Peter Corris - Deep Water

At home she asked for more coffee. She said goodnight and I heard the shower running long and hard, first cold then hot-different sounds. I showered in the downstairs bathroom and went up to bed, thinking I might manage a chapter of McGrath. It was a sleep-between-the-sheets night with a fan on and I’d just got settled when the door opened and Margaret came in.

She was wearing just the top of her silk pyjamas and the buttons weren’t fastened.

‘This is silly,’ she said. ‘I like you and you like me, don’t you?’

‘Very much.’

‘Move over.’

She slid into bed and we made love slowly and carefully, each learning what the other liked and needed. When we finished we lay close together with only a film of sweat between us.

‘Was that your first time since the heart attack?’

‘Yes. I’m behind schedule. The hospital pamphlet said you could resume after six weeks.’

She laughed. ‘I think most men start solo.’

‘I thought about it but decided it was immature.’

We were drowsily quiet for a while; then she took my hand and said, ‘You know I’m going back to the States, don’t you? This is just. .’

‘It’s what it is. I know. Nothing to say I can’t visit though. Tony’ll be fighting for the title soon. What d’you think about boxing?’

‘I don’t. What do you think about basketball?’

‘I don’t.’

‘Right, I’ll come and watch Tony if you’ll come and watch the Lakers.’

We rolled apart and drifted off to sleep. I woke first and enjoyed the sight of her sleeping. She had her hand held up near her head, making her look oddly young and vulnerable. I eased out of the bed, showered and put on an old cotton dressing gown. She was still asleep and I put her kimono on the bed and went downstairs to make coffee and listen to the news, get the paper in, start the day.

She came down in her pyjama top and kimono. She kissed me. ‘How’s that Cold Chisel song go?’

I recited:

The coffee’s hot

And the toast is brown.

‘That’s it. I loved that group. Is “Sweethearts” still there?’

I poured her coffee and put the bread in the toaster. ‘I don’t know. We’d better find out.’

She pointed to the paper. ‘What’s the news?’

I showed her the headline: GOVERNMENT IN DEEP TROUBLE!

‘That’s weeks away,’ she said. ‘Things change.’

The toaster popped and I put the slices on a plate and pushed them towards her with the margarine and the honey.

‘The government’s shot to bits in the polls,’ I said. ‘They figure they need time to turn it around.’

‘Reckon they can?’

‘No.’

‘Good. Why’re we talking about this and not about finding out who killed my dad? I know it’s important, politics, but. .’

I got orange juice from the fridge and detached my pills from their foils. I swilled a couple down and then dropped the aspirin tablet into a glass of water, watched it dissolve and drank it. The taste was sweetish and unpleasant. I followed it with a mouthful of coffee.

‘It’s not all that important,’ I said. ‘Be good to see the last of the present lot, but things’ll change only at the margins.’

‘Cliff, come on. You’re stalling.’

‘Right,’ I said. ‘Things to tell you.’

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I told her what Josephine Dart had told me. She listened without interrupting, but she left her toast practically untouched. When I’d finished she drank her coffee which must have been tepid.

‘And you believed her?’ she said.

‘I think so.’

‘You think.’

I’d made copies of the three keys that had got me into McKinley’s townhouse and the one to the shed padlock. I’d given the copies to the police who’d made a search after the discovery of McKinley’s body. The fifth key had puzzled me, as I’d told Mrs Dart. I got the original set from my jacket and singled out the fifth key.

‘She had keys to your father’s house,’ I said. ‘This one is allegedly the key to the place at Myall. She says the house hasn’t been used since her husband’s death, not by her anyway. If what she says is true there should be signs of their. . activities, and it’s possible your father might have left something there that could make sense of what happened to him. Just possible.’

She nodded. ‘You see, it’s as I said before. I didn’t really know him. If this is true I’m glad in a way. I never liked to think of him alone and sexless. Pedalling away the frustration. I suppose I was thinking of a nice female companion, someone I’d like, but you can’t legislate for people’s sex lives, can you?’

‘No way known so far.’

‘So when’re we going up there to take a look?’

Before setting off for the coast, we went in to Newtown to

tell Hank and Megan the latest.

‘Jesus,’ Hank said, ‘that opens up a can of worms.’

‘Ugly image,’ Margaret said.

Hank said, ‘Sorry, Ms McKinley, I. .’

Margaret smiled. ‘Margaret, remember?’

Megan watched this exchange with amusement. As far as I could tell, Margaret and I presented exactly as before, but some women can read signs not apparent to most. She was fighting to repress a knowing smile.

‘Any quarries up there?’ I asked, just to deflect her.

She went to her desk and shuffled paper. ‘There is as it happens-Larson’s quarry at a place called Howard’s Bend, not that far away.’

She tapped keys and the printer spewed out a sheet.

‘Bit of a mystery this,’ Megan said. ‘Mind you, most of them are. Ownership or leasehold has to be tracked through a minefield of interlocking companies. I’m struggling, I admit. But you might check this one out physically. Why not?’

I took the sheet and folded it. We left.

‘She knows we’re fucking,’ Margaret said when we reached the street.

‘Yes. She-’

A movement across the street took my attention and I caught a glimpse of Phil Fitzwilliam in a car pulled up at a set of lights. He looked my way and then said something to his driver as the car accelerated away, jumping the red light.

‘What?’ Margaret said.

‘Nothing. Just saw someone I don’t want to see.’

‘I suppose you’ve got a few enemies?’

‘A few.’

‘But friends as well, right? Who’s this Frank Parker you talk about?’

‘He’s my best friend, and he outweighs quite a few enemies.’

We took my car because Margaret said she wasn’t confident about driving any great distance on the wrong side of the road. She was worried about the turns on and off the bridge.

‘I can just see the headline,’ she said. ‘“Expat driver causes pile-up on bridge”.’

We’d originally planned to go up and back in the one day, but Megan’s quarry would take up some time, so we stopped in Glebe and packed overnight bags. In the past I’d have taken a pistol, even on a benign trip like this, but I didn’t have a licensed firearm anymore, or an unlicensed one. The last illegal gun I’d had I’d thrown into the harbour after I’d tried to kill a man-Lily’s murderer-with it. The gun had jammed, for which I was eternally grateful. I packed a camera instead.

Myall was about 200 kilometres north-west of Sydney. I’d never been there but the directions I’d got from the web seemed easy enough. Drive about 70 kilometres north of Newcastle and then 10 kilometres off the Pacific Highway. The village, the region, were named for the Myall Lakes, where I seemed to remember there’d been important archaeological digs in the past. I’d forgotten the details. Something significant about stone axes and the length of time the Aborigines had been in the country-longer than anyone thought.