‘Not really, he became radical at the beginning of the year. It happens to most of the bright ones, although a bit late in his case. The process sends some of them haywire but Ken seemed to be able to handle it. His first term’s work was excellent, he trailed off a bit in early second term, nothing serious, then he just suspended for no reason.’
‘Are you curious about that?’
‘Yes, very.’
‘Then help me.’
She took her time about it. The process involved pouring some more sherry and tossing back the thick mane of chestnut hair.
‘All right.’ She held up her glass and sunlight sifted through the pale, amber fluid. ‘You’d better talk to his girlfriend, Kathy Martin.’
‘How can I contact her?’
‘She’ll be at my lecture at a quarter past two. She’s a blonde with a suntan, you can’t miss her.’
‘You won’t introduce us?’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
She smiled. ‘My reputation’, she said.
I finished my sherry, found out where the lecture was held, thanked her and left.
The lecture theatre sloped steeply and had front and back entrances. I killed some time with a sandwich and coffee and was back at a quarter past two watching the acolytes roll up for knowledge. I stood up the back, and tried not to be depressed by their impossible youth. One of the last students in was a blonde with her hair tied back; she had on a simple, sleeveless dress and sandals; her arms and legs and face were very brown. She sat down and got out a clipboard and looked like business as Dr Garson started in on R.D. Laing. I snuck out for coffee I didn’t want and when I got back the students were dribbling out. I approached the blonde girl as she loped out into the quadrangle.
‘Kathy Martin?’
‘Yes.’ Up close, she was the original outdoors girl with a demoralising sheen of good health.
‘My name is Hardy, I’ve been hired by Mr Horace Silverman to look for his son. I understand you were a friend.’
‘Yes.’ I got the impression she wasn’t a big talker.
‘Well, can we have a chat?’
She looked at her watch. ‘I have a tutorial in an hour and I haven’t done all the reading.’
‘It won’t take long.’ I herded her across to a bench. She sat down after looking at her watch again.
‘When did you last see Kenneth?’
‘Nearly two months ago.’
‘Where?’
‘At his place.’
‘Where’s that?’
‘He had a squat in Glebe, Sweatman Street.’ She gave me the number and I wrote it down.
‘Why was he squatting? He had plenty of money didn’t he?’
‘Kenny stopped taking his family’s money. He went left, extreme left.’
‘Did you?’
‘Not so extreme.’
‘Did you quarrel?’
She frowned. ‘A bit, but we didn’t split up, if that’s what you mean.’
‘You didn’t?’
‘No, he was around. I saw him, we did what we usually did. You wouldn’t understand.’
‘One day he was there and the next day he wasn’t?’
‘It wasn’t a day-to-day thing.’ She tapped her battered briefcase. ‘Look, I really have to read this stuff.’
‘Won’t keep you a minute. What did you do about it-Kenneth’s disappearance?’
‘Nothing. I said you wouldn’t follow. It wasn’t a disappearance. The people he was in with, they do it all the time-go north, take jobs for money, you know?’
‘So you weren’t worried.’
‘What could I do?’ she snapped. ‘I couldn’t go to the police or anything, they were really out in Kenny’s terms. I didn’t know his family. I just hoped he’d turn up; I still do.’
‘What about the people at the squat?’
‘They were raided. The house was taken over.’
‘This was after Kenneth went missing?’
She paused. ‘Kenneth sounds weird. Yes, I think so, soon after.’
I tried to digest the information and lost her while I did it. She got up and said goodbye in a voice that meant it. I thanked her and watched her walk away with that long, bouncy step and the thought came to me that Kenny had at least one good reason to stick around.
Sweatman Street has seen worse days; the big, two-storeyed, bay-windowed houses had been broken up into flats and rooms until recently, when small, affluent families had taken them over. More European cars and four-wheel-drives than beaten-up Holdens with a rust problem. The street is down near the water and getting more leafy and smart daily and the pockets of poverty in it are not old-style-port and pension-but new-style; dope and dole poverty.
The address Kathy had given me was the last house in a terrace of twenty. It featured weeds and broken glass and peeling paint. The windows at the side and back were set too high up to see in. Around the back, I was surprised to find that all the fences dividing the yards had been removed. This left an immense space which was taken up with trees, rubbish and children’s play gear in about equal proportions.
The broken windows at the back of the house were boarded up and the door was nailed shut. I gave it an experimental tug, and a shout came from behind me.
‘Hey! What’re you doing?’
He was big, with a lot of hair on his head and face. His jeans, sneakers and T-shirt were old and dirty. I stepped down from the door and tried to look innocent.
‘Just looking’, I said.
He was close enough for me to see the aggression pent up in him and something else-there was a nervousness in his movements and a frozen look in his eyes that I’d seen before in speed-freaks and pill-poppers. I opened my hands in a placating gesture which he misunderstood, perhaps deliberately. He crowded up close and bumped me back against the crumbling brick wall. I wasn’t ready for it, and lost a bit of breath.
‘Take it easy’, I said. I put out a hand to hold him back and he swept it aside. His punch was a clumsy looping effort, and I couldn’t resist it; I stepped inside and hit him short, just above the belt buckle. He sagged and I grabbed him under the arms to hold him up.
‘Let him go.’ Another man came from behind the trees; he was slighter and clean-shaven and he dropped into a martial arts pose about ten feet away from me. I let the bearded man slide down the wall.
‘Don’t be silly’, I said. ‘All this is silly; I just want to ask a few questions. I’m looking for someone.’
‘Do him, Chris’, my winded opponent said, and Chris didn’t need any encouragement. He jumped up and let go a flying kick at my shoulder. It was a good, high jump, but the trick with this stuff is not to watch the acrobatics. I ducked under it and kicked the leg he landed on out from under him. He went down in a heap and the stiff-armed chop he came up with might have looked good on the mat but was way too slow in the field. I swayed away from it and hit him just where I’d hit his mate; and that was a mistake because he had washboard muscles there, but I had the combination ready and the next punch landed on his nose where there aren’t any muscles, just nerves to cause pain and bloody vessels to break. He yelped and threw his hands up over his face.
So I had one on the ground and one with a bloody face and no information. Then I heard a slow, ironic handclap; she was standing on the steps of the next house, dark and fat in a shapeless dress and with a cigarette between her lips.
‘I didn’t start it’, I said inanely.
