops to handwrite a word. Puzzles relax Alison, release the pressure valve in her brain. A lump of guilt in her guts prevents her eating. The relationship is too intense, too karmic. Maria's loyalties? An old aunt had said to Alison as a zany, brilliant teenager, 'If I had the courage, girl, I would scar your face with a carving knife, to save yourself and others from tragedy'; the double barb, it had happened already, dissociation from the shame. All these strings, her beauty, her destiny, she tries to knot and separate; Medea, Helen and Cassandra she has been; now she is an impoverished, dysfunctional single mother on a pension with one job, cleaner.
'Does the cycle never end? Things happen around me, people dying. Because I wish it. And I see them before they do. I do not wish her dead, yet I wish for my own exorcism. Demons overtake me like succubae. There are my blackouts.'
Suddenly her eyes hook onto the information on the monitor. To avoid the pressure banging on her brain, she has been searching Neil's favourite websites to solve an enigma. Now she is looking at what she knows to be a major clue: www.Whymen, Hebefilia International, Sail to the galaxy, boys, on our yacht. Boys who love nature, boys who love sport, adventure, ecstasy, pics and places! The pornography paths through the Internet, she interprets as a teenage boy thing, a geek's adventure into cybersex. Boy-lovers' societies. Okay, lads have egos and like to be called beautiful. Galaxy is highlighted. She clicks on it. This is beyond libertarian porn. Trips like you wouldn't believe, kid! All free, all we want is your body, for a heavenly moment. Using Neil's cybernym, she joins the chat. This is tacky, rings false, she mutters. The tatting of purpose falls into place. The Argo is rigged and ready. She takes command of the fleet with a thousand oars.
Soft porn slime won't get Lenny, Alison determines. These guys claim they are not interested in prepubescent boys, but mid-adolescence, where a child turns into youth. Beauty, love and truth, as classic as ancient Greece. Smooth as lines of snot. And wealthy. She has a link. The date coincides. This is Neil's computer and his cyberfriends would push him places whether or not he wanted to go. Do the boys hate what the older men love? Something doesn't gel though. She looks at the cryptic and sees that she had written the wrong part of speech, 'tion ending, instead of 'ting. The Neil puzzle is flashing the same amber light. Caution.
She is interrupted by the pink palm of a black body. 'You owe me sister-girl.'
Alison pulls fifty dollars out of the pocket of her blue uniform, and smiles at her friend's face. 'Thanks Iris.'
'No worries. What's this shit you're reading, sister-girl?' demands Lenny's auntie.
'You got it, shit,' Alison responds, working fast. 'Have you noticed any fancy yacht berthed down on the pier, or anywhere along the river in the past couple of weeks?' she asks, not moving her eyes from the computer.
For some reason, the Aboriginal woman does not answer, but asks, 'Do you want me to pick up Lenny or what?'
'Iris? Answer me.' Alison turns around.
'Oh, they are probably just fishermen, you know, rich buggers after marlin and fame.' Iris stands with her arms folded beneath her breasts, speaking as if there is so much she has noticed over the years that white people don't see that she could just fish out any observation and it would do as well in answer to the question.
'Who? What? Who? Yes, I do want you to pick up Lenny and can he stay overnight? Listen here's another twenty bucks for pizza. Tell me where it is.' Alison pleads.
Iris shrugs. 'What about Tilly?'
'She's okay. She's with some friends.' Alison wants to shake the information out of the nonchalant woman. 'Where is the yacht?'
Iris grins. And explains, 'You have to go by boat, too muddy to walk, the mangroves are thick there. Behind the oyster leases. That's what makes it funny, sticks out like a sore thumb, but I suppose they can pick up anchor and motor off anywhere anytime. To Tahiti, perhaps.'
'Perhaps. What does it look like?' Alison has to interrupt her own interpretation of Iris' expression; she has the odd impression that Iris dreams of travel.
'Well,' Iris fills her in, 'it's like a three-storey speed-boat with two bloody great outboards about 800 horsepower each, and it's prickling with aerials and rods. It's a flash motorcruiser all right. A bit like that one on the other side of the canal here, only bigger, I reckon.'
Alison, indeed, hadn't taken much notice of the surroundings of Penny Waughan's house, usually entertained more by mental visions than outside observations. Iris pulls her to the window which overlooks the brown canal. Opposite, moored to a private jetty, is a cabin cruiser, shining white and blue and looking brand new. 'Would you call it a yacht?' she asks.
Iris laughs with a gust of amusement. 'A yacht has sails, and a stick up the middle they call a mast, and the wind blows it along the sea. This one up the river could reach 30 knots out of pure diesel power, girl. Reckon it would cost more than a million dollars.'
Alison frowns. 'Well, are there any strange yachts about?'
Iris shakes her head, 'I don't know. The marina is like a closed shop, you know. Like a locked paddock full of racehorses, they can tell the difference between them. I don't know if any of them is strange. They pay money, they get a mooring. What we couldn't do with one of them, you know?'
Alison nods, 'Of course. Thanks for your help.' She goes back to the computer. The screen-saver is Bart Simpson who says, 'Yo Ninja!'
Iris, at the door, asks, 'You ever tell your boss that I do the work?'
'Hell no.' Alison picks up her fresh rubber gloves and sniffs them. It is a habit. 'And don't you!'
'Helps to be a white girl, don't it?' Lenny's auntie comments without bitterness.
'Don't it, just? It's not that, Iris, you can have all the money she pays me. I need this.' Alison slaps the keyboard. She covets Neil's IT equipment and plans to use it more.
'Nothing wrong with sharing.' Alison goes back to the dates and times, reaches for her crossword pen and scrabbles about for some paper. She writes them down. Then she refigures the
material on the computer and attaches it to an email to Chandra. When she shuts down she is desperate to see Maria; not to touch her; not to have sex with her; just to ground the sparking wires in her brain.
When I got to Chandra's I found her on the verandah flipping through a PC magazine. 'Can you believe this?' she said, as she gestured me to sit. 'There is a video game called Blind Pedestrians.'
'Heard of Carmageddon?' I asked, struck by how weird it was when something you have been thinking about comes up in someone else's conversation.
She answered, 'Yeah, you hard-shoulder your opponent and ram a competitor from behind as he corners and watch him flip over your head in a terrifying roll.'
'That's funny. I was just thinking about that.' I fished the paper out of my jeans pocket.
'They have a lot to answer for, these guys.' Chandra claimed mildly, belying the heat she probably felt about it. 'What's that?' she demanded abruptly.
'Nasty,' I said, and unfolded it. 'Nutters.' My confusion led to frustration, then to a quickening anger as she did not say anything, implying that she did not agree with my judgement. I told her where I found it.
Chandra said, 'Betrayal makes us vulnerable.' She who trusted felt betrayed and feeling betrayed, paralysed. 'Fuck Meghan.' She ignored me and went into her office and started manipulating the computer screen. I heard the dial tone of telephonic connection. Then, after a few rapid screen changes, a page of chat came up. Chandra typed, waited, typed, waited. I stood in the doorway.
'What all that about?' I asked.
Not responding straightaway, Chandra eventually confided, 'My enemy.'
'Mine,' I said, as I debated internally whether to show my hand, 'is on the tar and cement highway of life, in control of gasoline power and tonnes of weight, smelling in the fumes, perfume to himself. The muddy clouds of coal chimney fires look fine to him. I prefer to see and hear the foe I fear.'
'Wait,' she said.
I started to converse, but she interrupted with, 'Hang on, there is something I have to check on.'
I gazed out the window at Potsdam Harry, who was grazing between the white-painted tyres in the exercise yard. She opened her palms to the screen, 'This is truly weird.'
The sentences rolled up like the credits of a film. 'So?'
Chandra looked at me and shook her head, then said, 'Someone's playing with me.'
She began thrashing her keyboard rather hard I thought. No change, just a scroll, like the work of a fast typist monopolised the screen. The icon moved with Chandra's hand, but the click on the mouse wasn't having any effect. She pulled the switch on the whole thing, which I'd been advised was a big no-no. 'RSA cryptosystem, invented twenty-five years ago, was considered impregnable. Now it's no longer safe.'
'Have you cracked it?' I asked Chandra, the hacker.
She said, 'Time to make a move in a more serious direction.' She took a laptop from a brief-case and brought it to life on her knees, leaving the desktop computer without power. 'Let's see what the RAD method can do. That is,' she said for my benefit, 'rapid application development.'
'I knew that,' I muttered in the slang that meant I had no idea what she was talking about.
She went on. 'If I email myself, here,' Chandra clapped her desk, 'I'll discover whether I have been sent a defective, infected, message. Ah ha! Someone has just loaded my computer with crap. Virus attached. What is bizarre is, it does nothing. Except.'
She looked at me, doubtfully. I nodded, encouraging. 'What does that look like to you?'
'Dates and times?' I guessed, relatively alarmed by her mood. 'Can't you de-bug it?'
'Cross-tool. Easy if you know what you're doing,' Chandra leaned back, gazing warmly up at me. 'You utilise a file replication service. Works like a chain letter. Or an office distribution list. Oh, forget it.' She switched on the desktop terminal, found a program from a very long list and set what she called a defrag in motion, the computer arranging its pixels into neatly colour-coordinated squares. And wheeled herself out of her office. Chandra, apparently, plays by her own rules.
'What do you think of this?' I sought her opinion. 'Meghan's place has been ransacked. Gear everywhere.'
'Why were you at Meghan's?' Chandra seemed suddenly astonished, picking up the note I'd shown her.
'Doing my job.' I grinned. 'Have you any idea of what else Meghan owns?' I asked Chandra, meaning property. She shook a negative with a her handsome head.
'There is a huge hole I'm trying to get to the bottom of,' I explained, being as vague as vague. 'I like digging,' I admitted. Client confidentiality prevented me from dealing in nuts and bolts as regards my investigation.
'On-line banking, perhaps? Have you considered that, Margot?'
'Wouldn't that show up in credit card statements?'
'I suppose,' Chandra replied, still holding the handwritten chit. 'Meghan, and/or Jill, plainly know their way round the Internet.' She wiggled the pinfeed paper. 'Can I copy this? I'll give it back to you in a minute.' Chandra scooted back to her office. I followed. She fiddled with her electronic equipment. Scanner, fax. I didn't know. I wondered if Chandra was as rude to everybody else as she was to me.
Determined not to let her fob me off, I entered her home office and said, 'Tell me what's going on here.' I myself was struck by the tone of my voice.
She glanced at me sharply, narrowing her eyes. I saw trust and distrust of me slide across the surface of her irises like wind-driven clouds. 'Just a glitch.' The facsimile regurgitated the page and she thrust it at me. 'Nonsense.'
'How does the information get there, anyway?' I leant against the wall with my thumbs hitched in my front pockets.
'Three basic ways. You know computers "think" in noughts and ones? Well on the CD-ROMs they are read as pits and dashes by optical fibre. Read Only Memory. Then there is RAM, random access, which is built-in, electro-magnetic, and then there's electronic communication. Phone lines et cetera. Leaps and bounds are being made in wireless, completely wireless, communication. What's happening here is some kind of cross-over. Beggars reason.' A natural teacher, Chandra, I felt she said all that nervously, as a way to attract me or, perhaps, to divert me.