Salt and Blood (2 page)

By the time I'd reached the car, reality and the cold breeze had cut in, dissolving the nostalgia and the sentimentality and diluting the alcohol. I started the car and let it warm up and I was already thinking about the problems of dealing
with someone who'd been shut away for seven years.

Home alone. It wasn't late and I wasn't sleepy. I took a walk around the block to induce sleep. The last three hundred metres of Glebe Point Road on the right-hand side going down to the water are undergoing massive development. An up-market apartment complex is replacing the warehouses and boat yards. A working area of the bay has had its time and the water is more valuable now as something to look at. The painting-by-numbers advertisement for the complex stresses the view as the selling point. The developers promise walkways and grass plus a fountain and it'll probably look okay, but I'll miss the boat yards. If I sold my terrace I could probably buy two apartments—live in one, rent the other and be set for life, except that it'd feel like death.

Back inside, I only looked briefly at the Scotch bottle before making a pot of coffee. I went upstairs to the spare bedroom where I'd set up the computer and turned it on. I heard the coffee perking and went down to fill a mug. I'm told there are people who can sit down at a computer without anything to eat, drink or smoke but I'm not one of them.

A bit of a trawl turned up some Harkness data. Warren St J was a partner in Beams, Harkness and Trezize, solicitors in the city. Nice website. Not exactly touting for custom but letting the world know they were around. Harkness Holdings Ltd was a publicly listed company with interests in
commercial and residential property in Sydney and Melbourne and with a solid share value. Sceptic that I am, I wondered immediately why such a well-heeled character would deal with a one-woman detective agency. Why not one of the internationals with their Dick Tracy wrist walkie-talkies and lapel badge cameras? I sipped coffee and thought about it. Three possibilities: one—referral. Maybe Glen had done good work for someone Harkness knew. Two—security. The bigger the show the more people in the know. Three—containment. In my experience clients sometimes went for a small outfit so they could feel in control.

I wondered whether Glen had got herself a website yet. Sure enough: The Glen Withers Agency—former Detective Inspector NSW Police; BSc (Newcastle), BJuris (Monash); Captain, Army Reserve. Confidential enquiries discreetly conducted, blah, blah. Nice photo. I stared at the screen and tried to imagine my own home page: Hardy Investigations—Second Lieutenant Australian Army (campaign ribbon, mentioned in despatches); LLB (NSW) discontinued; twenty-plus years'
 experience. I saw my battered, broken-nosed phiz cold-eyeing back at me and shook my head. Bad move.

I finished my coffee and was about to log off when an idea occurred to me. I called up the search engine and tapped in Rutherford House. There was a fair amount of Rutherford this and Rutherford that but I got to it before too long. It was amazing how such a glossy, up-market,
hi-tech website could convey so little warmth. The grounds and buildings looked nice and the medical staff had every qualification under the sun. The place had government certification and high- profile patrons and endorsements but something about the design and layout of the information struck me as chilling. I had no doubt it cost a fortune to be treated there, but for all the pictures of garden beds and recreation areas it still gave off the atmosphere of a prison. I printed out the page with the staff list and bookmarked the site.

Before switching off I checked the email, not expecting anything. There was a message with an attachment from withersg. The contract, no doubt. She'd probably drawn it up beforehand. Sure of her man. The message read ‘Thanks, Cliff.' There we were, in the inner west and the eastern suburbs, connected by computer but far, far apart.

2

In the morning I printed out the contract and read it through. I'd get my retainer from her and she'd meet my ongoing daily rate and expenses. The document contained no details of the case so I was signing on simply on the strength of what Glen had told me. Glen and I had worked in tandem like this a few times before, sometimes with her as the principal and sometimes me, without any trouble. But those times we'd only signed a contract halfway through the job or at the end or not at all. I wasn't happy about signing such an open-ended contract up front. All this high-tech formality. I brooded about it and Glen rang me as I was brooding.

‘I thought you could sign it and fax me back.'

‘I'm sorry. I reckon I should know a bit more about it before committing myself.'

I could feel her impatience coming down the line but she composed herself, obviously with an effort. ‘Tell you what, I'm scheduled to meet Lady R and her son this afternoon at the family home,' she said. ‘I'd like you to come along so they can see how reliable you look. And you can look them over and decide.'

‘Okay, I'll brush up on reliability. Where and when?'

When turned out to be 3 p.m. and where was a large house with a Mediterranean villa look to it set in what appeared from the street to be half an acre of forest in the middle of Bellevue Hill. I drew up in the Falcon behind Glen's Pajero. A high brick fence enclosed the grounds and the only entrance was a narrow walk-through gate with heavy security. No driveway. I got out of my car and leaned in at the Pajero's driver window.

‘Where's the entrance to the underground car park?'

‘I was told about that. They don't have cars. There's a delivery entrance off the side street that runs along the east boundary of the place. Weird, huh?'

‘You mean Warren lives here with his mum?'

‘That's right.'

‘Where's dad?'

Glen busied herself collecting her shoulder bag and checking in it for her professional bits and pieces. ‘I imagine we're going to find out about him and Rodney and other stuff. All I know is he's dead. Let's have a look at you. Are you presentable?'

I stepped back and she got out and looked me over. A navy blazer, blue shirt, dark slacks and shoes, no tie. I'd shaved closely and washed my hair which was still more dark than grey. Glen was wearing a black pants suit, low heels, white silk blouse.

‘You'll do,' she said. ‘Let's go in.'

‘This is where you say, “I'll do the talking.”'

‘You'll say what you like when you choose. You always do.'

The gate had an ivy-covered wrought-iron and timber canopy with an electronic buzzer set in the brickwork. Glen hit the buzzer and said her name into the intercom. The gate swung open. We walked up sixty or seventy metres of paving that had just the right amount of moss growing between the slate blocks, with closely weeded garden beds and lawn like putting greens on either side, to a set of ten sandstone steps worn concave by well-shod feet. A wide, tiled verandah ran the length of the house and before you could enter you had to negotiate a heavy security screen and yet another buzzer.

Press and wait. After a minute or more the door opened, giving me time to look around and see the surveillance camera mounted a metre above our heads. The Harknesses clearly didn't like surprise visitors or maybe they didn't like visitors at all. The woman who opened the door didn't exactly wear a maid's uniform but she didn't look quite like a civilian either. Severe belted dress in a dark fabric, cream scarf, dark stockings, sensible shoes. She was neither young nor old, fat nor thin, as if she'd been designed to blend into the background.

‘Ms Withers and …?'

‘Mr Hardy,' Glen said.

She nodded. ‘Lady Rachel and Mr Harkness are in the east sitting room. Will you come this way, please.'

We stepped out of the twenty-first century into the nineteenth. The entrance hall was vast and
cold with a wide staircase ascending into shadows on one side and a dimly lit passage on the other. The parquet floor made Glen and the woman's leather heels ring and my rubber ones squeak. We followed our guide about the length of a cricket pitch to a wood panelled door where she knocked discreetly before opening it. Up to this point the place had been cold, lacked light and smelled of money and floor polish, but this room carried an aroma of coffee and tobacco and the afternoon light flooded in from French windows letting out to the verandah with the garden not far off.

We walked across an ornately worked carpet towards leather chairs and a couch where a man and a woman were sitting beside a trolley carrying a silver coffee pot and matching jugs, a sugar bowl likewise. Porcelain cups. The man was drinking coffee and smoking a chunky cigar, the woman was just sitting. The man put his cup down on the trolley and came forward holding his cigar in front of him like a torch. He was big, 190 centimetres or so, giving him a couple on me, and he could have spotted me a few kilos as well. Put him at ninety plus. A lot of it was soft though, discreetly masked by the pinstriped double-breaster.

‘Ms Withers,' he said. ‘Thank you for coming.'

Glen introduced me to Harkness and he introduced us both to his mother. At a guess, Lady Rachel Harkness was in her sixties, fashionably thin with the lacquered look rich women acquire from dieting, makeup and perhaps a little discreet plastic surgery. Her hair was a subtle blend of silver and blonde and everything about her—the
silk dress, minimal jewellery, elegant pose and restrained expression—conspired to say, Look at me with envy. I am beautiful and rich.

The rapport between the two appeared to be very good although I had a suspicion they had rehearsed this meeting. Glen and I sat down and Warren Harkness served us coffee. I refused a cigar. With his mother saying almost nothing but making little confirmatory gestures with her head and hands, Harkness outlined the assignment.

‘My brother married Lucille Hammond on the rebound as they say, from the collapse of another relationship. They weren't at all suited. Rodney was … is, a quiet, serious sort of chap, when he's ah … in control of himself. Lucille was wild, younger than him of course. Extroverted. She was Catholic and wouldn't use birth control. They had a child quite quickly, a girl. Rodney was delighted but Lucille didn't accept the responsibility. She chafed under it, you might say. They fought. I'm sorry to say that she provoked Rodney into hitting her. She left him. Rodney had some letters from her and he sent her some money. He was desperate to make amends. But she told him she never wanted to see him again and she broke off all contact. That's when Rodney began to drink and behave … erratically.'

Harkness paused to offer us more coffee and make sure his mother had everything she wanted. Nice manners, or perhaps a good sense of dramatic timing. I was irritated and I could feel Glen's similar reaction. We obviously weren't intended to interrupt the flow but Glen did anyway.

‘Do you have these letters, Mr Harkness?' she asked. ‘And the details of the money and so on?'

‘Yes, yes, of course.' Harkness killed his cigar in a crystal ashtray and his mother wrinkled her nose at the smell—the first spontaneous movement she'd made. Control was
her
middle name.

‘This is difficult for us,' Harkness went on. ‘Rodney embezzled some money. He lost it gambling and tried to recoup it by dealing in drugs. The police became aware of it. There were various unpleasant incidents. Someone attempted to blackmail Rodney and he injured the person very severely. He attempted to bribe a police officer and then assaulted him. If matters had run their course he would have been sentenced to a prison term and no doubt have deteriorated further.'

Harkness was looking at me by this stage. I nodded but I thought, I
doubt he'd have served seven years.
I still wasn't being invited to comment but I did. ‘You were able to make other arrangements.'

Harkness glanced at his mother who nodded slightly and spoke in her slightly stagy top-drawer accent. ‘Yes. Several psychiatrists examined Rodney and he was declared unfit to plead to the charges. His responsibility was judged to be diminished. He was placed in institutional care and his state of mind was reviewed from time to time.'

The formal tableau was getting me down. I deliberately made my cup and saucer rattle as I put them back on the trolley. ‘How's he doing?'

Harkness shook his head and some loose flesh moved on his face. Jowls on the way. ‘Opinions differ. Our … some doctors say he is still delusional. Others decided otherwise.'

Lady Rachel Harkness's sculptured lips formed into a tight line. ‘There has been interference from some quarter and we want Ms Withers to find out all she can about that. There may be professional misconduct involved.'

You want to lock the poor fucker up again,
I thought, but Glen cut in smoothly.

‘I'm sure there will be avenues to follow on that,' she said. ‘And I understand you want to reunite Mr Harkness with his wife and child.'

‘No,' Lady Rachel said sharply.

Warren looked uncomfortable and as if he'd like to get another cigar going, but perhaps one was all Mum allowed him. ‘I may have given you a false impression there in our preliminary talk, Ms Withers,' he said. ‘We are only interested in the child. We believe that Rodney might respond positively to meeting his daughter again.'

‘And the mother?' I said.

‘We'll cross that bridge when we come to it,' Lady Rachel said. ‘All we want to say about her is that she was a most unsuitable person. No character, no background. Most unsuitable.' I'd swear her accent slipped a notch or two.

They went on to outline what they hoped I could do for them. Their biggest worry was that Rodney Harkness would get back on the grog despite his long drying-out. They had managed to modify the court release order the civil liberties
people had secured to provide that, in addition to psychological counselling and monitoring, he should be assigned a companion for at least the first few weeks to keep him on the straight and narrow.