I didn’t take any notes while talking to Sarah, not wanting to put her off, but I scribbled a few things down back in the car. Things to be done, and in this kind of investigation the more the better. I’d had enough of Pittwater and environs and was glad to be heading back to the city. I played some more Joni Mitchell but I was almost at the Spit Bridge before I realised that thinking about the Hampshire case had blotted out every word and note.
I drove to Rose Bay, parked as close as I could to the apartments where Hampshire was staying and asked for him at the service desk. He was out, but at least he was still staying there. I left a message for him to ring me. Back in my office, I phoned Gunnarson.
‘You’ll be pleased to hear that the dragon lady regards you as competent.’
‘I’m thrilled. Did you get anywhere?’
‘I might have, but I’m going to need some help.’
He sighed. ‘Why is there never any end to what you blokes want?’
‘We never sleep.’
I told him in outline about Pierre Fontaine and his possible place in the scheme of things. He swore and condemned all people who held back information from the police. I sympathised.
‘He’s in gaol somewhere. I don’t know where and I don’t know for how long. Be a big help if you could get me in to see him.’
‘Is that all? Shit, Hardy, haven’t you heard of lawyers, prisoners’ rights, civil liberties…?’
‘Yeah, and I’ve heard of missing person case files closed.’ He wasn’t going to give in too easily. ‘How about Hampshire, the skinflint dad? Are you still in touch?’
I didn’t exactly lie. ‘Yes, but only by phone. He’s cagey.’
‘He fucking should be. All right, Hardy, leave it with me and I’ll get back to you. It could take a while to set up. If I can do it, and I’m not saying I can, you’ll owe me a big favour. Some serious cooperation with any useful developments might help to square it.’
My next stop was the Fisher Library at the university. Sure enough, it held a copy of the Brigadier-General’s Monumental Art of Australia. They tell me some self-publishers scatter their books like confetti. This one was a professionally produced effort, though, in a nice typeface with a ton of photos. The text was what you’d call reverent. No index, so I had to leaf through. I found the Bangara memorial arch on page 145. A big, ugly structure, it had been unveiled by the mothers of dead soldiers on Empire Day, 24 May 1924. The arch bore the names of 58 dead and 299 returned AIF members.
Things were coming together. Justin Hampshire knew about the arch and that his great-grandfather’s name should be on it. He got his chance to look at it and his behaviour changed after that. Then he went to Canberra to look at the war memorial there. ‘Fuck the army’, he’d said subsequently. It wasn’t too hard to figure out, but I needed confirmation. I felt sure I could find out from some official about the names on the Canberra memorial, but I didn’t know a soul in Bangara. Gunnarson had said it’d take time to set up a meeting with the Frenchman. Hampshire had said he had investments; I’d find out tomorrow whether his cheque had cleared. If it had, I’d go to Bangara where Justin Hampshire had learned something that had changed him. I needed to know what it was. Perhaps it had drawn him back there. If the cheque hadn’t cleared I still wanted to know, but I’d give serious thought to dobbing Hampshire in for his child support arrears.
6
What you like about your crappy so-called profession W is being able to piss off whenever it suits you.’
That was my ex-wife Cyn’s assessment of my attraction to my job and I couldn’t say that she was entirely wrong. There were other things-the interesting characters, the edginess, the satisfaction of bringing something to a conclusion-but they wouldn’t have cut any ice with Cyn even if I’d spoken about them. A lot of the time we weren’t on speaking terms. An architect, she’d blotted me out with cigarette smoke and scale drawings. Well, she had her North Shore stay-at-home advertising executive now, and her two kids, and I could still piss off.
In the morning I pulled out one of my collection of tattered road maps and plotted the route. Hadn’t been down that way in years. It was a long run but what the hell. With luck I’d get in a swim and a bodysurf. I filled the Falcon’s tank, checked the oil and water and cleaned the windscreen and the back window that had gathered dust on the way back from Pittwater. I also put air in the tyres and the spare. Never let it be said that Hardy went unprepared. But the Smith amp; Wesson. 38 stayed in the house. It wasn’t that kind of a trip, or at least I hoped not.
The weather was warm but the sky was iffy, with dark clouds building and then dissipating as the wind shifted around. I packed my usual summer travelling gear-a change of shirt and socks, a linen jacket, toiletries and shaving stuff, a towel, swimmers and thongs. Robert Hughes for company at night, unless something else turned up. I had a clutch of cassettes taken from the shelf at random, and a camera.
Even bypassing Wollongong on the freeway, it was a slow run through Kiama and Nowra. There was enough of the summer left over for holiday-makers and home-goers to still be using the highway. The traffic thinned out after Ulladulla, and the sky cleared as a strong easterly pushed the threatening clouds inland. I made Bangara by midafternoon and booked into yet another motel. What was the title of that Frank Zappa album- 200 Motels? Tell me about it.
The memorial was easy to find. It formed the entrance to a large park a block back from the beach. The names of the serving soldiers were on the side away from the water, protecting them from the effects of salty winds and leaving them fairly well preserved after sixty-plus years. Graffitists and vandals had done a certain amount of damage to the edifice but not to the lists of names. Even the antisocial seem to have some respect for names etched in stone. It didn’t take long for me to find what Justin had found -the name Hampshire did not appear among the fallen or the returned. I took a couple of photographs.
I was a bit tired after the drive so I sat on a bench in the park under the shade of a tree I couldn’t identify and thought about this discovery, or non-discovery. The boy had been brought up to venerate a fallen hero antecedent and found he’d been sold a lie. Given what I’d learned about how locked in to the military traditions he’d been, I could imagine the impact on him. But why didn’t he say anything about it to anyone-his sister, his mother, his absent father? Shame perhaps, or anger?
The wind gusted and leaves gathered around my feet and at the base of the arch. The sky clouded over. I wondered whether Justin had sat here before rejoining his party and remaining strangely silent on the return trip, so that even Simmons, not the most sensitive observer, had noticed it.
Bangara had the best south coast features-an estuary formed by Wilson’s Creek, a back beach and a surf beach. The town swells in the holiday period and settles back into sleepiness for the rest of the year. Keen surfers come for the waves at off-season times and there is a certain amount of game fishing for those who can’t afford the prices further south at Bermagui, where Zane Grey fished in the 30s and Lee Marvin did more recently. I cherished the memory of a photo of Marvin, with his trademark grin, carrying a crate of Great Western champagne down to the boat. The only way to fish.
I strolled along the foreshore and one look cured me of a wish to surf. Under the onshore wind the waves were rolling in as if they intended to build one upon another, collapse and wipe out the beach. Of course they didn’t, but they’d throw a bodysurfer around like a cork and there was no fun in that. A swim from the sandy banks of Wilson’s Creek looked like the best bet. The surf club building was the usual sturdy bricks and mortar, glass and aluminium structure with cement surrounds. I had Paul Hampshire’s photograph of his missing son in my shirt pocket and thought I’d try it on the surfing community. A way to check whether Justin had returned to the scene of his epiphany- a long shot.