Chapter Thirty-four

Jack was going to be late. He’d underestimated the traffic getting through Byron – he should have known better. Zoe, who was doing a hairdressing house-call for an elderly client, had agreed to drop off Caitlin, so hopefully she was already there. He raced along the pockmarked road out of town, hitting a pothole the size of a bomb crater, after which the car developed an ominous rattle that continued the whole drive along the motorway until he reached the council office in Mullumbimby.

Caitlin the chameleon was in professional mode today, her dreadlocks deftly assembled into a bun, and Betty Boop and Bader Ginsburg nowhere to be seen. She pointedly glanced at her watch when he arrived, looking as nonplussed as a lawyer waiting on time she couldn’t charge out. She said, ‘I’d be getting that prostate seen to.’

Jack was confused until she glanced towards the large wet patch on his shorts.

‘It’s nice to see you too, Caitlin.’ And he was pleased to see her – he’d been worried when she hadn’t answered his calls all day. ‘Are you okay?’

She merely nodded, without offering an explanation as to what had upset her when she’d dropped the cup the previous day. ‘C’mon, we’re very late.’

The receptionist was unsmiling. She was even frostier when she saw the wet patch on Jack’s shorts. ‘So your partner has finally arrived then?’

‘Oh, he’s not my partner,’ replied Caitlin, ‘he’s my executive support officer. Or was.’ She didn’t look at Jack, but he saw a flicker of a smile. ‘He’s finishing up today; late once too often.’

A well-rehearsed ‘whatever’ look came over the receptionist’s face. ‘I’ll let Marlene know you’re here.’

A few minutes later they were led along narrow, low-ceilinged corridors. Packed offices opened higgledy-piggledy on each side. Printers and cabinets were packed into every available space.

A sign on the door announced: ‘Marlene Jennings, Archivist’. Inside, her office was an oasis of order compared with the post-cyclonic decor they’d just walked through. Wall-to-wall shelves were heavy with an array of ring binders, archive boxes and manila folders. Marlene’s welcoming face was framed by a bob cut of thick, dark hair, her matching eyebrows parallel lines beneath a sharp fringe. Two photos stood on her desk, one of an elderly man, presumably her husband, the other a dog. Both photos were the same size.

When she greeted them, she took Caitlin’s hand, holding it in both of hers as she spoke. ‘Caitlin O’Shaughnessy? You must be Patrick’s daughter. I’m so sorry.’

Caitlin took a deep breath before she answered. ‘Thank you.’

Marlene offered them chairs. ‘Your father spent a lot of time here over the years, especially the last few months.’

‘What was he doing?’ asked Jack.

She laughed. ‘You’d think I’d know, but I don’t. Lately he was pretty cagey.’

Caitlin asked, ‘Do you have a record of the documents he accessed?’

Marlene looked a little embarrassed and lowered her voice. ‘I’m supposed to. But your father and I had a little arrangement. He brought in a bottle of red or one of his lovely, scented candles from time to time, and I didn’t waste ratepayers’ money recording everything he looked at. I just let him work quietly away at the other desk.’ She pointed at a table at the side of the room, beneath the window.

Jack turned and looked at the masses of documents on the shelves and his heart sank. ‘We’re trying to find out what Patrick was investigating when he came here. Are we able to look through documents ourselves?’

She raised an eyebrow. ‘Can you narrow it down to a particular time? Otherwise, you could be spending the rest of your lives in here.’

Caitlin replied, ‘1987.’

Marlene’s eyes widened. ‘Are you sure? 1987?’

They both nodded.

Marlene sat quietly and placed her palms face down on the desk, then seemed to make a decision. She walked to the door and quietly closed it before pointing out a large gap between a row of folders. ‘See those missing documents? That’s 1987.’ Her voice was low, infused with anger. ‘It was Tom Bradshaw himself who came down a few weeks ago and took them. He said he needed to do some research. Research, my foot. Now he’s refusing to return them, but what am I supposed to do? He’s the goddamned mayor.’

Jack and Caitlin looked at each other and their eyebrows rose simultaneously.

Caitlin recovered first. ‘And online?’

The anger was still in Marlene’s face. ‘Digitising the older records hasn’t been a priority for funding.’

Jack asked, ‘Do you know what happened in that year?’

Marlene shook her head, her bob swaying backwards and forwards. ‘Before my time. What are you looking for?’

‘Something big or something controversial, a planning decision, corruption, major conflict of interest. We really don’t know,’ said Jack.

There was a very long silence before she spoke. ‘Look, there might be a way. As long as you don’t disclose the source of the information.’

Jack and Caitlin exchanged glances, and quickly agreed. Jack felt a little flutter of hope. He was sure everything was tied to whatever story Patrick had been chasing.

‘Give me a few days,’ Marlene said. She wrote out her personal mobile number and handed it to Jack. ‘Don’t call me at work.’ She then opened the door, looked each way down the corridor, and walked them quickly out.