16

Gary’s house was a huge Edwardian place surrounded by acres of lush green gardens. White picket fence, four chimneys, six leadlight windows and miles of wraparound verandah. Painting that verandah would be one of those soul-destroying activities, like painting the Sydney Harbour Bridge—as soon as you’d finished, it’d be time to start again.

Gary answered the door, his salt and pepper hair spiky and wet. Not too many alcohol fumes: maybe he hadn’t started yet.

‘He certainly made a mess of your eye,’ he said.

A small white dog was busy yapping behind him.

‘Settle, Preston.’

Gary held a piece of toast in his hand. That and the smell of frying bacon drifting through the doorway reminded me of the unwelcome fact I hadn’t eaten anything yet this morning, except for a couple of Panadol with a cuppa so rushed it burned my tongue.

He led me down a black and white chequered-tile hallway, the smell of bacon growing stronger. We sailed past a lounge room decked out in a sickening brownish swirl—vintage 1970s, the era that really knew how to celebrate the glorious shades of poo and wee. Preston rounded me up, barking and sneezing manically around my feet.

A phone started ringing.

‘Sorry, need to get that,’ Gary marched down the hall, Preston following, keeping up the bark-sneezes.

I waited in the hallway, filling in the moment by looking at the pictures on the wall. Lots of browns and blues. A muddy painting of what might be a waterfall.

Well, there was no harm in taking a little look around while I waited. I slipped into the lounge for a brief inspection. The brown swirling carpet was offset by long green velvet curtains. One chaise longue strewn with yellow silk cushions, a glassed-in bookcase, a statue of a young woman, one hand held casually behind her head; all the better to reveal her graceful un-nanna-flapped arms.

I wandered over to the bookcase. Earnest, serious books—political biographies, Australian history, explorers and military history. No fiction. A whole shelf devoted to astronomy. I headed back into the hallway.

Gary returned, toast no longer visible.

‘Organising a speaker for the festival. Bloody subcommittees. Unbelievable how long it takes to actually do anything,’ he paused. ‘You had breakfast?’

‘Yep.’ But like always my stomach growled as I spoke. Traitor.

‘Come on.’

He smiled and led me down the hallway into the kitchen.

A surprisingly modern kitchen—no hint of any 1970s, although there was a poster circa-1950s of a matador. More black and white tiles. In fact, the whole kitchen featured black, white and stainless steel. The steel wasn’t quite as stainless as you might hope for. I wondered when Gary had last cleaned. An overfull frypan of bacon sizzled on the stove.

On the wall opposite there was a row of three photos in wooden frames. The first photo featured a small girl, aged five or so. Red hair in plaits. Blue hair ties wound around the plaits. She was licking a spoon, a bowl of ice-cream in front of her. A younger version of Gary, wearing a red shirt, was beside her, watching her as if no one else existed. He was sitting sideways as if to protect her from the world. Photo two featured the same little girl, this time drinking from a coffee cup, and Gary, smiling, eating some ice-cream from her bowl. He had dimples. I glanced at him. These days the dimples were deep grooves. In photo three they were hugging. He had ice-cream on his cheek.

‘Take a seat.’ Gary pointed at the stools along the black granite benchtop.

I sat on the one stool that wasn’t overflowing with piles of papers.

The dog kept up the yapping around my feet.

‘Don’t worry about Preston,’ said Gary, turning over the bacon. ‘Don’t try to pat him though.’

I maintained a good eye on Preston. Don’t get me wrong, I like dogs. But only dogs that like me back.

I kept my feet up as high as possible. The old dog-bite scar on my leg throbbed. Preston kept up the manic bark-sneezing and then threw himself and his little jaws at the leg of my stool. I lifted my legs higher. I was starting to lose interest in breakfast, to be honest.

Gary put a bowl of dog food near the kitchen door and Preston scampered over to it, snarling as he ate.

‘He was Natalie’s.’

He put a plate heaped with bacon and toast in front of me. Another one for himself. Gary was a bloke who ate with some concentration.

I’ll admit the food was welcome.

‘This pepper spray Natalie had in her bag—was someone hassling her? An ex-boyfriend, maybe?’

‘She didn’t have a boyfriend.’

‘You sure about that?’

‘I’m sick of people insinuating things about Natalie. OK?’ A vein bulged in his neck.

‘What kind of things do they insinuate?’

‘Nothing!’ He thumped the table with his fist.

An awkward pause. Preston did his best to fill it with a new round of bark-sneezes.

‘Listen, Gary, I’m not asking to be nosy. I’m trying to find out who killed Natalie. So if there’s something I need to know, don’t you think you’d better tell me?’

‘Sorry,’ Gary said. ‘I know I’ve got a…short fuse.’

I guess if I had a daughter who’d been killed, I’d be a touch unstable too.

‘This town is full of people who love nothing more than to destroy other people’s reputations.’

‘Right.’

‘Andy Fitzgerald’s, for example.’

I once knew Andy Fitzgerald as a red-faced pimply creep with a bum-fluffed attempt at a moustache on his upper lip. Since then he’d lost the pimples and gained a sense of self-importance. Probably related to him being state minister for innovation, major projects and energy.

‘Their latest pigswill is that Natalie and Fitzgerald spent a lot of time together.’

As in an affair? ‘And the, err, police took this into consideration?’

He shrugged. ‘Your son decided early on that Natalie was just a driver who’d taken Jensen Corner too fast. He wasn’t particularly interested in any detail.’

‘And he knew she had a history of speeding. Any reason you didn’t tell me about her fines?’ I said.

He looked at me blankly. ‘Natalie was always a careful driver.’

I kept my voice gentle. ‘Dean said she’d been booked twice for speeding.’

‘Yeah, but you know what he’s like.’

‘What does that mean?’ I didn’t bother keeping my voice gentle this time.

‘Well…’ He shrugged. ‘Frankly, I think you’ve got more chance of finding out what happened than he has. He’s too busy with his clipboard.’

‘He’s just doing his job, Gary.’ To the best of his ability. Which, of course, is the problem. I didn’t say that. If you don’t have family loyalty, what do you have?

I forked in a mouthful of bacon, chewed and swallowed.

‘What about Natalie’s friends? Might be useful if I talk to them.’

‘I have no idea who her friends were. There were so many strange faces at her funeral.’

Right. The bloke was totally out of touch with his daughter’s life.

‘Sometimes I worry that…’ he paused.

‘What?’

‘Well, what if Natalie drove off the road deliberately?

‘Why would she do that?’

‘Natalie was always so…intense. She had to excel at everything. Won every damn award going at school. If she couldn’t be the best, it just wasn’t worth doing, in her view. Leaving the job like that, well, she’d have been very upset. She had this whole career path mapped out for herself: she wanted to work for the Guardian. Anyway…’ he stood and gathered up our empty plates; stacked them with the piles of others beside the sink. ‘Let me show you her room.’

He shut Preston in the kitchen, then led me up the red carpeted stairs, past another muddy painting—possibly a lake?

Natalie’s room was behind the second door on the right. It was a room that made a big and confusing impression. The floor was strewn with an array of items: ropes, a helmet, coloured slings, metal things that I guessed might be used for rock-climbing, a pair of walking boots and a rucksack. The bed was unmade and had piles of clothing lying on it. A row of framed photos on the wall. A desk in the corner of the room.

‘I haven’t touched anything in here. I should probably get rid of her things, but…’ his voice trailed off.

I picked my way over to the desk with a paddling kind of movement, like I was wading through a swamp. It was hard to tell what colour the carpet was, or if there was, in fact, any carpet, underneath all this crap. I wondered for a moment if all overachievers tend to have messy rooms. Achieving takes time—you wouldn’t want to waste any on tidying.

‘Did Natalie ever bring work home?’ I said.

‘Occasionally. Take anything you need.’ He swallowed. ‘Look, I don’t like being in here, to be honest. I’ll leave you to it—and I need to organise a few things for the Lions Club meeting tonight. I’ll be downstairs if you need anything.’ He backed out rapidly.

I started with the desk—covered with papers—news cuttings, magazines, brochures. I unearthed a plate covered with what might once have been segments of mandarin. I put the plate on the other side of the desk and then sifted through the papers. A pile of flyers. Climate change: what the science really says.

I picked one up. It was for a talk later this week at the Turning Leaf Spectacular. Maybe it would be useful for Brad. I checked the desk drawers: three pens and an expired credit card.

I took a look at the photos on the wall. One of Natalie in a parachute. Another of her in an off-road car, with a caption: At the Mallee Rally! Next to it, a photo of her climbing a rock face: Me leading Mantis at Arapiles!

Looking at the rock-climbing photo made my knees wobble. I’m not fond of heights; it’s probably a good thing I live in pretty much the deadest-flattest area in Australia.

After close to an hour of searching Natalie’s room, I was more than familiar with her tendency to chuck things on the floor, but no closer to understanding what the story was that she’d been working on. I went downstairs to find Gary.

He was sitting at a laptop in the corner of the kitchen.

‘OK if I take this?’ I held out the flyer I found in Natalie’s room.

‘Sure. That’s the speaker I’m organising. Dr Eric Buckland. Come along, if you want.’

‘Not my kind of thing. My son might find it useful though, for one of his uni assignments.’

‘What’s he studying?’

‘Marine biology.’

‘Well, at least it’s not one of those ridiculous courses on renewable energy.’

‘You don’t like the idea of renewable energy?’

‘The idea is fine. The reality though…well, we don’t know enough about the dangers. It’s a damn good thing the council pulled the plug on that solar farm before we all came down with solar sickness. That poor man and his goats. It just shows we’re better off sticking with the things we know.’

Christ, the Showbag effect—it’s everywhere.

‘I wouldn’t go around believing everything you hear, Gary. Showbag isn’t actually sick. And his goats are fine. In fact, I’m sure he made the whole thing up.’

‘Why would he do that?’

Damn good question. For the attention, quite possibly. After all, he ended up in the paper. And he certainly got the attention of the local council, not to mention that government inquiry into the safety of solar power.

‘Anyway, I’m not sure how useful that flyer will be for your son. I don’t think many uni science courses teach the work of Dr Buckland.’

‘Oh?’

‘He’s…got his own ideas. Not really establishment.’

Maybe Buckland was one of these climate deniers Brad’s always on about.

I put the flyer in my pocket. ‘I’ll go over to the Cultivator and talk to the editor. What’s his name again?’

‘Shane Millson. But he’s away, on long service leave. He left not long after Natalie died.’

‘Oh. So how do I contact him?’

‘Dunno. He’s travelling in Europe somewhere.’

‘That’s a bit…inconvenient.’

Gary’s face was grim. ‘Seems very convenient to me.’