Peter Temple - Black Tide

‘Well,’ I said, ‘I know that there’s a connection between the man I’m looking for and a private bank in Europe and that Stuart knew a lot about the bank. He helped out a friend of mine with information. In the mid-eighties. Long time ago, I suppose.’

She moved her head left, looked at me over her nose, drank some more beer. ‘I suppose,’ she said.

I tried to get going again. ‘So Stuart never walked in the door?’

‘No. The cops checked the airlines, customs, whatever, and they found he’d flown to Sydney on July 10. His car was here. In the garage. Did I say that?’

‘No.’

‘Wasn’t unusual. He always took a cab to the airport. Anyway, he’d flown to Sydney on a redeye, 6.30 a.m. or something, and then he’d flown to New Zealand the same day. And that was that.’

‘He didn’t leave New Zealand?’

‘No record of him leaving New Zealand.’

‘No contact with anyone?’

‘No-one we know ever heard from him again.’

‘Never used credit cards, drew money?’

‘No. Never.’

Lyall finished the beer and looked in the fridge for another one. Her hair slid forward and hid her face. ‘Sure?’ she said, straightening up, pushing back her hair, holding up a long-neck bottle of Miller’s. ‘I’m moving upmarket now.’

‘I’m sure.’ She wasn’t plain at all. Strong cheekbones.

‘Would Stuart have a reason for wanting to disappear?’

‘They asked that. And Bradley and I both had to say that we didn’t have the vaguest fucking idea. We’d shared the house with Stuart for three or four years and we knew exactly bugger-all about him. Liked him, enjoyed his company, knew nothing about him. Shocking. I knew more about his sister, and she’d only stayed here once.’

‘He didn’t talk about his work?’

‘Well, no. He’d talk about stories he thought people should write. Lots of passion about that. Always on about the CIA. But if you asked him what he was working on, he’d say something like, “Oh, bits and pieces.’’’

‘But he made a living as a freelance?’

A telephone began to ring somewhere in the house. Lyall put her beer down and left the kitchen. I went to the french doors. They led onto a narrow brick-paved courtyard surrounded by high creeper-covered walls. Plants in terracotta pots were dead or sickly. Leaves, yellow, brown, scarlet, lay in drifts everywhere.

‘Disgraceful, isn’t it?’

Lyall had come up behind me. I turned. She had her hands in her pockets, thumbs out, pelvis thrust. The beer had flushed her cheeks a little. She had a long neck, prominent collarbone. Where had plain come from? How does one form these judgments?

There was a moment of looking at each other.

‘Where were we?’ I asked.

She turned and went back inside to the table, sat down, picked up her beer. I followed, took my seat.

‘They want me to go to China tomorrow,’ she said, ran her left hand through her hair, drawing it back, showing strong roots. ‘If I don’t want it, fifteen other hopefuls do and are prepared to swim from Darwin if necessary. Cameras tied onto their heads.’

‘Going?’

She drained the stubby and got up, went to the fridge. ‘I said, “Let the Darwin to China Swimathon for Wannabees commence.’’ I’m going to sleep, eat, walk around, drink, read, sleep, eat, walk around, read, drink, sleep. Keep at it till I get these things right.’

‘Stuart made a living out of…’

The crooked smile. ‘Back to business, Mr Irish. I don’t think Stuart had to make a living. No sign of that. Kate gave the impression the parents left them heaps. Stuart went to high school in America, then to Columbia Journalism School. His parents were living in the States then. Both doctors. Stuart was big on the Philippines, working on a book on the subject. He had stuff published in Mother Jones.’

She read my eyes.

‘It’s American. Sort of public interest magazine. I haven’t seen one in a while. Big on military-industrial-complex conspiracy stuff. But not loony. American lefty, very earnest, bit short on theory.’

‘I’m a bit short on theory. Practice isn’t that long either. Did Stuart work from here?’

‘Had the room next to his bedroom as an office.’ She drank some beer. ‘Had? He still has. We never touched anything. Anyway, he’s not officially dead. Kate won’t apply to have him declared dead. She’s absolutely convinced that he’s walking around somewhere, that he’s lost his memory and will get it back.’

‘What do you think?’

Shrug. ‘If he’s alive, he’s not in New Zealand. His picture’s been on television, in all the papers, Kate spent a fortune getting posters put up everywhere. Someone would have seen him. The cities are like big country towns and the towns are like Hamilton in the 1950s.’

I said, ‘I know this is a big ask, but could I have a look at his office?’

Lyall gave me a long look. ‘Sure. I was going to suggest it. Help de-spookify it for me. Come.’

She went up the stairs first. It was no hardship walking behind her.

‘It was okay while Bradley was here,’ she said, ‘but now every time I come home, I listen for sounds upstairs, listen for his music. He used to play this Afro-Caribbean stuff. I tried keeping his doors open, but one day I came back from Hong Kong and they were closed. I went absolutely rigid, didn’t know what to do.’

Upstairs, there was a broad landing with three doors on either side.

‘The cleaning lady had closed them,’ Lyall said. ‘I left them closed after that, told her never to leave them open. Now every time I come back I expect to see them open.’

Stuart Wardle’s office didn’t look like the dabbling room of a dilettante journalist. Two walls had floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. A work table under the window held a computer monitor, keyboard and tower, a fax, telephone, answering machine. Stuart’s chair was an expensive executive model, flanked by large wire wastepaper baskets. Twin two-drawer filing cabinets stood against the fourth wall, one bearing a compact copier, the other a compact stereo.

I opened the bottom drawer of the left-hand filing cabinet. Empty. Top. Empty. Next cabinet. Same.

‘This phone used to be the line into the house,’ Lyall said from the doorway. ‘The one downstairs was an extension. Caused all kinds of shit when he left the answering machine on. You’d be downstairs, the phone would ring, stop before you got there, race upstairs, get in here, hear the last word of a message. That’s one change we made.’

‘Messages on this machine when you got back?’

‘Lots. Always lots.’

‘For Stuart?’

‘Some. A friend from the States. She stayed here once. And the Economist. He’d done work for them. It’s an English magazine.’

‘I know.’

Pause, eyes locked.

A swig from the bottle, head tilted back. Long neck. The exposed neck is a sweet and vulnerable thing.

Lowered the bottle. ‘More than your average suburban solicitor knows,’ she said, ‘Mr Irish.’

‘Depends. Some are exceedingly well read, the others go into politics or crime.’

I found her smile attractive. And heartening.

‘His sister had rung a few times,’ she said. ‘And there were three or four calls for Bradley. I wrote all the messages in the logbook.’

I looked around some more. ‘The room was like this when you first came into it after your trip?’

‘Yes. Nothing’s been touched. It’s been dusted, that’s all.’

‘Nothing on the desk? Wastepaper baskets empty? Filing cabinets empty?’

‘Yes. He’d done a big clean-up. I don’t know about the filing cabinets, never saw them open.’

‘The clean-up, was that unusual?’

‘I’ll say. Two in two months was outstandingly unusual. Two a year was more like it. He used to buy those huge orange garden rubbish bags.’