by Brett Adams
I get the same with names, too.
I love the name Marlowe. Roll it around on your tongue. It’s a cracker.
It’s also a name with literary heft.
Conspiracy theorists insist half of Shakespeare’s plays were penned by Christopher Marlowe.
Charlie Marlow was the narrator of Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, a tale set during the wax of the British Empire, when every which way lay a frontier. It tells of a steamboat journey up the Congo into the heart of alien Africa, backwards in time to primeval scapes, and a descent into the soul of man. (Incidentally, it was also the inspiration for Apocalypse Now, which featured an old, fat Marlon Brando, who nevertheless sweated charisma by the gallon in the jungles of Vietnam.)
Phillip Marlowe is Raymond Chandler’s wisecracking, hard-drinking, chess-playing detective, brought to the screen unforgettably by Humphrey Bogart. The archetype of the hardboiled hero.
I looked up the meaning of Marlowe. It means: a bog left by a drained lake.
See? Disappointing.
57
“I told you to take a break from this.”
Collins flicked a hand at the nest of paper in which Marten’s laptop rested. A photo of Jack Griffen paper-clipped to the top sheet was prominent—a faculty shot from his university, by the look of it.
“Hate to be pedantic—” Marten began. Collins shook his head, indicating he knew she loved to be pedantic. It was part of her job description. “But you did not. You advised me to take a break. I declined.”
Collins stepped back from the desk and squared his feet. Marten tensed and looked up. She could usually read his mood infallibly. Today she had no idea what he was thinking.
“There’s going to be an investigation.”
Marten frowned. “Into . . . ?” She wasn’t going to let him be a coward. She’d make him spell it out.
“You. Your conduct.”
The floor of her office dropped away.
“You’re kidding.”
“Dammit, Marten. I gave you every kind of warning I know how to give, and you couldn’t drop it.”
Her gaze narrowed. Investigations cost money and were bad press. They didn’t start of their own accord. “Who?”
“No. You’re going to have to let it—”
“Trent,” she said, no longer looking at Collins.
His silence told her she was right.
Gradually her office pulled itself back together. She glanced at her watch. It was a quarter to noon.
“Okay. If I’m suspended—”
“You’re not suspended,” he sighed. “But you are taking leave. As of now.”
“Good,” she stood and began collecting paper from her desk. “And the first thing I’m doing on leave is being taken to lunch by you.”
Collins glanced at his watch. “Bit early isn’t it? And you don’t want to have lunch with me. You want to throw darts at my face.”
“Why can’t I do both? I’m not taking no for an answer,” and she batted her eyelashes hideously at him.
He chuckled roughly and stalked out of the office, pausing at the threshold to hold the door open.
Marten gathered her laptop into her bag and passed him, saying, “And they say chivalry is dead.”
“Hurry up,” he muttered. “Bloody woman.”
Minutes later they were seated at a window of the Slug and Lettuce, barely a block from Marten’s office.
She had drunk half a martini, steeling herself, then plumped her phone down on the table. A phone number was already loaded into the keypad, just needed the touch of a button to enact the call.
Collins glanced at it and swore. “An ambush. I should have known.”
“Just be quiet and listen.” She thrust one half of her earbud headphones at him. He sighed, then leaned forward to insert it into his ear, resting his elbows on the table and bowing his head.
Marten inserted the other earbud and touched the call button.
The call blipped three times before it was picked up.
“Wéi.”
Collins lifted his head, frowning.
“Alexa?” said Marten.
A pause. “Miss Lacroix?”
“Mrs, yes. You said call back at eleven, but something came up.” She flashed her eyes at Collins, who pretended to ignore her. “It’s only half-twelve. I hope it’s okay.”
“Sure, sure,” said Alexa, sounding unconvincing.
“Oh, great.” Marten raised her eyes to the ceiling, saying a silent thank you, and tried to arrange her thoughts.
Alexa spoke. “You wanted to talk about . . . about Li?” Marten didn’t need her psychology degree to interpret the broken sentence. Li and Alexa had been long-time friends. And Li was barely four weeks cold.
“Yes and no. I’m after information about someone Li might have known.”
One of Collins’ hands appeared on the table at the edge of Marten’s view. Its fingers began a slow, rhythmic undulation—tap, tap, tap . . .
Shit. She had a minute, perhaps, to pique his interest before she was busted back to the academy.
“Can I confirm something first? I need to know if you’re thereeldeel?”
Marten took a moment to realize how stupid that sounded, but before she could clarify, Alexa spoke.
“That’s me. Double-e, double-e. The other was taken, but I don’t care anymore. I kind of like it the way it is now.”
Collins’ fingers drummed faster.
“Do you remember getting an email from Li on the 12th of September? The subject line was ‘Sub-population stats’, and she attached a spreadsheet.”
The silence that followed sounded pregnant to Marten. She strained to interpret the fuzz in the line over the clatter and murmur of the café’s ambient noise.
About the time Marten began to hear the throb of her own pulse, Alexa responded. “I remember the email. But I’m guessing you know it wasn’t a spreadsheet, and I’m guessing that’s why you called.”
Smart girl, thought Marten.
“Let me cut to the chase then, Alexa. The spreadsheet was in fact a photo of a young man. What I want to know is: was that man Hieronymus Beck?”
A pause. Then—
“I don’t know.”
Marten stared at the phone. She couldn’t have heard that right.
“What I mean is,” Alexa continued, “I don’t know for sure. I never met him in person, and Li never sent me another message.”
Of course. The message was sent 12th of September. Li was murdered shortly after.
But Marten clung to the words, ‘I never met him in person.’
“But I think that was him. I’m sure that was him. You see, all I had to go on was her word. He didn’t let anyone photograph him. Ever.”
That explained why the photo was so obviously covert, and the only one.
Marten slumped in her chair, and the earbud popped from her ear. As she scrambled to replace it, Collins gestured at a waitress for another Coke. The fire had taken.
“—think she doubted I believed her, even though I assured her again and again that I did. So I think she sent the photo as proof.”
Marten pressed. “Proof of what?”
“That her boyfriend wasn’t imaginary.”
Marten placed both hands on the table, palms down, fingers splayed, and fought her wheeling thoughts for clarity. She felt as if this call, Alexa, was a buffet but she had only seconds to eat. She strained to distil her need to the essentials. Alexa was her only source on Hiero, beside Jack and a comatose girl lying in a Viennese hospital. What could Alexa tell her?
“Alexa, there was no one enrolled at the university by the name Hieronymus Beck.”
“You think Hiero had something to do with her . . . with—”
“That’s what I’m trying to find out. Think.”
A pause, then, “Li said he was an exchange student studying linguistics, but attending lectures in literature. He was meeting with a professor—I forget his name.”
“Jack Gri
ffen?”
“Griffen, that’s it. I remember; it reminded me of Harry Potter, which is silly. So Hiero wouldn’t have been on the enrolment for Li’s course.”
Or any course, thought Marten, but didn’t press the point.
“When did she first start talking about him?”
“Oh, not long after the start of semester she started dropping hints that there was this guy hanging around. She spotted him a couple of times at a café off campus, watching her. She couldn’t stop talking about his eyes, how they made everything else around her pale. I laughed with her; she had it bad to be spouting that crap.”
There was a smile in her voice at first, before reality seemed to catch.
“Then one day when she was alone he sat down at her table. He said ‘Hi’, full of confidence, and she blurted, ‘I knew you were American!’ She was so embarrassed, but she was right. He looked straight out of California.”
Marten risked a glance at Collins. His gaze was abstracted, but he wasn’t bored. His fingers had stilled. He was listening intently.
She swiped into the phone’s photo gallery and found the image of Hiero. Collins’ gaze twitched toward it, then grew unfocused again.
Marten said, “After that, their relationship became steady?”
“Steady. But thin.”
“Thin?”
“They met regularly—cafés, museums, the beach—but maybe once a week? It was high octane. She filled the other days with fantasy. But Hiero—it sounded to me like he was spread too thin. Or . . .”
“Or?”
“Had more than one iron in the fire.”
“Did you ever say as much to Li?”
Alexa made a surprised noise. “Oh, no. Pure speculation on my part. And besides, she seemed so happy. Hiero might have been on drip feed, but he was potent. More than enough for Li right then. Who was I to intrude on that?”
Marten changed tack. “When did you learn that Hiero didn’t want Li to photograph him?”
She laughed. “Immediately, of course. A photo was the first thing I asked for when she told me she was seeing someone.”
“Did that seem odd?”
There was a pause, and a rustle of motion. “You know, what she told me then, his reason for not wanting to be photographed? That was the first hint that he might be shitting her. Benefit of hindsight and all that.”
“Why?”
“Well, it sounded so far-fetched.”
Marten sensed Collins drawing down over the phone, as if to better hear, despite the wire dangling from his ear.
“Li said that Hiero hinted at a dark past.”
Marten’s eyes flashed at Collins—see!—but he appeared to be studying the grain of the tabletop.
“Li said he was the great-great-grandson or something of the single surviving member of a murdered family. Hiero said there were kooks who looked up people like that, hassled them, even stalked them. He’d had it in the US, and didn’t want it in Australia.”
Marten sat back in her chair, momentarily unsure what to make of the revelation. It wasn’t at all what she had expected to hear. She wasn’t sure she believed a word of Hiero’s story, but to keep Alexa on the line while she tried to sort through it, she said: “Is that all Li said about his ancestry, this murder?”
“I don’t remember, I’m sorry. Nothing, except—except it was Christmas. The family was murdered at Christmas.”
Alexa went on, unprompted. “Li was a journalism student. And here was this handsome, charming American navigating the fallout of a tragic past. I mean, wow. You can see why I wanted a photo. Potent.”
From the corner of her eye, Marten saw Collins move like a robot suddenly activated. He retrieved a pen from his pocket and scribbled on a napkin. He slid it next to the phone, and tapped it once with the pen.
He’d written: Jack Griffen.
Marten suppressed a sigh. “And did Jack Griffen’s name ever come up in these conversations, other than that Hiero was meeting with him?”
“Oh, the professor? Of course. They were planning to play a prank on him.”
Marten found herself inches from the phone.
“I’m sorry, did you say a prank?”
“Yeah. A prank. That’s all she said. She was very secretive about it, but she and Hiero were going to prank him. Li at heart was a gentle soul, despite the front she put up. If she was pranking a teacher, I was sure it was in good humor. I didn’t press her on it.” A sigh. “And then, well, soon after, I couldn’t press her on anything ever again.”
Minutes later Marten and Collins were staring at each other across the table. They broke the silence simultaneously:
“Hiero,” said Marten.
“Griffen,” said Collins.
58
Longman’s boat, it turns out, is what some salts call a stinkpotter. Part sailboat, part trawler, all floating apartment.
When I learnt this, I finally understood that half of the gibes in the Crewsearch forums were oblique references to Longman not being a real sailor. Yes the boat had sails, and could pull above five knots in a thirteen knot breeze on sail alone. But if the wind failed, or the sailor simply felt like taking a quiet finger of Scotch over the paper in a rare afternoon of sunshine on the cusp of the hurricane season, he could reef sail and fire up the diesel motor, point the bow, and let the screw carry him over the waves.
This was what Longman was doing now, and my delight was unseemly. I lay back in a deckchair like a cat, a notepad and pen resting in my lap, and tried to arrange my thoughts for the interview that would soon come.
Despite myself, my interest in how it was that an ex-tycoon and an eleven-year-old kid had come to make a habit of crossing the north Atlantic unfashionably early in the season, had grown until it overwhelmed the festering dread I felt for what awaited me on the far shore.
Unfashionably early in the season. Psychotically early in the season. In November the Atlantic was still frequently scoured by hurricanes, and I wondered what business Longman had dragging a kid into it. If he wanted to pit himself against raw mother nature in a burn-out-rather-than-fade finale to life he was welcome to. But why put the kid in harm’s way?
I voiced the question before Longman put his paper away—the customary signal he was ready to submit to interview.
He said, “The ‘kid’ is old enough to make up his own mind.”
Scrub still had yet to speak. I was surer than ever that he suffered from some kind of mental disorder. I tried to delicately put this to Longman: “Perhaps he doesn’t know how to refuse?” The boy clearly doted on the man.
Longman lifted his head and yelled. “Scrub! Come here and urinate on the reporter.”
A shadow fell over me. The kid had an uncanny knack of being everywhere, silent as a mouse. His dark eyes stared at me for a moment, and a hand strayed to the waist of his shorts—which he wore at all times, despite the chill.
I tensed. Then Longman waved him away. The kid turned and disappeared into the cabin.
“I’m not a reporter,” I said, embarrassed at my fear.
“And he ain’t a kid,” said Longman. Then, barely audible, “They stole that from him.”
In the silence that followed, all I could hear was the deep chug chug of the diesel motor, and the faint susurrus of the wind in my ears. The deck thrummed with the beat of the motor, and the slap of a slight swell across our line.
The ocean was clear to the horizon in every direction. All the world might have sunk beneath the waves. The sight gave me a peculiarly claustrophobic feeling.
The rustle of newspaper pulled my attention back from the vastness. Longman spoke, his voice gravelly at the edges with the ravages of time. Sitting there with his hat jammed over his ears, a fringe of exposed hair feathered by the wind, and squinting from beneath his deeply-creased brow, he looked so much the salt-bitten sailor that I had to force myself to remember the same voice had spent most of its strength commanding boardrooms rather than decks.
“You think I have
a death wish and don’t care if he is collateral?”
Chuck Longman, I was beginning to learn, valued directness. I nodded.
“Hurricanes don’t run on a timetable. They’re subject to chance, and if you’re not willing to accept that, you might as well not get out of bed in the morning.”
“Wind is fickle,” I said, in a lame attempt to build the conversation.
He turned his squint on me. “Wind is about the only thing you can rely on out here.”
“But I thought you just said—”
“For a reporter, you need to pay more attention to words. I was talking about hurricanes not wind. Hurricanes blow up on the beat of butterfly wings on the other side of the world, right?” A wry tug of his mouth revealed he didn’t buy this wisdom. “That’s a chance event. A broken spar. A cracked fuel pump. A chaffed line. All chance events. But the wind, this time of year, this place—it’s blue chip. It’ll flux, but the trend is steady. That’s an investment in the long run.”
I should have been prying for details of his life, but I couldn’t let this go. “Fickle wind—it’s a cliché. I’m not a sailor”—he grunted in agreement—“but clichés are clichés by force of truth.”
He sighed. “You know why all those nice yachts in the marina back there don’t convoy out and make a beeline for Miami—that’s a beeline from the UK or Spain to the US?”
This was news to me. That’s precisely what I thought they did. What were we doing?
He answered his own question. “Because sitting slap bang in the middle of the North Atlantic is the Azores High—a high pressure zone a thousand miles wide. Sure, it wobbles around, sometimes makes it as far west as Bermuda, where it’s called the Bermuda High. You’re making the same mistake most folks make about the wind, thinking of it as a two dimensional thing. It’s not. That deadzone is the bottom of a massive cauldron of wind reaching into the atmosphere, and around it, always clockwise in the northern hemisphere races the wind. It’s driven by an ocean current that drags the air within it until the whole lot is moving. That cauldron starts to churn late November and keeps on until May. It’s so regular, people used to trade on it.”
