My car was still up on blocks in a friend’s garage awaiting a final service and tune-up, and I’d caught a cab to Double Bay. I hadn’t been away more than six months but Sydney traffic seemed to have got worse, if that was possible. It was stop, start and crawl for long stretches and the new tunnels didn’t seem to have had any good effect. On the return trip, glad I wasn’t driving myself, I had plenty of time to think about the next move. Two options-get the police on the job or tackle Tarelton Explorations directly.
I’d put it to Hank. Might have to persuade him a little, but I was pretty sure which way he’d jump. The taxi dropped me in Newtown and I went up the steps to Hank’s office under the newly installed fluorescent light. In my time there, you could scarcely see your hand in front of your face on that stairway. Hank wasn’t the only tenant to have upgraded his premises. The way things were going, the landlord would be stressing them all by raising the rent.
Hank was on the phone in one room and Megan was on the internet in the other. Both looked up, made welcoming signs and got on with what they were doing. Kick your heels, Hardy. You’re supernumerary now.
Megan got free first and I asked her what she was doing.
‘Confidential,’ she said.
‘Jesus!’
She stood and kissed my cheek. ‘Hello, Cliff, are you feeling as well as you look?’
‘You’ll get on. Yes, love, I’m fine. Back to my best at the gym.’
‘Really?’
‘Well-nearly. I’m here about the McKinley matter. How busy is Hank?’
‘Busy enough, but he’ll find the time. The coffee maker’s more or less where you had it.’
She went back to the computer. I wanted to ask her how things were going between her and Hank but I didn’t: our relationship didn’t quite reach into those personal zones. Not yet, maybe never. I had to be content with what I had and, mostly, I was. I watched her out of the corner of my eye as I made coffee, and saw myself in her olive complexion and dark hair. There was something of her mother, though, in her powers of concentration and her cool manner. Cyn could work me over with that attitude whenever she chose, and she did.
‘Hey, Cliff!’
Hank advanced towards me-all 195 centimetres and one hundred kilos of him.
‘Hank,’ I said. ‘What’ve you done to the coffee? Smells drinkable.’
‘Blame Meg.’
Meg is it now? I thought, but I said, ‘I want to move ahead on McKinley.’
Hank beckoned me into his office.
‘I’m with you on this, Cliff. I know it’s important to you, but-’
‘I’m paying.’
‘Say again.’
‘As of now, you’re on a full retainer and expenses. I’ll arrange an account debit and. . however the hell these things are handled now on an ongoing basis.’
Hank leaned back in his chair and studied me as I sipped the coffee. ‘You sure about this?’
‘Look-we’ve got a missing man whose study and darkroom have been searched to the point of destruction, his close friend, possibly murdered, whose briefcase was stolen. Coincidence? I don’t think so. You’ve got an anonymous person buying up the missing man’s drawings and an employer not cooperating. Plus. .’
‘Plus what?’
I told him about my interview with Josephine Dart and my feeling that there was more to her connection with McKinley, and maybe more to McKinley himself, than met the eye. I said I’d talked to McKinley’s lawyer, who would play along for a certain distance.
‘This is a workable case,’ I said.
‘Sure it is. But throw in an ex-private eye working the street and financing the investigation himself, that puts a spin on it.’
There was no point in trying to put one over Hank. He looked like a jock and often talked like a jock, but he was smart and a good reader of people. I finished the coffee and put the cup on the desk.
‘OK, you’ve nailed me. I’m attracted to the woman and I need something to do. Is that good enough for you?’
I surprised myself with the first part of the statement and the sincerity I’d expressed. That did the job for Hank. He clapped his big hands together. ‘You lay it on the line, man. What d’you suggest?’
‘A direct approach to the Tarelton people.’
‘Tried it once, remember. Got fobbed off by some dude in personnel.’
‘Do it again, mate. But this time get across that you’ve learned McKinley’s home has been broken into and searched, that his closest friend has had a fatal accident and that a possibly significant McKinley drawing is in your possession. Tell the personnel bloke to get that message through to the higher-ups.’
‘Will do,’ Hank said.
6
I went to the gym in the morning-treadmill at a moderate speed and gradient, free weights and the machines. What I’d told Megan was true; I was almost back to what I’d been doing before. I told myself I’d reach precisely that level next session. Something had been holding me back and I wasn’t sure what. I didn’t like the feeling of unconscious caution, if that’s what it was.
I had a massage from Wesley Scott, the manager of the gym and a longstanding friend.
‘You healed good,’ Wes said, looking at my scar which was now just a slightly discoloured line running down the middle of my chest. The hair that had been shaved off was growing back. Pretty soon the scar would be all but invisible.
‘Purity of mind and body.’
Wes snorted. ‘Lost some muscle tone along the way. Getting it back, I’d say. Not quite there. Take it easy, Cliff. Don’t push it. Remember, man, you were dead but for a computer and a little old electric machine.’
‘Thank you so much, Wesley,’ I said. ‘Just rub, will you?’
Hank rang to say that he had an appointment with the head of personnel at Tarelton for that afternoon.
‘I want to come along,’ I said. ‘You can do all the talking. I just want to look and listen.’
Hank’s hesitation was momentary. ‘OK. Make a copy of that drawing and bring it along. Might help.’
‘That’s a very good idea.’
The Tarelton building was on Elizabeth Street, a few blocks from Prince Alfred Park-named after a royal back in Victorian times. I don’t remember that he ever did anything useful. Not many of them did from that day to this. Tarelton Explorations was housed in a three-storey building painted a becoming shade of grey and renovated to within an inch of its life. It had probably been a red brick factory or warehouse, but now it featured tinted windows, big sliding glass doors and a marble-floored lobby with glass cases displaying models of some of the projects the company claimed to have participated in-a dam, a bridge over a river, a tunnel under a river and a lake that doubled as a decoration for a beach resort and a wetland for wildlife. I couldn’t figure where exploration came into it, but it did occur to me that the lobby would be a good setting for Robert Hawkins’s boats.
Hank and I were a little early and we studied the models with interest.
‘Pretty green oriented, this stuff,’ Hank said. ‘I’m seeing that everywhere these days.’
‘Hadn’t noticed,’ I said. ‘Tell you what though, with these lights and the air conditioning, the building’s laying
down a fair carbon fingerprint.’
‘Footprint, Cliff, footprint. Time to go.’
We checked in at a high-tech reception desk, were given security passes, and took the lift to the second level. A good-looking woman in a suit and blouse that stopped just short of being a uniform met us and we were escorted down a corridor. Discreet lighting through the tinted glass, framed blueprints on the wall, a rock garden with fountain at a bend.
She opened a door with ‘Personnel’ on a nameplate and nodded to the man and the woman working at computer desks. She knocked on a door that carried the name Ashley Guy.
‘Come,’ a voice within said.
I glanced at Hank, who was fighting off a grin.
She opened the door and waved us in.