was standing next to a fair woman in a white jacket; they were watching the bald man demonstrating a shot to a woman who was frowning with concentration. She was small with a taut, energetic-looking body and cropped brown hair. Her red sweater was draped over her shoulders with the sleeves tied in front. She looked as if she couldn’t wait to get hold of the club.
6
I parked in one of Chatswood’s extensive parking areas and walked towards the railway station. At a casual glance there wasn’t much that I couldn’t have bought in the shops, from a leather tie to a chocolate pavlova. On the other hand, I didn’t see anything I actually needed. The Chatterbox was one of those bright, glossy places where everything was scrupulously clean, but you wouldn’t put money on the chance of getting a good cup of coffee. I took a seat by the window and told the waitress that I was waiting for someone. She checked that the table, ashtray and plastic-coated menu were spotless, and went away. There were three or four other people in the cafe, all singles. No chattering just at present.
Dell Burton arrived five minutes after the appointed time. She was wearing tight black trousers, the kind with a strap under the foot, high-heeled shoes, a loose blue sweater and helmet-like red felt hat. A leather bag like — small duffel was slung over her shoulder. She marched straight up to my table.
“Mr Hardy?”
I lifted my bum off the chair. “Mrs Burton.”
We shook hands and she sat down. She pulled off the hat and rubbed her hand over the cropped hair. All her movements were quick and busy. Her makeup was effective-a woman of about forty years of age looking her best. “Have you ordered?” she asked.
“Not yet.” I looked up and the waitress was there, magically ready.
“Long black for me,” Mrs Burton said.
“The same.”
The waitress made two squiggles on her pad. “Anything to eat at all?”
We both shook our heads and she left, gliding away over clean tiles in rubber-soled shoes. Mrs Burton dug a crumpled soft pack of Marlboro out of her bag and offered them to me. I refused and she lit up. “Three a day,” she said. “Maybe four today, or ten. So?”
“I’m hoping you can tell me something about Brian Madden that’ll help me to find him.”
She blew smoke over my shoulder. “I wish I could. If I had any ideas I’d have acted on them myself by now.”
“Despite your… situation?”
“Yes. My situation, as you call it, is not all that tricky. My husband knows that I’ve been having an affair. He doesn’t know with whom, and he doesn’t want to know. They’re the terms we struck. It works all right. I’m not housebound, no kids. I could’ve… looked…” She waved the hand with the cigarette in it, more emphatically than theatrically. “But I didn’t know what I could do. I thought about trying to contact the daughter, going to his school. But…” The hand waved again, indicating lack of direction.
The waitress brought the coffee. I put a spoonful of raw, granulated sugar in mine; she didn’t take sugar, but she still stirred the cup with the spoon-the gesture of an ex-sugar user. She drew solidly on her Marlboro a couple of times and then stubbed it out. I waited for the waitress to spring up with a fresh ashtray, but a few new customers drifted in and took her attention. The coffee was a bit weak but acceptable. “Sane, balanced, contented people don’t disappear for no reason,” I said. “Either they fall victim to some random senseless force or there’s some-thing in their lives, their backgrounds, that… removes them from the scene.”
“You mean, makes them run away, change their names?”
I shrugged and drank some more coffee. “That sort of thing. You haven’t tried your coffee. It’s okay.”
“I don’t want it. I want another cigarette.”
“Fight it.”
“Know all about it, do you?”
“Not about moderation, just quitting.”
She drank some of her coffee. “I couldn’t, not possibly. Well, I hadn’t ever thought about Brian in the way you say, about a random act or a reason for disappearing. I don’t know what to think.”
“You can’t recall anything he said, or anything you overheard, or half-heard, that suggested some problem in his life? Past or present. Some… disorder? What about his marriage? Any threads?”
“No. He spoke about his wife a few times, but there was nothing to suggest that it wasn’t just a sad event in the past. Normal, almost.”
I nodded. That was the word I had hit on when looking through the flat. “What about the daughter?”
Suspicion flared. She lowered her cup. “She hired you, you said.”
“It’s been known. You hire someone like me but you don’t give the real reasons.”
Dell Burton shook her head. “Nothing. He’s a nice, funny, warm man. Good in all sorts of ways. Good for me.”
“You’ll have to forgive me, Mrs Burton. This is where it gets personal, and I have to be blunt. If you walk out, I won’t try to stop you.”
“You’re softening me up in advance.”
“Maybe. I can see that you’re an intelligent, sophisticated woman. Perhaps a bit selfish.”
“That’s fair.”
I put the coffee cup between her and the question. “Why didn’t you leave your husband for Brian Madden?”
She lifted her cup. We were like two fencers, feinting. “He didn’t have any money.”
“Your husband does?”
“Lots.”
“I don’t believe you. I don’t think that’s the reason. Why?”
She put the coffee cup down and lit another cigarette. I didn’t say anything. Like the government that collects taxes on the stuff, I could see the benefit. “You’re right. There was something strange about Brian. Nothing sinister, like you’ve been suggesting.”
I wasn’t aware that I’d been suggesting anything sinister. Maybe that feeling I’d had in the flat was seeping through. “Tell me,” I said.
“Brian wasn’t completely grown up. I know he’d been widowed and raised a child and held a responsible job and so on, but there was something boyish about him. Attractive, you understand, but…”
“I see.”
“Not very helpful?”
“I don’t know. I’m all at sea when it comes to psychology. Have you any idea why he was like this?”
“Was?”
“Is.”
“Not really, unless it’s that he lived in the shadow of his father, who was one of the chief engineers for the harbour bridge. I gather that there was some pressure on Brian to become an engineer, but he wasn’t interested. His father was a strong personality, apparently. I suppose being a builder of the bridge was a pretty big deal back in the thirties and forties.”
“I suppose. I guess fathers have to do something.”
“Mmm. Mine made a lot of money. What did yours do, Mr Hardy?”
“Nothing to be ashamed of,” I said. “That’s all you can tell me, Mrs Burton?”
“That’s all. What d’you think can have happened to him?”
“I don’t know. I’ll have to keep digging — try his colleagues, try to get at his bank accounts.”
“That’s… ugly.”
The rich tend to think that their money is beautiful but that it’s ugly for others to look too closely at it. I decided that there was something a bit hard about Mrs Burton. Perhaps I let that show. In any case, the rapport between us dissolved. I told her that I’d let her know if I found anything useful. She nodded and put her cigarettes
