But at the Sea Breeze Apartments they were told that Josh Brownlee had checked out.
‘After breakfast,’ the manager said, desultorily watering a row of rosebushes at the rear of the building. He wore a wife-beater singlet, tight shorts and a beer gut.
‘Damn,’ said Ellen.
‘Paid through till Sunday, too,’ the manager said.
Pam, feeling nasty, said, ‘If you’d care to give me the refund, I’ll be sure he gets it.’
The manager backed away agitatedly, cigarette bobbing amid the bristles around his mouth. ‘Can’t do it. Regulations.’
Ellen fixed him with the lenses of her dark glasses. ‘Did he say where he was going?’
‘Dunno. Home?’
The motel building and grounds were better tended than the manager. It was quiet here at the rear, cool, leafy the air smelling of freshly watered garden beds. Seagulls called out, and on the foreshore road at the front of the building a pair of joggers chuffed by but, otherwise, this corner of the world was asleep. Ellen glanced at all the curtained windows: schoolies inside, unlikely to stir before noon.
‘I have his home address,’ Pam said as they returned to the car. Here on the street the sun was beating on glass and metal, softening the tarry road.
‘Where?’
‘Oliver’s Hill.’
They drove off in the hot car, Ellen steering along the foreshore and out onto the Frankston road while Pam searched the street directory. Although Oliver’s Hill was part of the depressed bayside suburb of Frankston, it was above it literally and sociologically, with big houses that looked out over the bay and down on the struggle below. There was no underemployment on Oliver’s Hill, no fast-food obesity or here-today-and-gone-tomorrow kinds of commerce.
‘Should we call first?’
Ellen shook her head. ‘We don’t want him to run again. We also don’t want the parents thinking about a lawyer before we get there.’
At Somerville she headed down Eramosa Road to the freeway and then up and over a spine of hills to the Nepean Highway, which skirted Oliver’s Hill. Pam directed her to an exit before the road began its plummet into the main part of Frankston. As Ellen wound through the hillside streets she found herself gazing keenly at the houses on either side. Where had it come from, this sudden interest in where and how other people lived?
Their destination was a 1960s brick house on three levels to account for the steepness of the block. Nothing redeemed it apart from its size and the vast blue haze or the bay’s curving waters, which could be glimpsed between a pair of ghost gums. ‘I don’t see his car,’ Pam said as they got out.
There was only a white Holden, parked in a carport attached to the upper level of the house. No sign of Josh’s little boulevard racer in the driveway or on the street. They stepped through a small gate and along a flagstone path to a solid wooden door with a small triangle of gold glass set in it. Ellen couldn’t work the place out. This was the main entrance, but did it lead to the main living areas? In any other house, this would be the back door. She rang the bell. A woman dressed in paint-flecked sleeveless overalls and a singlet top opened the door. She took one look at them and seemed to know. ‘Is this about Josh?’
There was paint over her hands, fine dots of it on her face and in her hair. ‘Yes.’
She sagged briefly against the door. ‘I’m Sue Brownlee. You’d better come in. My husband’s here.’
She took them along a corridor of partly-open bedroom doors to a kind of landing arranged with sofas and a flat screen TV, then down a flight of steps to a sitting room, which Ellen guessed made up the middle level of the house. The air was dense and heavy with paint odours. The man standing there was dressed in a fine suit, crisp white shirt, a blue and gold tie. He looked as wretched and tense as his wife but came forward decisively and stuck out his hand. ‘Clive Brownlee. Sue called me at work. I just got here.’
All four of them were posed on a nondescript carpet. Ellen looked inquiringly at the man’s wife, who said, ‘I asked Clive to come home because Josh burst in all upset and then went out again. I wasn’t expecting him till Sunday.’ She paused. ‘I was painting the laundry. It’s my day off.’
‘Did he say where he was going?’
‘He acted so upset,’ Sue Brownlee said.
They were frozen there, the parents apparently unable or unwilling to think clearly. ‘Perhaps if we all had a cup of tea?’ said Ellen gently.
Relieved, the Brownlees led Pam and Ellen to the kitchen, which was like an annexe to the middle floor of the house. They sat on stools on either side of a high bench. Clive Brownlee filled the kettle, his wife rummaged for cups. The kitchen, like the other parts of the house that Ellen had walked through, was faintly worn and out of date, and she chided herself for assuming that Josh Brownlee came from a background like Zara Selkirk’s. All they had in common was the Landseer School. Zara Selkirk came from real money, the kind that was offhand, almost unthinking, while the Brownlees, it seemed, spent most of theirs on school fees and the mortgage. Theirs was the anxious, struggling face of the middle-class.
‘Did Josh say what he was upset about?’ Pam said.
Sue Brownlee’s hand went to her neck, her long, paint-flecked fingers stroking it. ‘I asked what was wrong and he grabbed my neck and shook me. He said: “No one’s paid enough.” He scared me.’
‘Did he say who hasn’t paid, or what they haven’t paid for?’
The parents exchanged a glance. ‘He takes drugs,’ Clive Brownlee said finally. ‘They affect his mood. He imagines things. He can get quite violent sometimes.’
His wife said tensely, ‘Please, what’s he done?’
Ellen ignored the question. ‘Did your son stay here long before going out again? Did he unpack, for example, or repack?’
‘What’s he done?’
Ellen said evenly, ‘We wish to question him in connection with an assault.’
‘Oh, God. Who?’
‘A man named Lachlan Roe. It’s been in the news, but does the name mean anything to you other than that?’
The Brownlees stared at each other, making connections. ‘The Landseer chaplain.’
‘Yes,’ Pam said. ‘Josh was a Landseer student?’
‘He finished last year. A day kid, not a boarder. He caught the school bus at the end of the street.’
Clive Brownlee passed around cups of tea. Ellen had no intention of drinking hers but was merely marking time. ‘What was Josh’s involvement with Mr Roe?’
Something deep and desolate lies behind this, she thought, watching the Brownlees. And perhaps not recently, given that Josh no longer attended the school.
The father choked the words out. ‘Our other son, Michael, was also at Landseer. He committed suicide halfway through last year.’
‘I’m so sorry,’ Ellen said.
‘It hit Josh hard. He feels responsible, you know, the older brother.’
‘Is that when he started taking drugs?’ Pam asked gently.
Brownlee’s hands were resting palm up, empty and vulnerable on the table. He leaned toward her. ‘It’s as if he feels he should have made a better job of looking after Mike.’
Pam glanced at Ellen. They got to their feet. ‘Was the chaplain involved in some way?’
The parents, raw and baffled, failed to reply.
‘Do you know where Josh might have gone when he left here?’
The parents exchanged a look. ‘When he’s cross with us he goes to his Uncle Ray’s.’
‘And where’s that?’
‘Ray trains horses. He’s got a place in Skye.’
Farmland, northeast of Frankston. ‘Perhaps you could call him,’ Ellen suggested.
There was a kitchen phone, but Josh’s father left the room, knocking into a chair and the doorjamb as his body began to let him down. Soon they could hear his voice in another part of the house. There was an exclamation, then silence, and then he was in the doorway, looking shocked.
‘He was there, but he left. He’s got Ray’s shotgun.’
Pam said authoritatively to Ellen, ‘Let me drive, Sarge.’