Wet Graves

by Peter Corris

  I washed a couple of days’ worth of dishes and swept a fortnight’s dirt from the floor. Then I shaved and stood under a shower, letting the warm water massage my bruised head. The bulldozers hadn’t made their moves on the next two houses yet, and I was dreading the day. For the moment they stood empty, and my end of the street was unnaturally calm and peaceful. No Joni Mitchell from Soames, no revving Yamahas from number 63. I missed them both. The cat missed them more. Soames’ cat was a wimpy part-Persian that offered no competition to mine. The bikers—the house seemed to harbour a shifting population of leather-clad males and females—were an endless source of hamburger, pizza and souvlakia scraps. The cat’s calories were cut drastically when the places were sold. It drank its milk sullenly, curled up in a patch of sunlight and was through for the day. “Have a good one, sport,” I said.

  I allowed myself a few minutes to sit in the sun and try to recall every nuance of the attack the night before. Nothing much came: male almost certainly, from an impression of size, and a smoker. No one who has given the habit up ever fails to detect the smell on hair and clothes. No Hercules—the blow hadn’t been delivered with enormous power. But then, that might have been compassion. There’d been no sound, no speech. At a guess, a million or so citizens of the city could fill the bill.

  I told myself this was a challenge. Keep busy. By the time I was sitting in my car, turning the ignition key and putting on my sunglasses, I felt almost normal. If you can call a man who talks to cats normal.

  5

  I was driving to Milson’s Point to sniff around Brian Madden’s neighbourhood, get the feel of the man on his own territory, so I should have been thinking about that. Madden in the daytime, Lenko at night. Instead, I found myself thinking about Rhino Jackson. He’d be about ten years older than me, I reckoned, out of the police force for going on twenty years and into almost every other related field of activity you could name—security guard and courier, bodyguard, private enquiries, security consultant for right-wing political figures and organisations and, I’d often heard it rumoured, part-time spook. I’d run into him every few years or so in the course of my work, and he always went out of his way to be nice to me. He even apologised once, when he was drunk, for the short count. I’d forgotten about it until the apology reminded me. I found it impossible to like him for no very good reason. Now I had a reason.

  I took the first exit off the Bradfield Highway and cut back towards the water. I tried to remember the last time I’d seen Jackson. It had been a few years ago, not long after my final break with Helen Broadway. I couldn’t remember anything about the meeting, except that Jackson had been drunk. Maybe I’d been drunk too. Back then it wasn’t too uncommon. The thing about Jackson was that he was good at what he did. He was an alcoholic, but it never seemed to impair his functioning. He changed course so often not because he was incompetent but because he got restless. I’d been told that or had worked it out for myself. It seemed I knew more about him than I realised, but I didn’t know why he was called ‘Rhino’.

  I waited at a red light behind a truck which blocked out the water view I’d been looking forward to, one of the rewards of driving around Sydney. Indecision washed over me. Which was more important—finding Brain Madden or protecting my licence? Also, which was easier? I knew lots of places to look for Rhino Jackson. The light changed and I made the decision to stick to the plan. Tune out the static and put up the antennae, I thought. You might get lucky and find Madden this morning.

  The track turned left and I got the view I’d been waiting for. It’s quite an eyeful—across the sparkling water to the shining city. The water seems to sanitise things, to make it seem that a city blessed with such a setting couldn’t possibly be a bad and dangerous place. We know better, of course; perhaps it’s the tension between the appearance and the reality that make the town exciting. I’ve said these things to people in loquacious moments and a common reply has been, “If you feel so hot for the water view, why haven’t you got one?” That’s a new Sydney sort of question. I give the old Sydney answer: “Because I like to look at it doesn’t mean I want to buy it.”

  Milson’s Point is bisected by the Bradfield Highway. Madden’s flat was in the western sector at the high end of a short street with a view out over Lavender Bay. As in all older areas with a high proportion of flats, there wasn’t much space to park in the street. The residents, who haven’t got what the real estate agents call o.s.p., leave their cars at home and catch ferries and buses to work They use their cars to go to shopping centres, beaches and football grounds at the weekends. I got a space across the road and down the slope from Number 27 and sat for a while to pick up the atmosphere of the street. Also, my head was still hurting and the view was restful. A few people came and went, mostly middle-aged or older. A motorcycle courier roared up, left his motor ticking and ran across to a small block of flats. He scanned the letterboxes and went up a short flight of steps three at a time. He was back and performing a tight U-turn within a minute. I should have taken his registration number—the next time I needed to send something by courier I wanted him.

  I locked the Falcon and strolled across the street. Number 27 was a white stucco building of somewhat unusual design. It housed three flats, on top of each other facing the street; another flat at the back ran at right angles to the others. This one was on two levels and rather bigger. On the lower level there were French doors opening onto a small garden. The effective entrance was on the upper level, reached by a set of iron steps. Good view of the water from here, sliver of bridge, slice of Opera House. There was a small, tiled area at the top of the steps under a wooden pergola. Great place for breakfast—some weathered garden furniture, a few hardy vines in tubs and one black plastic flowerpot If you were hoping for a secreted door key, this was the place to look

  I bent, lifted the pot and picked up the rusty key to flat 3. I knocked on the door and waited, as is only polite. Nothing. The key turned easily in the well-worn Yale lock, and I stepped into a short hallway which led to a series of smallish rooms which were dim because the blinds were drawn. The place had that closed up, no one-around-for-a-month smell that starts to soak into the carpets and curtains if it hangs about for much longer. I raised the blinds as I went quickly through the rooms, getting the feel of the place. There was a sitting room, a bedroom and a bathroom upstairs; downstairs was the kitchen, a smaller bedroom and a study. The flat was neat but not obsessively so—books and magazines sat on shelves and surfaces without their edges lined up; a few clothes hung over chairs in the main bedroom; there were papers on the study desk and rinsed but not washed dishes in the draining rack

  “Normal,” I said to myself, “very normal.”

  On my second tour I paid more attention to detail: I examined the clothes which tended towards the casual but included a couple of good quality suits and an expensive overcoat; the books suggested an interest in modem political history and serious literature, with historical novels from a variety of periods thrown in for light relief. Madden’s golf shoes were pricey but not new, likewise his clubs, which were stored in a cupboard under the stairs. There were a couple of bottles of wine in a rack, a half-empty bottle of riesling and a couple of cans of beer in the fridge. I sat down at the study desk, opened the drawers and went through his papers like an auditor. I found ample evidence of an orderly, bill-paying person. A tax-paying person with a superannuation scheme to guarantee him a comfortable but not riotous retirement. Madden kept his credit card slips for tax purposes, and there was too big a stack of them to go through in detail. A quick shuffle showed nothing out of the ordinary. There was a registration paper for a 1987 Ford Laser with an expiry date in February of the current year. No evidence of renewal. Madden had a chequebook and a savings passbook with unremarkable balances, deposits and withdrawals. No diary, no medical bills out of the ordinary, no love letters or blackmail threats.

  I found two photograph albums, neither very carefully kept or annotated. The pictures em
phasised the normality and stability of Madden’s life—there was a continuity to them, a continuity of people and places from young adulthood to middle age. The only interruption to the even flow was the absence from the snapshots, dating from about thirty years back, of the bright-eyed, dark-haired young woman who had been Brian Madden’s wife. There were plenty of photographs of Louise, charting her growth from childhood to late teens. Only the odd picture from that point on. No shots from foreign holidays, no handsome schoolboys or young girls with old eyes.

  A stack of letters lay on the living room table. I surmised that Louise had collected them on an earlier, worried visit to the flat and that there would be more now in the letterbox. I examined the letters but found nothing remarkable about them. The contents of most could be guessed from the envelopes—bills, subscriptions due, invitations, professional bumf. The telephone was on a shelf in the kitchen—stool beside it, pad for messages, address and telephone number book to hand. I’d recently met a young woman who didn’t know the telephone number of her own flat, which she shared with a couple of friends. When I asked her how she rang home, she said, “I’ve got the number on auto-dial at the office. I don’t need to know it.” None of that nonsense for Brian Madden—his phone was the old, dial-it-yourself model and his address and numbers book was as old as the phone.

  I raised all the blinds in the kitchen and sat down at the table to leaf through the book Madden had printed the surnames and street names, but the numbers and first names were written in a hurried scrawl that probably came from taking lecture notes and marking essays. He seemed to know a lot of people and had recorded a good many institutional and business numbers, but not more than you’d expect for a well-educated man with broad interests—a theatre booking agency, several restaurants and hotels, the state library and gallery, the ABC, David Jones, four taxi companies, two plumbers, an electrician and so on. I recognised some of the personal entries: the journalist Max Walsh, the cartoonist Bruce Petty. Several of the names were crossed out, and since these included those of George Munster and Xavier Herbert, I concluded that these people were dead. I’m not big on intuition, let alone premonition, but I felt something not rational or logical at work as I looked at that entry—‘X. Herbert, Red Lynch, Queensland, 4899’, and the post office box number—with the firm lines passing through the letters, almost obliterating them. I sensed that Brian Madden was dead.

  I put the address book down and went for another wander, in a sombre mood now, alert to different things, through the flat. Most of the rooms carried a picture or two on the walls. A few originals by artists I didn’t know; a couple of prints—a Roberts and a Streeton. Nice middle-of-the-road stuff. Over the small fireplace in the study there was a framed, enlarged-to-a-metre-square copy of the famous photograph that showed the two arches of the Sydney Harbour Bridge just before they were joined. The figures of workmen, right on top of the structure, stood out starkly against a light sky.

  The morbid feeling stayed with me as I moved through the rooms. I was irritated with myself for giving way to it and tried to find something to give it rational support—pills, whisky bottles, burnt paper, a bloodstain. I found nothing. Feeling foolish, I examined the golf clubs, which told me nothing except that Madden apparently used the whole set, like someone who knew how to play the game. I upended the bag and only leaves, flakes of mud and a couple of balls fell out. In one of the zippered pockets I found a batch of score cards. All but two of the cards were Madden’s. He shot consistently in the 80s. One card had a jotting on it to the effect that Henry Bush owed Madden ten dollars after losing to him by three holes. The card was dated eighteen months back. Two of the cards were marked up in a different hand and carried the name Dell Burton. Madden and Dell Burton had played rounds together on 1 and 25 April at Chatswood. Madden had shot 86 to Burton’s 87 on the first round; they’d both shot 88 on the second.

  I found a telephone number and an address in Chatswood for Burton, D. in Madden’s book. You didn’t have to be Einstein to work out that Dell Burton was ‘the woman’ Louise Madden had referred to. What else is there to do with ‘the woman’? I sat on the stool and dialled her number.

  “Hello.” Good voice, educated but not toffee. Mature-sounding.

  “I’d like to speak to Dell Burton.”

  “Speaking. Who’s this?”

  “My name is Hardy, Ms Burton. I’m a private detective. Louise Madden has hired me to investigate her father’s disappearance.”

  “Brian’s daughter? He said he’d never discussed me with her. I can’t believe she gave you my number.”

  “No. She’s aware of your existence, but nothing more. I’m calling from Mr Madden’s flat right now. I found a golf score card with your name on it, and your number in his address book.”

  “I see. A private detective, urn, I don’t know. I’ve been calling Brian’s number for weeks. I’ve been to the flat. I thought about going to the school, but …”

  “I’d very much like to talk to you. Can I come to Chatswood and see you? Is there a problem in that?”

  “What did you say your name was?”

  “Hardy, Cliff Hardy. You can look me up in the phone book and you can call Louise Madden, if you want to check on me.”

  “I’ll think about that. This is a little bit difficult, Mr Hardy.”

  “Could we meet somewhere else?”

  “I’m married. God, I’ve been so worried about Brian! I can’t understand what’s happened. Is he …?”

  “I don’t want to cause you any trouble, Mrs Burton. I just want to talk about Mr Madden. I need to understand him better if I’m to be of any use. His daughter loves and admires him.”

  “So do I, Mr Hardy.”

  “Good. Not many men have that much luck. He must be a man worth knowing and worth finding. I need to talk to you.”

  A pause while she digested that, and what else? Does a Chatswood wife meet a man who announces himself as a private detective over the phone? On the other hand, can a woman who has heard nothing from her lover in a month afford not to meet someone who’s apparently in the know?

  “You wouldn’t blame me for being cautious, would you?” she asked.

  “Not at all.”

  “Then I will look you up in the phone book, Mr Hardy. Tell me, how did you get into Brian’s flat?”

  “His daughter told me where to find the key, under the flowerpot.”

  “I’ll call the number in a few minutes.” She hung up sharply.

  Smart woman, I thought. Taking precautions, keeping the initiative. I flicked through the address book and located a name and number for Henry Bush. When the phone rang I picked it up immediately and said, “Hardy.”

  “I’ll meet you, Mr Hardy. There’s a coffee shop in Chatswood immediately across from the railway station. It’s called the Chatterbox. Let’s meet there in half an hour.”

  “Fine. How will I know you?”

  I heard her sigh, and there was something like a catch in her voice when she next spoke. “Have you looked through Brian’s things?”

  “Some of them. I’ve been pretty thorough, I think.”

  “Have you seen a photograph of a golf foursome? Brian, a tall, bald man and two women?”

  “I think so.”

  “I’m the woman in the red sweater. The other man is my husband.”

  I thanked her, hung up and went back into the study for the photograph albums. I had seen the photo but hadn’t paid it much attention. A fine day on the golf course—ruddy cheeks, cotton shirts, windblown hair. Madden was standing next to a fair woman in a white jacket; they were watching the bald man demonstrating a shot to a woman who was frowning with concentration. She was small with a taut, energetic-looking body and cropped brown hair. Her red sweater was draped over her shoulders with the sleeves tied in front. She looked as if she couldn’t wait to get hold of the club.

  6

  I parked in one of Chatswood’s extensive parking areas and walked towards the railway station. At
a casual glance there wasn’t much that I couldn’t have bought in the shops, from a leather tie to a chocolate pavlova. On the other hand, I didn’t see anything I actually needed. The Chatterbox was one of those bright, glossy places where everything was scrupulously clean, but you wouldn’t put money on the chance of getting a good cup of coffee. I took a seat by the window and told the waitress that I was waiting for someone. She checked that the table, ashtray and plastic-coated menu were spotless, and went away. There were three or four other people in the cafe, all singles. No chattering just at present.

  Dell Burton arrived five minutes after the appointed time. She was wearing tight black trousers, the kind with a strap under the foot, high-heeled shoes, a loose blue sweater and helmet-like red felt hat. A leather bag like a small duffel was slung over her shoulder. She marched straight up to my table.

  “Mr Hardy?”

  I lifted my bum off the chair. “Mrs Burton.”

  We shook hands and she sat down. She pulled off the hat and rubbed her hand over the cropped hair. All her movements were quick and busy. Her makeup was effective—a woman of about forty years of age looking her best. “Have you ordered?” she asked.

  “Not yet.” I looked up and the waitress was there, magically ready.

  “Long black for me,” Mrs Burton said.

  “The same.”

  The waitress made two squiggles on her pad. “Anything to eat at all?”

  We both shook our heads and she left, gliding away over clean tiles in rubber-soled shoes. Mrs Burton dug a crumpled soft pack of Marlboro out of her bag and offered them to me. I refused and she lit up. “Three a day,” she said. “Maybe four today, or ten. So?”