here long enough and had no real reason. Macleod? Possible, but again, although he might be alarmed at my making a connection between him and Talbot, he had no reason to go this far. Millennium Security seemed like the best bet. I went into the kitchen and poured myself a glass of wine.
Geoff wandered in and sneered. ‘That’d be right. Go for the grog.’
‘Take it easy, Geoff. This was a super smooth professional job. They’d have got past practically any security system. I’m sorry about your computer but I’ve got full insurance and…’
‘Fuck that. I had stuff on the hard disk I need.’
I’d had enough of members of the Samuels family getting up my nose. ‘Too bad. You should’ve backed it up on floppies. I thought you computer nerds knew all about that.’
He took it to heart. ‘I’m not a computer nerd,’ he muttered.
‘I know. I’m sorry. Look, we’re both on edge and you look like you didn’t get much sleep last night.’
‘I didn’t.’
‘Me either.’ I got some cheese out of the fridge and a loaf from the bread bin. ‘Have a drink and something to eat or roll yourself a joint. We’ve got some serious talking to do. You’re young. I hope you’ve got a young person’s memory.’
He must’ve realised how long it’d been since he’d eaten because he attacked the loaf and the lump of cheese and accepted the glass of wine I poured for him. ‘I’ve got a great memory,’ he said with his mouth full. ‘I can name the entire cast list of all the Star Wars movies.’
‘Great, but this could be tougher. What did you get from the Net on Tadpole Creek? I don’t expect chapter and verse
‘What does that mean?’
‘Never mind. Try to remember everything you can.’
He sat at the table, munched on his bread and cheese and drank his wine. I did the same standing up. Of course the kid’s right, I thought. I should’ve installed a proper security system here years ago . From that thought I jumped to thinking about the office. At least things were a bit more secure there, but more as a result of a recent renovation of the building than my doing. I knew I’d been slack and didn’t like the feeling.
Geoff rolled a joint and lit it. ‘I was hacking into recent land transfer registers for the area,’ he said. ‘It’s not hard to do if you know how. That Tadpole Creek land was acquired by the State Government as part of their plans for the Olympics. But there was some kind of bullshit about it. Some sort of protest from the owner. It’s still not completely settled and that’s the legal basis for the protest. I mean, the government says it is settled and the former owner says it isn’t.’
‘That’s interesting. And who is this former owner?’
‘That’s the thing I can’t quite… I know we’ve heard the name.’
I got my notebook and began reading out names as I flipped over the pages. ‘Talbot, French, Annette, Hewitt, Smith, Kamenka, Macleod…’
‘That’s it! Macleod. The owner was a Dr Bruce Macleod.’
You didn’t have to be Stephen Hawking to grasp the significance of that. Dr Macleod, he of the disappearing elderly citizens, was protecting a patch of barren ground by financing an environmental protest and using one of his patients, Damien Talbot, as a stirrer and front man. The inference was obvious – Dr Macleod didn’t want the ground to be disturbed.
I explained this to Geoff who took it in but displayed some indifference. I assumed that this was because he was still grieving over the loss of his computer, but he surprised me. He said, ‘It doesn’t get us any closer to finding Megan French, does it?’
He was right there and I was feeling desperate and frustrated, entertaining notions of locating Ramsay Hewitt and shaking anything he might know out of him or confronting Macleod and his heavies with what little ammunition I had and bluffing him. Just thinking about them made both ideas seem weak. The phone rang and I grabbed it.
‘Tess?’ I hadn’t told Geoff anything about Tess and I saw the interested look on his face before he politely left the room.
‘Mr Hardy? This is Dora French.’
I gripped the phone so hard my hand cramped and I had to change hands and wriggle the fingers. ‘Yes, Mrs French?’
‘I’m in Katoomba. I’ve managed to get away from the others and Rex for a few minutes but I must talk quickly. I’ve seen a newspaper report about Megan. We don’t have radio or television or papers at Mount Wilson so I didn’t know anything about this dreadful trouble Megan’s in. I saw a paper in the Ladies’ here quite by accident.’
‘It’s very worrying, Mrs French. She may be in serious danger. Damien Talbot…’
‘Yes, yes, I appreciate that. I can’t go to the police, Mr Hardy. If Rex and Pastor John found out I’d be in awful strife. I have to trust you.’
‘Trust me with what, Mrs French?’
‘I know where Megan will have gone if she needs to hide.’
‘Tell me, please.’
‘There are some old houses down at Scarborough on the south coast this side of Wollongong. Megan used to go down there to stay with friends. They didn’t pay any money. They sort of squatted, I think the expression is. Rex was furious about it. He…’
“Where are these places, Mrs French?’
‘I don’t know exactly. All I remember her saying is that they were above the railway line and they’d been condemned because of a landslip. They have terrible rain down there, you know.’
I did know. The Illawarra escarpment was notoriously unstable in heavy rain and there’d been flooding recently. I pressed her for more information but she became flustered and said she had to ring off because ‘the others’ would be looking for her. She’d had to beg the money for the phone. She pleaded with me to look after Megan if I found her and I promised I would.
I went through to the living room and found Geoff looking out the dirty window at the leaves blowing around outside. The light was dim. A storm was brewing.
‘Are you still in on this? Despite the computer?’
‘Of course I am.’
‘Okay. Go down to the Glebe library and get on the Net. Look up Scarborough, New South Wales and print out everything you can find. News stuff, land use, development plans and maps. Especially maps.’
‘Shit, I wish I had my computer.’
‘Well, you don’t. Get going.’
‘What’ll you be doing?’
‘First, doing something about getting your computer back. Second, getting ready to go down to Scarborough when you come back with the info.’
‘Where is it?’
‘Not far, son. Not very far.’
22
It took me quite a while to get through to Smith at Millennium Security and as long again to convince him that I could help him in his difficulties with the Tadpole Creek protest. At a price, of course. He didn’t admit that it was his people that had taken Geoffs computer. He didn’t have to. They had, and we both knew it.
‘I know who’s behind the protest and why,’ I told him. ‘I know how you can stop it. I imagine that’d put you in good with the contractors.’
‘Perhaps. Well…?’
‘I want something in return.’
‘I’m listening, Hardy.’
‘Being who you are, big and respectable and all that, you’d be liaising closely with the police, right?’
