‘Hello, Mr Hardy.’
I looked up from the book. The woman standing in front of me was familiar, but I couldn’t place her.’ ‘Nurse Margaret McKinley,’ she said. I half rose in the polite, meaningless way my generation
was taught to do, but she put a hand on my shoulder to interrupt the movement.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I didn’t recognise you out of uniform.’
‘Understandable, a uniform’s the best disguise there is, they say. May I sit down?’
I shuffled along, although there was plenty of room. ‘Of course.’
‘You look very well,’ she said. ‘I’ve seen you here before.’
‘I walk the line,’ I said.
She smiled, took the book and examined it. ‘Ah, that explains it.’
‘What?’
‘What you said to Dr Pierce when you were coming to the surface. You said you were looking for Frankie Machine. We were puzzled. I see it’s another title by this writer. I gather the book’s set here.’
She was in her mid-thirties at a guess-medium sized with strong, squarish features and dark-brown hair in a no-nonsense style. She carried a sun hat and wore a white sleeveless blouse and denim pants that came to just below the knee; a light tan. Sandals. No ring. Ah, Hardy, stripped of your licence, but still sizing up the citizens.
‘I don’t think you were around when I left,’ I said. ‘I thanked everyone in sight.’
‘I know. Everyone was very grateful. Your daughter came back and made a donation.’
‘I didn’t know that.’
‘You’re lucky to have her. I take it she’s gone home?’
The way she said it made me pay attention to her voice. It was basically Californian but with an underlying tingle of something else. ‘You’re Australian,’ I said.
‘I was, still am at heart, but I’m a US citizen now by marriage. No hubby any longer, but a kid and a good job.’
I looked up at the clear blue sky and nodded. ‘Living in climate heaven.’
She shook her head. Her face had the sort of lines that come from experiences good and bad but mostly good.
‘Not really,’ she said. ‘Sometimes I yearn for Sydney’s seasons. Even a bloody hailstorm.’
The Australian accent became slightly more pronounced with every word, the way it can when the other person is a genuine speaker.
‘I suppose it might get you down over time,’ I said, ‘but just now it’s perfect for my purposes.’
‘I heard you say you were a private detective.’
‘I was. I’m. . retired.’
‘You might still be able to help me. Could I buy you a cup of coffee?’
It was close to midday. ‘What about a beer?’ I said.
She had a nice smile. ‘Why not, although it’d horrify my colleagues.’
We walked back towards the bar where Megan and I had sat and I told her about Megan’s surprise at being asked for ID.
‘Americans can be very funny about drinking. I know some who’d never dream of having a beer during the day or a glass of wine with their meals, but get bombed on cocktails every night.’
‘Unhealthy,’ I said.
We sat at a shaded table and ordered two Coors, which a little experimentation had taught me was the beer closest to my taste. The frosted bottles and glasses came; we poured.
‘To Sydney,’ she said.
I nodded and drank the toast.
‘When’re you going back, Mr Hardy?’
‘After all the services you performed I think you should call me Cliff.’
She laughed. ‘You had trouble maintaining your dignity, didn’t you? Perched on top of that bedpan.’
I’d been constipated for a few days after the operation and a proctologist had whacked in suppositories and let nature take its course.
‘Made me feel human again, though. You said something about needing help.’
She told me that she’d left Australia fifteen years before to marry an American doctor who’d been holidaying in the wide brown land. The marriage hadn’t worked out, but her Australian nursing credentials had served her well in America and she had no trouble getting work that allowed her time for her daughter.
‘I was an only child and my mother died when I was ten. My dad was a geologist and his work took him all over the country. He did his very best for me, but I was often parked with people I didn’t know and he was busy even when he was around. I want to be there for my kid a hundred per cent. Her father lives in LA. He visits now and then and contributes financially but not emotionally.’
For all the difficulties he’d had with his parenting role, Margaret said that she loved her father. She’d visited Australia twice during her daughter’s holidays and he’d visited once. They corresponded by letter at first and electronically in recent times. Thirteen-year-old Lucinda valued the connection with someone she called her ‘Ossie grandad’.
We were near the end of our drinks when she got to the heart of the matter. ‘He’s disappeared,’ she said. ‘I haven’t heard from him for weeks and I can’t find out anything about him. I email and phone the company he works for and get nothing useful. A couple of his friends say they haven’t heard from him either. I’m very worried about him but I can’t. . I contacted the police and made a report but I’ve heard nothing back. I can’t go home. I need this job, and Lucinda’s involved in so many things that’re important to her. I’m stuck.’
I asked some questions-like had he, Henry McKinley, been off on some up-bush expedition when she’d last heard from him. She said not, that he was city-based, working for a major corporation, about which she had few details. I asked about his age, his health and habits. She said he was fifty-eight, a cyclist, non-smoker and social drinker. As far as she knew he was wholly occupied with his work. His recreations were cycling, photography, archaeology and pen and ink drawing.
‘He was. . he is quite talented,’ Margaret said. ‘Lucinda seems to have some of the same knack. They swapped sketches over the internet.’
Saying that broke her composure somewhat and got through to me. I said I’d contact someone I knew in Sydney and try to get an investigation underway.
‘I can pay,’ Margaret said. ‘Some.’
Amazing the freedom having money in the bank can give you. ‘Don’t worry about that,’ I said. ‘Let’s see how far we can get.’
We talked some more. She gave me her email address and said she could provide documents, photos.
Getting fit, sitting in the sun, thinking about swimming, reading, watching HBO is all very well, but I knew I was going to miss my former profession and now I had that feeling for real, and very strongly.
Naturally the flat had a computer connected to the internet and a printer and scanner and other hardware unfamiliar to me. I’d kept my email address so as to stay in touch while I was overseas and I sent a message to Margaret McKinley to establish the contact.
I was never much of a web user but now I read some newspapers and blogs from home and was pleased to see that the conservative government was in trouble at the polls. The opposition was scoring better on most counts and the commentators were predicting a close election, with some reading it one way and some the other. I’d be back in time to cast my vote for change. It was well past time.
Margaret’s message came through with a number of attachments-two photographs of Henry McKinley, one obviously taken a few years back showing him with his daughter and grand-daughter, who looked to be about ten. There was a photostat of his driver’s licence and several newspaper clippings recording his winning a number of awards-one for a book on water management in the Sydney basin, another some kind of medal from the Australasian Geological Society, and one for the first over-55 finisher in the Sydney to Wollongong cycling race.
Margaret’s notes said that her father owned the townhouse he lived in at Rose Bay, that he had no pets and that his mail went to a post office box, so there was nothing at the flat to indicate that it was unoccupied. She included the phone number and URL of the corporation he worked for and documented the times she had made calls and emailed enquiring about her father. She listed the friends she had referred to when we spoke, and a number for the secretary of the Four Bays Cycling Club. It was an impressive dossier-she was obviously highly organised as well as very worried.