‘Disgraceful, isn’t it?’
Lyall had come up behind me. I turned. She had her hands in her pockets, thumbs out, pelvis thrust. The beer had flushed her cheeks a little. She had a long neck, prominent collarbone. Where had plain come from? How does one form these judgments?
There was a moment of looking at each other.
‘Where were we?’ I asked.
She turned and went back inside to the table, sat down, picked up her beer. I followed, took my seat.
‘They want me to go to China tomorrow,’ she said, ran her left hand through her hair, drawing it back, showing strong roots. ‘If I don’t want it, fifteen other hopefuls do and are prepared to swim from Darwin if necessary. Cameras tied onto their heads.’
‘Going?’
She drained the stubby and got up, went to the fridge. ‘I said, “Let the Darwin to China Swimathon for Wannabees commence.’’ I’m going to sleep, eat, walk around, drink, read, sleep, eat, walk around, read, drink, sleep. Keep at it till I get these things right.’
‘Stuart made a living out of…’
The crooked smile. ‘Back to business, Mr Irish. I don’t think Stuart had to make a living. No sign of that. Kate gave the impression the parents left them heaps. Stuart went to high school in America, then to Columbia Journalism School. His parents were living in the States then. Both doctors. Stuart was big on the Philippines, working on a book on the subject. He had stuff published in Mother Jones.’
She read my eyes.
‘It’s American. Sort of public interest magazine. I haven’t seen one in a while. Big on military-industrial-complex conspiracy stuff. But not loony. American lefty, very earnest, bit short on theory.’
‘I’m a bit short on theory. Practice isn’t that long either. Did Stuart work from here?’
‘Had the room next to his bedroom as an office.’ She drank some beer. ‘Had? He still has. We never touched anything. Anyway, he’s not officially dead. Kate won’t apply to have him declared dead. She’s absolutely convinced that he’s walking around somewhere, that he’s lost his memory and will get it back.’
‘What do you think?’
Shrug. ‘If he’s alive, he’s not in New Zealand. His picture’s been on television, in all the papers, Kate spent a fortune getting posters put up everywhere. Someone would have seen him. The cities are like big country towns and the towns are like Hamilton in the 1950s.’
I said, ‘I know this is a big ask, but could I have a look at his office?’
Lyall gave me a long look. ‘Sure. I was going to suggest it. Help de-spookify it for me. Come.’
She went up the stairs first. It was no hardship walking behind her.
‘It was okay while Bradley was here,’ she said, ‘but now every time I come home, I listen for sounds upstairs, listen for his music. He used to play this Afro-Caribbean stuff. I tried keeping his doors open, but one day I came back from Hong Kong and they were closed. I went absolutely rigid, didn’t know what to do.’
Upstairs, there was a broad landing with three doors on either side.
‘The cleaning lady had closed them,’ Lyall said. ‘I left them closed after that, told her never to leave them open. Now every time I come back I expect to see them open.’
Stuart Wardle’s office didn’t look like the dabbling room of a dilettante journalist. Two walls had floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. A work table under the window held a computer monitor, keyboard and tower, a fax, telephone, answering machine. Stuart’s chair was an expensive executive model, flanked by large wire wastepaper baskets. Twin two-drawer filing cabinets stood against the fourth wall, one bearing a compact copier, the other a compact stereo.
I opened the bottom drawer of the left-hand filing cabinet. Empty. Top. Empty. Next cabinet. Same.
‘This phone used to be the line into the house,’ Lyall said from the doorway. ‘The one downstairs was an extension. Caused all kinds of shit when he left the answering machine on. You’d be downstairs, the phone would ring, stop before you got there, race upstairs, get in here, hear the last word of a message. That’s one change we made.’
‘Messages on this machine when you got back?’
‘Lots. Always lots.’
‘For Stuart?’
‘Some. A friend from the States. She stayed here once. And the Economist. He’d done work for them. It’s an English magazine.’
‘I know.’
Pause, eyes locked.
A swig from the bottle, head tilted back. Long neck. The exposed neck is a sweet and vulnerable thing.
Lowered the bottle. ‘More than your average suburban solicitor knows,’ she said, ‘Mr Irish.’
‘Depends. Some are exceedingly well read, the others go into politics or crime.’
I found her smile attractive. And heartening.
‘His sister had rung a few times,’ she said. ‘And there were three or four calls for Bradley. I wrote all the messages in the logbook.’
I looked around some more. ‘The room was like this when you first came into it after your trip?’
‘Yes. Nothing’s been touched. It’s been dusted, that’s all.’
‘Nothing on the desk? Wastepaper baskets empty? Filing cabinets empty?’
‘Yes. He’d done a big clean-up. I don’t know about the filing cabinets, never saw them open.’
‘The clean-up, was that unusual?’
‘I’ll say. Two in two months was outstandingly unusual. Two a year was more like it. He used to buy those huge orange garden rubbish bags.’
‘So he’d had a clean-up two months earlier?’
Lyall nodded. ‘I helped him put the bags in his car. Five of them. Took them to be shredded somewhere. Paranoid about his waste paper.’
‘Where would he keep his papers? Bank statements, credit-card statements, bills, receipts, that sort of thing? The tax stuff?’
‘There were some in the filing cabinets. The missing persons guy took them.’
‘Never gave them back?’
‘Probably gave them to Kate. I don’t know.’
‘Can I see his bedroom?’
It was purely functional: double bed, one bedside table with lamp, chest of drawers. A built-in cupboard covered one wall.
‘We tidied up in here,’ Lyall said. ‘Did his washing.’
‘Any signs of packing? Clothes missing? Luggage?’
‘Are you sure you’re a solicitor?’ she said. ‘My feeling is you’ve done this kind of thing before.’
‘Instinct,’ I said. ‘I rely on instinct.’
She smiled, finished the beer. ‘Hard to tell about clothes. Stuart wore jeans and T-shirts most of the time and he had plenty of both. His little aluminium suitcase isn’t here. He only ever took that.’
On the way downstairs, I said, ‘His car’s here, you said.’
‘It’s still in the garage. There’s nothing in it.’
‘Check the boot?’
Pause. ‘I don’t know. Bradley might’ve. He had it put on these jack things, sort of mothballed.’
The garage was reached through a door in the courtyard wall. A newish Honda was parked behind an old BMW coupe on jacks. Five wheels were leaning against the back wall.
‘You might like to wait outside,’ I said. ‘Just in case.’
Lyall took her lower lip between her teeth. A full lower lip, square white teeth. She handed over the keys, didn’t move.
The ignition key unlocked the boot. The lid didn’t come up automatically.
I got fingertips under the numberplate and lifted. It resisted. Came up suddenly. Empty. A strong smell of brake fluid leaked from a plastic container.
I looked around. Lyall had the fingers of her right hand to her mouth. But not alarmed. People who went into
