beach, was muggy in the hazy sea air. Sand from the soil had turned the footpaths gritty. The warm morning sun baked the footpath and its background of home units, parched gardens and occasional shopfronts.
The man who opened the door to Harrigan was tall, stoop-shouldered, with a heavy, fleshy face. His hair was white. He ushered Harrigan into a living room bereft of decoration; a small, dark space dominated by a flat-screen television. Beneath it was a shelf of unlabelled videos and DVDs. There were no other signs of entertainment in the room. The house had a stale odour, of old age and a place not often cleaned. Frank Wells motioned to Harrigan to sit down. He himself sat on a tiny two-seater lounge and put his hands on his knees.
‘Did you bring the money?’ he asked in his old man’s voice, low and abrasive.
Harrigan had an account for incidentals like these. Usually his clients paid the costs but today he was working for himself. Frank Wells counted the notes slowly, then tucked them away in his wallet. It was too thick to fit back into his pocket and he put it within reach on the arm of the lounge.
‘What did you want to know?’ he asked.
‘Anything you can tell me about your son and your wife.’
‘They’re both dead now, aren’t they? I got this out for you.’
It came out of a cardboard box, an album housing a small, messy collection of photographs. Baby pictures of Craig were accompanied by a christening certificate with a lock of his dark hair sticky-taped next to it. There was one of him in his school uniform with a pencilled note saying it was his first day at school. He was an unsmiling, tense-looking child. There was a shot of a threesome-Janice, Frank and their son at a barbecue-and after this, occasional ones of Frank and Janice together. No one smiled much in any of these fuzzy pictures. They petered out when Craig would have been no more than seven. The last three-quarters of the album was empty.
Harrigan closed it with a slight thump. It left him with a sense of drabness, almost uselessness. The atmosphere in this room had the same negativity. In this place, you could wake up every day and wonder why you were bothering with life at all.
‘How old was Craig when your wife left?’ he asked.
Frank shrugged. ‘I don’t know if I remember. He’d been at school for a while. Eight?’
‘Your wife left this album behind.’
‘She didn’t want it. No one wants it. You can have it if you want to pay for it.’
Harrigan had come prepared. Frank Wells forced the extra notes into his already bulging wallet like a man who is pleased to get his hands on every dollar that he can. Harrigan’s gaze came back to the high-definition plasma television dominating the room. Everything else spoke of someone who probably scraped by on the old-age pension.
‘Can I ask you something about yourself, Frank?’
‘If you want.’
‘How old are you?’
‘Seventy-four.’
‘You’re in good shape for your age.’ The old man smiled. ‘When did you meet your wife?’
‘It was when I came back from New Guinea. I went up there when I was younger. I was working with the police. It was good money and something different to do. I was there for ten years, I suppose. I met my wife when I came back. She left her first husband for me. Then she left me and took up with someone else, then he left her. I think I was just the next one in line.’
Harrigan had the voice now. It wasn’t only harshness and aggression, it was disappointment. Frank Wells was someone who had not taken much from life. There was no sign in this room that he’d spent ten years in another place so very different from this one. Harrigan thought of Grace’s father, Kep Riordan. His house on the Central Coast was filled with artefacts, books and photographs from the time he and his family had spent in New Guinea. Grace herself had photographs, wall hangings and pieces of art which were now in the Birchgrove house. In this claustrophobic room, there was nothing.
‘And before you went to New Guinea?’ Harrigan asked.
‘I worked at Gowings. Started there when I was fourteen. That’s what I did when I came back too. I stayed there till I retired.’ ‘Did you and your ex-wife live here?’
‘She kept nagging me about that. She wanted a larger house. It wasn’t practical. I wasn’t going to take out a mortgage.’
Whatever Janice Wells had been as a person, no one could blame her for leaving this place. Living here would have been like living in a coffin. Harrigan glanced again at the plasma television. Before he could ask another question, Frank interrupted him.
‘Look, you’re not from the solicitors, are you? Anything like that?’
‘What solicitors?’
‘My mother’s maybe.’
‘No, my interest in this is exactly what I’ve told you. Why did you think otherwise?’
‘I thought when you said you were interested in my wife and Craig, it might be something else to do with my mother’s will. Maybe there was some more money. You haven’t really told me that much. Why are you asking about them?’
‘I’m investigating the possibility that Craig may still be alive.’
At this, Frank’s head drooped down. He seemed to be frowning. Then he looked up, his eyes hard and bright.
‘None of this makes any sense to me,’ he said, like someone feeling they’re being pushed too far. ‘Let me show you this.’
It came out of the same cardboard box that had held the photograph album: a letter. Dated four years back, it was written on what appeared to be a law firm’s letterhead. Frank Wells was advised that according to her dying wishes, his birth mother, Dr Amelie Santos, wished to inform him of his parentage, proof of which was attached. She had died only recently and solicitors from the above-named firm were acting as executors to her will. She had left an estate valued in the millions and if he rang the above number, he would learn the exact amount of his inheritance. It was signed Ian Blackmore.
Attached to this correspondence was a photocopy of a letter from the Salvation Army to a sanatorium in the Southern Highlands of New South Wales, relating to the adoption of baby X, son of Amelie and Rafael, by a family with the surname of Wells. The letter was dated in the first half of the 1930s and gave the baby’s age as two months old. The full names and addresses of the adoptive parents, in Annandale, were also recorded. It was noted that the family was now ready to receive the baby and also that he was being adopted out because the father had deserted his mother two months prior to the birth. It concluded by saying that the adoptive parents would arrange for his christening and had chosen the name Francis Martin. Also attached was an extract from a register of marriages recording the marriage of Amelie Warwick, eighteen, and Rafael Santos, thirty-five. There were eight months between the date of the wedding and the adoption of the child.
Harrigan made quick notes of these details in his notebook, including the address of the law firm. They were based in Katoomba in the Blue Mountains. He looked up. Frank was leaning forward, his eyes still sharp and bright. He was shaking, involuntarily Harrigan guessed.
‘Were these your adoptive parents, Frank?’ he asked. ‘Is this their name and address?’
‘That’s them. That’s where I grew up. I’d never heard of this Amelie Santos before. I rang that legal firm just like the letter said I should.’ The bitterness in Frank’s voice was almost too profound. ‘They said they were the executors of my mother’s will all right, but they’d never sent that letter and they’d never heard of the man who signed it. And they’d never heard of me. She hadn’t left me a penny! When I heard that, it was a kick in the guts. That’s when I went and got my own solicitor. I couldn’t afford to but I was angry. I had to get something out of that woman. She wasn’t going to do that to me. What she’d done already was bad enough.’
‘Your adoption?’
‘Throwing me away.’ He sat like a rock, every bit of him radiating fury and hurt. ‘I didn’t care about any of this until I got that letter. But when I read that and I knew, I thought, you fucking bitch! She had fucking millions! She didn’t leave me a cent.’
‘Did she know who you were?’
‘She could have found me. Someone did. Why not her?’
Again silence while Harrigan waited for Frank to grow calm.
‘Who did she leave her estate to?’ he asked.
