disoriented. He turned towards us, realised he was headed the wrong way, pushed Ms Pettigrew aside and made her lose balance. She fell and swore.
A younger female voice screeched, ‘No, Ronny!’
Ronny was big, young and frightened and he made the mistake of throwing a punch at me as he tried to get clear. I blocked his clumsy swing with my left forearm and hooked him low in the ribs with a short right, the way I’d done hundreds of times in the ring. A skilful boxer spots it early and sways away, reducing the impact. Ronny didn’t know the moves and the punch took the wind out of him and rubberised his legs. He went down in a heap as Ms Pettigrew got gamely and smoothly to her feet.
Sarah, all teased blonde hair and eye makeup, stood in the doorway in her bra and school skirt and giggled as I helped steady her mother, who accepted the support momentarily and then brushed me off like a troublesome fly.
‘Who’s this, then, Mummy? Nice!’
Give her her due, Angela was up to the job. She stepped forward, landed a heavy slap on the girl’s face, shoved her back inside the room and pulled the door shut. She wasn’t even breathing hard. She’d be good on the steps. Maybe she had made the hockey team.
‘You hypocritical bitch!’ the girl screamed.
Ronny was sucking in air and pressing himself back against the wall, trying to slide upright.
‘You,’ Angela said, completely under control now and nudging Ronny with her foot. ‘Get out!’
He scrambled up, all legs and arms in jeans, sneakers and bomber jacket, and rushed to the door. His fly zipper was still undone. Rock music came from inside the room.
‘Well,’ Ms Pettigrew said, ‘after all that I don’t suppose there’s any use pretending we’re a happy family.’
‘Not many are all the time.’
‘I suppose not. She looked at her watch and tapped the side of her head with an index finger. ‘Oh, I’ve got it now- I told her I’d be away having the car seen to until late, but as it turned out I had to have it towed. I forgot to tell her about my appointment with you. I have to admit I was going to cancel it in favour of dealing with the car, until it wouldn’t start and it became clear from the NRMA person that it was undriveable and so I’d still be here to see you. She… they obviously thought I wasn’t here. I must say you were quick and. .. decisive.’
So were you, I thought, but I didn’t say it. ‘He was just a boy, no experience.’
On the way back to the sunroom she stopped in the kitchen, swivelled, and headed towards a drinks tray on a pine sideboard. ‘I’m going to have a whisky. Would you care for one, Mr Hardy?’
‘I would. Thank you.’
‘Ice?’
‘Just water.’
‘Quite right.’ She poured two solid belts of Cutty Sark, added water from a cooler and took the drinks through to where we’d been sitting.
‘Cheers, and thank you for your help. That big lump of a boy could have hurt me.’
‘He was more frightened than anything else, but he did need discouraging.’
She smiled. ‘You do have a nice way of putting things. Sarah is an uncontrolled and uncontrollable little hoyden. I don’t know what I’m going to do with her. She’s been on the brink of expulsion from St Margaret’s many a time.’
‘Unlike Justin.’
‘My word, yes. He was an exemplary… oh God.’ She took a strong pull on her drink and stroked the side of her face with her free hand. ‘I must have sounded so cold before. It’s the way I was brought up. Don’t show your feelings, remain in control. I do, but sometimes I want to scream.’
I drank some scotch and gave her a minute, then I said, ‘You’ve got a lot on your hands. I’ll only ask one question and then I’d like to see anything of Justin’s you can show me. What did you mean when you said his disappearance was your husbands fault?’
She knocked back the rest of her drink. ‘Paul had always gone on about the military tradition of the Hampshires-the Boer War, World Wars I and II and all that, plus his own service in Vietnam. He filled Justin to the brim with the idea of Duntroon and the military. Justin and I had an argument about something or other and I told him that Paul had served briefly as a supply officer in Vietnam before being invalided out. He never fired a shot in anger or had one fired at him, never left the base. This was after Paul had deserted us, making noises about American business deals, promising to look into scholarships to West Point.’
‘So Justin…?’
‘I’m guessing. He and I never spoke about… personal matters, not really, not manly-you know? I’m guessing he went off to do something brave, unlike his father, to prove to him and himself that he was a man. God knows what, and he hasn’t been heard of since
Her pain was palpable now but I had to ask one more question. ‘Did you tell any of this to the police?’
‘No, I was ashamed of the mess we were in and it was just a guess. What good could it do?’
I had the feeling that she wanted to say a lot more but couldn’t bring herself to do it. She lowered her dark head, strands of grey showing at the crown, and pointed. ‘Second door on the right is Justin’s room. Take all the time you need. Thank you again, Mr Hardy. I’m going to lie down.’
I didn’t recognise the music coming from behind Sarah’s door and didn’t want to. Justin’s room wasn’t one of those shrines to the departed you hear about. It had been tidied and I had the impression a good deal of the paraphernalia had been removed. It was basically just a bedroom with posters on the walls-standard teenage stuff-and marks where other stuff had been stuck, perhaps too affecting to be allowed to stay.
There wasn’t much in the desk and didn’t look as if there ever had been-no diary, nothing taped to the underside of a drawer, no hollowed-out cavities. A bookshelf held a few textbooks-history, English, human movement, agricultural science-and there was a well overdue school library copy of Series biography of Monash along with paperbacks of Waugh’s Put Out More Flags and a couple of Clancys and Forsyths. Oh for the days of blotters with indiscretions scribbled on them and discarded carbon papers. A calendar for the year Justin went missing was taped to the side of the bookcase, effectively hidden from view. The date of his mother’s missing person report was 18 September. The date the HSC exams were to start was circled in red, but further back, on 1 August, was scribbled ‘Ag Sci Ex’.
I took the Serle book down and something fell out from it-a reader’s ticket to the Mitchell Library. I left the room and knocked quietly on the door almost opposite. No response. I knocked louder and the music stopped.
‘What?’
‘I’m a private investigator looking into the disappearance of your brother. I want to talk to you.’
‘Fuck off.’
‘Any message if I run into Ronny?’
‘Tell him to fuck off, too.’ The music kicked in-loud!
I went back to the sunroom, drained my scotch and left my card near the glass. I had to hope Sarah wouldn’t tear it up.
It was raining, making the steps treacherous. I went down gingerly and hurried to the car. A U-turn and I was back heading south, away from the big houses and boats that are no protection against the worst kinds of trouble. A couple of hundred metres along I spotted Ronny. He was hunched up inside his jacket, with one hand in his pocket and the other thumbing for a ride. Seemed to be favouring his right side a little. I drove a short way past, stopped and opened the door. He got in and grunted his thanks before he identified me. By then I’d reached across him to close the door and had the car moving.
‘Take it easy,’ I said, ‘it’s pissing down. You need a lift and I need to talk to you.’
The rain was lashing the windscreen now, the wipers barely coping. He shoved both hands into his pockets and gave me a stare that was supposed to be hard but ended up sullen. ‘Who are you, then? The mother’s new bloke?’
I told him who I was and what I was doing as I drove carefully on the narrow road. His only response was a shrug. On closer inspection, he was a presentable kid-tall, lean and dark, trying for a beard and not quite making it yet. His clothes were the standard uniform but not bargain basement-New Balance high-tops-and he wore an expensive-looking watch. He examined the interior of the old Falcon and was unimpressed.
‘Have you got a smoke?’ he said.
