Wet Graves (6 page)

“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?”

“I'm hoping you can tell me something about Brian Madden that'll help me to find him.”

She blew smoke over my shoulder. “I wish I could. If I had any ideas I'd have acted on them myself by now.”

“Despite your … situation?”

“Yes. My situation, as you call it, is not all that tricky. My husband knows that I've been having an affair. He doesn't know with whom, and he doesn't want to know. They're the terms we struck. It works all right I'm not housebound, no kids. I could've … looked …” She waved the hand with the cigarette in it, more emphatically than theatrically. “But I didn't know what I could do. I thought about trying to contact the daughter, going to his school. But …” The hand waved again, indicating lack of direction.

The waitress brought the coffee. I put a spoonful of raw, granulated sugar in mine; she didn't take sugar, but she still stirred the cup with the spoon—the gesture of an ex-sugar user. She drew solidly on her Marlboro a couple of times and then stubbed it out. I waited for the waitress to spring up with a fresh ashtray, but a few new customers drifted in and took her attention. The coffee was a bit weak but acceptable. “Sane, balanced, contented people don't disappear for no reason,” I said. “Either they fall victim to some random, senseless force or there's something in their lives, their backgrounds, that … removes them from the scene.”

“You mean, makes them run away, change their names?”

I shrugged and drank some more coffee. “That sort of thing. You haven't tried your coffee. It's okay.”

“I don't want it. I want another cigarette.”

“Fight it.”

“Know all about it, do you?”

“Not about moderation, just quitting.”

She drank some of her coffee. “I couldn't, not possibly. Well, I hadn't ever thought about Brian in the way you say, about a random act or a reason for disappearing. I don't know what to think.”

“You can't recall anything he said, or anything you overheard, or half-heard, that suggested some problem in his life? Past or present. Some … disorder? What about his marriage? Any threads?”

“No. He spoke about his wife a few times, but there was nothing to suggest that it wasn't just a sad event in the past. Normal, almost.”

I nodded. That was the word I had hit on when looking through the flat. “What about the daughter?”

Suspicion flared. She lowered her cup. “She hired you, you said.”

“It's been known. You hire someone like me, but you don't give the real reasons.”

Dell Burton shook her head. “Nothing. He's a nice, funny, warm man. Good in all sorts of ways. Good for me.”

“You'll have to forgive me, Mrs Burton. This is where it gets personal, and I have to be blunt. If you walk out, I won't try to stop you.”

“You're softening me up in advance.”

“Maybe. I can see that you're an intelligent, sophisticated woman. Perhaps a bit selfish.”

“That's fair.”

I put the coffee cup between her and the question. “Why didn't you leave your husband for Brian Madden?”

She lifted her cup. We were like two fencers, feinting. “He didn't have any money.”

“Your husband does?”

“Lots.”

“I don't believe you. I don't think that's the reason. Why?”

She put the coffee cup down and lit another cigarette. I didn't say anything. Like the government that collects taxes on the stuff, I could see the benefit. “You're right. There was something strange about Brian. Nothing sinister, like you've been suggesting.”

I wasn't aware that I'd been suggesting anything sinister. Maybe that feeling I'd had in the flat was seeping through. “Tell me,” I said.

“Brian wasn't completely grown up. I know he'd been widowed and raised a child and held a responsible job and so on, but there was something boyish about him. Attractive, you understand, but …”

“I see.”

“Not very helpful?”

“I don't know. I'm all at sea when it comes to psychology. Have you any idea why he was like this?”

“Was?”

“Is.”

“Not really, unless it's that he lived in the shadow of his father, who was one of the chief engineers for the harbour bridge. I gather that there was some pressure on Brian to become an engineer, but he wasn't interested. His father was a strong personality, apparently. I suppose being a builder of the bridge was a pretty big deal back in the thirties and forties.”

“I suppose. I guess fathers have to do something.”

“Mmm. Mine made a lot of money. What did yours do, Mr Hardy?”

“Nothing to be ashamed of,” I said. “That's all you can tell me, Mrs Burton?”

“That's all. What d'you think can have happened to him?”

“I don't know. I'll have to keep digging—try his colleagues, try to get at his bank accounts.”

“That's … ugly.”

The rich tend to think that their money is beautiful, but that it's ugly for others to look too closely at it. I decided that there was something a bit hard about Mrs Burton. Perhaps I let that show. In any case, the rapport between us dissolved. I told her that I'd let her know if I found anything useful. She nodded and put her cigarettes away. We could have been discussing a stolen car. She forced a smile and walked away, her firm, disciplined body steady on her high heels. I didn't think Louise Madden would like her much. I didn't myself, but Brian Madden had and that was what mattered. My trip to the north shore hadn't worked out so well—I'd turned over some of the physical and personal residues of Brian Madden's life, but I didn't feel that I knew the man at all.

I'd made some notes while I was in Madden's flat—I had the name of a travel agency he'd used when he'd taken a trip to New Caledonia a few years back, also the name of a Queensland resort he'd stayed at for a week during his summer vacation. The registration number of the Laser was in my pocket along with the names of a solicitor, a doctor and the high roller, Henry Bush. Threads to pull, and I pulled them through the rest of the afternoon. I called at the travel agency and phoned the resort and got what I expected—nothing. Brian Madden had done just the one bit of business with them. From the secretaries to the doctor and solicitor I got appointments. In return for a modest financial consideration, I extracted a promise from a contact in the Department of Motor Transport to make available all recent information on the Laser.

When I rang Henry Bush's number I got his answering machine: “Hi there! This is Henry Bush. Sorry I can't talk to you right now, but I will pronto if you'll leave your name and number after the yodel.” A high, trembling Swiss yodel tickled my eardrums. I was so surprised I hung up without leaving a message.
That must happen to a lot of people
, I thought,
maybe that's why he does it
. Anyway, he didn't sound like the kind of man to commit murder for ten bucks.

All this took me through to six o'clock and left me in the Crown Hotel in Norton Street, Leichhardt, where you can get a glass of red or white wine for a dollar and the use of a public phone in the bar. I bought my first drink of the day at 6.01 and moved away from the phone. I felt I'd put in a reasonable sort of a day on the Brian Madden case and could now turn my attention to Rhino Jackson. The Crown is right across the straight from one of the gambling places Jackson was reputed to protect. And if he wasn't there, I had a good chance of finding someone who knew where he was. But I was fairly confident of finding him; Jackson was a gambler as well as a protection-provider, and gamblers are addicted to the atmosphere of gambling. No other kind of air can sustain their life.

As I drank the glass of one-dollar red I reflected that everything I knew about Jackson would be known to the police. But in looking for a missing witness you're not necessarily in competition with the police—it depends how hard they want to find him, or her. Sometimes they want to very badly and then it's the SWOS force and the sledgehammers on the doors at dawn; sometimes they don't and all that happens is that a few questions get asked and a few forms get filled in. Until I learned more from Parker and Sackville, I had no way of knowing how hard the police were trying. With me it's different—I'm
always
trying hard, usually for the money and in this case for my skin.

I thought about another glass of wine but settled for a light beer and then went across the street to the Bar Napoli, where I had the wine and a lasagna to blot it up. It being Wednesday night, the place was pretty quiet. I go there often enough to consider myself almost a regular and I saw a few people I'd seen there before, which tells you you're a regular. But it's the kind of café you feel comfortable in whether you're a regular or not. The people serving the food and coffee will talk to you if you want or leave you alone—your choice. You can read or look at the nicely framed paintings, drawings and photographs on the walls. These are by people known to the management and are for sale. I once saw a customer buy a painting.

I ate my food slowly and made the wine last. The television was turned to SBS for the news and a sports roundup and then Bruno, the proprietor, turned it off and settled down with cigarettes and a short black to talk to his pals. The TV wouldn't go on again unless Bruno said so, which meant until there was a soccer match. That was fine with me. I read some stories in the
Sydney Review
, a give-away tabloid that seems to be subsidised by upmarket wineries and boutiques. I got a few laughs and a few yawns for free. Two dawdled-over coffees took me past eight o'clock, which was still way too early to actually find Rhino Jackson behind a wheel or a poker hand. Before leaving I had a quick word with Bruno and we came to an understanding.