Before shutting down the computer I tried again to mentally recreate the driver of the white Commodore. I’d told the police I’d only registered that it was a male-from the build, the set of the head on the shoulders. Now I pushed myself to see if there was more. I’d mostly seen him from the back, only fleetingly from the side when he jerked his head sideways as he jumped lanes. There was something. But what? I couldn’t dredge it up. Something.
I showered, shaved and took my medications plus some of those I’d missed the day before. Not recommended, but medicos who lay out rules for you don’t anticipate things like being hauled in by the cops. Ben had spilled ice cream on the suit trousers. I changed into drill trousers, a casual shirt and a leather jacket. I hadn’t told Megan and Hank about Bobby’s mobile being missing. That meant the killer knew about me. Might care, might not. But I felt better with my new Smith amp; Wesson.38 in my armpit.
I walked to the ATM in Glebe Point Road, drew out a few hundred dollars and caught a taxi to a car hire place in Leichhardt. I opted for a blue Holden Astra which looked like about a hundred thousand others. It had the hands-free mobile phone attachment and GPS. After consulting the manual and getting it all wrong a couple of times, I got it to function with a pleasant female Australian voice. I entered the Burwood address and resolved to follow the instructions even if I thought I knew a better way.
I didn’t know much about Burwood. I had an impression there were sets of medical clinics in the main drag and I seemed to remember something about citizens protesting against plans to open a brothel. I had a vague recollection that the argument was the brothel was too close to a church and a school. Can’t remember how it came out, but to my mind churchgoers should be able to resist temptation or try to redeem sinners, and no brothel owner I knew would ever admit a schoolchild. They might have employees dressed up as schoolchildren but that was between them and their clients.
The GPS instructions got me to Hood Street more efficiently than I could have done. Spent almost no time on Parramatta Road. The house was a big Federation job on a corner. Biggish block, neat front garden, car access at the side. The area was quiet with an almost oppressive feeling of respectability. I parked outside, opened the low gate and walked up a tiled path to the front porch. The porch was tiled as well and the house carried a brass plate with the name ‘Sherwood’ in elaborate script. Some kind of joke. The brass was polished to a high shine.
I rang the bell. Footsteps sounded on a wooden floor. I had my licence and the photo of Mary Oberon or ‘Miranda’ at the ready. The woman who opened the door checked that the screen door was locked before she looked at me.
‘Yes?’ she said.
She was middle-aged, dumpy, overdressed in expensive matronly clothes. I showed her the licence and told her I wanted information about the woman in the photograph. Her heavily ringed hand flew up to her mouth.
‘Oh my God, is she dead?’
‘Why would you think that?’
She shook her head. ‘Please go away, I don’t want to have anything more to do with her.’
‘This is important. I gather she’s not here. Can I come in and talk to you?’
‘No. Go away.’
‘This could be a police matter.’
Her hand against the screen door trembled and I took a punt.
‘Or a tax matter.’
The trembling increased.
‘I don’t want to make trouble for you,’ I said. ‘I don’t even need to know your name. I just need to know everything you can tell me about this woman.’
‘You’d better come in.’
She unlocked the screen door and I followed her a few steps inside and then into the front room on the right. It was a big room, overfurnished, with a bay window. The shelf in the bay window was covered with knick-knacks.
‘Do you want to sit down?’ she said.
The big armchairs would have swallowed me. ‘No thanks.’
She subsided into one of the chairs. ‘I should never have taken her in. She was unsuitable.’
‘What name did she give you?’
‘Mary Oberon.’
‘Do you know what job she had?’
‘She didn’t seem to have one. She slept most of the day. She didn’t have breakfast or lunch as far as I could see. I asked her if she was dieting and she laughed. She went out for a little while in the evening, to get something to eat, I suppose. Then she stayed in her room playing dreadful music.’
‘She was hiding?’
‘Hiding? I don’t know. She seemed nice at first but she wasn’t. Wouldn’t give me the time of day.’
‘How long was she here?’
‘A few weeks.’
‘She paid her rent?’
Tricky territory for her. There were, at a guess, four or five bedrooms in the house. She could be raking it in. She nodded.
‘Why did you think she might be dead?’
She began to twist one of the rings on her finger. The sort of fidgeting that usually precedes a lie. My guess was that she’d poked into Mary Oberon’s belongings or overheard something and didn’t want to admit it. She looked around the room and didn’t speak.
I shrugged. ‘Okay, well I’ll have to take it further, Mrs. .?’
‘She was terrified.’
‘Of what?’
‘A man.’
I sat on the arm of one of the chairs. That perched me well above her in a dominant position. No great achievement; she was a guilty, frightened woman and I wasn’t proud of pressuring her.
‘Tell me,’ I said.
She said Mary Oberon had paid a month’s rent in advance. I’d have been willing to bet she’d extracted an extra month as a bond of sorts but I didn’t interrupt her. She’d left before the month was up taking everything with her, which wasn’t much to start with-clothes, toiletries, a computer, a mobile phone, an mp3 player which the woman called an earplug thing. I asked how she knew the music was terrible if Mary Oberon had listened through earplugs. She said she heard it sometimes when Mary played it without the earplugs just to annoy her. She left after being threatened by the only visitor she ever had-a bearded man driving a white car.
‘Threatened how?’ I said.
‘They had arguments the couple of times he called. He woke her up in the morning and I could hear their voices raised.’
I bet you could hear them , I thought. Raised or not .
‘Then one afternoon he came and they went outside. It looked as though he was trying to make her get into his car. I was watching from the side window. She wouldn’t go. He got into the car and he tried to run her over. He drove the car over the gutter and up onto the nature strip and she had to jump out of the way. She fell over and he drove off. You can still see the marks the car wheels made on the grass.’
‘Did you go out to her?’
‘No, I was too frightened. I thought he might come back.’
And you didn’t want to get involved . ‘What happened then?’
‘She came in and I heard her crying in her room for a while. I went shopping and when I came back she was gone. No note. She took the key to the house and her room. I had to change the lock on the front door and get. . two more keys cut.’
And then some , I thought. I felt sure she knew more than she was telling me but had no idea how to tease it out other than by being direct. I stood and then sat down abruptly. She almost yelped in alarm.
‘There’s something you’re not telling me. What is it? Quickly.’
‘It’s nothing.’
‘Tell me.’
‘Will you leave if I do?’
‘Probably.’
‘Wait here.’
I didn’t. I followed her out of the room and down the passage to the kitchen. Her purse was sitting on a bench. She opened it, took out a banknote and handed it to me. It was a Fijian fifty-dollar note.