All the smart people were eating their sticky date puddings, fruit salads and risotti marinari when I went by the row of cafes with Italian names in Darlinghurst. That bit was easy. Finding the street took more time. I’d only been there once before, and that was at night. In the inner city things look quite different in the bright light of day.
Once I found the street the actual house was no problem. The ‘9’ house number was still hanging by one screw and the distinctive artwork on the door was the same. Actually, it was better. At night, it had simply looked garish, but in the daylight I could see that it was quite skilful. A stylised Buddha in the middle of the door, with ornate patterning around the edges, which made it look as if the Buddha was guarding an entrance.
Maddy, Ralph, Simon. These were the names Kerry had called out that night. And later, when she came out again, she’d said, ‘See ya, Simon.’ A wispy young man as I recalled. I hoped I’d recognise him again.
The house still had music snaking out of it but at a much more bearable level. Certainly low enough for anyone inside to hear me knocking on the door.
The Buddha swung inwards and was replaced by the young man.
‘Hi. Simon?’
‘Yes,’ he said warily.
‘My name’s Claudia. I’m a friend of Kerry’s.’
He looked me up and down, wondering whether Kerry would have someone like me for a friend. For a start, I was old enough to be her mother. But you couldn’t tell that just by looking.
‘What do you want?’
‘Can I come in? It won’t take long,’ I assured him.
He took a minute to think about it, then let me in. Into a time warp. There was incense burning, the walls were painted either blue or pink and the dark blue ceiling of the hallway had silver stars painted on it. As I walked by the bedrooms I saw mattresses on the floor with bright-coloured Indian spreads. There was even a girl sitting in the kitchen wearing a long diaphanous top and skirt. The anomaly in all this was her workboots and thick socks. That wasn’t part of the seventies wardrobe. For most of the seventies she hadn’t even been born. If you were old enough to remember what it was like the first time, you were too old to wear it the second time around.
‘Hi,’ she said, a friend to all. ‘I’m Melissa.’
‘Hi, Melissa. I’m Claudia.’
We were now all seated at the kitchen table. They each had a half-finished cup of tea in front of them but neither of them offered me a cup. Maybe the pot was empty.
As far as Melissa was concerned there was no need to ask questions of me. I’d simply come in and joined the camaraderie of the house. But Simon didn’t have the same trust and faith in his fellow beings. He was waiting for me to state my business.
‘We have a mutual friend. Madalena.’ I watched for their reactions. Melissa’s expression changed only slightly. It was as if the rosy hue emanating from her filtered out any harshness in the world. Perhaps it was just the reflection off the pink walls. Simon, on the other hand, took the full impact of it.
‘She’s not here,’ he said.
‘But she was here, wasn’t she?’
He didn’t say anything. I thought perhaps I should help him out.
‘Look, I know what she said,’ I took a guess. ‘Not to say anything if anyone came looking for her, right?’
He shrugged a shoulder noncommittally.
‘Madalena disappeared. If she’s in any danger I want to help her. Don’t you want to help?’
He started fiddling with the teacup in front of him, avoiding my eyes.
‘Did a man come here? A dark-haired man who maybe said he was Madalena’s uncle? Is that why you’re afraid to talk?’
‘I’m not afraid,’ said Simon, ‘I’ve got nothing to say, that’s all.’
‘Hey, I remember him,’ said Melissa. ‘Simon? You remember, he had those really cool sunglasses. When he moved his face they were like … rainbow colours.’
Far out. ‘What happened that night?’ I now turned my attention to Melissa.
‘He came during the day.’
‘Not at night?’ I said, thinking it might have been the night of the party.
‘No, it was the day. He said he was Maddy’s uncle and he had a message for her. He must have found her because she didn’t come back. I think she went back home because her sleeping bag and everything’s gone, hasn’t it, Simon?’
Simon was staring daggers at Melissa. He wanted her to shut up but at the same time he didn’t want to make a big deal of it in front of me.
‘Is that what happened, Simon, she moved back home?’
He shifted uncomfortably. He knew it wasn’t true as much as I did. ‘Yeah, I guess that’s what happened.’
‘Can I have a look at her room?’
‘Sure,’ said the ever-friendly Melissa. Simon shrugged again—if all her things were gone, there was no harm in me looking.
She showed me to a blue room, a mattress on the floor, some fold-up chairs stacked against the wall. Apart from that the room was bare. I had a good look around but could see no sign of anything.
‘It’s a spare room,’ Melissa explained. ‘You know, when we have parties and things, people can crash here.’
‘Well, thanks for showing me, I hope I didn’t take up too much of your time. Simon?’ Like the gentleman I expected him to be, Simon showed me to the door. When we got there I said, ‘What really happened?’
I must have been in the house a good twenty minutes. Enough time for him to decide whether to trust me. I had been courteous and polite, I hoped he had a good impression of me.
Melissa was out of earshot but he looked around anyway. ‘I … I don’t know.’
‘You didn’t think it was strange that she just upped and left?’
‘I thought she’d gone back home. When she first came here, she was really upset, she wouldn’t say why. Kerry said she’d had a fight with her old man the day before so we just assumed it was that. Then when she left, I assumed she’d gone back home. But she hasn’t been in touch with anyone. You’d think she would have let someone know. I mean, she didn’t even call Kerry.’
‘So when she left she took her things with her.’
He frowned. ‘No. They went missing later. I thought, maybe she’d come back for them when everyone was out.’
The same pattern as when she’d left Lugarno. She disappears then her belongings disappear. ‘Who lives here?’
‘Melissa, me. Alex, but he’s away.’
‘Does anyone else have a key?’
‘Raf does.’
‘Raf?’
‘He did all the painting,’ said Andrew. ‘On the door here, on the ceiling in the hallway.’
‘Does he live here?’
‘He comes and goes.’
‘Where might I find him?’
Simon gave me one of his shrugs, but this time without the surliness. ‘He just turns up. You never know when.’
I walked back past the trendy cafes and waited at the main intersection that separates Darlinghurst from Kings Cross. Raf. I kept saying it over and over in my mind. When I’d heard Kerry call it out the night I’d followed her, I thought she’d said ‘Ralph’. But it was Raf. An abbreviation. Raffia. Raffish. Rafael. Not a very common name but one that rang a bell with me. I’d seen it in Gothic lettering in a book in Madalena’s room, a fantasy book about a lost world. Rafael Khan. Maybe there was a phone number in the book as well. Has a key to the house but ‘comes and goes’. A mystery man. An artist who has books about lost worlds. I wondered if he knew anything about lost girls.
Raf wasn’t the only mystery man. There was also the one who drove the car with the FABIO plates. Wherever I went he had also been. Always one step ahead. Maybe that’s because he’d started sooner. And knew something I didn’t.
I descended the escalator into Kings Cross station. Was it possible that Madalena’s father had hired someone, and not told his wife? Just as she was not telling him about hiring me. I didn’t like his tactics with Kerry but then he wouldn’t be the first private investigator to bend the rules. Perhaps he wasn’t a professional, just someone who worked for Grimaldi.
I had to talk to Madalena’s mother. I looked at the posters on the wall on the other side of the track, Speed Kills. I could imagine Rosa sitting at home waiting for the phone to ring. Hoping it was Madalena. I told her I would let her know how things were going. How could I tell her the story so far and make it sound hopeful rather than alarming?
There was a rumbling and a whoosh of cold steely air heralding the approach of the train back to the city. The headlights appeared out of the darkness of the tunnel, people stirred. Got themselves ready for when the train stopped and the doors opened. One or two people alighted, then those waiting on the platform got on. The automatic doors closed behind us and the train started up. We travelled briefly underground then the train burst out into the open, the roofs and buildings of Woolloomooloo visible below us.
It was then that I saw the two young boys outside the carriage, standing on the bit that joins one carriage to the other. Joyriding, scared shitless but trying to look nonchalant, getting a buzz out of flirting with death. The train went into the tunnel again and down under the city. Down and down it went, all the way to Town Hall.