Standing probably twenty metres away from him, I rang Phil and gave him the news about Kristina’s mobile number. I told him that I’d keep trying to contact Kristina, but that if I didn’t reach her he should ring me the minute she turned up. He didn’t like it but, with the way things were with public, media and police interest in the underage sex scene, he didn’t have much choice. A white Commodore pulled up as I was driving away-business at last.
I didn’t have anything much to report to either of my clients, but the day hadn’t been a complete zero. I drove around aimlessly for a while, just letting impressions form and take shape. I drifted back towards Glebe, going with the flow of the mid-afternoon traffic. The twin towers in New York might be gone, but the two towers of the Tempe brickworks still stood, although the huge rubbish dump and quarry have been landscaped into something called, with brilliant imagination, Sydney Park. I made a mental note to have a good walk around its rolling grassy hectares some day. Perhaps jog around it. Perhaps.
Old habits die hard, especially those associated with work. I’ve heard of writers who couldn’t tap out a word for months after giving up smoking or going off the grog. I was still coming to terms with having no office to go to-no way to break up the day, compartmentalise life and work. I’d always done a certain amount of work at home-read files, made phone calls, used the computer-but having only the house as a base irked me. I’d liked the vibe of Darlinghurst-the number of people there living on the edge, taking risks, bombing out, occasionally coming up trumps. It acted as an antidote to the conformity I felt creeping over the country, seeping out from the conservative mandarins of Canberra. The upshot was that, increasingly, with no office to go to I didn’t want to go home.
I keep a spare set of clothes, a toothbrush and shaving gear in the car for those times when it’s not possible to go home. This time it was a matter of choice. With the Kristina Karatsky case on hold and possibly headed for a win, there was no reason not to scoot down to the south coast and take a look at the burnt-out house in Wombarra. I’d taken notes from the stuff Elizabeth Farmer had given me so I knew the names of the people I needed to talk to. I hit the Princes Highway and went south.
I hadn’t been to the Illawarra in some time but I remembered the lie of the land pretty well. You leave the highway south of Waterfall if you want the coast road, otherwise you stick on it all the way to the Bulli Pass. I’m like most Australians, the coast has a special appeal for me, and I remembered the coastline south from Stanwell Tops as spectacular. A tonic to an old surfer. I got a greatest hits station on the radio and settled back to enjoy the drive once I’d got past the used car yards and auto accessory supermarkets. The Eagles and Credence were good company and at Heathcote the Beach Boys felt like a bonus.
I swung left down towards Stanwell Park and the plan came unstuck. A flashing sign above the road read: COAST ROAD CLOSED AT COALCLIFF. The narrow road carved into the cliff with a straight drop to the sea is fragile. Signs in this area read ‘Falling Rocks Do Not Stop’ and they don’t. I swore and drove down as far as the turnoff just to get a glimpse of the coastline before u-turning and heading back to the highway.
It was after five when I got to Bulli where I stopped for petrol. The young attendant was a livewire who insisted on checking the oil, water and tyres. He found a soft one and gave it some air. The process took longer than it usually does and, with daylight saving still a couple of weeks away, the light was dropping and it would be even darker at Wombarra, four towns back in the shadow of the escarpment. I drove to Thirroul and checked into the motel where Brett Whiteley had cashed in his chips. If it had been America they would’ve tricked out his room and charged a special rate. Not so here. It was a quiet time with plenty of vacancies. I might’ve been in Brett’s room, not that I cared one way or the other.
It hadn’t been strenuous, but, with the deception at Matilda Farmer’s office, the aggro in Tempe, the progress in Alexandria and the miles covered, it felt like a full day. I ate a passable meal in one of the town’s restaurants, bought a bottle of white and took it back to the room where I watched television for a while, read a bit from one of the many paperbacks lying around in the car, and was asleep by 11 pm.
I woke up a few times and thought I could hear the waves of the Tasman Sea hitting the Illawarra shore. I was probably too far back to really hear it, but imagining it was just as good. An orange juice from the mini-bar and two cups of instant coffee did for breakfast. I put on my gym gear that I also keep in the car and went for a jog down to the beach and along the sand. Pretty nice beach at Thirroul and the surfers were already out. Still in their wetsuits, though. I thought about a swim, decided against it. The tiled and chlorinated saltwater pool was open and there was no entrance fee. With Sydney only an hour and a bit away by train, it was a pretty good place to live. I had a memory of some famous literary figure hanging around here for a spell and writing about the place, and the name jumped out at me-D. H. Lawrence. I remembered the name of the book, Kangaroo. I’d never read it; hadn’t read much of him at all apart from Lady Chatterley’s Lover when we were finally allowed. A bit dull, I thought.
My change of clothes amounted to jeans, a flannie, a T-shirt and a pair of sandals I’d picked up in New Caledonia the year before. There was still a nip in the air so I put the flannie on over the T-shirt until the day warmed up. Good south coast outfit. I paid my bill with my always stretched Amex card, and drove north to Wombarra. The next town up was Austinmer which has a long history as a beach holiday spot, and then Coledale and Wombarra, both mining towns in the old days, and now more or less dormitory suburbs for Sydney and Wollongong commuters.
I keep a selection of directories for different areas- Wollongong, Newcastle, the Blue Mountains-in the car for out-of-town jobs. The address Dr Farmer had given me was for a road running parallel to the railway line and well above it. I took the steep turnoff at Coledale and made the climb with the old Falcon performing well. The escarpment seemed to loom just above the road although in fact it was still a good way back. House numbers were hard to spot. Some of the houses were weekenders. The owners didn’t get much mail here and didn’t bother to keep the numbers clear of bushes and trees. Eventually I worked out which was the Farmer block by a process of elimination.
It was narrow-fronted and seemed to run back a long way in a sort of fan shape. The grass in front of the fence was overgrown and the wide gate leading to a track was padlocked. I got out of the car and shivered. Tall trees to the east blocked the sun and the area was clinging to its night-time chill. I exchanged the sandals for socks and sneakers and approached the gate. The land on the other side of the road looked unoccupied and the nearest neighbour was a hundred metres away to the right. The Farmer land was bounded to the north by a narrow street running down to the railway.
I climbed the gate and walked down the driveway. The grass at the sides and in the middle had grown back aggressively, indicating that no vehicles had passed by recently. The track bent south. The place was giving off an air of neglect but that didn’t concern the healthy stand of trees fifty metres down. A horticultural ignoramus, even I could tell when flame trees and jacarandas have been deliberately planted and cared for. I passed through the red and purple display, pushing through spider webs, and saw where the house had been. Perfect spot. The land dropped away to the north-east and gaps in the trees gave a glimpse of the water in the near distance. What had been garden and lawn all around was a weed field, and only blackened stumps and a crumbling brick chimney remained of the house.
I walked through the knee-high grass soaking the legs of my jeans, socks and sneakers. I spent some time as an insurance investigator many years ago and knew what to look for when arson was suspected, but you have to be on the spot while the embers are still warm to learn anything useful. This site had been rained on, windblown, shat on by birds, rooted through by animals. No trace of anything dodgy could remain. Still, you can learn something about the former occupants even from a ruin like this. Indications were that virtually no renovation had ever been done to what was originally a fairly large fibro cottage. The rooms were small, suggesting pre-World War II construction. The back verandah, which would have afforded a glimpse of the water, hadn’t been built in to provide extra living or sleeping space. The only signs of recent maintenance were the bits of guttering lying around. Thoroughly blackened, but no rust.
Dr Farmer had said the house was heated by bar radiators, so evidently the combustion stove, blackened and rusty, still standing under the chimney, had been inoperative. Pity, nothing better than heating up the kitchen on a cold country morning by getting the stove going. I remembered holidays in Katoomba with friends of my parents and my city-dwelling father clumsily wielding the axe and hatchet to get the kindling and stove wood. Everything cooked was fried and tasted terrific…
‘What the hell d’you think you’re doing?’
The voice came from a woman who’d approached from the south side without me hearing her. Too busy reminiscing. She was tall and slender in a heavy sweater, corduroy pants and gumboots. Her hair was dark with grey streaks glinting in the sunlight filtering through the tops of the trees. She carried the sort of stick I should have had for pushing away the cobwebs and she looked capable of using it for other purposes.
‘I’m working for Dr Elizabeth Farmer,’ I said.
‘Is that right? Can you prove it?’
‘Perhaps you should tell me why you’ve got the right to ask.’
She picked her way sure-footedly through the charred ruins and stopped within a metre of me. ‘I live over behind this property. She…Elizabeth asked me to see if the orchard could be revived.’
I reached into my wallet, took out Dr Farmer’s card and showed it to her. I said, ‘She didn’t mention you to me.’
‘Cards don’t prove anything.’
‘I’ve got a mobile in the car. You can ring her and check.’
She looked at me closely. She had strong, symmetrical features, slightly weathered skin, capable-looking hands one side or the other of forty. We realised simultaneously that each was examining the other and we both saw the humour of it. Her grin brought a small network of lines and wrinkles in her face to life. ‘I suppose you could be telling the truth,’ she said. ‘What’re you doing for Elizabeth?’
I showed her my licence folder and told her. That changed her manner completely.
‘Bloody hell, it’s about time. I’m glad to hear it. I’m Sue Holland.’
We shook hands. ‘Cliff Hardy.’ I flipped the folder closed. ‘I take it you think the fire here wasn’t an accident?’
‘Fred? Burn his house down? No chance.’
‘He was getting on. Maybe he just slipped up a bit and…’
She shook her head. ‘No way. I saw him that day. Sharp as a tack, old Fred. Pissed off at that wife of his as usual, but not dotty.’
‘We’d better have a proper talk, ah, Ms, Mrs…’
‘Sue. Where’s your car?’
I pointed and she told me to drive down the street beside the Farmer property and come in where I saw a two metre high stump with the name Holland painted on it. I did as instructed and followed a track for close to a hundred metres, finishing up at a sandstone cottage in a rainforest clearing. I waited and Sue who-had-to-be Holland came tramping through the bush to the side of the cottage. She snapped her stick across her knee and threw the three pieces onto a woodheap under a galvanised iron lean-to. Smoke was rising from a chimney at the rear of the house and she gestured to me to come back there.
‘Come in. The front of the place is freezing. I live out the back until the summer.’
I followed her along a gravel path to a set of brick steps where she kicked off her boots. She gave a sharp whistle and an old dog came slowly out of a kennel near the steps. She patted his head and murmured something to him.
‘Poor old feller,’ she said. ‘He used to come with me everywhere but now he can barely raise a trot. Come on in. D’you drink tea or coffee?’
‘Coffee. Thanks. What’s his name?’
She glanced sharply at me. ‘Why?’
I shrugged. ‘Just asking. I like dogs and wish I could have one but my lifestyle doesn’t allow it.’
‘Oh, I thought you were being prescient. His name’s Fred. I named him after Elizabeth’s dad when I got him from the pound.’ She laughed. ‘Cunning dog, he was older than he looked.’
We went into the kitchen where a combustion stove very like the one I remembered from Katoomba was heating the space nicely. Tiled floor with a few rugs, pine table with chairs, workbenches, two tall pine dressers, old style sink, new style fridge and microwave. She hefted a big black kettle over to the sink and ran the tap. She dumped it on the stove, opened the hinged door and stirred up the fire, fed in some light wood.
‘Won’t be long. I could use the jug but I prefer it this way.’
‘I would too.’
‘You don’t strike me as a country type.’
‘I’m not. Boyhood memories and romantic fantasies.’
‘Have a seat.’ She busied herself spooning ground coffee and getting mugs down from the dresser. The draining board on the sink was empty. She was compulsive about putting things away, like me. I sat at the table and enjoyed watching her as she went unselfconsciously about the tasks, padding softly across the tiles in her thick socks. The kettle whistled and she poured the water and set the plunger.
‘Milk?’
‘If you’ve got it. Doesn’t matter.’
We settled with two steaming mugs of coffee and about a hundred years of pine table history between us. The surface was scarred and scorched and gouged, but it had been oiled and cared for lately and gave off a soft, yellow gleam.
She saw me noticing. ‘This was the mine manager’s house. The shaft entrance is about fifty metres off that-away.’ She pointed. ‘Covered with lantana now, of course.’
I nodded and drank some of the very good coffee. ‘I didn’t expect anything like this.’
‘Like what?’
‘Someone so knowledgeable about the area and about the Farmers. Lucky.’
She shrugged. ‘Don’t know what good it’ll do you. What’s your brief from Elizabeth?’
I sipped. ‘You’re very direct.’
‘I don’t like to piss about. I know Elizabeth thinks Matilda hyphen whatever had Fred killed. I think it’s likely but no one else does. What are you supposed to do, prove it?’
‘Investigate,’ I said.
‘Oh, right-sit on the fence and charge so much a day.’
I drank more coffee and said nothing.
She cupped her hands around the mug. ‘I’m sorry. That was rude and offensive. It’s just that she needs someone on her side.’
‘You are.’
‘Apart from me. I can do bugger-all. Have you met Matilda?’
‘Yes.’
‘What d’you reckon?’
I liked this woman. I liked her house and her dog. I liked her coffee and the way the flue in her combustion stove didn’t work perfectly so that there was a bit of fragrant wood smoke in the kitchen. ‘I’d say she was capable of almost anything.’
‘Good on you. More coffee?’