Flanagan smiled as Lord looked him in the eye and just as quickly looked away, rolling his gaze around the room and chuckling.
“It all sounds pretty gay, I know, and looking at you now I’m wondering who this Michael Flanagan was I invented in my head all those years ago. You look like . . . I don’t know. BJ and the Bear springs to mind.”
“The guy with the monkey.”
“Yeah, trucking ‘round the USA with his pet monkey solving other people’s problems,” Lord said and sighed. “Man, I wanted to be that guy so bad when I was a little kid. Who would’ve thought a show like that wouldn’t last forever?”
“Jeez, maybe I’m strange,” Flanagan replied. “When I was that age all I wanted was two wives.”
Tennyson laughed loudly, putting his beer down in case of spillage.
“And did you?”
“I meant in marriage. It’s still illegal, as far as I know. A brunette with freckles and a redhead. Think you can line that up for me?”
“A pair of nice Irish girls.”
“Sisters, for all I care.”
Teneille floated into the room with a ready smile as their laughter died. She perched on the edge of the couch near her husband looking down at the pictures splashed across the coffee table.
“What do you think, Mr Flanagan? Is that a portrait of trouble?”
Flanagan lifted one of the pics showing a good-looking girl in a school hockey uniform, bare arms poised to flick a ball towards goal. Allyson was slim with good skin. Her hair was the mousy brown her sister used modern alchemy to transform. It had an unruly quality well-suited to her reputation as a young tearaway.
“Mick asked a few other things earlier on today,” Lord said.
Teneille gestured at the pad.
“There are a few phone numbers there. I thought Allyson kept a diary, but my mother said she hasn’t seen her with one, or writing in one, for quite a long time. We searched her room again. Nothing. I could get you in there too, Mick, if you want to do the search yourself. You’re the professional. Perhaps there’s something we missed?”
“Maybe when your father’s at work,” Flanagan slowly smiled.
Lord tilted his head back and sniffed the air.
“Mmm, what’s cooking?”
“Tandoori, from Lal’s,” Teneille laughed. “I’m cooking the rice.”
“This argument with your parents,” Flanagan asked. “This is the last time she’s been seen, right?”
“Yes.” Teneille nodded. “She must’ve made a call. She was dropped off by a man in a car –”
“Yeah, I got it,” Flanagan said. “SMOKIN.”
“That’s right.” Teneille smiled and held it, tense but with her mind elsewhere. “Mum and dad left it ten minutes or more before they went searching the streets for her, but she’d gone.”
Lord shrugged into his wife’s pause. “Let’s eat.”
*
THE FOOD WAS good, and when it started to flow, the conversation surprisingly pleasant. Lord’s critique still in his ears, Flanagan tried to speak like a regular human being, conspicuous in the classy surrounds. Teneille was a good-looking woman and it was hard not to give her the attention she deserved, becoming the natural centrepiece in the discussion with attentive men either side of the kitchen table. Though Flanagan didn’t doubt her intentions for a moment, she enjoyed herself all the same.
Lord’s wife was an art teacher trying to get into naturopathy as a trade, while pursuing a yet-to-be lucrative career as a children’s book illustrator. Flanagan nodded appreciatively over the canvases her husband hounded her to bring to the table; and when the beer was gone, Teneille produced a bottle of white wine and they reheated the scraps of the butter chicken, Lord opting out like a voyeur as his wife and one-time best friend shared the remains.
“So where are you staying?”
Flanagan eased back from the kitchen table, caught halfway trying to hand signal Lord that he was slipping outside for a smoke.
“Oh, around. Here and there. I thought I was coming back to stay with my dad in Midland, but things have changed a little since I’ve been gone.”
“Oh, why’s that?”
“He died,” Flanagan said, and in the following silence, couldn’t help a laugh.
“It’s alright, really.” He produced a cigarette he’d rolled earlier. “If it’s OK with you, I am going to go smoke this fella on that magnificent back veranda I spied earlier.”
“Yes, of course.” Teneille stood up so fast the wooden chair squeaked. “I’ll get you an ashtray. And some bedding. You can stay here.”
Flanagan let himself out, standing in the cool darkness with the tickle of moisture at the edge of his nostrils, nothing at all like the jungle despite the wet. Something was moving through the black foliage and when Flanagan lit up, the flick and the flame caused the creature to skitter away in the greenery. When Lord opened the French doors, the animal landed heavily on the tin roof and its scrabbling claws identified the possum.
“You’ve got house guests already.”
“The possum? Don’t worry about it. I wouldn’t have you sleeping in the fireplace.”
“It’s a kind offer, but I’ll get a room.”
His friend appeared beside him in the dark and budged a cigarette, choosing to light it with the borrowed end of Flanagan’s fag rather than alert his wife to another click.
“She wants you to stay here.”
“She’s quite the hostess. How do I say no and not offend her?”
“Look,” Lord said slowly. “It’s OK with me. Come on. A few nights at least. It’s the least we can do if you’re looking into this . . . thing.”
Flanagan studied the taller man in the greyscale of the evening and waited long seconds until Tennyson nodded again to prove his sincerity.
“I’m not going to fuck your wife, Alf.”
The lawyer’s breath exploded from his lungs, though whether in surprise or relief it was hard to tell.
“Mate, come on. . . .”
“I just want you to know.”
“I’m not worried. I trust you.”
“Then you’re a silly cunt. Women like a bit of rough stuff, ‘specially when they’ve got an itch.” Flanagan gave his best leer and Lord looked away.
“I’m sure you’ve got tales you could tell.”
“Nothing like that. I haven’t been with a white woman in four years.” He suddenly remembered Tess and blanched, hidden by the shadows of the porch.
“Well, until the other night,” he corrected. “Last night.”
Tennyson laughed wearily and shook his head. The door opened and the lawyer smoothly shot his half-smoked cigarette into the dark. Flanagan thought he heard the bird bath sizzle and snickered briefly with the thought of nicotine’s impact on the local fauna.
Teneille set a small ceramic pot on the edge of the veranda rail and moved around behind them, discreetly lighting incense of sandalwood and musk. Then she came up behind her husband and slid her arms around his waist from behind. She sniffed his smoky shirt, but it was discreet.
“Flanagan said he’d stay. A few nights, at least.”
“Good,” Teneille smiled, just a voice in the dark and the soft glow from the house with her tall husband in the way. “We’ve got a spare room adjoining the study there. The bed’s made. I’ll get you a towel.”
“Yeah, make yourself at home.”
“I’ll try not to take that too literally.” When the joke sounded a little wan, Flanagan added a more sincere thank you.
“Don’t mention it,” Teneille said.
She drifted away, leaving the two men at the rail halfway to drunk if not already there. Lord did no more than glance and they both nodded.
“I’m wrecked,” he said. “Time for bed.”
“We’ve both got work in the morning.”
SEVEN
HE’D NEVER BEEN one for sleepovers when he was a kid, and waking up in the cosy, 1940s-style bedroom at the back of Tennyson
’s house didn’t put him any further at ease. He didn’t have much in the way of clothing and from the moment he hit the shower he felt like a reprobate, changing back into his jeans and shirt and walking barefoot to present himself as good-naturedly as possible in the kitchen.
Teneille looked up from where she stood at the counter, reading a book while waiting for thick-cut toast to pop up nearby. There was a clock on the mantel and he realised straight away they were alone in the house.
“Morning, Mick.” She gestured with the open book to the steel kettle on the range, gas-powered to match the Colonial feel. “Kettle’s warm. Can I make you something?”
“Call me Flanagan if you want,” he replied. “It’s what I’m used to.”
She nodded politely and he moved awkwardly past to get at the kettle and the cans of things.
“No need to wait on me, though, thanks all the same,” he said. “I’ll boil some fresh . . . once I figure it out. Want one?”
He turned and Teneille glanced away, a curiously wide smile on her face. She wore only a faint flush of make-up, blue eyes well matched with an agate and jade necklace. The white, open-collared shirt was a fine gallery for such an exhibit. Otherwise, she wore the same jeans as the night before and her feet, like Flanagan’s own, seemed curiously bare in the well-appointed house. She had a gold toe-ring and her stance displayed a subtle arch. Flanagan pondered the impact Mrs Tennyson might have on a foot fetish and returned attention to the necklace.
“You got that in Thailand?” he asked. “Bangkok?”
“Yeah,” Teneille shrugged apologetically. “Khao San Road, I’m sorry to say. It’s a tourist trap, hmmm?”
“There’s plenty of places around there the tourists don’t know about yet,” Flanagan answered.
“Oh right, Fred mentioned you’d lived there for a while. Were you in Bangkok?”
“In the, uh, north, mostly.”
“Chiang Mai?”
“Yeah, I’ve been to Chiang Mai a bit,” Flanagan smiled, moving to the funny half-sized fridge and digging out the pint of cow’s milk behind the soy stuff in the door.
“I’ve been meaning to get back there. Such great fabrics and art.”
Their eyes met for a second and Flanagan moved across the intimate stage to the kettle just as it started to boil.
“What brought you back?” Teneille asked.
Flanagan stopped. Bereft of any sensible answer as he considered all the events he’d missed and the conversations he’d planned for years that now wouldn’t take place.
“Maybe you could help me find the tea bags,” he answered instead. Not exactly the most deft segue, but he was working with what was to hand.
Teneille nodded, politely feigning ignorance of the brush-off. She stood on tip-toes to reach an out-of-the-way box of Lipton’s, pulling it down and shaking it to produce a single bag.
“Timely,” she said, wrinkling her nose as she laughed. “I have to do some grocery shopping today. Maybe you’d give me a hand?”
“If that’s what you’d like, sure.”
It took a moment to hear his mobile phone bleeping from the back room. He caught it like the frog it imitated, skittering across the floorboards on its own vibrations. He picked the phone up and barked his name.
“Ah, Michael Flanagan. How are you, son? Frank Doyle here. Heard you left a message.”
“Jesus,” Flanagan said. He was unused to talking on the mobile. “How are you, Frank? I guess there’s no need to tell you I’m back in the country.”
“So it appears, so it appears. To what does Western Australia owe the great honour? Or did you hope you were comin’ home like the great prodigal son, mighty with your fucken . . . what are they, conquests?”
“Not much conquests on my behalf, Frank. You would’ve heard about my dad.”
“Yeah.”
“I’m in Mozzie Park. Wondered if I might have a word.”
“I’ve always got time for you, young Michael. Keeping off the junk, are you?”
Flanagan blinked, glancing into the kitchen and seeing Teneille watch. He smiled and moved through the study, grabbing his cigarettes off Lord’s desk, the laptop gone to work, and then he moved through onto the veranda.
“Frank, what are you talking about?”
“I heard you were in Thailand, mate, of all the fucken places. A lot of bad shit there. The Cesspool of the Orient, you ever heard that? Plenty of blokes coming back from that place with a habit they couldn’t kick.”
“There’s nothing like that to worry about, Frank. Jesus.”
He awkwardly lit up and eased onto the railing, his back against a supporting beam perhaps just a little too cosy for a guest. He eased down self-consciously and walked to the unexplored end of the porch and flicked ash and realised he needed a leak. Pissing into the dichondra seemed like a bad idea, not to mention the old family friend in his ear like the badass vulture he’d always been.
“No criminal record, then, son? Wonderful. You lookin’ for a job?”
Flanagan chuckled in discomfort. It was the broken record treatment he’d forgotten from his mother’s side of the family, the Lysaghts cops since Christ was on the cross. One of the many reasons he’d been happy for an overseas posting.
“I’ve got a job, actually.”
He stared across the rising smoke and into the impenetrable back wall of the garden, a kid’s yellow volleyball half-consumed by the monsters lurking in the shadowy weeds and ferns, their febrile erections and hairy brown fingers curling unnoticed amid the moist greenery.
“A job already. Well, fuck. You want to meet?” Doyle hawked and spat. “I’m on a private mobile so you can speak your mind. You wanna catch up for a kiss an’ a cuddle or did you want something?”
Flanagan spelt out the licence plate number and Doyle tutted, agreeing to hand over the details the next time he was at the office.
“I’ll be there later today,” he muttered, no longer quite so enthusiastic. “I should warn you not to look a gift horse in the mouth, Little Micky. Your easy ride’s got a one-way ticket into the sunset. I’m retiring at the end of the year.”
“Well, fuck a small duck,” Flanagan laughed. “Who’d have thought you’d ever be ready to move on from the lofty halls of East Perth station, Detective Inspector? Congratulations, I suppose. You’re getting out while you’re still young enough to enjoy it.”
“Young enough?” Doyle barked a cough again. “I’m pissing into a little bag these days, sport. I don’t know where you’ve been, but I turned 61 last month and I don’t fucken like it. I might head down Mandurah way. Don’t worry. I’ll still keep my dick in with the big boys. We might be able to profit each other, if you’re doing what I think you’re doing.”
“Well, if you’re thinking what I’m thinking B2. . . .”
“Old Errol wouldn’t be impressed.”
“He’s had the good taste to be dead about five years, as I understand it.”
“Errol Lysaght was a good cop and an even better bloke, Flanagan. You can’t fuck with that, no matter what your father ever said.”
“Forget my father.”
“Like you did? No problem.” Doyle hawked phlegm again as Flanagan swallowed a too-quick retort and then the old cop resumed speaking.
“You’ve got my number. Give me a proper call some time and we’ll have a beer. This was fun, but I want to see that look in your eye when I bitch about your old man. Give me the excuse to recall the time you decked Errol.”
Doyle hung up, leaving Flanagan with the contradictory feelings of vast annoyance and warm laughter bubbling into an incoherent desire to get roaring drunk and hit someone, though not necessarily in that order. Instead, he stuffed the leather-cased phone into his pocket and went to the toilet, re-emerging as Teneille settled at the table with her legs crossed.
Flanagan walked in and snatched up his tea so fast it spilled and he swore, immediately prickling to the inappropriateness of his response. He grabbed a tea towel and began m
opping furiously at the mess.
“Is everything OK?”
Her hand on the back of his palm felt like a three-day stigmata. Flanagan pushed away from the table aware his eyes were streaming.
“I’m fine. I think I need a coffee. You ready to go?”
Without waiting for an answer, he disappeared into the bedroom and grabbed his coat, sitting on the edge of the Queen-size single waiting for his eyes to dry and praying to God that Teneille wouldn’t follow him.
*
SHE DROVE A Honda. For some reason, Teneille thought it would be funny to throw him the keys, so Flanagan thumbed the keyless entry and squeezed into the cramped bucket seat. Teneille slid into the other side. It was obviously not a car her long-legged husband ever drove.
“Do you have a shopping list or something?”
He’d taken his duffel and the carry-all in from the car that morning, surprised at sleeping peacefully with nearly a hundred thousand in American money left unprotected. He still had the roll of notes in his jeans’ pocket, though he’d changed from the long-sleeve shirt back to his dark Bonds tee.
“A little bit of everything, basically.”
“Alright.”
He gunned the ignition and reversed into the street. Teneille started chatting amicably about the organic vegetables in the area and some of her preferred spots. Flanagan nodded along with her so that it took them both by surprise when he turned through North Fremantle and crossed over the Old Traffic Bridge.
“Where are you going?”
“Uh, Fremantle?”
She settled into her seat more easily and stared out at the port with the sun shining down from behind them in the east. The Tampa was at its berth along with a fleet of Japanese research vessels. Someone had dangled a rainbow-coloured banner off the rocks beneath the Old Artillery Barracks, reminding the visitors Fremantle wasn’t just a nuclear-free port.
“I do love Freo,” Teneille eventually said. “Funny that we don’t get down here as much as we could.”
“Yeah, it’s funny.”
He winced at his foot-in-mouth disease and hoped Mrs Tennyson wouldn’t take it personally. It wasn’t too much longer before he steered the white buggy into the converted Woolstores and its half-deserted shopping centre within.
Hard Light- Infamous Page 5