by Janet Tanner
Tom had hired a car the previous afternoon, a Renault sporting the huge cow-catcher bars on the front bumper which seemed to be obligatory in Darwin. He manoeuvered it with confident ease through the town and headed out along the East Point Road. To their left the waters of Fannie Bay were as blue as the sky, fringed with the bougainvillaea that rioted along the clifftop.
Darwin in all its tropical glory, thought Harriet, pictures to give a totally different perspective to the bar room scene. But last night’s flush of enthusiasm had faded now, eclipsed by the possibility that they were very close to Greg Martin.
The address Tom had been given turned out to be a modern bungalow, very English in design, Harriet thought, set in a neat garden. Pleasant, comfortable, but hardly luxurious and certainly a far cry from the Sydney mansion where Greg had lived with Maria. Because her money had paid for that palace – or because Greg had not wanted to attract attention to himself here in Darwin? An old aborigine was working in the garden, clipping back bushes that had shot out in all directions in the greenhouse atmosphere; he looked up, grinned toothlessly and continued with his lazy chopping without a word.
‘Anyone at home?’ Tom called.
The aborigine shrugged his shoulders in reply, grinned, and lolloped out of sight around the spreading bush.
The windows of the bungalow were open, letting in what air there was going before the downpour started once more, and the door stood ajar. Tom rang the bell and after a few moments a thin woman in a sleeveless cotton shift appeared, brandishing a duster. The daily help, obviously.
‘Good morning,’ Tom greeted her. ‘Is Mr Michael in?’
She looked merely puzzled. ‘Who?’
‘Rolf Michael. He lives here, doesn’t he?’
She ran a hand through her hair which was tied up with what appeared to be an old stocking.
‘I think you’ve got the wrong place. No one of that name here.’
‘Vanessa McGuigan then?’ Tom tried again.
The woman’s heavily lined brow cleared. ‘ Oh yes. Miss McGuigan.’
‘Is she in?’
‘No.’
‘Do you know when she will be?’
The woman fiddled with the stocking band.
‘I couldn’t say. She comes and goes. But this I can tell you. She won’t be here much longer. The place is on the market. She was here the day before yesterday. “ Make the house look good, Madge,” she says to me. “I’m selling it.” Damned nuisance. I’ve only been here three months and it’s a good little job. Easy, like, with her hardly ever here. Made my day, I can tell you, knowing I’ll have to look around for something else.’
‘I see. Who’s the house on the market with?’
‘Abbott and Skerry, Smith Street. You interested in buying, then?’
‘I might be,’ Tom said. ‘Could we have a look around?’
The woman hesitated. ‘I don’t know about that. You’d better see the agents.’
‘It would save us driving out here again,’ Tom said. ‘And if we do buy, of course, we shall be looking for daily help.’
He smiled at her. Middle-aged and plain the woman might be, she was no more impervious to his easy charm than the nineteen-year-old receptionist at Darwest had been.
‘Well, I s’pose it’ll be all right …’ She stood aside, allowing them into the bungalow. ‘What do you want to see?’
She bustled ahead of them, opening doors and flicking at specks of dust with her cleaning cloth.
‘This is the kitchen – not a bad size, is it? The fridge and cooker are fitted – she’ll have to leave those. And this is the sitting room – bathroom down the hall …’
The bungalow, never having been used as a home, had an impersonal feel, too neat, too tidy. It told them nothing. Only the bedroom had the touches that gave some clues about the occupant – a filmy négligé hanging on the door, perfume spray and neatly arranged cosmetic jars on the dressing table and a large framed photograph on the table beside the bed. Tom picked it up. Looking over his shoulder Harriet saw a beautiful girl in a strapless evening gown, blonde hair cascading over her bare shoulders, smiling toothily up at a man in a tuxedo and bow tie. Obviously Greg and Vanessa. Something sharp and painful twisted within her and she turned away just as the woman said reprovingly: ‘Don’t touch things, if you don’t mind.’
Tom replaced the photograph. ‘She’s a lovely girl.’
‘Oh, she’s that all right.’ The woman smiled thinly. ‘ She’s won beauty contests, you know. Could have been Miss Australia if she’d stuck at it if you ask me.’
‘And the man?’ Tom asked casually. ‘Who is he?’
‘Her fiancé, of course. Mike, she calls him. I’ve only seen him a couple of times. He’s a busy man, I understand. And I’m only here in the mornings. Now, if you’ve seen all you want …’ She fussed in the doorway.
‘Yes. Thanks for all your help, Mrs …?’
‘Peake. Madge Peake. Look – if you do decide to buy the place you won’t forget me, will you? I’m a good reliable worker and I live close enough so I can always get in if you want anything extra.’
Tom gave her the benefit of his smile.
‘We won’t forget, Mrs Peake. We haven’t made up our minds yet, of course, but we’ll get in touch with – Abbott and Skerry, was it?’
‘Abbott and Skerry, yes. It’s a nice house, good neighbourhood.’ She was following them now, almost sorry to let prospective employers out of her sight. ‘Can I take a message in case Miss McGuigan phones? Your names?’
‘We’ll take your advice and deal through the agents,’ Tom said smoothly.
He ushered Harriet down the path. At the gate she took a last look back at the house, where Madge Peake still stood in the doorway watching them go. She didn’t suppose she’d see it again.
‘That was cool,’ she said as Tom opened the door of the car for her to get in. ‘ I begin to see why you’re so good at your job.’
‘I just make the most of my opportunities. It didn’t get us far though, did it? Except for the picture. I now know what Martin looks like nowadays, even if I don’t know for sure what he’s calling himself.’
‘Do you have a good memory for faces?’ she asked, fastening her seat belt. ‘I can picture him now, but give me a couple of days and I’ll have forgotten, though I suppose I would recognise him if I met him.’
‘Oh, I don’t rely on memory if I can help it,’ Tom said, swinging the car in a wide arc to go back towards Darwin, then fishing in the pocket of the casual jacket he had put on to go into the bungalow. ‘I’ve got this – see?’
He dropped it into her lap – a small photograph, about an inch in diameter, in an antiqued silver frame. Unmistakably the same man as the one with Vanessa in the large photograph – Greg Martin.
‘Where did you get that?’ Harriet asked accusingly.
‘It was on the bedside table with the other one. I made a show of looking at that – and pocketed this one. My sleight of hand almost fits me for the Magic Circle, wouldn’t you say?’
‘But that’s stealing!’ Harriet said, shocked.
‘Yes,’ he agreed, smiling. ‘But in a very good cause.’
‘If Vanessa sets the police on your tail don’t think you can drag me into it! I shall deny all knowledge …’
‘And I thought you were willing to go to any lengths to catch up with Greg Martin! Ah well!’
Harriet grinned, looking along at him. ‘Oh, I am, I am. I’m only annoyed that I didn’t notice the damned picture and think of stealing it myself!’
Darwin town centre was busy. Everyone, it seemed, was going about their business before the rain began again.
‘Where the hell is Smith Street?’ Tom asked.
Harriet, busy studying the map provided by the car hire company, traced it with her finger.
‘It’s here – a really long street.’
‘Where’s here? Where are we now?’
‘Slow down – hang on – Daly Street. Keep go
ing and we can’t miss it.’
‘Famous last words. I’m going to look for somewhere to park and we’ll walk.’ He did so, manoeuvring into a kerbside space. ‘Come on.’
They got out. Already Harriet could feel her shirt sticking to her back where it had been pressed against the seat. She wriggled uncomfortably. How did anyone ever manage to work in a climate like this, so energy sapping? A big old Morris car, painted in garish colours, racketed by with a horde of grinning aborigines hanging out of the windows waving bottles and beer cans. That partly answered her question. Some people didn’t work at all. They got drunk and went joy riding – and who could blame them?
As Harriet had seen from the map Smith Street was long and straight. Cranes engaged in building work towered above the buildings on the skyline, stretching long arms towards the fast-thickening sky. Darwest Developments? she wondered. Clearly there was money to be made in real estate and construction in Darwin and those responsible for rebuilding after Cyclone Tracy could only be admired. The new town was well planned with a pleasant suburban feel to it – just the kind of enterprise to attract someone with money to invest and a nose for the right place to put it. No one could accuse Greg Martin of not being shrewd.
The offices of Abbott and Skerry were situated between a fast food shop and a launderette. Large boards decorated with photographs and details of houses for sale filled the windows. Tom and Harriet scanned them briefly looking for the bungalow at East Point but could not see it. Perhaps it was too fresh on the market.
‘I’ll handle this one alone if you don’t mind,’ Tom said. ‘Go and do some window shopping – buy a burger – whatever you like. I’ll see you back here in ten minutes.’ His tone left no room for argument.
A little annoyed at being so summarily excluded but knowing she had not the slightest grounds to object, Harriet wandered along the street and back again. Another group of aborigines were squatting against a wall, bottles between their knees, black faces grinning vacantly. What the hell do we do to the natives when we take over their country? Harriet wondered. Either they are shoved into reservations or else they are left to become the misfits in a civilisation totally foreign to them. Her hand hovered over her camera, tucked inside her bag. A couple of pictures like this might well find a place in the set and the abos would make marvellous subjects – they would never notice she was photographing them. She ducked into a doorway to fit the right lens to her camera then spent ten minutes unobtrusively clicking away.
‘Hard at work, I see,’ Tom’s voice said in her ear. She was so engrossed she had not noticed him approaching.
‘I thought I might as well make use of my time,’ she said, covering the lens and packing her camera away. ‘How did you get on?’
He put a hand under her elbow.
‘Come on, lady, walk. I think those abos have seen you. Is it aborigines who think they’ll lose their soul if they are photographed – or is that red indians? If it’s abos they’ll probably try to snatch your camera, if not they’ll be pestering you to pay them.’
She glanced over her shoulder. There was something disturbing about the vacant grinning black faces.
‘They could do with a hand-out by the look of them.’
‘They’d only spend it on booze. Keep going.’ His hand was still beneath her elbow, his sleeve brushing her bare arm. Suddenly she was very aware of it – and not only as yet another example of his irritating bossiness.
‘You haven’t answered my question,’ she said to hide her discomfort. ‘ How did you get on?’
‘So-so. It’s true – Miss McGuigan has put the house on the market. They don’t know a Mr Michael Trafford or a Rolf Michael. She’s obviously dealing with it all herself.’
‘And where is she?’
‘At present – out of town. But she told them she will be back in Darwin the day after tomorrow. I don’t think we can usefully do any more until then.’
Harriet pulled a face. ‘ Two whole days wasted …’
‘We haven’t much option. And we don’t want to ask too many questions and warn them off. Better to wait and try to catch Vanessa unawares. So whilst we’re waiting I suggest we keep well out of the way. How do you fancy a trip to the outback?’
‘The outback!’
‘Why not? It seems a shame to be in the Territory and not see some of it. Besides, you could get some marvellous shots.’
‘I suppose I could.’ But she was finding it difficult to think about such a trip in terms of photography and she knew she was reacting to it as a woman. Two days in the outback with a man she was finding increasingly attractive … a man who had a way of making her forget the only reason they were together was to discover the truth about events that had taken place more than twenty years ago.
‘So? What do you say? Shall we do it?’
Was it her imagination or had his hand tightened slightly around her elbow.’
‘Oh – why not?’
‘Good. That’s settled. And now, Miss Varna, you have another decision to make. It’s about to start raining again if I’m not much mistaken. Can you summon up the energy to run, or shall we just get wet?’
The first spots, like the very beginning of a cool shower, felt refreshing to her hot skin. ‘Oh, let’s get wet!’ she said recklessly.
Back at the hotel Tom put through a phone call to London.
‘Karen? Any news?’
‘Not yet boss, but I’m working on it.’
‘Good girl. Now listen – I’m going walkabout as the aborigines say for a couple of days. As soon as I get fixed up at a hotel I’ll let you know where I am. Don’t forget – I want to know the minute you have anything.’
‘I won’t forget.’ A slight pause. ‘Is she still with you? Harriet Varna?’
Tom grinned, amused at the pique in her voice.
‘Yes, Karen, she is. Everything is going according to plan. If you want to be the one to collect the kudos you’d better start detecting because when the lady’s guard is down I might get her to tell me all I want to know.’
‘You can count on me boss,’ Karen replied emphatically.
Tom was still smiling as he replaced the receiver.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The Stuart Highway runs due south from Darwin all the way to Adelaide, more than two thousand miles of fast road through the tropical greenery and wetlands of the Top End, with its rivers, magnificent canyons and escarpments, into the red desert of the dead centre and back to the gender country of Southern Australia.
The following morning Tom and Harriet set off in a four wheel drive vehicle known locally as a ‘ute’ which Tom had exchanged for the Renault the previous afternoon at the offices of the rental company.
‘We thought we’d go down to have a look at Alice Springs,’ Tom had said to the girl, neatly uniformed in the scarlet skirt and white shirt with a neck scarf bearing the logo of the company, and she had raised a sceptical eyebrow.
‘You realise you are talking about an eighteen-hour drive? And you can’t travel at night. No one drives after dark in the Territory. If you do you’re liable to get a buffalo through your windscreen.’
Tom and Harriet had exchanged glances. They had not yet become accustomed to the vast distances of Australia.
‘Well maybe not Alice Springs,’ Tom conceded. ‘We’ve only got a couple of days. Where would you suggest?’
She pulled a face. ‘This isn’t the best time of year. If you want to sightsee you should come in the Dry, but I guess you could go down to Katherine. That’s only two hundred miles or so. There’s the Gorge and the National Park – brilliant scenery if the weather is clear. And the river will be running high, that’s for sure.’
‘We’ll see how we get on,’ Tom said.
‘That’s up to you – but don’t forget about the buffalo. Many of the roads are unfenced and the bars won’t save you if you hit one. Oh – and I’d stick to the main highway. Lesser roads are often not made up and can be impassable in the Wet.’
‘I suppose she’s only doing her job. They probably get sick to death of idiot Poms out here. We don’t understand the place. If we did we’d never have dropped that clanger about going to Alice.’
Once again the early part of the day was clear and blue, though humid. Tom put his foot hard down on the accelerator and left it there and the ute skimmed along the almost deserted highway, eating up the miles. Noonamah, Adelaide River, Pine Creek, all were left behind, and with them the threat of the rain mists rolling in from the sea. By lunchtime they were in Katherine, their only worry the fact that the needle of the fuel gauge had been hovering on empty for the past twenty miles, their only discomfort slight stiffness. Speed had created a breeze so that they had scarcely noticed the sun heating down; only later did Harriet realise her forehead, nose and forearms had been scorched and a deep V stencilled at the neck of her shirt.
In the winter Katherine would overflow with tourists but at this time of year it was almost deserted. They selected a hotel, old-fashioned colonial in style, standing on stilts, with a deep verandah, and booked in with no trouble. The receptionist, plump, pretty and sporting an ugly mosquito bite on her wrist, seemed surprised to see them.
‘A room? Yeah – no worries.’
‘Two rooms,’ Tom corrected her.
‘We could have gone on further,’ Harriet said as they followed the girl along the narrow passage. ‘By nightfall we could have been halfway to Alice Springs.’
Tom pulled a face. ‘ I’ve had enough of driving for one day. And I don’t suppose there’s much to see between here and Alice. Just dust and desert.’
‘I could have taken my share of the driving,’ Harriet said, wondering why she hadn’t thought to suggest it.
‘Yes, you could have,’ he agreed. ‘If we go out again this afternoon you can drive if you like and give me a rest.’
