The Marvellous Boy (15 page)

“He's been overseas I bet.”

“Yes, he used to travel with his Mum and Dad. It's been a bit of a joke, his closeness to them.”

“It's a cynical world. You said ‘used to.'”

“Right. He's made a couple of trips to Indonesia in the last two years.”

“Aha. Anything on Warwick's sporting triumphs?”

“Oh Christ yes, tons. He went to half a dozen schools around here, he was always getting expelled, but he cleaned up at sport—running, swimming, throwing things, kicking things—the lot. It grieves me to say it, but he was bright as well; he got distinctions in his last year at school.” She paused: “Yes, here it is—maths, economics, modern history, Italian. He only got a credit for English.”

“Tough. Went on to uni did he?”

“Yes, he did two years of Law. He won the iron man in his first year. Do you know what that is?”

“No.”

“It's a race. They run about five miles I think and have to eat things and drink a lot of grog throughout. They get disqualified if they vomit. Warwick holds the record.”

“Charming. How'd he go at Law?”

“Tapering off a bit but he got through the first year well enough—the drug bust came in the middle of the second year.”

“I see. Well that's terrific work, love, anything else?”

“Yes, you said you wanted photos, well I'm told there are two in
The Canberra Times.”
She gave the dates. “I can't get a look at the file copies on Sunday. You'll have to go to the National Library. It's open today. You know where it is?”

“By the lake?”

“Right.”

“Tickets needed?”

“No, it's a public utility. You have full rights as a citizen.”

Then her voice changed and the brisk and businesslike tone took over completely. “Phone me when you're finished,” she said.

“Look, Kay, don't stand back so far. I'll come and get you at five. Okay?”

She said it was. I paid a bit on account at the motel; the money was running low but I had the receipts and Lady Catherine was getting value. I felt uppish; the tried and tested procedures were working. I had leads to follow.

Driving across the bridge in Canberra is a very low-key
experience: the lake looks and is artificial, placid and blue with no debris. The bridge spans it easily. It all feels planned and controlled and easy, soft. The National Library is a cream and pink copy of the Acropolis on the sculptured shores of the lake. It's surrounded on three sides by car parks; cars were bullocked up on footpaths and dividing strips and parking tickets flapped on their windshields like bunting. I squeezed into a semi-legal space, grabbed a pad and pen and headed for the portals.

A gaggle of tourists was gasping at the stained glass windows and bronze work; another batch was inspecting a pottery exhibition on the mezzanine floor. I got directions from a succession of attendants and finished up in an airless room in front of a microfilm reader. The Ph.D. students were scratching on cards, scratching themselves, yawning and chewing gum. I stabbed at the automatic button; months of life, marriage, death and world events flashed in front of my eyes and the students frowned as they crept, inch by inch, frame by frame, through their papers.

The Canberra Times
is a broadsheet which meant that I had to adjust the machine often to scan the whole page. I got distracted by the headlines and stories at the beginning of the seventies. The rot had set into the Government, the ministers' speeches were getting sillier by the day and the Opposition was just sitting pat, trying to sound sensible and waiting for its finest hour. A tide was flowing—a three year tide. I found the first picture of Warwick Baudin in an issue for November 1968. He'd competed at the inter-school sports and won all three sprint races and the long jump; he was standing straight and tall in a track suit sucking on a can of soft drink. It was like an advertisement: he had a big, open face with a lot of curly dark hair. He looked sure of himself—so would I if I had a 48.4 440 to my credit. The
best I could manage was 52 seconds. But Warwick, the boy wonder of the track, had slid a long way in two years. The next picture, in October 1971, was on the front of a Saturday paper. The crash had occurred on the Cotter Road—two sports cars. One driver was dead, a girl passenger was seriously injured and the other driver was standing unhurt in the photograph by the side of the road. A headlight had hit him full in the face, washing it stark white. They weren't ideal conditions to be photographed in, but Warwick's face looked much fuller, almost bloated, and his body was bulky inside the casual clothes. There was talk of charges—driving under the influence, manslaughter—it was a bad business. Staring at the frank, unstudied picture I tried to see a resemblance to the old man who'd handed down the savage sentences in court, or to the softened lines of the face that looked down from the wall in Rushcutters Bay. It was there all right, but oddly stronger in the younger face. Making all allowances for the circumstances, in the later pictures Baudin's face showed traces of a hesitancy or self-doubt which had never troubled Sir Clive.

I printed out a few copies of the pictures, made some notes and handed the reels back to an attendant who gave me a tired, sceptical smile. The whole operation had taken less than an hour and I hadn't used a single stick of gum. Outside the air was warm and still; I took a walk along the edge of the lake and tried to think about genetics and blood tests and whether it could be proved that one person was the child of another. I had a feeling that you couldn't and all the tests could establish was that some people could not be the progenitors of others. Maybe it wouldn't come to that, maybe it wouldn't come to anything. It was still a paper chase, the pictures in my pocket were like a talisman but, for all I knew, the man himself could be manacled to a prison wall in Bangkok for heroin dealing.

Wandering around the big, grey complex of government buildings I tried to push the whole thing aside. The letter I'd got from Keir Baudin was calling me to Sydney, to Honey of Darlinghurst whoever she was, but Kay kept breaking in on my thoughts. Ailsa and I had been on and off lovers, a night here, a night there; I tried to think when I'd last slept two nights in succession with a woman—it was a long time ago.

It was a good night. I ran the Falcon through a car wash just to kill some time while waiting to pick up Kay. I felt young again, transported back to when cars and girls meant everything. We had a couple of drinks and ate in a restaurant that had once been an old house—we took our own wine and I wasn't the only man not wearing a tie. Around ten o'clock we were standing in one of the pedestrian malls and her hips were pressing into me and we were kissing like I was leaving for the front the next day.

We broke apart. “Come to my place,” she said, “I can't wear the same clothes three days in a row.”

I smoothed her hair. “I often do.”

“That's because you're uncivilised, a predator.”

“You disapprove?”

“No.” She kissed me quickly. “The world's full of desk-sitters who smell of shampoo and soap. You smell of . . .”

“Alcohol and sweat?”

“A bit, not too much.”

Her flat was in Ainslie, close to the centre of the city. It was the top half of a house which we reached down a side way pushing through an overgrown garden. Inside the
colours were cream and brown and there was a comfortable amount of untidiness. I automatically browsed through her books while she showered; there was a touch too much philosophy for my taste, but the novels were sound—Hemingway and Waugh, Keesey, and Amis, a sprinkling of Hammett and Chandler. I was reading Fussell's
The Great War and Modern Memory
when she came out wearing a Chinese dressing gown. Her hair was wet and spiky and gave off a smell of apples. We kissed hard and leaned into each other, needing and giving support.

“Great book,” she said.

“Yeah.” Then we were kissing again and soon after that we were on a big low bed under a window. We satisfied the first, hard, need quickly and then lay close and talked and let a slow warmth creep over us. The second time was slower and I was conscious of the whole of her body and her experience; her slim, strong arms and the long legs that trapped and held me lightly. I lay there in the dim light listening to her breathing and then my breathing fell into synch with hers and I slept.

I woke at five o'clock and got up quietly. I dressed and was copying down the number of her phone when I heard her move in the bed.

“What are you doing?” She sat straight up and I could feel a wave of tension flow across to me. I leaned down and kissed her bare shoulder.

“I have to go Kay. I've got your number. I'll call you.”

She grabbed my hand. “When?”

“Tonight and every night until this is fixed. Then I'll come back here.”

“When you've finished the job?”

“Yes.”

“Business first.”

I knew what she meant the way I'd always known what Cyn had meant—the missed meetings and the professional drinking and the sleep binges. She flopped back and curled up the way she had in the motel.

“Canberra specialises in quick affairs, Cliff,” she said. “I've had men propose to me over breakfast and fly to London at lunchtime.”

“I'll call you tonight at eight. I promise.”

“I hope so,” she whispered; she rolled over away from me, twisting the sheet around her.

I let myself out quietly and negotiated the sideway; the dew was heavy and the overhanging branches dripped on me as I pushed through them. It wasn't like walking away from a good, quick roll in the hay, it wasn't like that at all.

I made myself unpopular at the motel by hauling the manager out of bed and paying my bill. From the look he gave me I would've bet the first thing he did after I'd gone was check the towels. It was going to be a hot one in Canberra; the sky was a blank blue and a heat haze was forming over the mountains. The air was still cool but a west wind was promising to make it dry and gritty within an hour. I cruised through the quiet streets along with the dogs and joggers and gave my newly cleaned car its head when we reached the highway. The drive from Canberra to Sydney has gotten easier in the last few years. They've punched through some hills and by-passed some of the towns. A good drive in a good car can do it in under four hours. It took me nearly five.

I was dry and hungry when I reached Glebe. I collected the mail and newspapers and went into the house; dust drifted about in the beams of light, and the cockroaches, blissfully undisturbed for a few days, ran for cover. I cleaned myself up and made a meal with limp things from
the fridge and plenty of cold wine. The papers carried a lot about the economy, all lies, something about prison riots, mostly lies, and profound analyses of events in the Middle East. There was no mention of Henry Brain. Four bills almost cancelled out the Chatterton money and as far as I could remember there was nothing else coming in. I called my answering service and learned I'd had two callers—Cy Sackville and Verna Reid.

I phoned Sackville who told me not to get into any trouble for a few weeks because he was going to a conference in Athens and planned a trip around Europe for a bit afterwards.

“Who pays?” I asked.

“You do mate, the taxpayer. Now about this Chatterton business. I couldn't get a lot on Henry Brain. He was a barrister, a good one, and he got struck off for drunkenness in court. That's going back a bit; he never applied for reinstatement.”

“He stayed drunk.”

“There's a lesson in that for you,” Cy said primly. “On the Chatterton estate I can't help you much. Young Booth didn't know who gets the dough, Dad hasn't told him. There are a few funny things about it though.”

“Like?”

“Well, the secrecy for one thing. Booth junior says it's unusual for Booth senior to be so close-mouthed. It might mean that the estate is tied up in some way. Also, someone else has been asking about it.”

“Who?”

“Booth doesn't remember his name, some bloke who scraped an acquaintance with him at a squash court. Big chap was all he said, looked as if he needed the exercise. That probably made Boothie feel smug—he's in great
shape.” Cy himself is as thin as a stick of spaghetti which he eats in large quantities. He never exercises; he's a workaholic who burns the weight off by mixing ambition with performance.

“What did this big bloke say?”

“Not much I gather and Booth probably didn't give a lot away. He's with an old firm, a conservative one, and Boothie knows that he's not the brightest. He plays it pretty cagey.”

“When was this and are you sure that's all?”

“A couple of weeks ago it was. Only other thing Booth recalled was that mention was made of the old lady's companion—Miss Reece?”

“Reid.”

Cy grunted, he wasn't used to getting things wrong.

“D'you want to be filled in on all this Cy?”

“Not really. It's bound to be sordid and I'm trying to clear my head for the holiday. I've got a lot to do, I've got to check on Greek scuba gear and I'm thinking of buying a Citroen over there and shipping it back . . . what do you think?”

“Great idea,” I said. “Give me the old one.”

“I've seen your car, you don't deserve a Citroen.”

He gave me the name of the man who would be filling in for him and a run-down on his prejudices—they seemed to cover everything I did and stood for. He sounded like the right man to brief the prosecution if I got into trouble.

After hanging up I went to the car and dug out my notes on the case and added a few more facts. I sat and thought; I had a cigarette and some more wine; I wrote Kay Fletcher's number in my book. When I couldn't stall any longer I rang the Chatterton number. Verna Reid's voice came over the wire like a chill Melbourne wind. She didn't seem to want
to connect me with Lady C. but I insisted and the line stayed live. While I was waiting I wondered whether Miss Reid was in line for the money, a heartbeat away from a fortune, and where her boyfriend and Richard Selby fitted into the picture.