10

IT WAS COMING on peak hour as I drove down Northbourne Avenue, heading for a property out by Lake George where we hoped to find Tom Hanley, the son of Susan Wright’s former senior private secretary. Smeaton sat next to me in the front, working his way through a burger and a bag of chips. Senior Constable Eric Bender from Queanbeyan police sat in the back, whittling down a shish kebab. Being in New South Wales, the lake was beyond the AFP’s jurisdiction, so we needed Bender with us if we wanted to talk to Hanley.

Information on his whereabouts had come from Ron Pitman, an old schoolmate of Hanley’s who Helen Stannage had put me on to. According to Pitman, the Hanley family had long owned some simple cabins out by the lake. He said the cabins were connected to the town water supply and electricity, but they’d never had a phone on out there. So, with no other way of contacting Hanley, we’d been forced to take a drive. And while we were probably on a wild-goose chase, Pitman had been confident his old mate still owned the cabins.

‘If Weereewaa Lodge had ever come onto the market,’ Pitman had said, ‘I’d certainly have bought it. Those lake properties are very tightly held. You’ll understand why when you get out there. It’s an amazing bit of country.’

Smeaton switched the car radio from a news station to classical music, then he pushed his seat back and closed his eyes. Twenty kilometres north of Canberra, I turned off the highway onto Macks Reef Road, an undulating stretch of blacktop that had once been the main route to the local gold diggings.

Macks Reef Road ended at a T junction, where I turned right, and about five kilometres out of Bungendore I took a left onto Lake Road. The blacktop soon gave way to a graded track that skirted the vast lake bed. The tree-lined track was narrow, with regular blind corners, so I eased my foot off the accelerator, turned on my lights, and Bender gave me some of the history of Lake George.

Weereewaa was the Aboriginal name for the lake, he said. The word meant ‘bad water’, and the blacks, and the Europeans who took their land, had plenty of reasons for thinking there was something bad about the lake. Before it was upgraded in the mid-1980s, the section of federal highway that skirted the lake’s western shore had been a notorious killer. Bender reckoned some of the drivers who’d died there had been mesmerised by the size of the lake.

‘Or maybe they just got distracted trying to see if there was any water in it,’ he said. ‘Whatever it was, lots of them ran off the road or piled into oncoming traffic. We dealt with the carnage on a regular basis.’

I’d driven along that section of highway countless times, and had never found the lake a distraction. This bumpy stretch of gravel road was different, though. It passed within twenty metres of the dried-out lake bed, and it was only a couple of metres above it in elevation. And though the full expanse of the lake was only visible through gaps in the trees, it was riveting when it flashed past — the sheer immensity of it. And, strangely, given how cold the day had become, the low line of mountains that bounded the far side of the lake shimmered in the late-afternoon light.

Like most Canberrans, I knew that the lake was very dangerous when it was full of water. Five Duntroon cadets had drowned here back in the 1950s. And two groups of hunters had died in more recent times when their tinnies, weighed down with shot deer, had sunk as they motored back to the western shore. There were even hang-gliders who had fallen in and gone under.

However, according to Bender, the worst tragedy happened in the early 1940s when a man and his wife, their two kids, and the parish priest ventured out onto the lake on a Sunday morning after mass. Soon after they set out, the wind picked up, the waves rose, and all of them ended up clinging to the upturned boat. The dad swam for help, but he disappeared under the waves. The mum followed him in, and she went under, too. Bender said that the priest had then weighed up his options — whether to swim, or stay with the kids. He decided to swim, and he was barely alive when the shore party stumbled across him. They immediately put a big boat out onto the water, but by the time they found the dinghy, it was deserted. When news got back to town that the priest had deserted the kids, he was run out of the parish.

Smeaton nudged me as the sign for Weereewaa Lodge flashed past. I slowed, did a three-point turn, and headed back to the sign. Then I swung the vehicle down a sandy track hemmed in on both sides by a low forest of skinny eucalypts. The track finished abruptly about seventy metres in — and there, parked under some taller trees, was an old BMW sedan. I got out and gave myself a minute to stretch while Smeaton and Bender had a look at the car. The registration was current, and the tyre tracks it had made coming in looked relatively fresh. It gave us hope that Tom Hanley might be around.

At the far end of the carpark, we found an old walking track that had been cut through another dense stand of eucalypts. The track seemed to head towards the high country overlooking the lake. We walked the perimeter of the car park looking for other options, and when none presented themselves, we headed down the track to see where it took us. After a few minutes walking through a tunnel of overhanging trees, we emerged into a clearing, and, sure enough, there was the Hanley place, just as Pitman had described it — seven cabins set either side of a wooden stairway that ascended to the top of the ridge about fifty metres above us.

Smeaton let out a few cooees, then we climbed the stairs to the first cabin. I knocked on the door and, when no one answered, I turned the door handle and gave it a push. It was a simple, single-room affair, with mouldering clothes strewn across the floor, and some magazines piled up in a corner. Most of the magazines were more than a decade old. I followed Smeaton and Bender back to the stairs, and we climbed to the next cabin — which was in the same condition as the first one. As was the next one up. It had me thinking our drive out might prove fruitless after all.

I was following Smeaton out of the fourth cabin when he stopped so suddenly I almost ran into the back of him. He tapped his ear urgently a couple of times and pointed to the cabin directly above us. Then I heard it, too — someone clearing their throat. We made our way back to the stairs and climbed to the fifth cabin, warily eyeing its open doorway and the dark corners under its eaves.

Then a pale, skinny bloke in an oversized grey tracksuit stepped from the cabin and spat into the bush below. He spat again, and then stood and gazed out over the treetops to the massive expanse of lake bed. At first I thought he hadn’t noticed us, but then he turned and casually nodded in our direction.

‘I’m Senior Constable Eric Bender from New South Wales police,’ said Bender, taking a few steps forward. ‘And this is Detective Sergeant Darren Glass. And Detective Joe Smeaton. They’re from the Australian Federal Police in Canberra. Are you Tom Hanley?’

Helen Stannage had emailed us a fourteen-year-old photo of Tom Hanley. Back then, he’d been a young man with nice teeth and an engaging smile. The disheveled guy in front of us bore some resemblance to the Hanley in the photo, except that this guy’s hair was matted and grey, his face was cracked with lines, and the purple sacks under his eyes completed the picture of a life stuck on spin cycle.

‘Are you Tom Hanley?’ said Bender, this time more insistent.

‘Yes, I’m him,’ said Hanley, sounding intoxicated or medicated, or both.

‘Mr Hanley, these two detectives are investigating the murder of Mrs Susan Wright. Would you mind sitting down inside with them and answering some questions?’

‘Questions? What questions?’ said Hanley, as if testing the notion. ‘And why d’yah wanna talk to me?’

‘If we could just go inside, sir,’ said Bender, indicating the open door.

‘I haven’t done anything,’ said Hanley, suddenly so enlivened it had me thinking that maybe he was under-medicated.

‘If we could just go inside, Mr Hanley, we could get this over with,’ said Bender. ‘And it’s very cold out here.’

‘That’s true,’ said Hanley. ‘It is cold. Okay. Come in. But not for long, mind. I’ve got things to do.’

And with that he swung around and stepped back inside the cabin, and the door slammed shut behind him. Never one to take chances in the face of erratic behaviour, Smeaton unholstered his Glock, and I followed suit. We readied ourselves on either side of the doorway, then Smeaton turned the door handle and gave it a push.

I silently indicated that I’d go in first, but Smeaton shook his head. I responded by nodding furiously. He took a deep breath, jabbed his bony index finger into his chest a couple of times and silently mouthed a count to three. Then he stepped inside and quickly swung his Glock in an arc to target the far end of the room. What he saw there caused him to lower his weapon, and he motioned me to join him.

When I stepped into the room, I was immediately hit by the musty smell of an unwashed human animal. Hanley was sitting in one of three old lounge chairs arranged around a picture window at the far end of the room. He was transfixed by the lake again, and took no notice as we approached him.

‘Can’t be too careful,’ said Smeaton, pulling a face as he holstered his weapon.

The sound of pills sloshing around in a plastic bottle drew us back to Hanley. He was bending down to remove his shoes. Once he got them off, he placed his bare feet in front of a three-bar heater that had only one bar glowing. Smeaton shook his head at this pitiable sight, then he and Bender sat and kept an eye on Hanley while I poked around the room.

A filthy sleeping bag was bunched up on a dark-grey mattress in one corner. An assortment of odd shoes and dirty clothes spewed from a backpack that lay upended next to the bed, and an avalanche of old magazines and newspapers, plus the odd fast-food wrapper, covered most of the rest of the floor.

The only relief from this chaos was the shelf above the sink. There, bags of nuts and muesli bars sat either side of a bowl of fresh fruit. There was even half a bottle of disinfectant. Tom Hanley wouldn’t starve, and though his room smelt like his arsehole, it was probably bacteria-free. Someone was taking care of him.

I sat in the chair next to the window and glanced out across the lake. Then I nodded at Smeaton, he hit ‘record’ and recited the necessaries, and I kicked things off.

‘Mr Hanley, where were you between eight o’clock on Tuesday night and eight on Wednesday morning?’ I said.

‘Here,’ said Hanley, sounding more like he was asking a question than answering one. ‘Yes. I was here. All the time. I’m usually here.’

‘Were you alone during those hours?’

‘I live alone. So, yes, I was alone.’

‘Did you know Susan Wright?’ said Smeaton.

‘I didn’t know her,’ said Hanley, his eyes suddenly more focused. ‘But I met her once. My dad used to work for her.’

‘And did your sister meet her then as well?’ I said.

‘Sylvie? Did you know Sylvie?’

‘No, I didn’t know her. She’s dead, isn’t she?’

‘Sylvie? Yes. Yes, she’s dead. She went to Thailand. I’ve still got the newspapers. You can have a look, if you like.’

He picked up a fat paperback from the floor — Dune by Frank Herbert — and took a wad of yellowed newspaper cuttings from inside the book and handed them over. They were from nine years before, and all of them told the same story. Twenty-eight-year-old Sylvie Hanley had been trekking in northern Thailand when the group she was with had stopped at a Karen village for the night. When her fellow trekkers awoke the next morning, Sylvie’s backpack was where she’d placed it the night before, but she and her sleeping bag were gone. None of the trekkers had heard anything in the night that might have indicated Sylvie’s fate, and a week-long search of the area had failed to find her. The last cutting in the wad was from a Sydney tabloid. It claimed that Sylvie Hanley had been kidnapped by a local warlord, taken to the golden triangle, and forced into sexual slavery.

‘Losing your sister like that, Mr Hanley,’ I said, ‘it must have been very hard on you.’

‘That’s right,’ said Hanley. ‘And Mum and Dad are gone now, too. So I’m all alone.’

But right at that moment, he didn’t look lonely. Or sad. In fact, his confidence seemed to be building the more he talked. Perhaps he was relieved, thinking that the interview was going well — maybe better than he’d expected. Whatever the reason, I figured that if he was hiding something, we had a better chance of getting at it if we kept him a bit off-balance. So I dropped some weight on him.

‘You know, Mr Hanley, it’s difficult for us to talk to you here,’ I said. ‘And difficult for you, too, no doubt. So maybe we should arrange for you to come into Queanbeyan police station. Just for a chat.’

Hanley’s reaction to this suggestion was immediate and extreme. His face morphed into a desperate mask, he pushed himself back into his chair, and he brought his knees up to his chest and hugged them tight.

‘I’m not leaving here,’ he said, his voice cracking with emotion. ‘I haven’t done anything wrong, so why would you want to take me away? Why? Why would you do that?’

‘It’s alright, Mr Hanley,’ I said, regretting my impulse. ‘We can talk here for now. It’s okay. Let’s just see how we go.’

I gave him a minute to settle. Maybe it was time to come at him from an altogether different angle. Get a little speculative.

‘Mr Hanley, do you ever remember your father talking about a bank called Mondrian?’ I said.

Hanley hugged his knees tight to his chest, and his face went red like he was straining to get something out. Or keep it in. It might have been the question that disturbed him. But having already upset him, maybe any question would have had the same effect.

‘No, he never said anything about a bank called that,’ Hanley said at last. ‘Why don’t you ask Michael Lansdowne about your bank. See what he remembers.’

‘That’s a very surprising suggestion, Mr Hanley,’ I said. ‘What do you think Mr Lansdowne knows about Mondrian?’

‘Lansdowne knows everything,’ said Hanley, suddenly relaxing his grip on his knees. ‘He always did. Because he makes it happen. Like that. And that.’

He jabbed his index finger at the far corners of the cabin, his hold on reality seemingly derailed.

‘He knows, but he won’t tell,’ said Hanley, his eyes red and wide open now. ‘When my dad knew, they pulled the rug from under him. And now they’re all gone. Except me. And I’ve almost bitten the dust. Because that’s how it goes, isn’t it? Another one bites the dust. Bites the dust. That’s what they say about the lake, too. That it’s all dust down there. Well, there’s a lot more than dust, I can tell you. There’s things you wouldn’t believe.’

‘Mr Hanley,’ I said loudly, to get his attention, and then more softly, trying to calm him. ‘Mr Hanley, what does the Prime Minister know about Mondrian?’

Hanley considered my question as though it was the first time I’d asked it.

‘Whatever he knows, you’ll have to ask him,’ said Hanley, gripping his knees again. ‘Only he can help you there. Pick up the phone. He’ll talk to you, you know. He talks to me.’

‘Yeah, right,’ said Smeaton in a whisper.

Hanley stared at him blankly, then his gaze slid to the window and he looked out to where a line of dead eucalypts fronted the edge of the dried-out lake bed. In the waning light, the mountains that fringed the far side of the lake looked like they’d been cut from a sheet of purple paper.

Hanley began swaying from side to side in his chair, keeping time like a zoo animal as he bumped against the armrests, wrapped up tight. It was time for us to go. Smeaton leaned over and whispered in my ear.

‘If this guy’s acting,’ he said, ‘it’s the best job I’ve seen in a while.’

‘It’s no act,’ I said. ‘Though I’m sure he knows more than he’s saying. Let’s give him a day, then get a psych out for a crack at him. I’m sure McHenry’ll want that.’

We left Hanley rocking in rhythm to the waterless lake, and made our way back to the car. The gravel road was even more challenging in the fading light, so I took it very slowly. Bender pointed to a luminous mist that hung over the middle of the lake. It was as though a cloud containing its own light source had descended.

We skirted Bungendore, an old pastoral town that these days accommodated the overflow from the national capital. When our mobiles came back to life on the Queanbeyan side of the ranges, mine rang. It was McHenry, so Smeaton put him on speaker.

‘Jean Acheson’s running a big story on that “Live” thing she does,’ he said, breathless and excited. ‘She’s claiming that the treasurer’s been treated at some sort of addiction clinic in America. The thing is, Penny Lomax from the PM’s called a few minutes ago, and she reckons there’s only one possible source for Acheson’s story, and that’s the file that went missing with Susan Wright.’