The Coast Road ch-27

by Peter Corris

  My change of clothes amounted to jeans, a flannie, a T-shirt and a pair of sandals I’d picked up in New Caledonia the year before. There was still a nip in the air so I put the flannie on over the T-shirt until the day warmed up. Good south coast outfit. I paid my bill with my always stretched Amex card, and drove north to Wombarra. The next town up was Austinmer which has a long history as a beach holiday spot, and then Coledale and Wombarra, both mining towns in the old days, and now more or less dormitory suburbs for Sydney and Wollongong commuters.

  I keep a selection of directories for different areas- Wollongong, Newcastle, the Blue Mountains-in the car for out-of-town jobs. The address Dr Farmer had given me was for a road running parallel to the railway line and well above it. I took the steep turnoff at Coledale and made the climb with the old Falcon performing well. The escarpment seemed to loom just above the road although in fact it was still a good way back. House numbers were hard to spot. Some of the houses were weekenders. The owners didn’t get much mail here and didn’t bother to keep the numbers clear of bushes and trees. Eventually I worked out which was the Farmer block by a process of elimination.

  It was narrow-fronted and seemed to run back a long way in a sort of fan shape. The grass in front of the fence was overgrown and the wide gate leading to a track was padlocked. I got out of the car and shivered. Tall trees to the east blocked the sun and the area was clinging to its night-time chill. I exchanged the sandals for socks and sneakers and approached the gate. The land on the other side of the road looked unoccupied and the nearest neighbour was a hundred metres away to the right. The Farmer land was bounded to the north by a narrow street running down to the railway.

  I climbed the gate and walked down the driveway. The grass at the sides and in the middle had grown back aggressively, indicating that no vehicles had passed by recently. The track bent south. The place was giving off an air of neglect but that didn’t concern the healthy stand of trees fifty metres down. A horticultural ignoramus, even I could tell when flame trees and jacarandas have been deliberately planted and cared for. I passed through the red and purple display, pushing through spider webs, and saw where the house had been. Perfect spot. The land dropped away to the north-east and gaps in the trees gave a glimpse of the water in the near distance. What had been garden and lawn all around was a weed field, and only blackened stumps and a crumbling brick chimney remained of the house.

  I walked through the knee-high grass soaking the legs of my jeans, socks and sneakers. I spent some time as an insurance investigator many years ago and knew what to look for when arson was suspected, but you have to be on the spot while the embers are still warm to learn anything useful. This site had been rained on, windblown, shat on by birds, rooted through by animals. No trace of anything dodgy could remain. Still, you can learn something about the former occupants even from a ruin like this. Indications were that virtually no renovation had ever been done to what was originally a fairly large fibro cottage. The rooms were small, suggesting pre-World War II construction. The back verandah, which would have afforded a glimpse of the water, hadn’t been built in to provide extra living or sleeping space. The only signs of recent maintenance were the bits of guttering lying around. Thoroughly blackened, but no rust.

  Dr Farmer had said the house was heated by bar radiators, so evidently the combustion stove, blackened and rusty, still standing under the chimney, had been inoperative. Pity, nothing better than heating up the kitchen on a cold country morning by getting the stove going. I remembered holidays in Katoomba with friends of my parents and my city-dwelling father clumsily wielding the axe and hatchet to get the kindling and stove wood. Everything cooked was fried and tasted terrific…

  ‘What the hell d’you think you’re doing?’

  The voice came from a woman who’d approached from the south side without me hearing her. Too busy reminiscing. She was tall and slender in a heavy sweater, corduroy pants and gumboots. Her hair was dark with grey streaks glinting in the sunlight filtering through the tops of the trees. She carried the sort of stick I should have had for pushing away the cobwebs and she looked capable of using it for other purposes.

  ‘I’m working for Dr Elizabeth Farmer,’ I said.

  ‘Is that right? Can you prove it?’

  ‘Perhaps you should tell me why you’ve got the right to ask.’

  She picked her way sure-footedly through the charred ruins and stopped within a metre of me. ‘I live over behind this property. She…Elizabeth asked me to see if the orchard could be revived.’

  I reached into my wallet, took out Dr Farmer’s card and showed it to her. I said, ‘She didn’t mention you to me.’

  ‘Cards don’t prove anything.’

  ‘I’ve got a mobile in the car. You can ring her and check.’

  She looked at me closely. She had strong, symmetrical features, slightly weathered skin, capable-looking hands one side or the other of forty. We realised simultaneously that each was examining the other and we both saw the humour of it. Her grin brought a small network of lines and wrinkles in her face to life. ‘I suppose you could be telling the truth,’ she said. ‘What’re you doing for Elizabeth?’

  I showed her my licence folder and told her. That changed her manner completely.

  ‘Bloody hell, it’s about time. I’m glad to hear it. I’m Sue Holland.’

  We shook hands. ‘Cliff Hardy.’ I flipped the folder closed. ‘I take it you think the fire here wasn’t an accident?’

  ‘Fred? Burn his house down? No chance.’

  ‘He was getting on. Maybe he just slipped up a bit and…’

  She shook her head. ‘No way. I saw him that day. Sharp as a tack, old Fred. Pissed off at that wife of his as usual, but not dotty.’

  ‘We’d better have a proper talk, ah, Ms, Mrs…’

  ‘Sue. Where’s your car?’

  I pointed and she told me to drive down the street beside the Farmer property and come in where I saw a two metre high stump with the name Holland painted on it. I did as instructed and followed a track for close to a hundred metres, finishing up at a sandstone cottage in a rainforest clearing. I waited and Sue who-had-to-be Holland came tramping through the bush to the side of the cottage. She snapped her stick across her knee and threw the three pieces onto a woodheap under a galvanised iron lean-to. Smoke was rising from a chimney at the rear of the house and she gestured to me to come back there.

  ‘Come in. The front of the place is freezing. I live out the back until the summer.’

  I followed her along a gravel path to a set of brick steps where she kicked off her boots. She gave a sharp whistle and an old dog came slowly out of a kennel near the steps. She patted his head and murmured something to him.

  ‘Poor old feller,’ she said. ‘He used to come with me everywhere but now he can barely raise a trot. Come on in. D’you drink tea or coffee?’

  ‘Coffee. Thanks. What’s his name?’

  She glanced sharply at me. ‘Why?’

  I shrugged. ‘Just asking. I like dogs and wish I could have one but my lifestyle doesn’t allow it.’

  ‘Oh, I thought you were being prescient. His name’s Fred. I named him after Elizabeth’s dad when I got him from the pound.’ She laughed. ‘Cunning dog, he was older than he looked.’

  We went into the kitchen where a combustion stove very like the one I remembered from Katoomba was heating the space nicely. Tiled floor with a few rugs, pine table with chairs, workbenches, two tall pine dressers, old style sink, new style fridge and microwave. She hefted a big black kettle over to the sink and ran the tap. She dumped it on the stove, opened the hinged door and stirred up the fire, fed in some light wood.

  ‘Won’t be long. I could use the jug but I prefer it this way.’

  ‘I would too.’

  ‘You don’t strike me as a country type.’

  ‘I’m not. Boyhood memories and romantic fantasies.’

  ‘Have a seat.’ She busied herself spooning ground coffee and getti
ng mugs down from the dresser. The draining board on the sink was empty. She was compulsive about putting things away, like me. I sat at the table and enjoyed watching her as she went unselfconsciously about the tasks, padding softly across the tiles in her thick socks. The kettle whistled and she poured the water and set the plunger.

  ‘Milk?’

  ‘If you’ve got it. Doesn’t matter.’

  We settled with two steaming mugs of coffee and about a hundred years of pine table history between us. The surface was scarred and scorched and gouged, but it had been oiled and cared for lately and gave off a soft, yellow gleam.

  She saw me noticing. ‘This was the mine manager’s house. The shaft entrance is about fifty metres off that-away.’ She pointed. ‘Covered with lantana now, of course.’

  I nodded and drank some of the very good coffee. ‘I didn’t expect anything like this.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Someone so knowledgeable about the area and about the Farmers. Lucky.’

  She shrugged. ‘Don’t know what good it’ll do you. What’s your brief from Elizabeth?’

  I sipped. ‘You’re very direct.’

  ‘I don’t like to piss about. I know Elizabeth thinks Matilda hyphen whatever had Fred killed. I think it’s likely but no one else does. What are you supposed to do, prove it?’

  ‘Investigate,’ I said.

  ‘Oh, right-sit on the fence and charge so much a day.’

  I drank more coffee and said nothing.

  She cupped her hands around the mug. ‘I’m sorry. That was rude and offensive. It’s just that she needs someone on her side.’

  ‘You are.’

  ‘Apart from me. I can do bugger-all. Have you met Matilda?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What d’you reckon?’

  I liked this woman. I liked her house and her dog. I liked her coffee and the way the flue in her combustion stove didn’t work perfectly so that there was a bit of fragrant wood smoke in the kitchen. ‘I’d say she was capable of almost anything.’

  ‘Good on you. More coffee?’

  6

  Sue Holland was a lecturer in horticulture at Wollongong TAFE. She’d bought the mine manager’s cottage on three hectares ten years before when she’d got the job, using an inheritance and taking out a solid mortgage. She was divorced, no children. She’d got to know Frederick Farmer and Elizabeth some years before his first wife’s death.

  ‘They came down together pretty often,’ she said. ‘I didn’t see much of him at first when he married Matilda and then I saw him a lot-after that went sour. We got on well. He was a nice man. Loved the bush.’

  We were on our second mug of coffee and the kitchen had heated up. I wanted to take off the flannel shirt but worried that it’d look presumptuous. I wiped away some perspiration and she laughed. ‘Heats up in here, doesn’t it?’ She stripped off her sweater. She wore a loose, collarless white cotton shirt under it. ‘Better take off the flannie. I’ve got things to tell you.’

  I took the shirt off and draped it over the back of my chair. I’d tucked my notebook into the hip pocket of my jeans and I pulled it out. ‘Got a pen?’

  She found one near the phone and passed it to me.

  ‘I saw someone hanging around Fred’s house a couple of times in the week before the fire. I didn’t think much of it. There’s all sorts of council types-inspectors, dog catchers. I told the police and would’ve given evidence at the inquest but it was over before I knew about it. The cops were useless. They didn’t like Elizabeth and they don’t like me.’

  I’d made a note. I looked at her.

  ‘Dykes,’ she said.

  ‘I’d have thought enlightenment would have penetrated this far south.’

  ‘Nothing much penetrates the skull of Detective Sergeant Barton of Bellambi.’

  ‘I know the type.’

  ‘I told him about the…lurker. He thinks I’m a man-hater, which I’m not, and he thinks Matilda’s shit doesn’t smell.’

  I poised the pen. ‘Can you tell me exactly what you saw and when, with dates if you can recall them? Did you see a car? Describe the person as precisely as you can. Did he leave anything behind? I want impressions, guesses, anything you can rake up.’

  She smiled. ‘You’re as different from Barton as it’s possible to be.’

  ‘Thanks. He’s on my list of people to see. Do you know someone called Carson Lucas?’

  ‘Is anyone called Carson Lucas?’

  ‘The insurance investigator, I’m told.’

  ‘Never met him.’

  ‘It doesn’t sound as if the thing was gone into very closely.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘That’s strange. Usually-’

  ‘You have to understand how things are down here. Local matters determine the thinking and the action. Fred had an offer for his place. Good offer, but he turned it down. Me too. Has to be a developer, even though the area can’t be subdivided. But the pressure builds and zoning can be changed. The council is keen to get more ratepayers. The cops want more paved roads, gutters, street lights, fewer secluded acres where people can grow dope, cook up speed…’

  ‘You’re giving me more suspects than Matilda.’

  ‘What if she was in with them?’

  ‘You’re a conspiracy theorist.’

  ‘You bet. You don’t think the conquest of Iraq was conspired at?’

  ‘Big scale, that.’

  ‘The scale doesn’t matter-the principle’s the same. Follow the money.’

  ‘You’re teaching me my job.’

  ‘I think you already know it.’

  We talked for a little while longer. She gave me as accurate a description of the person she’d seen as she could. It wasn’t much-small to medium and carrying a clip-board-hence her guess at an official. Raincoat. It had been raining both times, and then she came up with the sort of thing that makes my job hard but interesting.

  ‘I was nearly a hundred metres away both times,’ she said. ‘Buggering around among the old apple and pear trees. There was just something about him that struck me as odd. Sorry, can’t put my finger on it. Look, I’d had a joint, one of those times. It can sharpen you up, or, you know. .’

  I knew, although more about the effect of whisky than marijuana. I got her phone number and gave her my card. I thanked her for the coffee and the information.

  ‘No worries. How’s Elizabeth?’

  I thought about it. ‘Composed.’

  ‘That’d be right. She with anyone?’

  I shrugged. ‘I saw her at the uni.’

  I didn’t like to lie to her, but gossip wasn’t my game. We shook hands again and I patted Fred on the head on the way to my car. He barely stirred.

  I drove back to Thirroul and had a swim in the beachside pool. The water was cold but after a few laps I didn’t feel it and stayed at it long enough to feel I’d had a reasonable workout. I showered and changed back into the clothes I’d worn the day before. The shirt wasn’t the freshest, but the outfit looked better for calling on cops and insurance officers than the flannie and jeans. I wondered why Elizabeth Farmer hadn’t told me about the development angle. Possibly because she wanted Matilda to be at the bottom of everything. Not very objective, but that tends to happen with fallings-out inside families.

  The Bellambi police station was next to the courthouse on the highway, both solid old structures reflecting an investment in law and order. I went through the door of the cop shop and got what I expected-an old shell, new fittings. Air conditioning, computers, bulletin boards bristling with pinned-up papers. An outer office for the uniforms and civilian support staff and an inner sanctum for the detectives. A fresh-faced young constable left his desk and approached the chest-high counter. Counters in police stations are always higher than elsewhere. Don’t

  know why. Must ask.

  ‘Yes, sir?’

  I showed him my licence folder, let him discover that I had clean fingernails and didn’t smell of alcohol
and asked to see Sergeant Barton. For a minute I thought he was going to get me to fill in a form, but he didn’t.

  ‘What is it regarding, Mr Hardy?’

  Quick study. ‘Arson,’ I said. ‘Possibly.’

  He nodded and picked up the phone. ‘Door on your right. Down the passage. First left.’

  I went as directed. The building had been worked on over the years to provide private offices. I knocked at the door with ‘Detectives’ stencilled on it, got the call and went in. Biggish room, big windows, skylight, three desks each with a computer, filing cabinets, shelves stuffed with paper, photocopier, wastepaper baskets spewing. The carpet was dirty, likewise the windows. That didn’t mean anything- my office carpet hadn’t been too clean and the windows were opaque unless there’d been heavy rain. There were two men at their desks. The one who looked up was beefy and balding with a bull neck. Had to be Barton. I wondered if his first name was Bruce.

  He beckoned me over. ‘Let’s have a look at the credentials.’

  I handed him the folder, pulled up a chair and sat down without being asked. He didn’t like it. He didn’t like my licence folder or anything about me. He dropped the folder on the desk where I’d have to stretch to retrieve it. I didn’t.

  ‘To what d’we owe the honour?’

  ‘Oh, I’m just letting you know I’m around. In case anything happens. You know.’

  ‘Smartarse. Specifically?’

  He sat very still, didn’t fidget and kept his eyes focused on my face. I got a sense that, while he might have been rigid and narrow-minded, he wasn’t incompetent.