Open File (3 page)

‘I forgot to ask.’

‘That’s not encouraging.’

‘There’s a lot of ground to cover, Mrs Hampshire.’

‘Pettigrew, Ms—I’ve gone back to my maiden name.’

‘Are you still living where you lived when Justin was with you?’

‘Yes, why?’

‘I’d like to look at his . . . things.’

‘The police looked at them. They weren’t any help.’

‘I’d be looking from a different angle. And I’d like to have a talk with Sarah if possible.’

‘Are you expensive, Mr Hardy?’

‘Not particularly.’

‘Pity. Very well. Sarah will be home from school at three thirty. Shall we say four o’clock tomorrow?’

It sounded as if I’d better wear a jacket and mind my manners. I was beginning to see signs of the problems in the Hampshire nuptials. Paul was basically smooth but there were traces of rough edges here and there. And he’d dropped the hint about the questionable paternity of the daughter. Angela sounded genuinely top drawer. Either that or she was a good actress. She didn’t sound like a hysteric. And I was reminded of the quote from Willie Pep, the much-married boxer: ‘All my wives was great housekeepers. They always kept the house.’

My second last call was to Detective Sergeant Stefan Gunnarson of the Missing Persons Division. We’d had dealings before.

‘You again,’ he said.

‘Me again, to help you close a file.’

‘Hah, well, you did once.’

‘Twice.’

‘Have it your way. Okay, who?’

‘A few years back—Justin Hampshire, seventeen.’

‘Shit, a nightmare mother and an absent father.’

‘Clear in your memory, that’s good. Can I come in and see what you’ve got? How about tomorrow, in the morning? As I said to the lady, there’s a lot of ground to cover.’

‘She got you in?’

‘No, I spoke to the ex on the phone. The father hired me. He’s back from the land of the brave and the home of the free.’

Gunnarson snorted. ‘Well, that’s something. We were lucky to get a fax out of the fucker. When you meet the missus you’ll understand why he went twelve thousand fucking miles away. Okay, Hardy, eleven thirty, don’t be late.’

Always good to have a few bookings for the day ahead, even if they were spread out. Gunnarson was in Darlinghurst and Ms Pettigrew was up at Church Point. But I was on expenses, wasn’t I?

I got through to the registrar’s secretary at Bryce Grammar. After a little difficulty, she arranged to fit me in at the earliest opportunity—the morning of the day after next. She confirmed that I’d need parental authorisation.

I had a few small things to clean up and some to put on hold—faxes, phone calls, cheques in the mail. It was late when I got home and the house was hot after the muggy day. I ate some leftover cold chicken and salad and went to bed with the ceiling fan working overtime. I read a few pages of Robert Hughes’s
The Fatal Shore
. I had English and French settlers on my father’s side, according to research by my sister. Solidly Irish on my mother’s, with a few convicts—cutpurses and streetwalkers, nothing romantic, no land grantees or rum dealers. There was no Hardytown or Hardy Flats, but Hardys’d been here from early on and that mattered to me in reflective moments. I reached the chapter on ‘Bolters and Bushrangers’ and closed the book. The fan clattered a bit but I slept.

Stefan Gunnarson was no one’s idea of a Scandinavian. He was short and dark and he sweated a lot. His division was housed in a series of small connecting rooms in the Surry Hills police complex and it was the usual jumble of makeshift partitions, filing cabinets, desks, whiteboards and stacks of paper. Gunnarson had a cubicle slightly bigger than the others and slightly apart—the only signifier of his rank. He’d told me previously that he reported to people ‘upstairs’ who had carpet on their floors.

My pass was marked with the date and ‘AM’. I fingered it as I sat down opposite him.

‘Will I turn into a pumpkin at twelve oh-one?’

‘That’d be your famous charm at work, would it? You’re wearing a clean shirt and pants and that jacket was dry-cleaned recently. Let me guess. You’re on your way to see the dragon lady of Church Point.’

‘Right.’

‘Good luck.’ He had a thick spring-back folder on the desk and he released the contents. ‘Can’t show you the whole thing for obvious reasons, but I can give you the flavour.’

He sorted through the documents, withholding some and passing others across. I read the initial report and statements from Justin’s mother and sister. A couple of the neighbours had also been interviewed and some of the boy’s friends. The police had followed up on a few of the matters raised—a surf carnival up the coast at around the relevant time, a ski lodge where Justin had stayed a year before he disappeared. A draft copy of his letter of application to Duntroon Military Academy had been found in his wastepaper basket, torn in half. The two pages were now sticky taped together.

Gunnarson watched me as I read through it. The letter was correctly spelt, the grammar was accurate and the points were made clearly.

‘Torn in half,’ I said.

‘What do you do with drafts?’

‘Crumple them or use them as scrap paper.’

Gunnarson shrugged.

I read three faxes from Hampshire in California. In the first he said he was coming back, in the next he claimed to be delayed, in the third he said he couldn’t make it due to business commitments but would write supplying every detail about his son he could summon up.

‘Where’s the letter?’

‘Never arrived.’

‘Did you contact the Californian cops?’

‘You think we’re amateurs? Of course we did. Hampshire was up to his balls in complicated real estate deals. Legitimate but involving . . .’ He snapped his fingers. ‘What’s that finance crap young Warwick Fairfax stuffed up over?’

‘Junk bonds, whatever they are.’

‘Right. But there was no sign he was harbouring a runaway son.’

‘Still, the kid had a passport.’

‘We checked the ports, and I mean sea and air. Nothing. And nothing from New Zealand where he could’ve gone without a passport and used it as a jumping off point, in case that was what you were going to ask. Sorry, but we didn’t feel a need to bring in Interpol.’

I shuffled the papers in front of me. ‘Nothing from the school here.’

‘We talked to some students and some teachers but, you
know, private school, sensitive parents, lawyers from arsehole to breakfast. Can’t show you any of that.’

‘But no useful leads?’

‘Nope. The kid shaped up as Master Clean.’

‘So what d’you think happened, Sarge? Speculate.’

‘I haven’t a clue. Like it says, he took off in his Honda on a Saturday morning before anyone else at home got up. He took a few clothes and other bits and pieces. Sold his skis and his surfboard and skateboard and snowboard the week before. The kid was a balance-at-speed freak. It’s a wonder he didn’t have rollerblades and ice skates. He bought petrol locally and that’s the last anyone saw of him or the car.’

‘No bodies’ve turned up, no burnt-out Hondas?’

Gunnarson shook his head. ‘He could be scallop fishing in Bass Strait or riding the fucking rabbit-proof fence.’

‘You don’t think he came to harm?’

‘It’s possible of course, but he was a well set-up kid with a fair bit of money. No history of drugs or dodgy behaviour, and he’d obviously planned it. Turned eighteen within a few months of leaving. An adult.’

‘Did you ask yourself why?’

‘Over and over. The way you will.’

I made some notes from the papers I’d been allowed to see, thanked Gunnarson and left. Way too early for any theories, but not for being thoroughly intrigued.

It was after one pm when I left the police building with my permit well and truly expired. Time to fill in before the appointment in Church Point. It was not an area I was familiar with—I’d have to do some work in the
Gregory’s.
I decided I’d earned some food and went to a pub in
William Street where they did a fair counter lunch. Like all the best old pubs they had sporting pictures on the walls and the bar staff were mature, friendly females.

I bought a middy of Old and ordered the shepherd’s pie. I wished Gunnarson had let me photocopy some of the papers I’d seen but he drew the line at that. He had to protect his arse against any fallout, and that headline about me and threat of a charge hadn’t boosted my standing with the cops. Working fast, I’d tried for a verbatim copy of Hampshire’s faxes but, when I opened my notebook, I found parts of my scrawl hard to read.

The food came and, as I ate and drank, I stared at the notes I’d made of the faxes. There was a formality about some of the phrases—‘busy as I am’, ‘anxious to assist’, but also a defensiveness—‘I raised my son to be resourceful’, ‘he may need a period of relief from his mother’s excessive protectiveness’.

I was finishing up when Gunnarson walked into the pub, looked around, spotted me and came over.

‘Thought I might find you here,’ he said.

‘You’ve found him and I’m out of a job.’

‘Funny. No, Hampshire contacted the wife, she contacted social services, who contacted us. He’s way behind on his maintenance payments for the daughter.’ He put a card beside my plate. ‘Here’s the number to report his whereabouts. I’ll leave it up to you.’

‘Why?’

‘Two reasons. I suppose you’ve got a fighting chance of finding the kid and that’d clear a case for me and be good all round. And I’m divorced with an ex from hell. My guess is, that Hampshire bitch would gouge his eyes out and sell them to get square with him.’

He nodded and walked away. I put the card in my pocket and thought about what Gunnarson had said as I strolled back to the car. The last thing I needed was Hampshire under economic stress—bad for him, bad for me, bad, potentially, for Justin. Not a big ethical dilemma, but I needed to hear Angela Pettigrew’s story before making any hard and fast decisions. I filled the tank and kept the receipt to go on Hampshire’s bill. Three days for the cheque to clear—that could have a bearing on things. Hampshire had mentioned investments—I hoped his stocks were rising.

I hadn’t been over to the north side for some time and, as always, they’d shifted the lanes on the bridge so that I had to keep my wits about me to be in position for the turn-offs. Midafternoon and the traffic was light, which made it easier. I picked up Pittwater Road in North Manly and just kept on going, with Joni Mitchell on the cassette player:

I’m gonna see the folks I dig,

I’ll even kiss a sunset pig . . .

What the hell was a sunset pig?

Pittwater is spectacular country with the beaches, the high bluffs and the islands. A boatie’s paradise and there seemed to be plenty of people around with the money to indulge the passion. Boats of all sizes, from the Greg Norman style craft swinging gently at the deep water moorings to tinnies tied to jetties and rocks, bobbing in the shallows. The water was grey under a heavy sky; the high masts and trees swayed to a strong breeze.

The address was on Captain Hunter Road overlooking McCarrs Creek towards Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park. The road bent slightly at that point and I parked a little
further on. The house was a large, rambling weatherboard set high on a big bushy block with a winding, stepped path climbing up to it. The climb would certainly test Paul Hampshire’s wind now, as it did mine, but presumably he was fitter when he first moved in, which must have been more than twenty years ago. At that time, with the distance from Sydney and the rough roads, perhaps the house wasn’t too expensive. It would have more than doubled its value now and be on the rise as the people with the Mercs and the boats moved in.

Near the beginning of the path the hill had been dug into to make a carport. No car. The path was showing signs of wear and tear and sections of the handrail were shaky. I made it up to the deep verandah that ran across the front of the house and looked back. The view—the sky, the water, the bush—smacked you in the eye. I opened the unlatched flywire screen, which had a slight tear in the mesh, and knocked on the door. I’d expected a tall, cool blonde with high cheekbones, maybe because of listening to Joni. The woman who appeared was nothing like that. She was shortish, compact and dark, but she still had the plummy voice. She wasn’t the school’s netball captain or freestyle star—perhaps the top debater and certainly a prefect.

‘Mr Hardy, do come in. We’ll go through to the sunroom. Not that there’s much of it today. Dreadful weather.’

I didn’t think it was so bad, but up here, I guessed you expected the best at all times. We went down polished boards, past a series of rooms on either side of the long hallway, through a flagstoned kitchen to a partially glassed-in balcony that hung out over an overgrown lawn and neglected garden. The floors were swept and the surfaces
shone but the outside needed work. Rude of me to notice.

‘Would you care for tea, Mr Hardy?’

Tea? You’d have to hold me down and use a funnel.
‘No, thanks, Ms Pettigrew.’

‘Please sit.’

We sat on padded cane chairs. She wore a blouse and skirt, medium heels. She had good legs. No wedding ring, no jewellery. She had disconcertingly dark eyes that bulged just slightly, making you feel watched more closely than you wanted to be. Her complexion was pale and smooth with just a few lines showing. If she wore makeup it was subtle. She was just short of attractive but certainly interesting-looking and that can be better.

‘I’ve spoken to your former husband, obviously,’ I said, ‘and to the policeman who supervised the investigation into your missing son.’

‘Gunnarson,’ she said. ‘Competent, I thought, but nothing beyond that.’

‘I believe I need your authority to talk to people at the school.’ I took a sheet from my pocket. ‘I typed up something appropriate. Would you mind signing it?’

She glanced at it briefly and signed with the pen I offered.

‘I wanted to ask you about Justin—his habits his character, I suppose. As I said, I’d like to look at what he left behind and to hear any thoughts you might have about what caused him to leave.’

She inclined her head slightly. ‘To leave? That’s an interesting way of putting it. Yes, I rather like that. He left, didn’t he?’