People who live in the trendy harbourside suburbs, who truck off to Europe every second year, are more likely to be familiar with Lugarno, Italy, than Lugarno, Australia. Greystanes, Bidwill, Toongabbie. Lugarno. These are suburbs of Sydney that people who eat stuffed quail with ragout of fava beans, or lamb’s heart on a bed of arugula drizzled with grilled capsicum puree, have never heard of, let alone been to. But Lugarno inhabitants are there for the same reason that trendies hug the harbour. For the waters.
Lugarno is on the Georges River, which empties into Botany Bay and from there into the Pacific Ocean, the same way the Parramatta River empties into Sydney Harbour. A mirror image, the rivers like symmetrical veins running along either side of the body. If Capt. Arthur Phillip, leader of the First Fleet, had founded the settlement where he was supposed to found it, we’d all be living in Lugarno. Which is not the way the present residents would have it. In Lugarno you have peace, quiet, water and wide open spaces. Across the river is a nature reserve. Typical Sydney basin vegetation—eucalypts, bottlebrush, rocks, wildflowers in spring, birds in all seasons. In the water itself are mangroves, oyster leases, pelicans, jellyfish, black-fish, bream, flathead, ‘jumping’ mullet and plastic bags, depending on what’s running.
Down at the water level are fishermen’s fibro shacks, some of them permanent dwellings, some weekenders. There are also old timber jetties and new aluminium boats. Up on the road are big houses, some of which look like mansions. Underworld figures such as Peter Farrugia and George Freeman, now both dead, once encased themselves in millionaires’ mansions, complete with high security, in similar southern suburbs with water views. Neighbours reported they were quiet and kept to themselves. Of course they did. You don’t shit in your own nest, you leave your dirty business uptown.
Not that I was expecting to meet any big crime figures when I pulled up outside Rosa Grimaldi’s house. I was coming to see Madalena’s room, look around, get a feel for the kind of person she was. See if there were any syringes hidden in geometry sets under the bed. I was wearing jeans, a patterned shirt and runners, nothing too inner city. Like I might have been a friend of Rosa’s just dropping by. There weren’t any other cars parked in the street. I guess everyone round here has a garage. There weren’t any people in the street either, especially not men with reflective sunglasses.
It was a quiet street, the houses almost hidden behind bush and high fences. The Grimaldi abode belonged in the ‘modest millionaire’ bracket. There was an ornate arched gateway that I presumed would be locked but wasn’t. Then you went up steps to a deck, or rather a pergola, dripping with grapevines and wisteria.
Rosa must have been peeping out the window because before I had a chance to press the buzzer, she was at the security door. ‘Come in, come in,’ she welcomed. She was much brighter and chirpier here on home ground.
‘Coffee?’ she said, leading me past a stuffed kangaroo, into the living room. There was a black umbrella sticking out of its pouch. I swear its eyes followed me as I passed by.
A marquetry inlaid table in the living room was already set up with coffee and cake. I sat down on the lounge while Rosa poured the coffee. She offered me milk, which I waved away, then started to cut into the cake. She put a slice on a plate decorated with gold leaf and handed it to me.
‘Very healthy cake,’ began Rosa, ‘made with carrots. No butter, no sugar.’ Yeah, I could tell that. ‘I got the recipe from my cousin, Anna.’ For a case that was supposedly closed it had an uncanny knack for popping open again. Now I was eating the woman’s cake. ‘She said she’d come over later.’ Great, that’d be just great. I smiled wanly. ‘Perhaps I could see Madalena’s room,’ I suggested.
‘Is it always this tidy?’ I asked. The bed was made, there was a shroud-like cover draped over a lounge chair. On the top of the ornate dresser little boxes, ornaments and a hand mirror were neatly arranged. On the back of the door were posters of Johnny Depp, Nirvana and Madonna in one of her more modest garbs.
Rosa looked at the rug on the floor and shook her head. ‘When she was a little girl, it was always neat. She liked to make the bed, to sit her pyjama dog on the pillows, but the last months …’ She held her hands out in a gesture of helplessness. ‘The last six months, she doesn’t care so much about keeping the room nice. I find food in her room, plates under the bed with sauce stuck so hard it doesn’t come off in the dishwasher. She leaves Kleenex in her pockets. It makes a mess in the washing machine.’ Rosa went on listing her daughter’s peccadilloes without stopping for breath.
The room was presently spick and span. I would like to have seen it exactly the way Madalena had left it. Despite the blaring posters the room felt still and quiet. Nothing stirred. ‘Did you notice anything unusual when you cleaned up?’ I asked.
‘You mean the plate under the bed?’
That wasn’t the kind of unusual I meant. I was going to have to start lifting covers up, opening cupboards, unscrewing jars and bottles, looking in drawers. I was going to have to invade this child’s privacy. For that reason, I preferred Rosa remain in the room. I’d never worked on a case involving a missing child before but I’d had occasion to look through people’s rooms. I worked more quickly, efficiently, on my own but if there was something to be discovered I wanted Rosa to see it being discovered. If I found a syringe, condoms, any of the things that parents would rather not find in their kids’ bedrooms, I wanted her to discover it the same time I did. I didn’t want her denying it, calling me a liar, telling me her daughter would never do such a thing. Besides, she was the kid’s mother, she’d want to stay. If it was someone going through Amy’s room I’d be watching like a hawk.
‘I’m going to have to look through her things, do you mind?’ I asked as a matter of courtesy.
‘Please. Go ahead,’ invited Rosa. She stood back, out of my way but watching.
I started with the drawers of the dresser, lifting things and replacing them carefully so the disturbance was kept to a minimum. There were mainly socks and underwear in the top left-hand drawer. In the right-hand drawer was an assortment of objects, a kind of ‘junk’ drawer—the butt end of an eyeliner, a few safety pins one through the other to form a chain, pencils, a packet of photos.
I took the photos out and had a look. They all seemed to have been taken on the one day. Girls leaning into each other, holding up their fingers in peace signs, exaggeratedly posed with hands on hips. Half of them had a background of cliffs, and the other half were taken outside a milk bar. ‘A school excursion,’ Rosa explained. ‘They went to Wollongong to look at rocks for science.’
As well as photos of the group there were a couple of Madalena and another girl by themselves. The others looked like babes in the woods compared to this girl. Though she was dressed in the same school uniform, she’d managed to arrange it in such a fashion that it looked like it was breaking all the school rules. The ear that was visible beneath the dyed red hair was studded with earrings and her eyebrows were plucked to a thin line.
‘It’s Madalena’s “best friend”,’ said Rosa disparagingly. ‘Kerry Wells. She lives at Peakhurst. In the last few months it’s Kerry this, Kerry that. She goes out with boys, she goes to parties with no supervision. She is a bad influence on Madalena.’ ‘Have you spoken to her since Madalena disappeared?’
‘I’ve never spoken to her.’ And by Rosa’s tone of voice she had no intention of speaking to her.
I kept the packet of photos aside and went back to the drawer. I examined it thoroughly, lifted up the black wrapping paper with silver stars that was lining it. Nothing hidden under there. I got down to the bottom drawers. One contained T-shirts and the other jumpers. Rosa sat on the bed patting the empty pyjama dog but watching me closely. I looked behind the posters and in the wardrobe. There were three yellow blouses, presumably for school. A couple of formal dresses, an overcoat, jackets. On the floor of the wardrobe were shoes—a shaggy pair of split Reeboks that had done all the walking and running they were ever going to do, school shoes and a couple of pairs of dressy shoes.
‘What clothes are missing?’
‘The sports uniform, the school uniform, Doc Martens shoes, shorts and denim jacket. The backpack she took to school, jewellery, money. The contents of the coin jar—at least sixty dollars worth of one and two dollar coins. Thirty dollars which was payment for the gardener who comes once a month. Also about five hundred dollars in cash that her father kept in the pages of the bible.’
‘She didn’t take all that to school the day she disappeared, did she?’ As Rosa talked I realised that she’d scrolled over into items stolen during the burglary.
‘I’m sorry,’ she apologised, ‘I am confused. It is so … difficult.’ She looked like she was on the verge of tears.
I sat down on the bed beside her. It seemed pretty clear to me who had robbed the house. It was pretty clear to Rosa too. ‘How can she do this to us? Rob her own house, how can she do it?’ She put her hand up to her eyes and wiped the tears away.
It might not necessarily have been Madalena in person, but it certainly looked like an inside job. ‘Rosa, look at it this way. If she came back to rob the house at least she is still alive.’
Rosa sighed. It was cold comfort but better than no comfort at all.
I looked through the cassettes and COs-Pearl Jam, Nirvana, Sonic Youth. But there was nothing to play them on.
‘That went too,’ sighed Rosa. ‘A portable CD player. CD, cassette and radio, all in one. We bought it for her last Christmas. Three hundred dollars,’ she said, shaking her head as if Madalena didn’t appreciate it. Madalena appreciated it only too well. She probably wouldn’t get the full value of it at the pawnshop but at least it would be something.
Seemed odd though, the sequence of it. If you’re going to piss off you take it all with you. You don’t leave then come back the next day to rob the place. But then, whoever said that the thought processes of a fifteen year old were logical?
Below the cassettes were two shelves of books. Maths and science, Shakespeare, Wuthering Heights, books she was studying at school. On the bottom shelf I found the personal reading material—Stephen King, Ann Rice, a few fantasy novels, a stack of WHO magazines, the standard stuff a teenager reads. A book lay on top of the magazines, as if she’d been reading it, or had set it aside for some reason. I picked it up. The Lost World of Agharti by Alec Maclellan. Sounded like pretty standard fantasy stuff too. I opened it up. On the title page was a handprinted name—Rafael Khan. Perhaps she had the book out ready to return it to him.
I showed it to Rosa. ‘Do you know him?’
Rosa peered at it. ‘No.’
‘Did Madalena have a boyfriend?’
‘Of course not, she’s too young.’ She seemed shocked that I’d even suggested it.
I felt the pillows and the pyjama dog, and found nothing. ‘I’d like to look under the mattress, would you give me a hand?’ I said. She stood up, slightly bewildered.
‘What do you need to do that for?’
‘Just to see if there’s anything there. A plate of pasta, for example,’ I said, trying to make light of it. There was nothing under the mattress.
‘Did she have a geometry set?’
‘You mean compasses, ruler, things like that?’
I nodded. That’s precisely what I meant. Compasses, set squares, protractors. It’s the last place a parent would go looking for a syringe. And at a cursory glance it would probably look like another measuring instrument.
‘Yes, she did,’ said Rosa. ‘A bag about like this …’ she held up her hands to form a rectangle about 30 centimetres long, ‘… with a tartan check. Made from heavy fabric. I made it for her myself.’
She looked around, opened drawers, moved the books on the bookshelves. ‘It’s not here.’ Didn’t mean anything. It was probably in her schoolbag the day she disappeared. The more I examined the room, the less I felt that any serious drug-taking had gone on in here. The room didn’t have the dense, disturbed atmosphere of such places. Mind you, it doesn’t take much to get rid of it. A bit of a vacuum and a dusting down of the walls will clear the air. And Rosa would have done that when she cleaned the room up.
I looked out the window. Madalena’s bedroom was at the back of the house. I could see the river and the bushland on the other side. You couldn’t see right the way to the end of the block of land from here because it sloped steeply down.
‘What’s down the back?’ I asked idly.
‘Right down?’
Yes, I nodded.
‘The jetty. And the shed.’
‘What’s in the shed?’
‘The boat, just an aluminium dinghy, and a few other things. You want to see?’
I wished she’d told me about the 230 steps. The ones on the way down weren’t so bad. I was thinking about the ones on the way up. I keep fit by doing karate but lately, with the wedding and the kids being with me, my daily routine had fallen by the wayside.
Once down there it was like being in another world. ‘When Arturo and I first came here,’ Rosa started, ‘we lived in the shed. We worked hard, we built the house. Then the children came …’
‘Children?’ Plural? I’d assumed Madalena was the only one. There’d been no mention of another child.
Rosa looked at the ground and began to move her foot in a slow circular motion as if trying to smooth out some imperfection in the old timber boards of the jetty. ‘Roberto. He would have been twelve this Christmas Day. He was born on Christmas Day. Twelve years ago this Christmas.’
‘What happened?’ I softly asked her.
She looked across at the bushland on the far side of the river. ‘He drowned,’ she said, simply stating the fact.
The word hit me like a gong. The sound widened out and dissolved in the lapping water. ‘My father drowned,’ I told her.
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Roberto. Was it … here?’
Without moving her head or shifting her gaze she waved her hand in a vague direction off to the right. ‘Further up. Madalena was five, Roberto three. It was a big barbecue. All the family was here, Anna and John, uncles and aunts, all the children. With all those people you think someone is always keeping an eye on the children. There was a group down here, there were people at the house. Many people. Roberto must have wandered off.’ She paused, still looking across the river.
‘Madalena came up to the house and said, “Roberto’s lying in the water and he won’t get out.” Arturo and I flew down those stairs. And there …’ She stopped again, composing herself for what had to be said, and had been said many times before. ‘Roberto was lying face down in the water, very close to the edge. In his little hand he was clutching a blue straw.’ She sighed. ‘He must have seen the straw in the water and reached out to grab it. We called the ambulance, we tried to revive him but …’ Rosa’s voice drifted away.
She turned abruptly. ‘Come. I’ll show you the shed.’ We walked back a little way from the jetty to the shed. There was a padlock on the door but it wasn’t secured. Inside were a couple of aluminium dinghies leaning up against a wall with a couple of pairs of oars nearby. There were some fishing rods, an old pair of gumboots that probably belonged to Arturo.
‘Anything in the cupboard?’ I asked.
‘Nothing much. Have a look.’
It contained a few rusty oarlocks, tools, lengths of wire, and other odds and ends that always seem to end up in sheds but serve no discernible purpose. I moved around, just to be thorough, but there didn’t appear to be anything in here that might help me find Madalena.
I wondered how Madalena felt about the river, whether discovering her brother the way she did had left its scars. ‘Did Madalena use the boat?’
‘Yes. Sometimes. For a long time after Roberto died Arturo wouldn’t let her anywhere near the water. When he was home, he wouldn’t let her out of his sight. She thought It was because he blamed her for it but it wasn’t true. He just didn’t want to lose her the same way. I told him he had to stop this. The doctor even told him to relax, get a hobby. Go fishing, that’s what the doctor advised,’ she said with a touch of irony. ‘So, we started to go in the boat again. Madalena got bored quickly with the fishing but she liked the boat. She would sit there, trailing her hand in the water. Dreaming whatever children dream. Sometimes she and I would make up stories about bushes and trees on the other side. You know, if you look hard they make animal shapes. But then Arturo would tell us to be quiet, we were scaring the fish,’ Rosa smiled. ‘I don’t know why it would make a difference, the fish back in those days would practically jump on the line. Now Arturo leaves them alone. He doesn’t come home, always at work.’ Rosa laughed derisively. ‘It’s better that way. When he comes home he drinks grappa and gets angry. So I go and see Anna. She likes the company, her husband is away a lot.’ Yes, and I knew where.
‘What work does your husband do?’
‘He has the restaurant, La Giardinera in Leichhardt. And he has other properties.’
The trip down here hadn’t yielded any material clues about Madalena but it had told me quite a lot. We came out of the shed and Rosa closed the door behind her.
‘Please find my daughter,’ she said suddenly. ‘If she doesn’t want to tell us where she is, if she doesn’t want to come home … I will accept it. I just want to know she is all right. I just want to know she’s … alive.’
We walked back up the 230 steps in silence. They were every bit as bad as I thought they’d be.