by Peter Corris
‘Would you care for tea, Mr Hardy?’
Tea? You’d have to hold me down and use a funnel. ‘No, thanks, Ms Pettigrew.’
‘Please sit.’
We sat on padded cane chairs. She wore a blouse and skirt, medium heels. She had good legs. No wedding ring, no jewellery. She had disconcertingly dark eyes that bulged just slightly, making you feel watched more closely than you wanted to be. Her complexion was pale and smooth with just a few lines showing. If she wore makeup it was subtle. She was just short of attractive but certainly interesting-looking and that can be better.
‘I’ve spoken to your former husband, obviously,’ I said, ‘and to the policeman who supervised the investigation into your missing son.’
‘Gunnarson,’ she said. ‘Competent, I thought, but nothing beyond that.’
‘I believe I need your authority to talk to people at the school.’ I took a sheet from my pocket. ‘I typed up something appropriate. Would you mind signing it?’
She glanced at it briefly and signed with the pen I offered.
‘I wanted to ask you about Justin-his habits his character, I suppose. As I said, I’d like to look at what he left behind and to hear any thoughts you might have about what caused him to leave.’
She inclined her head slightly. ‘To leave? That’s an interesting way of putting it. Yes, I rather like that. He left, didn’t he?’
There was a quality to her I couldn’t put my finger on. Call it a lack of frankness, a feeling that much was being held back. But it was impossible to tell whether this related to Justin or to something else. Her degree of composure was disconcerting and I had a sense that she knew I was aware of it and was playing me. I began to get an inkling of what Gunnarson had meant by ‘dragon lady’. I didn’t want to be played. Time to be direct.
‘D’you think he’s still alive, Ms Pettigrew?’
‘Very possibly not, and if so it’s all Paul’s fault, the coward.’
3
I was about to probe that remark when the front door slammed and I heard laughter and pounding footsteps in the hallway. Angela Pettigrew shot out of her chair as if released by a spring and went quickly through the kitchen to the passage, heels clacking on the boards. I followed and her voice, raised to a shout but still with the rounded vowels, echoed through the space.
‘Sarah! Who do you have with you? Come out of there at once!’
By the time we reached the door it had opened and a young man had come out looking alarmed and disoriented. He turned towards us, realised he was headed the wrong way, pushed Ms Pettigrew aside and made her lose balance. She fell and swore.
A younger female voice screeched, ‘No, Ronny!’
Ronny was big, young and frightened and he made the mistake of throwing a punch at me as he tried to get clear. I blocked his clumsy swing with my left forearm and hooked him low in the ribs with a short right, the way I’d done hundreds of times in the ring. A skilful boxer spots it early and sways away, reducing the impact. Ronny didn’t know the moves and the punch took the wind out of him and rubberised his legs. He went down in a heap as Ms Pettigrew got gamely and smoothly to her feet.
Sarah, all teased blonde hair and eye makeup, stood in the doorway in her bra and school skirt and giggled as I helped steady her mother, who accepted the support momentarily and then brushed me off like a troublesome fly.
‘Who’s this, then, Mummy? Nice!’
Give her her due, Angela was up to the job. She stepped forward, landed a heavy slap on the girl’s face, shoved her back inside the room and pulled the door shut. She wasn’t even breathing hard. She’d be good on the steps. Maybe she had made the hockey team.
‘You hypocritical bitch!’ the girl screamed.
Ronny was sucking in air and pressing himself back against the wall, trying to slide upright.
‘You,’ Angela said, completely under control now and nudging Ronny with her foot. ‘Get out!’
He scrambled up, all legs and arms in jeans, sneakers and bomber jacket, and rushed to the door. His fly zipper was still undone. Rock music came from inside the room.
‘Well,’ Ms Pettigrew said, ‘after all that I don’t suppose there’s any use pretending we’re a happy family.’
‘Not many are all the time.’
‘I suppose not. She looked at her watch and tapped the side of her head with an index finger. ‘Oh, I’ve got it now- I told her I’d be away having the car seen to until late, but as it turned out I had to have it towed. I forgot to tell her about my appointment with you. I have to admit I was going to cancel it in favour of dealing with the car, until it wouldn’t start and it became clear from the NRMA person that it was undriveable and so I’d still be here to see you. She… they obviously thought I wasn’t here. I must say you were quick and. .. decisive.’
So were you, I thought, but I didn’t say it. ‘He was just a boy, no experience.’
On the way back to the sunroom she stopped in the kitchen, swivelled, and headed towards a drinks tray on a pine sideboard. ‘I’m going to have a whisky. Would you care for one, Mr Hardy?’
‘I would. Thank you.’
‘Ice?’
‘Just water.’
‘Quite right.’ She poured two solid belts of Cutty Sark, added water from a cooler and took the drinks through to where we’d been sitting.
‘Cheers, and thank you for your help. That big lump of a boy could have hurt me.’
‘He was more frightened than anything else, but he did need discouraging.’
She smiled. ‘You do have a nice way of putting things. Sarah is an uncontrolled and uncontrollable little hoyden. I don’t know what I’m going to do with her. She’s been on the brink of expulsion from St Margaret’s many a time.’
‘Unlike Justin.’
‘My word, yes. He was an exemplary… oh God.’ She took a strong pull on her drink and stroked the side of her face with her free hand. ‘I must have sounded so cold before. It’s the way I was brought up. Don’t show your feelings, remain in control. I do, but sometimes I want to scream.’
I drank some scotch and gave her a minute, then I said, ‘You’ve got a lot on your hands. I’ll only ask one question and then I’d like to see anything of Justin’s you can show me. What did you mean when you said his disappearance was your husbands fault?’
She knocked back the rest of her drink. ‘Paul had always gone on about the military tradition of the Hampshires-the Boer War, World Wars I and II and all that, plus his own service in Vietnam. He filled Justin to the brim with the idea of Duntroon and the military. Justin and I had an argument about something or other and I told him that Paul had served briefly as a supply officer in Vietnam before being invalided out. He never fired a shot in anger or had one fired at him, never left the base. This was after Paul had deserted us, making noises about American business deals, promising to look into scholarships to West Point.’
‘So Justin…?’
‘I’m guessing. He and I never spoke about… personal matters, not really, not manly-you know? I’m guessing he went off to do something brave, unlike his father, to prove to him and himself that he was a man. God knows what, and he hasn’t been heard of since
Her pain was palpable now but I had to ask one more question. ‘Did you tell any of this to the police?’
‘No, I was ashamed of the mess we were in and it was just a guess. What good could it do?’
I had the feeling that she wanted to say a lot more but couldn’t bring herself to do it. She lowered her dark head, strands of grey showing at the crown, and pointed. ‘Second door on the right is Justin’s room. Take all the time you need. Thank you again, Mr Hardy. I’m going to lie down.’
I didn’t recognise the music coming from behind Sarah’s door and didn’t want to. Justin’s room wasn’t one of those shrines to the departed you hear about. It had been tidied and I had the impression a good deal of the paraphernalia had been removed. It was basically just a bedroom with posters on the walls-standard te
enage stuff-and marks where other stuff had been stuck, perhaps too affecting to be allowed to stay.
There wasn’t much in the desk and didn’t look as if there ever had been-no diary, nothing taped to the underside of a drawer, no hollowed-out cavities. A bookshelf held a few textbooks-history, English, human movement, agricultural science-and there was a well overdue school library copy of Series biography of Monash along with paperbacks of Waugh’s Put Out More Flags and a couple of Clancys and Forsyths. Oh for the days of blotters with indiscretions scribbled on them and discarded carbon papers. A calendar for the year Justin went missing was taped to the side of the bookcase, effectively hidden from view. The date of his mother’s missing person report was 18 September. The date the HSC exams were to start was circled in red, but further back, on 1 August, was scribbled ‘Ag Sci Ex’.
I took the Serle book down and something fell out from it-a reader’s ticket to the Mitchell Library. I left the room and knocked quietly on the door almost opposite. No response. I knocked louder and the music stopped.
‘What?’
‘I’m a private investigator looking into the disappearance of your brother. I want to talk to you.’
‘Fuck off.’
‘Any message if I run into Ronny?’
‘Tell him to fuck off, too.’ The music kicked in-loud!
I went back to the sunroom, drained my scotch and left my card near the glass. I had to hope Sarah wouldn’t tear it up.
It was raining, making the steps treacherous. I went down gingerly and hurried to the car. A U-turn and I was back heading south, away from the big houses and boats that are no protection against the worst kinds of trouble. A couple of hundred metres along I spotted Ronny. He was hunched up inside his jacket, with one hand in his pocket and the other thumbing for a ride. Seemed to be favouring his right side a little. I drove a short way past, stopped and opened the door. He got in and grunted his thanks before he identified me. By then I’d reached across him to close the door and had the car moving.
‘Take it easy,’ I said, ‘it’s pissing down. You need a lift and I need to talk to you.’
The rain was lashing the windscreen now, the wipers barely coping. He shoved both hands into his pockets and gave me a stare that was supposed to be hard but ended up sullen. ‘Who are you, then? The mother’s new bloke?’
I told him who I was and what I was doing as I drove carefully on the narrow road. His only response was a shrug. On closer inspection, he was a presentable kid-tall, lean and dark, trying for a beard and not quite making it yet. His clothes were the standard uniform but not bargain basement-New Balance high-tops-and he wore an expensive-looking watch. He examined the interior of the old Falcon and was unimpressed.
‘Have you got a smoke?’ he said.
‘You might find some in the glove-box.’
He opened it up and took out a crumpled packet of Marlboros. ‘Three in it.’
‘You can have ‘em,’ I said. ‘And the lighter. Someone left them behind.’
He put a cigarette in his mouth.
‘You can smoke when you get out and after you answer a few questions. Okay?’
He wanted to ask me what Sarah had told me but with the rain pelting and the cigarettes available he decided to play it cool. Me too.
‘You need to learn a bit about fighting, son. You had a go, which I admire, but you should always keep your head moving and punch for the body. Bigger target.’
The cigarette in his mouth jiggled as he nodded. ‘If you say so.’
‘And you shouldn’t have pushed the woman. I know you were scared-’
‘Who says I’m scared?’
‘I do. You’re scared a lot of the time. I was at your age. How far’re you going?’
‘Mona Vale.’
‘I’ll drop you. Did you know Sarah’s brother, Justin?’
‘Yeah, I knew him. Went to the same fucking school until they chucked me out.’
‘What was he like?’
‘He was an arsehole.’
‘Explain.’
‘Always crapping on about the heroes in his fucking family. Grandfather and great-grandfather dying in battle, how he was going to be an officer and all that shit. Who cares?’
‘What else?’
‘He used to try to protect Sarah from blokes like me. Not that she wanted protection, and when he pissed off, wow, did she cut loose.’
‘Still at school, isn’t she?’
He sniggered and pushed up the sleeve of his jacket to scratch at a new-looking tattoo of an image I couldn’t identify. ‘Not a lot. Look, she basically goes for the drama classes. She wants to be a fucking actress and she’s acting all the time. Anyhow, she wasn’t at school today. We thought her old lady was out till late.’
‘Any more to tell me?’
‘No. Yeah, that car. Man, if I had a car like that what wouldn’t I do, but him-went fucking surfing and skiing and even went down to Canberra to look at some fucking museum. Nerd.’
‘When was this?’
‘Not long before he went, or whatever.’
‘Have you got any theory on that?’
‘What d’you mean?’
‘What do you think happened to him?’
The shrug and the snigger. ‘Dunno and don’t care. Sarah reckons he went off to be a soldier’s fortune, whatever the fuck that is.’
‘Soldier of fortune. A mercenary, fighting for money.’
Ronny had nothing to say to that one way or the other. We drove on in silence for a while as the rain eased.
‘What do you do, Ronny?’
‘Nothing much. Stop here.’
I pulled over and he got out. It looked for a second as if he intended to slam the door, but he glanced in at me and thought better of it.
It was late in the day. Bryce Grammar was in North Narrabeen and I was more or less on the spot. No reason to cross the harbour back to an empty house that might, if the rain had been falling in Glebe, be leaking. I booked into a Mona Vale motel-another charge on my client-ate a meal at a nearby Vietnamese restaurant and returned to watch some TV and make notes and squiggles on what I was beginning to think of-after Ronny’s slack-minded reference to Justin’s grandfather and great-grandfather-as the Hampshire saga. My recall for conversation wasn’t perfect but it was pretty good. A remark of Ronny’s stuck in my mind: Are you the mother’s new bloke? New?
Something had happened to send Justin Hampshire- focused, solid student set on a solid career, protector of his sister, adept sportsman-off in a spin. What? His mother had suggested disappointment at learning of his father’s indifferent military career and desertion. Possible, but it seemed a bit thin. Where he was certainly had to do with why he went. Angela Pettigrew’s acceptance of the possibility that her son could be dead worried me. Did mothers have an instinct about such things? How would I know?
I worked the mini-bar a bit-not a client expense-and wished I’d brought the Hughes book as bedtime reading. I read bits and pieces of the Serle biography of Monash instead and that was useful. Someone-Justin?-had underlined certain passages about the AIF’s heroic and sacrificial struggles at the Somme.
4
I didn’t sleep well. I had one of those nights when you wake up every hour or so for no reason you can fathom-not snoring, no outside noise, no bladder pressure. At four am I gave up, turned on the television and switched it off after flicking through the channels. Radio National was replaying a program on experimental music. I was reminded of the remark a music critic had made about a revival of the musical Jesus Christ, Superstar: ‘If you missed it the first time, here’s a chance to miss it again’.
I made a cup of coffee, read for a bit and then put the book down. Of course I found myself thinking about the case, going over the twists and turns. I wasn’t sure exactly how many missing person cases I’d worked on or what my strike rate was, but I knew it was in positive territory. This had the feel of a hard one-the background, the family circumstances, the deceptions and disa
ppointments provided complex motives for the disappearance and equally complex directions for the detective to follow.
The welcome morning light started to creep into the room and the feeling I always get in those conditions-a mixture of loneliness and relief at being my own master-left me in a meditative mood. A question that had been wafting around, half-formed, came into focus. Why had Angela Pettigrew married Paul Hampshire? She appeared to have come from a more favourable background, was more physically attractive or interesting, and certainly smarter.
You could have fitted the whole of Maroubra High-buildings, playground, assembly area, the lot-four or five times into the space occupied by Bryce Grammar. The grass on the playing fields was green; the artificial turf on the tennis courts had that eerie shine; the paths were gravel and there were parking areas for both students and staff. The flowerbeds were out of Home amp; Garden, and the buildings, though not very old, had already acquired a becoming amount of ivy in all the right places.
The classroom buildings were at a distance and I could see some blazered students walking around and sitting under shade. There was no one batting, bowling or hitting-it was evidently a serious time of the day on a serious day of the week. I went up some imposing sandstone steps into the carpeted quietness of the administration building and found the office of the registrar. His secretary was a cheerful, plump, middle-aged woman who asked me to wait while she took my note of authority in to the boss. That occupied enough time for me to look around and get some idea of what the registrar actually did to need a secretary and a day and a bit before he could see someone. The photographs of men and women in suits told the story-he lobbied and raised money from old boys and anyone else he could put the touch on.
The secretary came back minus the letter and ushered me past her cubicle to a door with ‘A R McKenzie-Brown, Registrar’ on a laminated card in a slot. Bit of a worry those slots-a name that can be slotted in can easily be slotted out. To my surprise the occupant opened the door at her knock and thanked her before stepping aside and beckoning me in. A lot of self-important executive types like to be seen working at their desks when you arrive. Looking busy. Not McKenzie-Brown. He was a tall, lean type in his early forties-shirt-sleeves, loosened tie, cigarette in hand. He offered me the other hand.
