‘I hope you do visit,’ Margaret said when we finished for the first time.
‘I will,’ I said.
I hadn’t told her about finding the glasses. Henry McKinley had been taken from the Myall cottage. It made sense. He couldn’t risk leaving the DVD at his house where either Tarelton or its competitors would surely search, and he’d been right about that. He’d assumed that no one but his lovers knew about the Myall cottage and that if they found the disc they’d do the right thing with it. He’d been mistaken. His predators knew about the Myall retreat. These days, big money employers know everything.
After we’d made love again, Margaret fell asleep and I lay thinking. McKinley had been taken and killed but he’d left a crucial piece of evidence behind. In a way, he’d had the last laugh. I’d try to put it that way to Margaret.
15
Next day, in Sydney, Margaret went shopping for a gift for her daughter and I reported on our progress to Hank and Megan. I didn’t go into details about the set-up in the cottage, but I told them about the ashes, the glasses and that I thought Myall was where McKinley had been abducted. Then I played the DVD for them. ‘This is big,’ Hank said. ‘Too big.’ Megan had been scribbling notes. ‘This has to be handled by the police or ICAC or someone.’
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘If it becomes known what McKinley was doing and the suspicions he had, the three players will shut up shop, run the shredders, call off the dogs. The only way to find out which of them was responsible for McKinley’s death is to keep alive their hopes of getting their hands on his research.’
‘That’s assuming he didn’t tell them when they had him,’ Megan said.
‘Right. But we may have an insider in this Dr O’Neil. If she’s still working for Tarelton, she’ll know whether they’ve hit pay-dirt or not.’
‘Have to find a way to talk to her privately,’ Hank said.
‘Maybe not.’
Megan looked at me. ‘You’d set her up?’
‘It’s worth thinking about, but probably not. At least not straight off.’
Megan closed her notebook. ‘I see now why some people call you a bit of a bastard.’
‘Only some people; only a bit of one.’
When I got to the house I found Margaret agitated and packing.
‘I have to go, Cliff,’ she said. ‘It’s not working out with Lucinda and her dad. They’ve had a row and she’s very upset. I’m on a flight in a couple of hours.’
‘I’m sorry. I’ll drive you. Is she with someone?’
‘Yes, yes, she’s OK. Thanks, Cliff. You’re right, that’s the important thing, she’s OK.’
I drove her to the airport and we had time for a quick drink before her flight, inevitably delayed, was called. She’d calmed down by this time and was able to think of other things beside her kid.
‘I want you and Hank and Megan to keep on with this until you find out what happened.’ She reached for my hand. ‘But don’t do anything dangerous. I want to see you again, Cliff.’
The flight was called. I walked her to the gate and we kissed and hugged hard and seriously. Then she disappeared into Customs. I didn’t try to watch the take-off. With planes coming in and going out at the rate they do it’s impossible to tell one from another. And what’s the point? Gone is gone. I went back to the bar for another overpriced whisky and as I drank it I could smell a faint trace of her perfume on my jacket. It made me feel lonely, but it made me feel determined to find out who’d beaten or frightened Dr Henry McKinley to death.
After the drink I walked around the airport for half an hour for the exercise and to metabolise the alcohol. It didn’t help the loneliness, but it didn’t hurt the determination.
‘How do you feel about cycling, Cliff?’ Megan asked when I turned up at the office the next day. I’d told her about Margaret. I’d been to the gym and felt fine, but not that fine.
‘Here and now? In Sydney? Roughly how I feel about skydiving. Why?’
Hank and Megan had done their thing on the internet. No one’s safe. They’d tracked Susan Talbot O’Neil from her stellar HSC result, when she was one of three who’d got the highest score in the state, through to her University Medal for Science at Sydney to her Cambridge PhD in geology.
‘Guess who examined her thesis?’ Megan said.
‘Henry McKinley.’
‘Right. He seems to have lured her away from a research post at the ANU to the corporate sector, specifically Tarelton Explorations.’
‘More money.’
‘Lots more, but also more her kind of thing.’
‘Water.’
‘And how it got to where it is and how to get it out. But wait, there’s more.’
Megan was grinning and Hank gave her a high-five sign on the way back to his office.
‘Dr O’Neil lives in Darling Point and her main recreation, at which she’s won prizes by the way, is cycling. She’s a member of the Four Bays Cycling Club.’
‘Like McKinley.’
‘Right. You’re a little late today, but they do an early morning ride every day. We can pick them up at the clubhouse tomorrow around seven-thirty.’
‘We?’
‘With Margaret gone don’t you think you need a woman’s touch, as it were?’
She got on with researching the two other companies McKinley had mentioned while I thought about Phil Fitzwilliam. I hadn’t told anyone about him, thinking that he was my problem. It seemed likely that he had some connection with the business at hand. His threat to Hank’s licence wasn’t just out of personal enmity and spite. I tried to see his approach as an opportunity, and to think of a way to turn it to our advantage. So far, nothing had occurred to me.
My mobile rang. Horace Greenacre.
‘Mr Hardy,’ he said, ‘Ms McKinley paid me a flying visit before she left and she insisted on signing a power of attorney in your favour. I tried to dissuade her but-’
‘Hold on,’ I said. ‘I know what a power of attorney is and I’m as surprised as you seem to be, but why did you try to talk her out of it?’
‘No offence, Mr Hardy, but there’s a good deal of money involved. Henry McKinley’s townhouse is a valuable property. He had substantial investments and a high level life insurance policy, plus superannuation benefits.’
I gripped the phone, wanting to throw the thing at the wall, and swore under my breath. Since the publicity surrounding the loss of my licence, I’d faced this sort of suspicion before. It had surfaced most strongly when I inherited half of Lily’s considerable estate, and here it was again in similar circumstances. I fought to keep my voice somewhere near civil.
‘Listen, Horace, my only interest in Margaret McKinley’s assets is in making use of them to finance the investigation into her father’s murder.’
‘I didn’t mean-’
‘You meant a disgraced private enquiry agent is a crook by definition. Well here’s some instructions for you in respect of your late client and his heir. You get in touch with me when there’s something I have to do in Margaret’s interest, and I get in touch with you when I need something. I’m making notes on this conversation and solicitors have been known to lose their tickets, just like PEAs. Are we clear? Good.’
I cut the call and looked up to see Megan staring at me. ‘Aren’t you supposed to avoid stress?’
‘Aren’t you supposed to be tapping keys?. . Shit, sorry, love. That prick got under my guard.’
‘Keep your right up, then,’ she said.
The phone rang again and I picked it up, steeling myself to be polite. It was Greenacre.
‘Mr Hardy, I’m sorry we got off on the wrong foot then. My apologies.’
‘Accepted. How can I help you?’
