‘Next week, the tenth. She was here two days, then said she was taking a week off. They come and go. They’re free agents. Plenty around.’
‘Did she…give satisfaction?’
He shrugged. ‘Far as I know.’
‘Out calls or here?’
‘Both.’
‘Her address?’
‘No, and we haven’t got her ABN or her tax file number or her-’
‘Okay, I get the picture. You must have some way of getting in touch. Mobile?’
He nodded. The terse type.
‘Give me that for real and you’ve got your money and I’m gone.’
‘How do I know you won’t raise a stink anyway?’
‘How do I know you won’t come after me and have a go?’
‘Fair enough.’ He went to the desk, pulled out a drawer and consulted a notebook. He read off the numbers and I scribbled them down. I handed him the money.
‘Sure you don’t want to stay a while? Some pretty hot babes here.’
‘I’m too old for hot, I prefer cool.’
‘Suit yourself.’ He pocketed the money and turned his attention back to the television. The sound came up- the usual pulsing rhythm and heavy breathing plus squeals.
‘One more thing-was she a junkie?’
He kept his eyes on the television. ‘No way. No tracks and we do a fair dinkum blood test.’
Interesting. Not exactly good news to tell her mother given the source, but something.
Things were slow, just Phyllis in reception, no takers, no givers. I nodded to her and got a stony stare in reply. I went out, unshipped my mobile and rang the number as I leaned against the car.
‘The mobile phone you have called is either switched off or cannot be reached at this time. Please call again later.’
5
Standing probably twenty metres away from him, I rang Phil and gave him the news about Kristina’s mobile number. I told him that I’d keep trying to contact Kristina, but that if I didn’t reach her he should ring me the minute she turned up. He didn’t like it but, with the way things were with public, media and police interest in the underage sex scene, he didn’t have much choice. A white Commodore pulled up as I was driving away-business at last.
I didn’t have anything much to report to either of my clients, but the day hadn’t been a complete zero. I drove around aimlessly for a while, just letting impressions form and take shape. I drifted back towards Glebe, going with the flow of the mid-afternoon traffic. The twin towers in New York might be gone, but the two towers of the Tempe brickworks still stood, although the huge rubbish dump and quarry have been landscaped into something called, with brilliant imagination, Sydney Park. I made a mental note to have a good walk around its rolling grassy hectares some day. Perhaps jog around it. Perhaps.
Old habits die hard, especially those associated with work. I’ve heard of writers who couldn’t tap out a word for months after giving up smoking or going off the grog. I was still coming to terms with having no office to go to- no way to break up the day, compartmentalise life and work. I’d always done a certain amount of work at home- read files, made phone calls, used the computer-but having only the house as a base irked me. I’d liked the vibe of Darlinghurst-the number of people there living on the edge, taking risks, bombing out, occasionally coming up trumps. It acted as an antidote to the conformity I felt creeping over the country, seeping out from the conservative mandarins of Canberra. The upshot was that, increasingly, with no office to go to I didn’t want to go home.
I keep a spare set of clothes, a toothbrush and shaving gear in the car for those times when it’s not possible to go home. This time it was a matter of choice. With the Kristina Karatsky case on hold and possibly headed for a win, there was no reason not to scoot down to the south coast and take a look at the burnt-out house in Wombarra. I’d taken notes from the stuff Elizabeth Farmer had given me so I knew the names of the people I needed to talk to. I hit the Princes Highway and went south.
I hadn’t been to the Illawarra in some time but I remembered the lie of the land pretty well. You leave the highway south of Waterfall if you want the coast road, otherwise you stick on it all the way to the Bulli Pass. I’m like most Australians, the coast has a special appeal for me, and I remembered the coastline south from Stanwell Tops as spectacular. A tonic to an old surfer. I got a greatest hits station on the radio and settled back to enjoy the drive once I’d got past the used car yards and auto accessory supermarkets. The Eagles and Credence were good company and at Heathcote the Beach Boys felt like a bonus.
I swung left down towards Stanwell Park and the plan came unstuck. A flashing sign above the road read: COAST ROAD CLOSED AT COALCLIFF. The narrow road carved into the cliff with a straight drop to the sea is fragile. Signs in this area read ‘Falling Rocks Do Not Stop’ and they don’t. I swore and drove down as far as the turnoff just to get a glimpse of the coastline before u-turning and heading back to the highway.
It was after five when I got to Bulli where I stopped for petrol. The young attendant was a livewire who insisted on checking the oil, water and tyres. He found a soft one and gave it some air. The process took longer than it usually does and, with daylight saving still a couple of weeks away, the light was dropping and it would be even darker at Wombarra, four towns back in the shadow of the escarpment. I drove to Thirroul and checked into the motel where Brett Whiteley had cashed in his chips. If it had been America they would’ve tricked out his room and charged a special rate. Not so here. It was a quiet time with plenty of vacancies. I might’ve been in Brett’s room, not that I cared one way or the other.
It hadn’t been strenuous, but, with the deception at Matilda Farmer’s office, the aggro in Tempe, the progress in Alexandria and the miles covered, it felt like a full day. I ate a passable meal in one of the town’s restaurants, bought a bottle of white and took it back to the room where I watched television for a while, read a bit from one of the many paperbacks lying around in the car, and was asleep by 11 pm.
I woke up a few times and thought I could hear the waves of the Tasman Sea hitting the Illawarra shore. I was probably too far back to really hear it, but imagining it was just as good. An orange juice from the mini-bar and two cups of instant coffee did for breakfast. I put on my gym gear that I also keep in the car and went for a jog down to the beach and along the sand. Pretty nice beach at Thirroul and the surfers were already out. Still in their wetsuits, though. I thought about a swim, decided against it. The tiled and chlorinated saltwater pool was open and there was no entrance fee. With Sydney only an hour and a bit away by train, it was a pretty good place to live. I had a memory of some famous literary figure hanging around here for a spell and writing about the place, and the name jumped out at me-D. H. Lawrence. I remembered the name of the book,
My change of clothes amounted to jeans, a flannie, a T-shirt and a pair of sandals I’d picked up in New Caledonia the year before. There was still a nip in the air so I put the flannie on over the T-shirt until the day warmed up. Good south coast outfit. I paid my bill with my always stretched Amex card, and drove north to Wombarra. The next town up was Austinmer which has a long history as a beach holiday spot, and then Coledale and Wombarra, both mining towns in the old days, and now more or less dormitory suburbs for Sydney and Wollongong commuters.
I keep a selection of directories for different areas- Wollongong, Newcastle, the Blue Mountains-in the car for out-of-town jobs. The address Dr Farmer had given me was for a road running parallel to the railway line and well above it. I took the steep turnoff at Coledale and made the climb with the old Falcon performing well. The escarpment seemed to loom just above the road although in fact it was still a good way back. House numbers were hard to spot. Some of the houses were weekenders. The owners didn’t get much mail here and didn’t bother to keep the numbers clear of bushes and trees. Eventually I worked out which was the Farmer block by a process of elimination.
It was narrow-fronted and seemed to run back a long way in a sort of fan shape. The grass in front of the fence was overgrown and the wide gate leading to a track was padlocked. I got out of the car and shivered. Tall
