No Safe Place

by Jenny Spence

  “She’s working with Patrick,” continues Surinder. “Scott will need to meet with them.”

  “Patrick?”

  “Yes,” she says patiently. “Patrick Donnelly.”

  “I don’t think I know him either,” I say. Where have I heard that name recently?

  Surinder looks at her watch and finishes up. We follow her meekly to the next floor so that Scott can be photographed for a security pass, as he’ll be spending a bit of time here. While we’re waiting, I get a chance to talk to Surinder.

  “You’ve been here a long time, haven’t you?” I ask. “Since before the restructure?”

  “Sure, Elly. Six years now.”

  “Did you know Peter Talbot?”

  “Who?”

  “Peter Talbot. He worked for Water Conservation and Catchment, and he went missing in the bush last year.”

  “Oh, yes, I remember. A few of the people around here knew him. They were pretty upset.”

  By the time Scott comes out I remember where I’ve heard that name.

  “Maybe we should both meet Rosemary while we’re here?” I suggest. “And – um – Patrick too?”

  Surinder takes us to an office a couple of floors down and introduces us to an earnest young Asian woman.

  “Sorry,” she says. “Patrick’s just gone outside for a smoke. You want to wait?”

  Surinder looks at her watch with a little frown, so I say, “No, it’s okay. Maybe next time.”

  Surinder bundles us out of the building, her mind on her next meeting, and my head’s swivelling in all directions as we step into the street. I spot him huddled in the next doorway, a wiry man in his mid-thirties with straight brown hair and carefully trimmed stubble, cradling a cigarette.

  “Scott,” I say, “there’s a great coffee place halfway down the block on the left-hand side. Can you go on ahead and order me a latte? I’ve got to have a word with someone for a moment.”

  He looks dubious. “Do they have soy? I’m a vegan.”

  “I’m sure they have everything. I’ll be there in a minute.”

  I move in on my prey. This would be easier if I were a member of the great fraternity of smokers.

  “Hi,” I say. “You’re Patrick, aren’t you?”

  He looks up. His face is pale and pinched in the cold, his eyes red-rimmed through the haze of smoke.

  “I’m Elly Cartwright. I’ve been working on that information system for Surinder. She said you had some new stuff to put into it?”

  “Oh, yeah, there’re those enhancements to the flood forecaster that we thought should be documented. Rosemary’s the one you should talk to, really.”

  “Okay, sure,” I say. “I’ll get onto her next time.”

  He puffs his cigarette and gazes morosely into the distance.

  “Someone told me you were a friend of Peter’s?” I say casually.

  “Yeah. Did you know him?”

  “Not well,” I say. “He was more like a friend of a friend. Do you think they’ll ever find out what happened to him?”

  “I doubt it,” he says. “That’s pretty dense bush up there. We tried searching for him before we hiked out, but we nearly lost each other.”

  “We?” I say, wide-eyed. “You were there?”

  “Yeah. Didn’t you know? There were four of us camping up there, but the weather was pretty lousy. By the time we lost Pete there was no-one else around to help us look for him.”

  “How did it happen?”

  “Well,” he says, “Suresh and me, we’d planned a big walk on the Sunday, full-day. But Brian and Peter had to get back to Melbourne, so they were just gonna do the Doctor Creek Track. It only takes about three hours there and back.”

  “I see.”

  “Only when we left, Brian had the mother of all hangovers. He’d really pushed the boat out the night before. You know what it’s like – four blokes away for the weekend.”

  “I can imagine,” I say, nodding and smiling.

  “So they were just hanging around for a while until Brian felt better. But he kept throwing up, so Pete went up on his own. He was a bit hung-over too, and he really shouldn’t have gone. It was wet and cold, and the tracks were in pretty poor shape. Brian blamed himself, but hell, the guy was practically comatose. He was still asleep in his tent when we got back, and we all got a hell of a shock to find Pete was missing.”

  “Peter had his phone, didn’t he? What happened when you tried to call him?”

  “We had to walk out to raise the alarm, because there’s virtually no coverage in there; and then we just couldn’t raise him.”

  “Brian,” I say. “Is he another workmate?”

  “Nah, Brian’s an old mate of Pete’s. I think they went to school together. They were like brothers. Brian was in a bad way. Distraught, you know.”

  “Oh yeah, I think my friend knows Brian. Is he another engineer?”

  “No, he’s one of those personal trainers. I think he works at Paths to Fitness, somewhere in the city.”

  He’s stubbing out his cigarette, so it’s time to go.

  When I get to the café, Scott’s sitting patiently at a table out the front, half frozen, with a cup of black coffee and a latte in front of him. He’s put the saucer on top of the cup to try to keep it hot for me. Too late, I remember that this is a straight-down-the-line Italian place with a prominent sign out the front reading: ‘No skim, no soy, no decaf, don’t ask.’

  18

  After lunch I get a chance to catch up with Luke and Ravi. I’m now officially on the Carlos project for a couple of days, so we can gather in the meeting room without worrying too much about Derek.

  “Okay,” says Ravi. “There’s a whole heap of triangulation data in the backup. What the Ukrainian guys have been doing, they’ve been analysing it.”

  “Yes!” I say.

  “So the date stamp on the raw data they worked on was for a Sunday morning in early October last year. That’s what you’re looking for, isn’t it?”

  “Sure is.”

  “In this attachment, which came in last week, they’ve done some conversions and interpolations and overlaid GPS data, to come up with the route this guy Talbot must have taken. They’ve even plotted it graphically on a map,” he says and brings it up on the screen. The map shows Talbot’s route deviating from the path he should have taken. There are labels at a few points showing map coordinates and times.

  “What are these?” I ask.

  “They’re the more reliable readings,” he explains. “The path kind of joins the dots.”

  “Well, it’s consistent with what I’ve found out,” I say. “That’s where they looked for him, and that’s where they eventually found his day pack.” I point out the location on the map. “No anomalies there.”

  “Not yet,” agrees Luke. “What else have we got, Ravi?”

  “Gold!” says Ravi, his teeth flashing white in his dark face, his fingers flying over the keyboard. “Have a look at this. It was in the backup.”

  He brings up a huge database table. We’ve all seen something like this before. It’s a master list of bank accounts.

  “Now look here,” he says, collapsing it down to a header page.

  “Mercantile Mutual Online Trading Bank,” reads Luke. “I’ve never heard of that before.”

  “Neither have I,” I say.

  “Neither has Google,” says Ravi.

  “That’s odd,” I say. “Is it real?”

  “Seems to be because these look like real accounts, and a lot of money is going through some of them. It’s just obviously very private and very discreet.”

  “Have you found names for these account IDs?”

  “Does the sun rise in the east?”

  “Are you going to surprise me?” I ask.

  “I think I am,” he murmurs, scrolling rapidly. “One of these accounts does belong to Peter Talbot. All I’ve got here is a snapshot of data for the first half of last year, but have a look at it.”

  T
here’s a list of deposits which we look at with awe.

  “If that’s his salary I’m joining the public service,” says Luke.

  “Have you added it up?” I ask.

  “Well,” says Ravi. “I can see roughly two million dollars going in just with the information we’ve got here. Most of it is in a regular monthly payment, but occasionally there’s another big payment, so I’d say there’s multiple sources. We don’t have an account balance, so it could have started earlier than these dates. If it kept going he must have had a hell of a lot by the time he disappeared.”

  “Carlos had this?”

  “Yep.”

  “And there are quite a few accounts in this table, aren’t there?”

  “That’s right.”

  I look from Ravi to Luke. They’re practically dancing with excitement.

  “Listen, you can talk to Steve about this of course, and I’ll report to Derek, but not a word to anyone else. Are you listening?” I say as their bright eyes look at me. “I know the others are going to ask what we’re finding out, but there’s information here that’s dangerous to know. Please be very careful.”

  “Hey!” says Luke. “You can count on us. Right, Ravs?”

  Ravi nods. They both look ready to cut their hands and swear an oath in blood, if boys still do that. Somehow, despite their proclamations, it’s still a game to them. But they play to win, so I’ll have to be satisfied with that.

  I get my phone out of the safe, reassemble it and search out the numbers I want. Having the phone functional for that short time makes me feel horribly exposed, like Frodo when he puts the ring on, and I feel the malevolent eye of Sauron on me. I’m not game to use Bluetooth to copy the numbers across to my new phone, in case there’s some way they can intercept that, so it’s a pen-and-paper job.

  Using the office phone I call the biggest Paths to Fitness gym in the city and ask for Brian O’Dwyer. They’ve never heard of him.

  Omar gives me a lift home, but I get him to drive into the basement to pick me up, and I climb into the back of his van for the first part of the trip out of the city. It’s fitted out with a mattress and opulent cushions, and smells of incense.

  “I’m not going to see anything I shouldn’t see back here, am I?” I call.

  “Hey, I take my mum shopping in this car!” he says indignantly.

  I get him to let me out in a quiet area a couple of streets away from the Khá Sen.

  “Pick you up here tomorrow?” he offers.

  “No, thanks anyway. I’ve got something to do in the morning. Tell Derek I’ll be in just before lunch.”

  In my room, I’m expecting to see a garbage bag stuffed with clothes. Instead, there’s a stack of neatly folded items on the bed, and some items on hangers on the back of the door. Everything that could be ironed has been ironed, and my shoes have been polished and are lined up in pairs on the floor. Mai obviously takes pride in her work, and she’s going to have a role in my future fantasies.

  I get a chance to thank her after dinner, when she joins me and Lily for jasmine tea in the restaurant.

  “Oh, Mai,” I say. “I hope you didn’t spend too much time cleaning. My house probably wasn’t as tidy as it should’ve been.”

  “No, all fine, all fine,” she smiles. “But maybe bathroom better if you use different product? I leave list in kitchen.”

  “Oh, really?”

  “Yeah, you buy stuff on list. Next time I clean your house, much better.”

  I wonder what sort of toxic chemicals she favours, then I feel guilty. For all I know she’s into white vinegar and bicarbonate of soda.

  “So did anyone knock on the door?” I ask, to change the subject.

  “Just Telstra guy.”

  “A Telstra guy?”

  “Yeah, you know, they want to offer you special deal on phone and Internet. I just tell him you not there.”

  “Hmmm,” I say, a bit nervous but also thinking they do come round quite often, leaving calling cards in the letterbox. “What did he say then?”

  “He want to know when you’ll be home. I tell him I don’t know, I’m just the cleaner. He say, ‘She be home tonight?’ I say, ‘I don’t know.’”

  “What did he look like, Mai?”

  She shrugs. “Just Anglo guy, you know? Glasses. Grey hair, bit too long.” She moves her hands around her face.

  “Right. Thanks, Mai. You did really well.”

  “I think he still there when I leave.”

  “Are you sure?” My heart lurches.

  “Not real sure, but there was car parked a little way down the street, and someone sitting in it. Looked like him, without the glasses.”

  “Not a Telstra van?”

  “No, not Telstra.”

  I’m chilled at the thought of someone watching Mai as she emerged from my house, innocently clutching a bag of my possessions. Sometimes I think he doesn’t exist, but sometimes I think he’s everywhere, and that he sees through all my pathetic attempts to fool him. He knows what’s in the bag and he knows that Mai will lead him straight back to me, here among these people who have endured their own trials and created this haven through hard work and perseverance, which they are sharing with unquestioning generosity.

  “It’s okay, Elly,” says Mai. “I clean two more houses after that. North Carlton, Kensington. Telstra guy didn’t show up. No cars like that one.”

  I reach across the table and give her a big hug. Lily laughs and they exchange a few pithy remarks in Vietnamese. They’re probably having a joke at my expense, but I don’t mind.

  They settle in for a gossip and soon after I thank Mai again and slip away to my room to go through some old information stored on my computer. My history with the Department of Water Resources goes back a few years, though I’ve only worked directly with Surinder and her team, and I’ve saved all the documents I edited for them. This is probably illegal, but it’s innocuous stuff, and represents a lot of work that I don’t want to have to repeat. Too often I’ve come back to a site to find they’ve lost or deleted all the work I did last time and I have to start again from scratch, so now I keep backups of everything.

  There’s a stack of old organizational charts, and I’ve got some that date back to the time before Water Conservation and Catchment split off into a separate department. It struck me as a particularly pointless restructure, since they’d only amalgamated a couple of years before, but what would I know?

  Peter Talbot’s name appears a couple of times, before the split. He seems to have been an environmental engineer, specialising in water modelling, which is presumably a meaningful concept to engineers. Once again I visualise translucent blue shapes hovering in the air. Talbot was at team leader level in the charts: the sort of person who might have become a project manager with his next promotion. His income would have been good – better than mine, I think grumpily – but not fantastic, and certainly not anywhere near the level in the account Ravi showed me.

  Brian O’Dwyer draws a blank when I Google him. Well, there are lots of Brian O’Dwyers, but not the one I’m interested in. Idly, I check the white pages online to see how many B O’Dwyers there are in Melbourne. To my surprise, I can’t find any. It’s too late now to call any more Paths to Fitness gyms, but I make a list of all the branches in and near the city.

  I go back to the blurred photo of Fiona with Suresh. Is there something over-intimate in the way his arm goes around her shoulders? But if I’m going to start suspecting Suresh, where does that place Patrick, who was with him all day?

  It’s possible that they were all in on it, Fiona included. If so, what was I doing, introducing myself to Patrick like that? Did he stub out his cigarette and reach for his phone, eyes narrowed, as he watched me walk away? I’ve got to be more careful.

  Having reached the limit of my resources as a detective, I sort through the stuff Lily brought, losing myself in the pleasure of having my own things again. It’s already cold in my room, and I put on a few extra layers o
f clothing and think sadly of the super-efficient gas heater I had installed in my house last winter. That gets me thinking about the beauty of the familiar, the ordinary, the everyday, and I wonder why I always seem to want what I haven’t got. All I want now is my life back.

  Before turning in, I set up the cheap mobile phone I bought yesterday and program in the numbers I need. Just Miranda, my closest friends Carol and Diana and a couple of people at work. After a moment’s hesitation I add DS Lewis, but I fervently hope I won’t need him again the way I did the other day. I log onto the work server and email my new number to Miranda, stressing that it’s for emergencies only. I know her idea of an emergency is not necessarily mine, but I can’t bear the thought of her not being able to contact me.

  19

  The day of Mabel’s funeral dawns grey and dismal, with an icy wind that slices through to the very bone. Dressed in my best dark suit, with a burgundy shawl wrapped over my head and shoulders, I join the morning commuters at Footscray Station and let the incoming tide take me to Flinders Street. It’s going to be a roundabout journey, but I’ve got time to kill and I’d rather get lost in the crowd.

  It’s still early when I get off the train, so I put on dark glasses and take the Degraves Street exit to Flinders Lane. After buying a takeaway coffee I wander down the alleys sipping it, checking on whether the street art has been replenished since the latest purge by the council. I’m pleased to see it’s slowly creeping back. Finishing my coffee, I thread my way back to the station for the half-hour ride to Fawkner.

  The cemetery is right outside the station. I don’t like the look of the set-up. There’s parking by the entrance, then a long, exposed path to the cluster of chapels in the distance, with plenty of hiding places on either side for anyone with ill intentions. Luckily I’ve timed things well and am able to join a knot of people heading towards the action, providing me with plenty of cover. The crowd huddles together against the bitter wind.

  I squeeze myself in between Jason and Rocco, both resplendent in fine dark Italian wool overcoats and scarves. The other neighbours are more down-market, in padded parkas and polar fleeces. They all greet me with the nodding sympathy usually reserved for the chief mourner.