Iraqi Icicle

by Bernie Dowling

  Suspicious, he admitted he had worked in pathology. Watching his unease, I pressed my advantage. ‘But I still don’t see how you knew how much cyanide was in Lu’s body?’

  Kahn replied indignantly. ‘I perused the post-mortem report. It was my right, naturally.’

  Acid dripped from his tongue as he said ‘naturally’. His tone spoke of the insolence of my questions. It was obvious I was a yob, so I might as well get offensive at a personal level. ‘Were you and Suzanne Lu close friends?’

  But my three-minute consultation was up. ‘Excuse me,’ Kahn said. ‘I have to see my wife.’

  I thought of following him, just to really piss him off, but I broke sharply to the left when I saw Jane’s hand beckoning me. Beside Bub was Caitlin Meares, dressed not in Vladimir’s clown costume, but in ankle-length green velvet, despite the heat.

  ‘What did he say?’ Jane asked excitedly.

  ‘He said the all-ordinaries will rise thirty points on the stock market but that I will never find true happiness until I improve my backswing.’

  ‘Very funny, Steele. Is it true Suzanne was poisoned? What an exit!’

  ‘Shush, Jane,’ Meares advised. ‘We shouldn’t talk about it till the police arrive.’

  I knew better and leaned towards Meares to share the wisdom born of experience. ‘That could be right, but I reckon the time we definitely don’t want to talk about it is when the police get here. There’s a lot to be said for the right to silence.’

  ‘Steele’s a petty crim,’ Jane explained to the other woman, making it sound like a compliment.

  I pretended offence at the description and even managed a snooty voice. ‘I’m rarely petty and I have never been to jail.’

  Jane stood on her digs. ‘You’re just lucky.’

  ‘No,’ I contradicted. ‘You’re Lucky.’

  I turned a palm towards Caitlin Meares. ‘And you’re Estragon? That’s right, isn’t it?’

  Meares shook her head. ‘Vladimir. I was Vladimir. Suzanne was Estragon.’

  ‘Oh yair, that’s right,’ I conceded. ‘I loved that bit about the carrot and the turnips. I like carrots. And aren’t they cheap at the moment? Where did you get your carrots from?’

  Both Caitlin Meares and Jane looked at me as if I was a couple of root vegetables short of a bunch.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Meares said. ‘Sandra brought them in.’

  ‘I will have to ask our director, then,’ I replied and walked towards Sandra Blaine.

  Jane followed to whisper in my ear. But first she turned back to Meares to reassure her friend. ‘Don’t worry, Caitlin, it’s not about you.’

  I hate people whispering in my ear, no matter how much juice is in the goss. What Jane had to say was pretty juicy.

  ‘You know Suzanne was having sex with Kahn.’

  ‘Is that right?’ I said with indifference, though I was hoping that this was as unreliable as most ‘good oil’. It threatened to throw my certainties about the killer out the window.

  ‘So you think Alison Kahn may have killed Lu?’ I asked Bub.

  ‘Why would she do that?’ Jane asked, suggesting she and I had our wires crossed.

  I was getting cross with Bub and might have spoken a little too loudly. ‘Because Suzanne was having sex with Alison’s husband.’

  Jane laughed softly. ‘Who’d go to bed with that creep, unless you had to? Suzanne and Alison were lovers. And I bet Efram found out.’

  With Jane around, it was a good bet everyone found out. The only question was whether it was true.

  Sandra Blaine was talking to the Kahns when I butted in to ask to see the director privately.

  When we were alone, I said I was sorry the production had been cancelled. Blaine replied there would always be another opening night. Though it was a shame the cast had given up nights and weekends for rehearsals during already stressful exam times. That was the deal struck with the college to obtain some meagre funding for the play: rehearsals outside class hours and performance off-campus during the holidays.

  “I see you had a bit part,’ I said. ‘Do you act much yourself?’

  ‘A little at college,’ she answered. ‘But these days I am content to be a teacher. I am better at it.’

  ‘So you’ve been a teacher ever since you graduated from Kelvin Grove. While classmates like Alison Kahn lit up the stage. The same as Suzanne Lu was likely to do.’

  If she considered my statements pointed, Blaine pretended not to get the point. ‘Suzanne had a lot of talent. More even than Alison, if I am any judge. And much more talent than I could ever have mustered. I’m certain of that.’

  ‘And what did you think of Suzanne Lu personally?’

  ‘Well, I hardly knew her socially. She was certainly ambitious; anyone could tell that. Ambition is hardly a crime.’

  Ambition of a long-term nature is not in my line, but I know more than I would like to about crime. ‘Sometimes, I think crime, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder,’ I said.

  ‘How poetic of you, Steele. But it is extreme artistic licence to suggest that I murdered Suzanne Lu out of some warped jealousy of performers. In theatre circles, quite a lot of kudos falls to directors, you know. Sometimes, even to teachers.’

  ‘Don’t mind me, Sandra, I was just being, um, theatrical. What I am really interested in are root vegetables. For the play, where did you keep the carrots and the turnips?’

  ‘In the fridge,’ she replied without hesitation.

  ‘So almost anyone had access to the vegies?’

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Blaine. The penny dropped. ‘Then it’s true! Suzanne was poisoned. I bought those vegetables from the local fruit shop. It was just an accident, chemical poisoning. I should have bought organically grown produce. Horticultural chemical companies have a lot to answer for.’

  In the scheme of things, it probably is true that horticultural chemical companies have a lot to answer for. But not for Suzanne Lu’s death.

  ‘Maybe the play is cursed,’ I suggested.

  Blaine was not having any of that. ‘Waiting for Godot cursed, what rubbish,’ she insisted. ‘I’ll put this play on again next year without a hitch. It is our century that is cursed. A play like Godot helps lift the curse, not reinforce it.’

  Powerful words. I thought it was just a play, with Beckett hoping to keep himself in Parisian rough red for a few months from the proceeds. ‘Will you cast Alison Kahn again?’ I asked.

  ‘Alison may not want to do it again next year,’ Sandra Blaine replied. ‘She is a busy professional and, this time around, it was only a favour for her old school.’

  ‘But if she does volunteer, will you cast her again?’

  Blaine looked at me with peeved rather than angry eyes. I thought she might lie to me, but in the end she could not be bothered. ‘No, I won’t,’ she snapped.

  Flourish, that is what allows Alison Kahn to stand out. She is only a little over average height. Nothing spectacular strikes you about her brownish hair and greenish eyes. Yet she flourishes when she snakes her lithe body and directs attention to herself with her arms. You can see why men and women desire her. Some of the more impressionable might love her. Me, I am just an unbiased observer with my mind on murder, not love.

  After we exchanged intros, I began, as people often do, by talking about the woman’s spouse. ‘Your husband seems annoyed with me. Is he a jealous man?’ I was hoping to catch Alison Kahn off-guard, so she might not ease into her routine of having a man jump through hoops for her.

  ‘You probably rubbed Efram the wrong way, Steele,’ Alison Kahn said, in a manner that suggested she herself was beyond being offended.

  Though she was not beyond handing out the odd gratuitous jibe. ‘The way you work the room, like Hill, Amateur Detective, I can imagine you putting Efram off.’

  I half-lied. ‘That’s the price I have to pay. You see, the police think I murdered Suzanne Lu.’

  Alison Kahn nodded her head in sympathy and asked sweetly, ‘And did
you?’

  I smiled. ‘No, not so’s you’d notice. Did you?’

  ‘Let me see.” She placed a finger on the middle of her chin. “I remember murdering in Macbeth and in King Lear, and then there was Medea, but you wouldn’t know that one. But Godot, I don’t think so. No, I definitely did not murder in Godot.’

  ‘And what about in real life?’ I persisted.

  ‘The only real life I know is the theatre.’ She continued her theme. ‘Before I’m through, I will have lived perhaps a hundred lives, every single one of them more intense and exciting than Steele Hill’s or even Alison Kahn’s.’

  ‘Or Suzanne Lu’s?’ I asked, reverting the conversation to more worldly murderous affairs.

  Alison Kahn replied in an even voice. ‘I loved Suzanne. But even if I hated her, I am not going to throw away my career for the fleeting pleasure of revenge. If I feel a lust for blood, I will audition for the part of one of the great murderers. I will not participate in a squalid and mundane variation on a theme.’

  ‘That’s the trouble with acting,’ I suggested. ‘At least, I would imagine that’s the trouble – the pressure to be great. It’s not enough to be good; you have to be the best.’

  ‘I would not know about that,’ Alison Kahn replied, with distaste at my ignorance. ‘I am the best.’

  It was time to put my little plan into action. I went out to the car and retrieved my two copies of the play. I had already marked some lines in each copy with a highlighter pen. I asked Caitlin Meares for a favour; I needed to remember a certain scene in the play – would she read some lines with me? Sandra Blaine obligingly gave me the keys to the theatre room. I asked Alison Kahn if she would read for me a little later. Dr Kahn overheard us. I was glad of that.

  Caitlin Meares and I went into the darkened theatre space. On cue, Sandra Blaine activated the overhead lights. The director went out. I motioned Meares to the centre of the round, empty stage surrounded by rectangular rows of empty seats. The movable rows of seating had not been moved since opening night. Dust slowly circled in the stark, white light. Ours was a stage without a world to be the centre of. I dragged two cheap plastic chairs from a corner of the room and placed them centre stage.

  ‘Could you read your part of Vladimir from where I have underlined on page twenty?’ I asked Meares in a polite manner. ‘I’ll read Estragon. The others will come in later to read their parts.’

  Caitlin was happy to comply, to act, even if it was with a rank amateur director/performer like me. ‘Is this it? “Do you want a carrot?” We start there?’ she asked.

  I looked at my copy and confirmed that was our first line.

  Meares paused for one moment. Then, ‘Do you want a carrot?’ in a totally new voice, the voice of Vladimir.

  ‘Is that all there is?’ I asked as a disappointed Estragon.

  Vladimir replied that she might have some turnips, but I prefer a carrot, only to bite on the vegetable and discover it is a turnip.

  ‘Oh, pardon!’ Caitlin apologised. ‘I could have sworn it was a carrot.’

  Meares rummaged through the pockets of her dress to find me an imaginary carrot.

  ‘There, dear fellow,’ she said affectionately.

  ‘Fancy that,’ I said.

  Caitlin objected. ‘Hang on; you’ve left out a whole stack of lines.’

  ‘I know. Just humour me.’

  ‘You can’t do that. This is Godot; you can’t just leave out a bunch of lines.’

  I ignored her objections.

  ‘Fancy that,’ I repeated, holding up the end of the imaginary carrot by the stubble of a leaf. ‘Funny that the more you eat the worse it gets.’

  Meares spat out her line, angry with me for playing about with the script. ‘With me it’s just the opposite.’

  ‘In other words?’ I asked.

  ‘I get used to the muck as I go along,’ Caitlin said.

  Omitting more lines, I said, ‘Nothing to be done.’

  I dangled our conjured carrot in front of Meares. ‘Like to finish it, Caitlin?’

  ‘No thanks.’

  I put down my copy of the play, and spoke evenly. ‘I saw you palm what was left of the carrot after Estragon died.’

  Meares put her book on top of mine and replied just as calmly. ‘No you didn’t.’

  ‘Are you saying you didn’t palm the carrot?’

  ‘I’m saying you didn’t see me do it.’

  ‘You’re right. I didn’t see you palm the carrot.’

  ‘Of course you didn’t.’

  ‘Then you admit you did it. You injected the poison into the carrot.

  ‘I admit nothing.’

  Meares’ shoulders sagged suddenly, as if expelling a great mental weight of tiredness. ‘How did you know?’

  ‘You said something to me on opening night. In fact you repeated it. You said it could have been you. It stuck in my head, the funny words you used. The distraught way you said them.

  ‘I asked everyone around if the play was cursed like Macbeth. That could have explained it. No one knew anything about a curse. Your unexplained phrase kept lurking in my head.’

  Caitlin Meares spoke with disdain, ‘Your generation always looks for explanations.’ She said it with loathing and I felt the need to apologise for every one of my twenty-four years on Earth. Though we were only a few years apart in age, she summed up ‘my generation’ in one damning phrase: ‘You’re so pathetic.’

  That was me done, a wasted life, just waiting to eke out the dregs, including tidying up a small murder. ‘I couldn’t work out the why, so I wasn’t sure. But I found out about your father and his small gold mine. They use potassium cyanide in processing, don’t they? It poisons the wildlife something shocking, so they tell me. You know all this, Caitlin.’

  ‘Congratulations,’ Meares said flatly. She stood up and slow-clapped. ‘Steele Hill turns out to be the unlikely hero of the piece. You give me over to the police, and the audience retires to their sanctuaries in suburbia.’

  I shook my head. ‘No, I’m not going to give you up. It’s not my style. Just tell me why, and my part is done.’

  Caitlin Meares looked up to where the ceiling met the wall. ‘I should have played Estragon. I told them.

  ‘Vladimir,’ she scoffed, ‘one of your kind, a too clever moralist. But Estragon, Estragon. He’s a poet, a poet of the void. I told them.’

  The why was drowning in a sea of theatrical criticism. I gave it one last shot. ‘You’re not telling me you committed a murder because they gave the part you wanted to someone else?’

  I did not expect answers and I got none. Meares continued to stare at the spot on the wall. Out damned spot, though that’s the wrong play. ‘You know what they said to me? They said Vladimir had more lines. As if it’s about who has more lines.’

  Sensing that there was nothing more for me here, I walked towards the door.

  ‘You won’t tell the police,’ Meares called after me.

  I did not even shake my head, just turned the doorknob, trudged down the staircase, and walked through the foyer of La Boite theatre, out into the hot night of the real world.

  ___o0o___

  SINKING INTO one of the Gooroo’s leather armchairs, I took a mouthful of red wine.

  ‘She gave herself up then?’ the Gooroo asked.

  ‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘I doubt it was from guilt. I guess she figured if I worked it out, anybody could.’

  ‘I think you underestimate yourself, Steele.’ The Gooroo starred into the depths of his mug of strong black tea. ‘You know he totally disapproved of women playing Vladimir and Estragon.’

  I wasn’t sure if he was talking to me or to stray tea leaves at the bottom of his ceramic container. In those days, people still made tea in a pot. Fancy that.

  ‘Who did?’

  ‘Beckett.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said, expecting the Gooroo to elaborate but he stared silently into the black liquid.

  Finally he raised his head. ‘He died today.�
��

  ‘Who did, not Beckett?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Who killed him?’ I asked.

  ‘He was 83-years old.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Alas poor Beckett, I knew him well.’

  ‘You haven’t quite got the Shakespearean quote right, Steele, but, in a way, I think you did.’

  I said I was saddened by the playwright’s death but I was glad my part in his comedy-drama was almost over. ‘You know what you said, Gooroo, about the straights being more bent than the crooked. I could not see the sickness on Caitlin Meares. I mean, normally you can see the sickness, in the eyes, or around the mouth, even among the straights. Maybe especially among the straights. I know it had to be there, but on Caitlin Meares, I could not see it at all.’

  The Gooroo reassured me that, after an appearance or three in court, I could forget the whole thing. ‘That’ll be the end of it,’ he said.

  ‘Not quite,’ I contradicted. The Gooroo raised an eyebrow. ‘This writer woman came around to see me. Seems she’s going to write a book on it.’

  The Gooroo shook his head sadly. ‘Now, that is sick.’

  We sat in silence for a few seconds. The Gooroo leaned towards me. ‘How much is she going to pay you, this writer?’

  ‘She said she would try to squeeze two grand out of the publisher for me.’

  ‘That’s not too bad,’ the Gooroo figured.

  ‘Not too bad at all,’ I agreed.

  Book Two

  At lessons

  6

  Brisbane, summer in December, 1991

  BAD LUCK, they say, comes in threes.

  I copped the treble that hot Thursday arvo and warmish Friday morning in early December, when any working stiff with a smidgen of sense was slowly clocking off for the year. For once, I wished I was one of them.

  It seemed pretty much plain sailing as I glared at the clock on the wall of what was then called the Commonwealth Employment Service. Still waiting at 2:20 for a 2 o’clock appointment, I could live with that. A public servant letting you know who’s boss is a small price to pay for another six months of hassle-free dole, or unemployment benefit or social welfare if you want to go all ideological about it.