The Other Side of Sorrow (20 page)

‘He can't swim,' she said.

I crouched, careful not to loom over her. ‘It wouldn't matter,' I said. ‘Not in that.'

‘I nearly jumped in.'

‘I know, but you didn't.'

I found myself minutely examining my feelings and reactions. I felt protective, relieved that she was safe, and slightly self-congratulatory that I'd seen things through to this point. Did I feel anything else? Paternal? I didn't know. I couldn't tell. Up close, wet and bedraggled as she was, the resemblance to Eve wasn't striking. Professional instincts were taking over—she was a young woman, the subject of my enquiries, and in trouble.

She rubbed the sleeves of her sweater across her eyes, face and hair and looked at me. ‘What now? Police?'

‘I don't know. What happened with the guard?'

‘It was a sort of accident really. Damien challenged him and the guard hit him with his torch. Damien lost his cool and took the torch away and …'

‘Did you see this?'

‘No. That's what Damien told me. He was sort of pleased to have killed someone at last. Always knew he would. But he was scared, too.'

‘Why did you go with him?'

She shrugged.

‘Megan …'

‘Get fucked. Who're you that I should tell you things?'

That's when I made a decision. ‘Listen,' I said. ‘You can come with me and see your mother and try to behave like a human being. If you do that I'll try to protect you. Or I can just throw you to the cops as Talbot's accomplice. Your choice.'

Too hard,
I thought as soon as I'd said it.
She's too young to handle stuff like that.
But I was wrong. The real measure of a person is in terms of what he or she has been through and Megan French had been through a lot. She looked around the dilapidated room and the few possessions she and Talbot had brought into it. Blood was still trickling from the cut but she was unaware of it.

‘I used to come here when I was a student.'

‘I know. Your … Mrs French, told me. That's how I got here. She cares about you.'

‘Jesus, you really have been digging, haven't you? What's your name?'

‘Hardy. Cliff Hardy.'

She sniffed and wiped her nose on her sleeve. ‘Don't tell me she's pissed that bastard off?'

‘Her husband? No, she just got away from him for a bit. Just long enough.'

‘Poor dumb thing. If I go along with you, what about Damien?'

‘He'll be found and it'll be over.'

‘What about me?'

‘Things can be arranged. But I have to know a bit more. What did Dr Macleod promise Talbot?'

She looked at the duffel bag on the bed that had apparently belonged to Talbot. There was a packet of tobacco, a lighter, a paperback book. It wasn't much to leave behind.

‘He said he'd set up a sort of conservation foundation with Damien as its head. He really did care about conservation, but … but he cared about smack more. The doctor supplied him.'

‘Okay. What's it going to be?'

‘This is just a job for you, right?'

I could see and feel her gathering strength, sorting things out, making decisions and I wanted to help her, confirm the strength she was mustering, but I held off.

‘That's right. A job.'

‘I hope you know what you're doing then.'

I recovered the magazine for the .38 and made sure I'd left no signs of my presence in the house. Megan gathered up her things and didn't touch anything of Talbot's. She didn't speak or look at me. She behaved as if I wasn't there and that she was doing things of her own choosing in her own way. She was passive, remote. I was wary.

The rain had eased to a wind-whipped drizzle. Geoff was waiting by the van which was sitting up on its still-inflated tyres. He and Megan looked at each other as if each was a specimen in a glass jar.

‘Megan,' I said. ‘This is Geoff Samuels.'

Geoff handled it well. He nodded neutrally to her, took a clean handkerchief from his pocket and handed it to her. She pressed it against the cut. He gave her just enough attention before turning to me. ‘Where's Talbot?'

I pointed to the roaring channel. ‘He fell in. Drowned.'

Geoff took my knife from his jacket pocket and handed it to me. ‘I didn't think it was a good idea to disable it. I thought we might need it.'

‘Okay,' I said. ‘But we don't.'

I had the flask with a last inch in it in my pocket. I moved closer to the van for shelter, took out the flask and drained it.

‘I saw you and … your mother one day,' Megan said. ‘What's wrong with her?'

‘Cancer,' Geoff said. ‘She's dying. She might be dead now. She wanted to meet you before she died.'

‘Why?'

‘Unfinished business,' I said. ‘Come on, we'd better get going.'

We got the Falcon unbogged and started, more due to Geoff's skill than mine. I dug and pushed, he fiddled. The rain got heavier and all signs that we'd been there were rapidly washing away as we inched down the track or what was left of it. I let Geoff drive and he did it well, taking the bends slowly and keeping the revs up when we had to negotiate hub-high water. Megan sat quietly in the back with her bag and I had to stop myself from turning around to look at her. I wasn't sure why I wanted to look at her. Was I afraid she was going to jump out, or was I still asking myself that question? I did sneak one quick look. She was staring out the window. Her expression was blank and with her short hair and rain-washed face she looked young but not afraid.

Surprisingly, the coast road was still open and we drove to Thirroul where Geoff got batteries for his mobile and a mechanic complimented him on the job he'd done on the car and added a few touches of his own. It was still early and, as the rain eased, a few more vehicles appeared and people in slickers carrying umbrellas came onto the streets. Wet and muddy though we and the car were, it was nothing remarkable. I bought three coffees and cups of hot chips and we sat in the car and let the windows steam up.

‘Tell me how it happened,' Geoff said.

I told him.

Megan said, ‘He wouldn't have hurt me. He was scared. You heavied him. It's your fault he's dead.'

The rain had washed the blood from the cut on her neck and she'd tied the handkerchief over it, but blood was still slightly oozing. ‘He cut you,' I said.

She fingered the wound and winced a little. She hadn't been aware of the pain until then. She said again, but with less conviction, ‘He was scared.'

‘We were all scared. It was a bad situation.'

She'd eaten her chips and drunk most of the coffee. She looked at the containers as if wondering where the contents had gone. Then she looked at me. ‘Why were you scared? You had a gun.'

‘I was afraid for you.'

‘Why?'

I didn't answer. I finished the coffee and wished I hadn't finished the whisky. Geoff was outside, leaning on the car and smoking. I rapped on the window. He dropped the butt, stood on it, got back in and started the engine.

‘Where're we going?' Megan said.

‘To the hospital. To see your mother. Geoff, what're they saying at the hospital?'

I knew he'd phoned while I was getting the food and drink. ‘Annie says to come straight away. She's pissed off at me for not being closer. She says it won't be long.'

We got on the road and a new set of questions began to nag at me. Should I have got the police in on it? Was I a bit drunk after most of a pint of whisky and not much to eat when I'd gone into the house? Could I have handled it better? Should I have shot Talbot in the leg straight away? What about his knife? What had happened to it? I wrestled with these things as Geoff drove, his face set like stone, back through the rain to Sydney.

We got to the hospital by early afternoon and went straight up to Cyn's room, Geoff and I drawing some looks for our muddy boots and clothes, tangled hair and unshaven faces. Anne was sitting close beside the bed holding her mother's hand. She looked up at us and her eyes widened when she saw Megan. But she was too involved in what was happening in the here and now to care about the past or the future.

Geoff whispered, ‘I'm sorry, Annie. I …'

Anne, who looked a lot less glossy than when I'd first seen her, older and stronger, too, shook her head. ‘It's all right, Geoffrey. You're here. She's almost gone. She can't really see or hear much.'

I heard Geoff draw in a deep breath and then he moved up behind his sister and rested his hand on her shoulder. Megan stood beside me. She was breathing heavily and her right hand was up, probing at the cloth around her neck. I wondered how she was going to cope with this after all she'd been through in the last few days. I wanted to offer her some comfort, physical support, but I knew better. She gripped the rail at the end of the bed.

Cyn's face was as white as the sheets and drawn in as if the bones had crumpled. Her eyes were closed and her mouth was just partly open. There was a slight rise and fall in the sheet over her body. Very slight. We stood there for what seemed like half an hour but was probably only a few minutes.

It was their moment and I felt I didn't belong. I was about to go out when Cyn's eyes opened wide. She looked at her daughter, at her son, and then made an effort to see more. Anne, best equipped now to know what was happening, beckoned Megan forward. She moved like an automaton but got close enough for Cyn to see her. I looked down at the face of the woman I'd once loved so much and then fought with and hurt, and was glad that at least in the end I hadn't failed her. Her sunken eyes fixed on Megan and then her head moved towards me a fraction and her pale lips, thinned out to nothing, formed in the shadow of a smile.

Somehow, I found the ability to speak. ‘This is Megan, Cyn.'

I don't know if she heard me or saw me or understood, because she turned her head slightly to the side again and looked at Geoff and Anne. There was some movement of the two hands on the cover, but whether it came from Cyn or Anne I couldn't tell. I backed away but not so far I couldn't hear the soft hiss of her last breath.

I learned from Smith of Millennium Security that they found Damien Talbot's van the next day and his body a day later. It was a couple of hundred metres from where he'd gone into the water and was battered almost beyond recognition. Almost.

Unlikely as it seemed, Anne Samuels took Megan French under her wing. Accompanied by a lawyer, they went to the police and Megan told them basically what she'd told me—that she hadn't been present when the guard was killed and had gone with Talbot under duress. She showed them the wound in her neck and claimed it had been inflicted some time before it actually was and that she'd got away from Talbot after that. The police closed the books on Talbot, putting his death down to suicide or accident.

I learned this from Geoff. His computer duly turned up and he came to collect it. ‘Annie drilled her in what to say,' Geoff said. ‘And it worked. No charges or anything. She's a strange one, that Megan.'

‘Has she said why she ran off the rails? Why she took up with Talbot and why she stayed with him?'

We were in my ratty back courtyard on a mild dry day with the leaves blowing around the bricks and catching in the sprouting weeds. I had a glass of wine and Geoff had a joint.

‘It's weird,' he said. ‘Annie's not married and the bloke who's the father of her baby isn't in the picture. Would you believe it? She's hired Megan as a sort of live-in nanny for when the baby comes. They get along fine apparently.'

‘You didn't answer my question.'

‘Annie says Megan has told her but she says I wouldn't understand.'

‘I wonder if I would?'

Geoff puffed on his joint and didn't say anything and didn't look at me.

‘Geoff,' I said. ‘Spit it out. What?'

‘Megan doesn't want to know you, Cliff. She doesn't like you. Doesn't trust you.'

‘Does she know …?'

He nodded. ‘She says it doesn't make any difference. Maybe Annie's right. Maybe we wouldn't understand. My guess is child abuse. That's the explanation for everything these days, isn't it?'

Maybe. I could believe almost anything of Rex French. But it looked as if I wasn't going to get the answers to those questions, not quickly at least. I had difficulty sorting out my feelings about this young woman who, I now had to accept, was my daughter. How do you know if you feel paternal when you don't know how paternal feels? Especially about someone you don't know who doesn't want to know you. All I could do was wait and stay in touch with the situation through Geoff. I was glad that Megan had accepted her half-siblings and been accepted by them. Maybe satisfaction over that was a paternal feeling in a way. I telephoned Frank French and told him that his niece was in good hands. He said he'd get the message to his sister-in-law. It was something.

I went to Cyn's funeral. It was a big affair with lots of people there from Cyn's other life. People I didn't know. Megan stayed close to Anne and I kept my distance.

Smith orchestrated things perfectly. The police moved in on the Tadpole Creek protest and closed it down. Examination of the site revealed four bodies of elderly people, all women, buried in deep graves. All this was kept hush-hush until the remains had been identified from dental records. The common link between them was that they were former patients of Dr Bruce Macleod who was arrested and charged with their murder. Smith kept me out of it and claimed that his investigators had made the link between Macleod, the site and the financing of the protest. I understand Miss Cartwright is going to give evidence against Macleod who, apparently, had some black marks against his name back in Britain.

For a supposedly smart operator, Macleod made some fundamental but understandable mistakes. Analysis of the remains showed that he'd apparently been experimenting with drugs and surgery designed to reverse Alzheimer's disease. The old people were his laboratory rats and well selected because they didn't have any attentive, caring relatives, and when the cops learned that these missing oldies were dementia cases their interest and energy dropped. So far, so good. Macleod knew that disposing of bodies in the big wide world is chancy. A controlled environment is the go; but his controlled environment slipped from his control before he could do anything about it. The protest he backed was a holding action. With the Olympic juggernaut held at bay and only the protesters to deal with, he reckoned to have a fair chance of correcting his mistake.