Anna rang me that evening.
‘Did you read the schedule of items of evidence at the back of the coroner’s report?’ she asked.
‘Not really.’
‘Among Luce’s possessions on Lord Howe they found a diary. I checked with someone in the coroner’s office. Apparently it was returned to Luce’s father after the inquest closed.’
‘Hm.’
‘I think we should have a look at it.’
‘Oh look, I said before, Anna, this isn’t some detective mystery with the murderer’s name spelled out in the victim’s diary in invisible ink. If there was anything interesting in it, the police would have picked it up, surely?’
‘We won’t know until we see it. It depends what they were looking for. I’ve told Mr Corcoran that we’re connected to the research project Luce was working on, and we need to see if there was any missing data in the diary.’
‘You’ve spoken to him? But he knows you, doesn’t he?’
‘Luce and I went to boarding school together in Sydney, but I only ever met him once, and again briefly at the funeral. He won’t know what subjects I was doing at uni. He was all right when I called him. Bit cautious, but all right. He said he’ll be available tomorrow, and I’ve arranged to take the day off. Can you make it? If not I’ll go on my own.’
‘No, it’s okay, I’ll come. I’ll borrow the car.’ Then I told her about my lunch with Damien, and visiting Suzi.
‘He’s right,’ she said finally. ‘I don’t want to do anything that will make things worse for her. But I want to know, Josh. I want to know what happened.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Me too.’
I followed the old Great Western Highway early the next morning, so that I could pass Ambler’s Pies. It was a pet shop now and I hardly recognised the place, the front rebuilt and the pie removed from the roof. I could see that a giant meat pie might not be the most appropriate symbol for a pet shop, but I felt sad, and wondered what had happened to it. Dad and Pam had long gone, too, their hard-earned cash reinvested in an allocated pension fund and a Winnebago Explorer motor-home, in which they were now roaming the continent with all the other grey nomads.
I turned off into Blacktown, following the directions Anna had given me, and found her waiting at her front door. At least she didn’t live in the nursing home, but in a flat nearby. She grinned hello as she got in the car, and I felt a touch of warmth at seeing her again. She was wearing a dark green shell jacket that looked identical to the one she’d worn in the Watagans all those years ago.
We climbed up over the Blue Mountains and down onto the western plains beyond, reaching Orange in time for lunch before our appointment with Luce’s dad. I drove along the wide main street, recently beautified with new street furniture and trees, like every other country town we’d passed through, and found a wood-fired pizza cafe. She chose a cheese topping and I remembered that she’d been a vegetarian. I asked her if she still was and she said yes. Like Luce, who’d persuaded her that that was the way to go. It was strange to feel the traces of Luce still present in our lives, like footprints on the sand. Luce had had no luck in trying to convert me to vegetarianism, but she did get me to stop smoking, another mute footprint.
We found Corcoran’s Farm Supplies on the edge of town, housed in several large steel sheds surrounded by a car park dotted with piles of barbed wire, drainage pipes, fencing posts and water tanks. Inside, wide aisles displayed an extraordinary, and to me baffling, range of gadgets that the modern farmer apparently needs. While Anna spoke to the woman behind the counter I learned quite a lot. I had no idea what a calf puller ($59.95) was, for instance, until I saw the illustrative photo of an unfortunate beast with a metal arm stuck up its backside. Then there was the ute dog tether ($14.95), the drench gun ($129.00) and the lightning diverter ($40.12) to protect the energiser on one’s electric fence ($3,447.40 to power 160 kilometres of multiwire fence). I was studying the action of the footrot shears ($54.95) when Anna came to my side. ‘He’s here,’ she said, and picked up a castration ring applicator ($32.95) with rather too much relish for my liking. ‘This place could be a supermarket for the Spanish Inquisition,’ she said.
Luce’s father was a gaunt and weathered man. He gripped my hand briefly, drilling my face with his eyes (bright blue, like hers) for a moment before turning and leading us up to an office built above the counter. He was wearing moleskins and R.M. Williams Stockyard boots that clumped loudly on the timber stairs. We sat around a plain wooden desk and Anna repeated her story about the research project, and how there was some missing data that Luce might have recorded in her diary or other papers. I felt that her tone, polite but businesslike, was about right. He listened with an inscrutable look on his face, bottom lip thrust forward, and I wondered how this leathery old man could have been the father of such a vital and beautiful daughter.
‘So that research business is still goin’ on, is it?’
‘We’re just gathering the loose ends.’
‘That Fenn feller isn’t involved, is he? They haven’t taken him back at the university, have they?’
‘Oh no. He’s not involved any more.’
He grunted, then stooped to a cardboard box at his side, about the size of a shoebox, and lifted it onto the table.
‘This is what the coroner’s office sent me,’ he growled. ‘I haven’t thrown anything away. Couldn’t bring m’self to.’
It sounded like an opportunity to say something sympathetic about his loss, but Anna didn’t take it, so I mumbled a few words about how sorry we were. He ignored me, and I felt stupid.
‘May we look?’ Anna said, after a pause.
‘Go ahead.’
He didn’t move, so Anna stood up, reached for the box and slid it towards her. It was roughly sealed with packing tape. Mr Corcoran rummaged in a drawer in the desk and handed her a Stanley knife, with which she cut the tape and looked inside.
‘Her clothes and personal things came separately, did they?’ she asked gently. This was getting a bit too forensic for me.
He nodded. ‘They sent her suitcase back first with the things they didn’t need.’
Anna lifted out a mobile phone, an electronic notebook and a small address book. There was also a wallet from which Anna systematically unpacked Lucy’s driver’s licence, Medicare and credit cards, her university student card, and a small photo of me. Her father stared at it, then at me, and I gave him a weak, pained smile. This was awful, staring at her things spread out on the table, things scuffed and worn by her fingers.
‘No diary,’ Anna said.
I pointed at the electronic notebook. ‘What about that?’
‘Maybe.’ Anna turned it over. It looked old, battered and scratched. There was a loop attached, and I could imagine Luce carrying it clipped to her climbing harness. Anna found the switch and pushed it to ON, but the screen remained stubbornly blank. ‘Looks dead,’ Anna said, and I winced. ‘I wonder …’ she ploughed on, turning to Corcoran. ‘Maybe we could take this to someone who could fix it. See if they can make it work?’
He stared at her for a moment, then shook his head. ‘I reckon not. Could be personal stuff in there Lucy would prefer left alone.’
‘It could be exactly what we’re looking for,’ Anna insisted. ‘I can assure you that only Josh and I would see it, and we’d keep any personal things strictly confidential, and return it to you.’
He shook his head, unmoved.
Anna seemed about to argue, then shrugged and put it back in the box. She flicked through the address book and put that back, too, and then the wallet and mobile phone. A blue envelope I hadn’t noticed before remained lying on the desk. Anna picked it up and read the name written on the front. ‘It’s to you,’ she said, and looked at me. She handed it over. I stared at it, then at her father, and put it in my pocket.