Salt and Blood by Peter Corris

you?
I felt like shouting it into the wind. Tomorrow I’d have to think more clearly about it—consider Glen’s favourite places—the Blue Mountains, the Southern Highlands—find out if Rod had any in his former life. Surfing spots most likely. Byron Bay for its point break?
    I went back inside and rang Glen’s mobile number. I got the recorded message that the phone was out of range or had been switched off. Wandering from room to room, something about the ultra modern, pastel-shaded computer drew me to it. I read the blizzard of Post-its. Glen had set him up with a server for email and the internet. I put the dregs of my drink down on the desk, settled into the chair and turned the computer on. It took me a while with the unfamiliar functions but I remembered how to get onto my server’s mail centre and access my own email. I tapped out a message for Glen. I knew she took a notebook with her everywhere and checked for messages frequently. I deleted the first angry sentence and the next that I mistyped badly because I was half-drunk as well as angry. I ended up with:
    Glen
—
This is unwise. There’s a lot you don’t know and need to know. Get in touch as soon as you see this and tell me where you are.
    No sign of jealousy there, surely. No alarmism. Just professional concern with a touch of superior knowledge to engage her curiosity. I looked at the message for a long time, knowing that it was nothing like what I really wanted to say. How could this dysfunctional loser of an actor, this overgrown private schoolboy with his perfect teeth and tight abdominals, turn intelligent women to mush? I clicked on Send harder than I needed to, waited for the message to vanish, and turned the computer off. I realised at that moment that I wasn’t thinking about Rodney or Glen but about Dr Jerry Weir with her curtain of dark hair and her dancer’s grace.
    I poured some more whisky, rang Glen’s home number and left the same message on her answering machine, word for word. I felt lonely and self-pitying in the flat and turned on the radio for company. It was tuned to a country music station. Glen again. Her favourite music. Not mine. With Rod, who knew what he liked apart from Elvis? I drowned the Scotch in water and hunted around for the painkillers I’d need sometime between now and the morning. No luck. I heard:
    There’s a pain in my heart
    Like a lightning bolt,
    I’m a little bit lonesome
    It’s all your fault.
    â€˜Right,’ I said to the print of a watercolour of nowhere in particular on the wall, and raised my glass. ‘That’s right.’ But I knew in
my
heart that it was never true.

13
    I slept long and deeply, undisturbed by dreams or by the wild night. I was reasonably clear-headed and after a couple of cups of coffee and a shower I was alert enough to take note of a few things like Rod’s missing toilet articles, clothes and overnight bag. The surfboard was gone as well and I could imagine it riding high on the roof rack of Glen’s Pajero. My first thought was,
To hell with them,
but I wasn’t comfortable with it and out of professional pride I began to think about ways of finding them. The surfboard was a lead. Maybe Rod had favourite beaches. The snag with that was the only person I had to ask was his brother and I didn’t want to let him know that his private eye had flown the coop with the client.
    Still mulling it over I punched in the code to check my phone messages at the office. There were three, two of which didn’t matter but the third did. The voice was unfamiliar: ‘Mr Hardy, this is Brett Hughes. Frank Parker spoke to you about me to do with Rodney Harkness. I’m keen to talk to you. I believe you have my number. Give me a ring.’
    I’d barely given the ex-policeman a thought since Frank had told me about him but it had been at the back of my mind to contact him to see if he could give me