by Peter Corris
‘I get the idea. I’ll start as soon as I get cleaned up. I’ll put my numbers on the fax. Ring me anytime, especially if you hear from him. I hope you will.’
‘Okay,’ Wesley said, but the gloom was settling back on him.
‘Look, Wes, is there anything you haven’t told me? Any trouble he might have been in?’
He shook his head. ‘That’s part of the problem. I’ve been thinking about that, thinking back. But he never put a foot wrong. No joy-riding, pot-smoking, getting pissed. He doesn’t drink or smoke. There’s nothing, nothing at all.’
I patted him on the shoulder and headed off, but what he’d said worried me. I don’t believe in paragons of virtue.
I drove home, cleaned up, went to the office and sent the fax. I tidied up a few loose ends and set off for Helensburgh. Not being a skier, I don’t think winter shows off any place to advantage, and it’s certainly not the best time to visit Helensburgh. The town, a mining and logging centre that also services some farms and orchards in the area, sits in the hills to the north of the Illawarra escarpment. In fine weather it might look picturesque from certain angles although it’s basically just a well-treed suburb, but as I drove in it seemed to be huddled down under a thin mist as if getting ready to be rained on.
I located Hillcrest Street and drove slowly along it looking for the right number. The street could have crested a hill once, but the spread of houses, a couple of blocks of units, the bitumen, cement kerbing and guttering and lines of lampposts along the major streets had obliterated the original topography. A few residents had left decent sized gum trees and wattles on their blocks, but most had embraced the shrub, the hedge, the lawn and the flower bed.
Clinton Scott’s house was a standard post-World War II fibro box with an iron roof, skimpy front porch and small windows. The slight lurch to the left of the whole structure suggested decayed stumps; the broken-down fence and overgrown garden shrieked cheap rent. I parked and walked through a gate wide enough to admit a car. It was held open by a brick. Tyre tracks showed where a car or cars had been parked but there weren’t any in evidence. The front yard was scruffy, although efforts had been made. At a guess, the grass had been cut roughly with a hand mower fairly recently and some of the more aggressive weeds and thistles had been pulled up and put in a heap.
The mist was thickening towards rain as I walked up the gravel path to the front of the house. I knocked, got no response and tried the door. It opened and I went in, making as much noise as I could. There was a threadbare carpet runner down the passage on top of linoleum. It was a lino kind of house. A bedroom off each side of the passage; a kitchen-cum-sitting room after that with a bathroom and toilet off to one side. The back porch ran the width of the house and had been built in with masonite lining and louvre windows. Everything was very basic—the plumbing, the two-bar radiators, the small television, the portable CD player—but the place was clean and tidy. A few cups, plates and dishes had been washed and stacked in a plastic rack to dry; a pedal bin in the kitchen was lined with newspaper and there were two spare rolls in the toilet.
It was easy to tell which bedroom was Clinton’s—golf clubs, a squash racket, battered size 12 Reeboks. The books on the shelves were about anatomy, pharmacology and physiology as well as sporting biographies, a few paperback novels and a history of Australian football. A poster on the back of his door showed a huge man in a red and white jersey flying high over a pack of other players to catch a football. It was signed in thick Texta colour ‘Best wishes, Clint—Plugger’. Like Wesley, I didn’t understand Aussie Rules, but you couldn’t live in Sydney in the last few years without hearing about Tony Lockett.
I turned the room over thoroughly and became convinced that Clinton had either left voluntarily—no wallet, some empty clothes hangers, no socks or underwear, a docket for a new pair of sneakers but no sign of them, no carryall—or someone had tried very hard to make it look that way. The room was tidy, but not unnaturally so. His university notes, neatly enclosed in labelled folders, were on the small table that served as his study desk. I flicked through them but it was all gibberish to me. There were three essays in a drawer, one for each of his subjects. He’d got two A–s and a B+. Academic failure wasn’t his problem. Not much in that to reassure Wesley.
I searched all the obvious hiding places, tapped for loose floorboards, found nothing. The bathroom, clean like the kitchen, was minimally equipped on first inspection—one of everything only. A closer look showed that a few things like goanna oil, tinea cream and elastic bandages had been tucked away in a cupboard. At a guess, the other kid in the house had done that. The cabinet that held the mirror had been moved up thirty centimetres from its original position. I remembered that Clinton was almost as tall as his father. The old holes had been neatly filled and painted over. Good kid.
‘Where the hell are you, Clinton?’ I said out loud.
I left the bathroom and was about to go into the other bedroom when I heard a noise outside. A car pulling up. I went into Clinton’s room and looked through the window. A light blue Holden Commodore pulled up beside the house, windscreen wipers working against the heavy rain. A tall, thin young man got out, deposited a couple of plastic shopping bags on the ground, and strode quickly back to the gate. He kicked the brick aside and closed it. He wore jeans, a bomber jacket and boots. His black hair was long and lank and he flicked it back with a toss of his head as he headed for the porch.
He opened the door and I stepped out into the passage. He dropped one of the bags and I heard glass break.
‘What . . . who’re you?’
I moved forward. ‘More to the point, what’re you doing driving around in Clinton Scott’s car?’
For a young person who’d had a considerable shock he showed a good deal of poise. He took a step and lowered the other bag to the floor before closing the door behind him. He stared at me and flicked back the hair again to get a better look. I did my best not to look threatening and he evidently decided that he wasn’t in danger from me because the stiffness went out of him.
‘I can explain that,’ he said. ‘Can you explain what you’re doing here?’
I admired his cool. I moved to one side. ‘That’s a fair enough question. Let’s go and sit down and talk. I could do with a cup of coffee.’
He didn’t look pleased but he nodded and lifted the bags gingerly. We went through to the kitchen and he put the shopping on the table. He lifted out the contents, tinned food mostly, and groaned when a can of baked beans came out covered in dripping thick red fluid. ‘Shit, the tomato sauce’s busted.’
‘Sorry,’ I said. I opened out the other bag and freed two bottles of cheap red wine. ‘Better that than the plonk.’
He grinned. ‘Yeah. You’re right. Hang on, I’ll just clean this up a bit and put the kettle on.’ He shrugged off his jacket and put it neatly on the back of a chair. He went about the business of wiping the tomato sauce off tins and packets and stowing them calmly and efficiently in a cupboard. I sat and watched him, thinking how unusual this was. When you enter a house illegally and surprise the occupant you don’t normally encounter a polite and competent young person who makes you feel rather clumsy. He filled an electric kettle, plugged it in and spooned instant coffee into two mugs. He got milk from the fridge and set it beside the mugs.
‘Sugar?’
‘No,’ I said, almost rudely. Unusual circumstances are all very well, but I didn’t want this to turn into a tea party. I opened my notebook and looked at the notes I’d taken on what Wesley had told me. ‘You’re Noel Kidman, is that right?’
That startled him. ‘I thought you were a friend of Clint’s or something, not a policeman.’
‘You were right the first time.’
The jug boiled. He made the coffee and brought it to the table. He sat down and fussily rearranged his jacket on the chair. ‘Clint hasn’t paid any rent for four weeks. I’ve had to pay the last two lots myself. It’s been hard. I felt justified in using his c
ar to save on fares. And I suppose because I’m pissed off with him.’
‘Okay.’ I passed one of my cards across the table and took a sip of the coffee. ‘I’ve been hired by Clinton’s father to find him. This is the obvious starting place. Have the police talked to you?’
‘No. There was a cop car here yesterday when I was coming home but I waited until it went away.’
‘Why?’
‘I don’t trust the police.’
‘I see. I understand you saw Mr Scott a couple of days ago?’
‘That’s right. He was very aggressive.’
‘He’s upset.’
He drank some coffee. ‘Well, so am I bloody upset. I’m in my final year. I’ve only got three units to get but they’re bloody hard. Plus I’m doing two part-time jobs. It’s tough. The rent here’s cheap and I can’t afford to move, but I can’t afford to pay it all myself. I’ll have to get someone else in and that’s not easy at this time of year. Clinton’s left me in the fucking lurch.’
‘I sympathise,’ I said. ‘But he’s missing. It’s not just that he’s pissed off somewhere. Something might have happened to him. Doesn’t that affect how you feel?’
It was clear from the defiant way he looked and drank more coffee that it did, but he wasn’t going to admit it. ‘Shit, what could happen to him? He’s as tough as they come, super fit. The Black Prince, that’s what they call him. He’s on top of everything. Well, he was . . .’
‘Okay, Noel, now we’re getting to it. He was on top of everything until when?’
He rubbed his chin where dark bristles were beginning to show through the pale skin. He was thinner than he should have been and his eyes showed tiredness and strain. ‘All right, about a month ago he went into a bit of a spin. I thought it was about this girl he had . . .’
‘You didn’t mention a girl to his father.’
‘I was scared of him. I thought he was going to take the place apart. I said as little as I possibly could.’
I nodded. I could imagine an upset Wesley being very frightening. ‘A girl.’
‘Yeah, well, Clinton seemed dead keen on her, then she was out of the picture. I’ve known him for a couple of years and he’s had more girls than I’ve had hot dinners. I thought he’d get over it but he didn’t seem to. He got moody and that. He stopped going to football and basketball training, or turned up late. He got sloppy around the house and hard to get on with. He was like a different person.’
‘What was her name?’
‘Don’t know.’
‘Come on, he must’ve called her something. What about when they talked on the phone?’
He rubbed at the stubble. ‘I suppose so, but I can’t remember. It didn’t go on for that long, only a couple of weeks, and I never met her. He never brought her here the way he did the others. All I know is she was at the uni and she played basketball. That’s how he met her. I suppose I should have been more sympathetic when he told me, but I’ve got my own worries, what with the essays and trying to work and get enough fucking sleep to be able to think straight . . .’
‘When he told you what?’
‘That she was dead.’
3
Noel Kidman was studying computer science and had a job lined up with a company setting up websites for businesses. It was a big opportunity in a competitive field and he needed his degree to clinch it. The need dominated his thinking and blunted his human responses. We talked some more over the coffee and he admitted as much and felt guilty about it. He was bright but under a lot of pressure and Clinton’s defection threatened to be a last straw. With absolutely no authority to do so, I told him to continue to use the car and that I’d get Clinton’s father to pay the back rent and pay for at least the next month.
‘D’you mean that?’ He looked as if a sack of cement had just been lifted off his shoulders.
‘Sure. And you phone me if you remember anything that might be helpful.’
He fingered my card. ‘I will. Shit, d’you really think . . . I mean, foul play?’
‘I always think foul play in my game,’ I said. ‘That way I get a pleasant surprise every once in a while.’
‘That sounds depressing.’
‘It has its moments. What’s the phone number here?’
‘It’s disconnected. I mean, it stopped working and I can’t afford to pay for it anyway.’
‘Since when?’
He thought about it. ‘Since just after Clint’s Dad rang.’
All that gave me something to chew on but it didn’t taste good. On the drive to Campbelltown where the main campus of the university was located, I tried to remember what Clinton had been like. Not much stuck in my mind apart from his athleticism and patience with someone in an early stage of decay. Wesley had said the boy had never given him much trouble and certainly hadn’t hinted at mental instability. There was nothing in his background or lifestyle to suggest that. Still, there was the business of his multiple girlfriends, then a serious if somewhat mysterious relationship ending on the woman’s death. Worrying.
I forced myself to stop thinking about the matter while I negotiated the unfamiliar roads in the rain being driven by a gusty wind. One minute the wipers were working overtime, the next it was only a drizzle, then it became fierce again. Difficult conditions and all the other drivers were taking it slow. It was going to be late on a bad afternoon when I arrived—not the best time to be asking questions about a young woman who’d recently died. But there’s no good time for something like that.
I’m not often in Campbelltown, which tends to be serviced for my line of work from Parramatta, and I’d never been to the Southwestern University. The campus was a kilometre from the centre of the town, a collection of low-rise, cement block buildings scattered over what had probably once been orchards or market gardens. I found the campus map, located the sports centre and parked in the visitors’ area. In a small set-up like this, it wasn’t so far from the sports centre. In the bigger universities it either doesn’t exist or is a bus ride from the action. I was wearing jeans and a leather jacket. I exchanged the jacket for a hooded parka and ran through the rain to where the lights had been turned on against the late afternoon gloom.
The building was warm and bright, very welcome after the nastiness outside. An impossibly healthy looking woman wearing a tracksuit with the name Kathy printed on the top was dealing with business at the reception desk. I shook water from my parka, taking care that it fell outside the door, made sure my shirt was tucked in and approached the desk. I could hear squash being played somewhere, an aerobics instructor screaming her directions and the unmistakable sound of basketball players pounding the boards. The average age of everyone in the place was probably twenty-one, but hell, I was bench-pressing quite a few kilos myself these days.
‘Can I help you, sir?’ Kathy said.
‘Hello. Do you know a young man named Clinton Scott?’
‘Clint, yes. He plays basketball for . . .’
I held up my PEA licence. ‘He’s missing. Has been for some time. I’ve been hired by his father to find him.’
‘Missing. Gee, I don’t know. Yes, I guess I haven’t seen him here for a while but I thought he might be injured or something. That happens all the time and they go off for physio and rehab and that. Missing, what . . .?’
‘There could be explanations, all sorts of explanations. But I’ve been told that he had a girlfriend who also played basketball and that she died. Do you know anything about that?’
She shook her head. ‘No. I haven’t heard anything like that. Who was she?’
‘I don’t know the name.’ The thought struck me then that Clinton might not have been telling the truth to Noel and that this might be a dead end. ‘I play soccer,’ Kathy said. ‘I don’t know much about the basketballers, the women that is. You should talk to Tanya. She’s the basketball coach. She’d know.’
‘Tanya?’
‘Tanya Martyn. With a “y”. She coaches basketball, hockey, and track
and field. I think she’s here tonight.’ She consulted a chart on the wall. Her own name was slotted into a board showing who was on duty at the desk—Katharine Simpson.
‘Yeah, she should be finishing up with the hockey people in twenty minutes. I can send her a message that you want to see her if you like.’
‘Please.’ I handed her a card and she tapped away on a keyboard. She made to return the card but I told her to keep it and to mention my enquiry to anyone she thought might be able to help. My guess was that this was the listening post for the sporting fraternity of the campus, and that there would be no better broadcaster than Kathy Simpson.
‘Mr Hardy is it?’
I’d wandered off to watch a squash game from above the court. I’ve never enjoyed squash but I admire the stamina of the players. I spun around to see a tall, dark woman in a blue tracksuit examining me. She had a clipboard in her hand and gave the impression that she was going to give me marks for cleanliness and posture.
‘Ms Martyn. Yes, I’m Hardy. I wonder if I can have a few words with you. Has Kathy told you about my enquiry?’
She drew nearer and dropped the clipboard onto a chair. She had short hair, fine features and a light film of sweat on her face. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘But you’ve got things screwed up.’
‘How’s that?’
‘I’m sitting down. I’m beat.’
We sat in the chairs with our backs to where the pair below where beating hell out of the little black ball.
‘I suppose you look like a private eye. Big enough. Tough. Could I see some ID and something to prove you’re doing what you say you are?’
I showed her my licence and hesitated, then I remembered Wesley Scott’s note. I hadn’t had to show it to Noel Kidman. I showed it to Tanya Martyn.
She took a slim glasses case out of her pants pocket, put on the half-glasses and read the note. She was in her thirties, I guessed, young to need reading glasses, but you can never tell when things are going to break down. She took the glasses off and put them away. ‘Okay. Looks kosher.’