Deep Water by Peter Corris Read Free Book Online

prepared to defend it if challenged. No challenge came. The adjoining townhouses were quiet—professionals out earning enough to live there.
    Light streamed in from a skylight halfway along the passage that led to a narrow set of stairs. I opened the door to the room immediately on the right. A bedroom. Double bed, neatly made up, the usual fittings, no sign of disturbance. Likewise the sitting room further down. The room suggested a non-fussy person of good taste. The furniture was comfortable rather than stylish. Neither the TV nor the sound system was new and the big, old bookcase with glass doors had the look of something handed down through the family—neither fashionable nor practical, but cherished. Its key stood in the lock. The books inside were a mixture ofthe very old—a Collins set of Shakespeare’s plays—and the very new—Robert Hughes’s autobiography. There was an emphasis on art and associated subjects—
Drawings
by Michael Fitzjames,
The Paintings of DH Lawrence
, a book on nineteenth century photography and three or four studies of Picasso.
    The dining room was small but with space enough for a no-nonsense pine table and solid chairs; the kitchen had another skylight and about as much stuff as a single man would need to cook, refrigerate and sit down for a quiet drink. The wine rack held five bottles of red—five more than my ex-wife Cyn had left behind when we split. A door from the kitchen gave out onto a bricked courtyard where everything—flowers, shrubs and herbs—was overgrown. Bird droppings stained the garden setting; leaves had collected around the legs of the chairs and table.
    A small aluminium shed occupied a corner of the courtyard. It was padlocked but a smaller key on the ring took care of that. A bicycle was held up on pegs attached to the wall. A heavy plastic cover was draped over it and there were tools I didn’t recognise, cans of oil, jars of something or other arranged neatly on a shelf. Three helmets hung from one peg, three pairs of bike shoes from another. I felt sad about the well-cared-for things a man I didn’t know had left behind him—if that’s what had happened. I re-locked the shed.
    I went up the stairs. There was a bathroom with a medium sized spa bath—something you’d need after those bike rides—a shower recess and toilet. At the back was a darkroom, fitted up with the red light, and the printing and developing equipment. The study was in the front. Both of these rooms had been searched, torn apart.

5
    No help for it. I sent off a long email to Margaret McKinley bringing her up to date. Impossible to be optimistic. I told her that I’d located the name of her father’s solicitor and his email address in my search of the townhouse, and asked her to contact him with an authorisation to talk to me.
    My solicitor, Viv Garner, didn’t think much of this when I told him what I was doing.
    â€˜I doubt he’ll do it on the strength of an email,’ he said. ‘Give me the details and I’ll get in touch and try to square it all away. Of course that’s what you had in mind when you told me all this.’
    â€˜I’m an open book to you, Viv,’ I said. I gave him the name. ‘I want to get a look at McKinley’s mail in his post office box. No way to tell if whoever searched the house found the key. Maybe he kept it on him.’
    â€˜That’s very tricky,’ Viv said. ‘Takes time. You say she’s hired Hank Bachelor to enquire into her father’s disappearance. You’re involved, of course, but you’ve got no status with the police or McKinley’s lawyer or his employer.’
    â€˜Moral authority,’ I said, and I told him about Josephine Dart.
    â€˜Moral authority’s not worth shit. But you’ll do what you want to do, I know that. I’ll try to smooth out some of the snags. Who do I bill for my time and