Ten

The green hill with the sun shining on it looked serene—top-knot of hill, beneath it a wealth of flowers in the early sun.

Again, I recalled the small, single-fronted shop in Parramatta Road. If Simon Lawrence owned all this, he ought to be master of an emporium in Pitt or George Street, all glass and mirrors to magnify the blooms. Or a chain of shops from Hornsby to Cronulla. How much was his business worth? How many shops, across Sydney and beyond, bought plants from this spacious, well-tended nursery?

It was scarcely eight o’clock, and there didn’t seem to be anyone about.

I got out of my car and walked up to the gates, which were large and made of black wrought iron, fitted with a heavy padlock. A sign said ‘Simon Lawrence, Retail and Wholesale Supplier of Quality Floral Produce’. Beneath it were the opening hours, 9 to 6 six days a week, 9 to 9 on Thursdays.

Now that I was closer, the area the nursery covered didn’t seem quite so extensive. Clever terracing had made the most of the available space. I wondered what the land had been used for before Lawrence took it over. Perhaps, from the early days of European settlement, it had been one type of market garden or another.

A man startled me, appearing from behind a shed that might have been a model for the one on the website. I hoped he hadn’t seen me. Though my car was parked back along the road, I didn’t want anybody noticing that either. The man wasn’t looking in my direction, but up the hill, where sprinklers suddenly came on. One second the air was clear, the next filled with water.

He was wearing khaki overalls and gumboots, and too far away for me to see his face, which in any case was hidden under a broad-brimmed hat. Though it was hard to be certain, I didn’t think I’d seen him before. I began to walk away, turning for a last look over my shoulder. The man was heading for what I took to be the main office and sales building. As I turned, he did too.

. . .

Tall gum trees with salmon-coloured trunks framed the cedar house, a house for families, for summer letting, too large for one man on his own.

But Brook was not alone, as I discovered seconds after I knocked on the front door. I heard my name spoken from the other side, in his voice, then a female one, further away and indistinct, floating down the stairs.

Brook smiled, kissed me on the cheek and said, ‘Sophie’s just arrived.’

Sophie descended the last two steps like a movie actress mindful of her cue, holding a hat and sunglasses in one hand. She smiled hello, waving them casually in my direction. I smiled back, thinking of my overnight bag in the car, thinking of the surf, white water breaking on my shoulders. I knew Sophie could see the disappointment on my face.

She exchanged with Brook the glance of a man and woman who have just got out of bed, touching his arm just above the elbow as she asked, ‘Is there anything you want me to pick up from the shops?’

‘Not right now, I don’t think.’ Brook’s voice was reassuring.

The whole ground floor of the house was open plan. I pictured the two of them laying claim to corners.

‘Coffee?’ Brook asked, leading the way towards the kitchen end. ‘Then you can tell me your news.’

‘How long will Sophie be?’

‘As long as she considers necessary.’

I let myself fall into a cane chair, while Brook made coffee and toasted raisin bread. I began at the beginning—not rushing, but not lingering over details either, now that I knew our time together was rationed. I mentioned Ken Dollimore’s phone call, Eden’s Carmichael’s aborted appointment with Senator Bryant, what I’d learnt about CleanNet, my conversations with Margot Lancaster and the women who worked for her, the break-ins to my computer and my house.

Staring out at the trees—the pink trunks looked soft—I was aware of Brook listening with his familiar slow consideration, and felt doubly certain that I had interrupted love-making.

I said my office had been trashed, but nothing stolen. ‘It seems we might be dealing with an amateur.’

‘We?’

‘You’ll get stuck into all of this when you come back to Canberra.’

Brook laughed. ‘Don’t you ever have a holiday?’

His laughter seemed a continuation of his morning’s occupation in the cedar house, and I felt that he was moving even further away from me. There was surprise in it as well. There’d always been something in Brook that greeted physical pleasure as an unexpected guest.

I sniffed. The beach house smelt of salt, sea air. I showed him Jenny Bishop’s flyer, and told him what Rose had said, that she didn’t believe Jenny had died of an overdose.

‘Lawrence, the guy who ripped the condom off, his website’s a front for porn. I’m wondering if he’s been reported to the Broadcasting Authority and if so what they’ve done about it.’

Brook handed me a plate of toast, then settled himself comfortably in a wicker chair.

In my mind’s eye, I saw Sophie returning, arms laden with provisions, edging the door shut behind her with one foot. She would smile. She would not need to say, ‘I’m glad Sandra’s gone.’

Facts tasted dry in my mouth. I couldn’t see the point in pulling more out. Eucalypt trunks through the window were orange-pink, robust, mildly obscene. The garden had the look of a stage set, though it should have been the other way around—audience out there, and on the stage two people sitting opposite in matching chairs, one relaxed, the other nervous—two people who knew each other well, yet suddenly, without warning, strangers.

Brook crossed his sleek legs in their cotton pants. He was proud of the weight he’d put on and managed to keep.

‘Why are you doing this?’ he asked me.

I’d told him over the phone, but I repeated it. ‘My time’s currently being paid for by Electronic Freedom. Not at a massively generous rate, but what else is a girl supposed to do in Canberra, in January?’

Brook did not say, you could have come down here. We both knew that, without Peter as a chaperone, it would have been impossible.

I remembered the bunch of roses and fetched them from my car. I’d sprinkled them with water before I left the hotel, and they’d survived the coast road pretty well. I handed them to Brook with a flourish, a matador with a living cape.

‘Tell Sophie where they came from,’ I said.

The flowers got us to the kitchen, where we made a small ceremony of looking for a vase. We found one eventually, in a top cupboard. Ugly, but it would do.

‘What’s he like then, this florist chappy?’ Brook asked mildly.

‘Attractive in a dark way. Heathcliffian. Dimple in his chin.’

I looked up from arranging the roses. They seemed meagre some­how, not enough to fill the vase, and artificial in the beach house setting.

‘I have a feeling Simon Lawrence doesn’t forget a face,’ I said, ‘not even one belonging to the most casual of customers.’

. . .

During the long drive back to Canberra, I was overcome by a drenching tiredness and emptiness. I’d walked into a trap at Broulee. On the snake road up the Clyde, I thought about the roses, pictured Sophie throwing them away, saying, with a short, careless laugh, that they were already dead. I realised how much I’d been looking forward to the weekend, the treat of spending time with Brook. Now it was over prematurely, and had left me feeling bad.

. . .

I woke to a mist slipping down Black Mountain’s hips, dry eucalypt smells, clean air of the hinterland. Not wanting to face the hot idleness of a Sunday on my own, I phoned Gail as soon as I thought there was a chance she’d be awake.

Gail chuckled at my description of the rosebuds. Perhaps, being more used to the solitary life than I was, she understood the mood swings it induced—pleasure in solitude one minute, fear of it the next. I told her about Jenny Bishop, Lawrence and the flyer. In return, she said that Mike Carnegie, the journalist who’d written up CleanNet’s presentation for the minister, would be happy to chat with me. I felt comforted by the thought of Gail just a few kilometres away, in her echoing, half-unpacked, single woman’s house.

I rang Laura Scott and suggested an afternoon swim at Civic Pool. Somewhat to my surprise, she agreed.

Then I drove by Margot’s, thinking it would probably be closed.

Two cars were parked next to each other in the carpark. When my knock on the door was met by silence, I knocked louder.

Margot opened the door, a crack at first, then a fraction wider.

‘What do you want?’ she asked.

‘Can I come in for a minute?’

‘Why?’

I peered round Margot’s shoulder, catching a glimpse of Denise standing in the shadows. She plucked at her eyes with a tissue, a hasty, almost cruel movement, then turned her back on me.

‘Jenny Bishop’s dead,’ I told them, thinking that it was unlikely to be news.

I stared at Margot as I spoke, but it was impossible to tell whether she already knew. I wondered why she’d answered the door at all, and why Denise had stayed in the foyer, rather than disappear into one of the rooms. Was it possible that Margot had ordered her to stay where she was? There was something vindictive in her manner.

‘The blonde wig, do you wear it yourself?’ I asked.

‘What are you talking about? Why would I?’

Margot pushed the door shut. I backed away, not wanting to cause any more trouble for Denise.

Driving home, I asked myself if Margot and Denise were lovers. Perhaps I’d interrupted a lovers’ quarrel.

. . .

I looked up Ken Dollimore’s phone number.

‘Good morning,’ I said when he came on the line.

‘Good morning, Mrs Mahoney.’ Dollimore sounded as if he’d just got back from church.

‘Did Eden Carmichael ever mention a young woman called Jenny Bishop?’

‘I don’t think so,’ Dollimore replied smoothly and politely. ‘I don’t recall the name.’

‘She worked at Margot Lancaster’s club for a while last year.’

‘I don’t think Ed mentioned names, apart from Madam’s. He never criticised or slighted any of the girls, if that’s a help to you.’

‘Why did he leave his flat to Margot?’

There was a silence, then Dollimore said, ‘Because he was a sentimental fool.’

‘Do you know what she plans to do with it?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘Do you?’

‘I might be able to find out. If I can, I’ll trade you.’

‘What for?’

‘I’ll make a list.’

Dollimore laughed. He had a nice laugh, melodious and warm.

. . .

Next, I phoned Chris Laskaris. He sounded friendlier than when I’d last spoken to him, and didn’t seem put out that I was ringing him on Sunday. He laughed when I told him about the rosebud trail, then reminded me that it wasn’t his group’s job to act as censor. Since our initial conversation, he’d heard that Stan Walewicz had been ordered to take down his website.

I asked if he’d heard anything on the grapevine about a meeting between Ken Dollimore and Richard McFadden, when McFadden was in Canberra. Chris said no, but he’d make a few enquiries if I liked.

. . .

Laura’s sleek physical assurance reminded me of Brook, a reminder that I didn’t want just then. She turned out to be surprisingly athletic. In her office, and at the funeral, she’d seemed so much a mistress of the tight skirt and stiletto heels. She dived off the springboard as though she’d been doing nothing else all summer, and came up laughing, her short dark hair plastered flat against her head. I wondered what had happened to put her in a playful mood.

‘How’s Ken Dollimore bearing up?’ I asked, when she’d pulled a T-shirt over her bathers and sat down on her towel.

‘Who can figure these guys out? Hey, you want an ice-cream?’

‘What would you like? I’ll get them.’

I came back with two Cornettos, already melting in the heat.

Laura polished hers off with a few quick bites, then said, ‘Ken kept on trying to get Ed to reform. He never gave up. He was determined to rescue the poor sod.’

‘Who from?’

‘Himself, I guess. Ed got sick of being lectured, but he put up with it. He told me once that if he was going to die before he reached sixty, it was his business, not anybody else’s.’

‘What were Dollimore’s main worries?’

‘Booze.’ Laura licked her fingers, then began counting on them. ‘Dicky heart. Bad women. Ken needs to save someone. It’s his religion. Ed used to say it was a pity the old patriarch’s daughters were such good girls. In his secret heart, he would have loved one of them to be a junkie so he could devote himself to rescuing her.’

‘That’s a bit hard.’

‘Hard? Ed loved the silly old goat. But that didn’t stop him taking the piss occasionally. And he was shaken up after his first heart attack. He did take more notice of Ken after that.’

‘But not enough to give up booze or bad women.’

‘No.’ Laura sighed. ‘Not enough for that.’

‘Who was he afraid of?’

Laura gave me a sharp look. ‘I don’t know who you’ve been talking to, but I’ve been thinking about that. Somebody was pressuring him. Underneath, you know, Ed was very much his own person, an independent thinker. In spite of everything, his constituents recognised and appreciated that. They trusted him not simply to go along with a party line.’

‘Ken Dollimore must have shared your concerns.’

‘That night in the carpark, we were trying to work out what to do when—if—’

Laura’s voice faltered.

I waited a moment, then said softly, ‘But he did recover. He came back to work.’

‘He was determined to see out his term. It was a matter of pride with him to finish what he’d started.’

‘Did you and Dollimore keep in touch, compare notes?’

‘I tried for a while. But Ken retreated behind that holier-than-thou manner of his. And he’d never thought much of me to begin with.’

‘Why not?’

‘A pretty face is all,’ said Laura philosophically.

‘Do you recall anything else about the CleanNet presentation? Any little detail?’

Laura thought for a while, then said, ‘Not really.’

‘Do you know if Carmichael met Richard McFadden privately?’

‘I made all Ed’s appointments for him.’

‘None with McFadden?’

‘No.’

Laura’s phone rang. From the way she answered, it sounded as though she’d been waiting for the call. She laughed and tossed her head as though the person she was talking to could see her.

She was still smiling when she said goodbye, thanked me for the ice-cream, and told me she was off to meet a friend in Civic.

. . .

Back home once more, I checked my email. Ivan had replied to the one I’d sent from Sydney.

‘A fuck’s a fuck Sandy. Poor old Carmichael died of a heart attack. I think you’ll find that’s all there is to it.’

Up yours too, I said to the computer. At the same time, I was reminded that it was a trap to categorise, abstract, and then ignore whatever details didn’t fit. There was the added impulse to solve a mystery on my own, and double-quick, to present Ivan with it at the airport, all tied up in a wig box, finished, done.