‘Sir Talbot, this is Martin Scarsden from the Sydney Morning Herald. I am preparing an article on your daughter. Your son-in-law Benjamin has been most helpful and suggested I call you. I wonder if we might talk?’ Martin leaves his mobile number, repeating it as slowly as he dares without sounding patronising.
chapter nineteen
Mandy’s phone rings. She’s aware of it, its insistence, but she’s unable to rouse herself from the hotel bed to answer it. Instead, she drifts, between sleep and consciousness, floating in and out of dreams. She’s in her memory palace, back in her mother’s bookstore, but she’s lost her way; the shelves all look the same. A man is following her, a man in a suit, a policeman. He’s desperate to tell her something, something bad, but she can’t hear him; can’t hear him because she’s trying to listen for Liam, trying to detect the boy’s breath. He’s here in the bookstore, but where is he? Where is Liam? Wasn’t he here a moment ago? She’s starting to panic. Where is he?
And then the dream is cut: the phone rings a second time and now she’s instantly awake. She answers, thinking it might be Vern, ringing to alert her to some mishap. Or worse. But the voice on the other end of the line is neither the laidback tenor of Martin’s uncle nor the joyful falsetto of her son; instead, it’s the baritone of authority, identifying itself as belonging to Detective Sergeant Claus Vandenbruk, police investigator. The man in the suit. He wants to meet, to come and see her. And now she truly is awake; she doesn’t want him anywhere near the hotel, lest he really does carry unwelcome news. The fewer people who know the location of their bolthole, the better. She suggests they meet at a police station.
‘A police station is not appropriate.’
‘Why not?’
‘I don’t want people to see us together; they’ll think you’re still a person of interest. I don’t want that. I don’t want you to be put in unnecessary danger.’
That shakes her: Vandenbruk doesn’t trust his fellow police. ‘Why would I still be a person of interest?’
‘Because you were engaged to Tarquin Molloy.’
‘Morris Montifore says I’m not a suspect.’
‘I didn’t say you were.’
She bites her lip, thinking. Is it possible the investigator suspects she helped Tarquin and is coming to interrogate her? Was that why he came to her house in Port Silver? Whatever the case, she has little choice. ‘Okay. I’ll help if I can. Where do you want to meet?’
‘Thank you,’ he says. They agree on a rendezvous: a cafe near Central Station, in an hour.
Before showering, she calls Winifred Barbicombe. The lawyer is already back in Melbourne.
‘I agree, you don’t have much choice. You should talk to him,’ says Winifred, when Mandy tells her of Vandenbruk’s request to meet. ‘But why not put it off until tomorrow? I’ll fly back.’
‘No. I want to hear what he has to say.’
There’s a pause on the other end of the line. ‘Why?’
‘What do you mean, why? I want to know what’s happening with the investigation. What happened to Tarquin.’
‘But Mandalay, why? Seriously. You need to be extricating yourself from this situation, not getting more entangled. You should be leaving Sydney, going back to your boy and your life. None of this concerns you, not anymore.’
‘If only that were true.’
‘What do you mean?’ The solicitor sounds unsure.
‘I am involved, Winifred, whether I like it or not. And if Martin’s here, I want to be with him.’
Now there is firmness in her solicitor’s voice. ‘That is no good reason. If Martin wants to return to journalism, that’s up to him. But he’s putting himself in danger and you with him.’
Mandy pauses before responding, not wanting to upset her most loyal supporter. ‘Okay. I’ll speak to Vandenbruk, but I won’t tell him anything I haven’t already told Montifore. Once that’s out of the way, I’ll talk to Martin about leaving.’
‘I’m still not comfortable with you talking to him on your own,’ Winifred says. ‘And Mandy?’
‘Yes?’
‘Remember, your own interests come first.’
‘Right.’
The cafe is subterranean, opening onto a pedestrian tunnel leading from Central Station, with a glass counter displaying fries, spring rolls and hash browns; the sort of place you might buy a takeaway coffee if you were in a rush, but not the sort of place you would choose to sit and eat if you had any other option. Claus Vandenbruk is seated out of sight around a tight little corner. If he’s trying to meld in with the surroundings, it’s working: he looks every bit as dingy as the cafe. The remains of an egg-and-bacon roll lie on a chipped plate before him; a trickle of yolk adorns a lapel of his suit. She takes a seat. He doesn’t offer coffee; she’s not sure she wants any.
‘I’ve already been through all this with Morris Montifore,’ she says.
‘Really? I haven’t seen a transcript.’
‘Will he see one of this?’ she counters.
Vandenbruk smiles, a crooked thing, out of kilter, possibly from lack of practice. ‘No, I think we might leave this conversation off the record. Otherwise I’d want you to have your lawyer with you, for your own protection. And, as I say, I don’t want to put you in danger.’ He tries the smile again; it’s no more convincing the second time around. Mandy concludes charm is not Vandenbruk’s favoured approach; that wading in with a couple of phone books might be more his style. There is something bottled up about the man, some sort of inner tension. ‘Do you remember
