Martin grimaces. ‘Too late. The police have it.’
‘Why? What happened?’
Martin swallows. Can the young man possibly help? He decides to trust him. ‘My old editor, Max Fuller, was murdered the night before last. Before he died, he was working on a big story.’
‘And his hard drive was scrubbed?’ asks Yev.
‘Yes.’
‘And there was no backup in-house at the Herald?’
‘Apparently not. He was keeping it close to his chest.’
‘Even so, he might have been backing up to the cloud using a private account, like Dropbox, iCloud, Google Drive.’
‘How could we find that? Access it?’
‘We couldn’t. Not without knowing the provider, the account name, the passwords.’
‘Sounds like a dead end, then.’
‘Hang on. This computer, the one with the erased hard drive—it was at the Herald, right?’
‘That’s right.’ And the moment he says it, Martin realises what Yev is driving at. Bethanie said Max was only rarely in the office, that he worked mainly from home. ‘A second computer.’
‘Worth checking out.’
But Martin is shaking his head. ‘He was murdered at his house. If it was because of the story, they wouldn’t kill him and leave the laptop.’
Yev shrugs. ‘There’s not a lot I can do then, short of you finding an account in the cloud.’
‘I guess,’ says Martin, gathering up his second-hand computer and thanking Yev. ‘I’ll let you know if I find anything useful.’ And he leaves, contemplating how he might broach the subject with the grieving Eileen Fuller.
chapter seventeen
Mandy sits by the window, looking out onto the street from the hotel lobby, waiting for him. The world flows through the dusk, dressed in greys and monochrome, heads down and unsmiling, as if the people of Sydney have been subjugated by the weather, have adopted the grimness like a fashion, a throwback to the days of pandemic. But no, look. There is a couple, their child between them, the three of them laughing, oblivious to the surrounding bleakness. Each parent has a hand, swinging their daughter off her feet and back again as they walk along. The parents are singing, the child is laughing. Mandy watches them pass, wishing she could hear the words of their song through the double-glazing, wishing she and Martin were back home swinging Liam between them.
Now she sees Martin, emerging from early evening anonymity. He’s on the other side of the road, at the far end of the block, walking towards her. Despite the distance, she can sense his mood: intense, distracted, consumed. Among the commuters he seems unremarkable: he has none of the bravado of Tarquin Molloy, none of the presence of Byron Swift. Instead, she can see the self-doubt and the vulnerability, balanced by conviction and duty. Can she see it, or is this simply her imagination, her view imposed on the world like a filter? She’d caught a glimpse of it the very first time she met him, back in her bookstore on the lonely plain of Riversend. She sees it again now as he walks alone among the crowd, deep in thought. He’s still too distant for her to see his expression, but she knows his forehead is furrowed, that his eyes are unseeing.
Journalism is his calling, his vocation. She realises that now. And it’s how he copes, burying himself in his work when the world goes awry. Maybe that’s what his whole career had been, the globe-trotting correspondent, forever on the hunt for the next story, the next woman, the next escape: a way to cope. She hadn’t known Martin then, wonders if she would have liked him, been attracted to him. Probably; she’d fallen for Tarquin, for Byron Swift. But she likes Martin as he is now: more exposed, more self-aware. Not perfect, but so much better. Not too good for her. Someone she should trust, someone she should believe in. Someone not always calculating the angles. The pretence is gone, but the journalist remains.
A memory of Tarquin comes, clear and well defined. A day at the races, at Royal Randwick, the Autumn Racing Carnival, the two of them dressed to the nines. He led her into the betting ring, the bookmakers in suits, like politicians or car salesmen or policemen, standing in front of their boards, odds displayed. ‘Behold,’ he said. ‘The great game.’
‘Are you betting?’ she asked.
‘No. Watching. Learning.’
The place was busy, teeming with people, but started to empty soon enough. The next race was approaching. ‘Shall we watch it?’ she asked.
‘No. This is where the real race is being run.’
‘Is that so?’
‘It’s a market. They need to frame it, constantly adapting, changing the odds. Against bets already laid, laying off with other bookies, trying to stay attractive and competitive to the punters, while backing their own judgement of form.’
‘You understand it?’
‘Not well enough. But I will.’
A car passes, a horn blares, loud enough to penetrate inside the hotel, jerking her back to the present, causing her to flinch. She scans the street, finding him standing opposite, unharmed, waiting to cross the road, apparently lost in thought, still unaware she’s watching him. He proceeds across the street through a break in the traffic and she loses sight of him as he enters the hotel.
And now he sees her across the lobby, and his frown lifts. They meet. They touch. His hand moves to her face, his eyes find hers. She wants to fall into him, to hold him close, but she doesn’t feel she can. Not here, not now. There is a barrier, enforcing a formality. He’s not the relaxed man of the north coast, the death of Max rewriting his features; she is not the gentle mother of their clifftop sanctuary, the confrontation with the Turtle destabilising her. Port Silver is gone; Sydney has them.
They move deeper inside the hotel, into the bar, midnight-dim and the decor dated. At this hour, they have it almost to themselves. There’s an older couple in a booth drinking in silence, not talking, not
