White Dog (Jack Irish Thriller 4)

by Peter Temple

  ‘The animal’s here?’ I said.

  No reply. They got out, I got out. A keen wind was coming from far away, crossing Ninety Mile Beach from Bass Strait, coming from Antarctica. Harry made himself comfortable in his garments, adjusted them, a herringbone tweed jacket, thick grey flannels. ‘Tidy,’ he said. ‘Man keeps a grip on things.’

  A door in the shed opened and a cattledog came out, behind him a man in moleskins and a checked shirt. The dog stood still, eyes fixed on us.

  The man walked over to Cam, some stiffness in a leg, and punched him under the collarbone, a medium-hard hit. ‘Mongrel,’ he said. He was tall and stooped, any age from fifty, boxer’s shoulders, long nose, self-administered haircut.

  They shook hands. The dog relaxed, embarked on a sniffing spree.

  ‘Hurts,’ said Cam, rubbing his chest. ‘Harry, this’s Chink.’

  They shook hands.

  ‘Know ya,’ said Chink. ‘That Derby, read that.’

  He was talking about Harry winning the English Derby in the late 1950s, a famous ride, Harry seeming to lift Ceasefire’s head with both hands to edge out Pride of Shannon by nostrils. The photograph was on the wall in Harry’s study, not big, not in pride of place. The first time I saw it, I was struck by Harry’s hands – his long, powerful fingers.

  Cam waved at me. ‘Jack, Chink.’

  We shook hands. Chink didn’t have the air of someone who wanted to hurt but he could have clamped two leaf springs flat.

  ‘Want some tea?’ said Chink. He was looking at Harry.

  Harry shook his head. ‘Need to keep this short,’ he said. ‘How far?’

  ‘Just down the track. Forty.’

  ‘Before we go,’ said Harry, looking around, scratching the cleft in his chin, ‘seen the papers?’

  ‘Nah.’

  ‘Could be bullshit?’

  ‘Bloke at the pub’s seen the papers.’

  Harry didn’t seem impressed by this authentication. ‘The bloke at the pub told you,’ he said.

  Chink understood Harry. ‘Know him,’ he said. He waited, then pointed a thumb at Cam. He seemed to be saying he trusted the man as he trusted Cam.

  Harry nodded, satisfied. ‘Spotted the animal in the paddock, did you?’

  Chink took the weight off his lesser leg. ‘Come by there one day,’ he said. ‘He took a run, rug rottin on him. Knew him for a thorough.’

  ‘How’s that?’ said Harry.

  Chink looked at Harry for a while, unblinking. ‘Bit to do with horses,’ he said. ‘Fifty year.’

  ‘No offence,’ said Harry. ‘And then?’

  ‘Asked around. Got the name.’

  Harry nodded. ‘Lost Legion.’

  ‘Yeah. Membered it. Funny old world.’

  ‘This bloke, he’s the owner?’

  ‘Reckon. He got left the property, everything. More brains in a tinny.’

  ‘We’ll follow you,’ said Harry.

  We remounted and watched Chink and the dog walk towards the paddock gate. The horses and the goat moved to meet them. Chink opened the gate a crack, the goat shot through. Chink found something in his shirt pocket for the horses, they put their noses in his big hand. The trio came back, the goat walking behind Chink, butting him, the dog third, nipping at the goat.

  ‘Like one of them kids’ stories,’ said Harry.

  Chink opened the back of the truck. The goat was waiting like someone in a bank queue. Chink picked it up as if it were weightless and loaded it, closed the door, latched it.

  We followed the Dodge back to the road. The dog’s head poked out of the window, barking at the world. Its colour matched the truck’s bodywork. We turned right and, after a while, took a side road to the right, going downhill again, the country opening up.

  Harry and Cam had an exchange, incomprehensible to me.

  ‘Can I join this universe of knowledge?’ I said. ‘Who’s Chink?’

  ‘Hardest man alive, Chink,’ said Cam.

  ‘The goat likes him,’ I said.

  ‘Hunted brumbies with Chink,’ said Cam. ‘In the Snowies, Tumut, up around there. All uphill, cold as buggery, snows any time, snows at Christmas.’

  ‘And now?’

  ‘No Chink, no horse. The thing’s a killer.’

  ‘Say no more. I understand perfectly. We’ve driven hundreds of kilometres into the wilderness for you to buy a killer horse.’

  ‘You, Jack,’ said Harry.

  ‘Me?’

  ‘I want you to buy it. Supposin we do.’

  I studied the big, lumpy piece of Gippsland that had come into view, more settled here, the odd weatherboard farmhouse smoking under a low, troubled sky, eroded creeks, leaning sheds, rugged-up horses, some signs of agriculture.

  When the land was almost flat, the Dodge, dog riding shotgun for the left flank, turned right. We followed, went through a belt of trees, down a back road for a kilometre or two. The truck pulled into a driveway. We stopped behind it. All humans got out.

  A horse was in the paddock, in the middle, twenty metres away, a tatter of a rug on its back. It looked at us, a glance, put its head down. If this was the horse, I could not see how the animal could be identified as a thoroughbred.

  We walked to join Chink. He was standing at the fence, hands in his pockets.

  ‘Small,’ said Harry.

  Chink didn’t say anything. He made a clicking noise. The horse raised its head. Chink clicked again. The horse looked at us, moved its head as if easing a strain, looked away in a deliberate manner.

  We waited. The horse shifted, one eye looked at us.

  ‘Thin,’ said Cam.

  Chink turned his back on the horse, looked down the valley. Cam and Harry turned. Not to be outdone, I turned.

  ‘Earnin a quid around here,’ said Harry. ‘What’s the secret?’

  ‘They don’t tell me,’ said Chink.

  A sound behind us, the horse. He was three metres away, looking at us: eyes interested but not sharp, small movements of his head.

  ‘No mongrel,’ said Harry. ‘Bit of wear on the legs.’

  Now I noticed the scar tissue on the horse’s forelegs.

  Harry looked at Chink. ‘Let’s see him move,’ he said.

  Chink depressed the top strand of the fence by half a metre and made to swing a leg over. The horse took off over the wet, pitted paddock, rug flapping, ran twenty or thirty metres, stopped and looked backed at us, breathing hard.

  ‘Nothing,’ said Cam. ‘Chink?’

  ‘Sound,’ said Chink. ‘Decent tucker, bit of work.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Harry, ‘where’s this bloke?’

  At the pub, a peeling single-storey structure at a T-junction, two utes and three dogs outside, we pulled up beside Chink. Cam got out, lit a Gitane, went around the bonnet and spoke to Chink, foot on the running board, looking up, wind erasing the smoke from his lips. He came back, flicked the cigarette, got in.

  Harry looked at him.

  ‘The bloke’s a bit bombed, apparently,’ said Cam. ‘Also even bombed these woops can see keen coming in the dark.’

  Harry turned and looked at me, the dry eyes, no lack of alertness here. He gave me an envelope. ‘Here’s the form,’ he said. ‘And Jack, the point’s not the stiff paper. I just don’t want any talk.’

  I sighed and left the warm container. Chink got out of the truck, fell in with me, pushed in the dirty door. The room was overheated, cruel fluorescent light, smelling of cigarette smoke, beer-sogged carpet, old frying oil. Two men were playing pool, the one on strike showing us a deep cleft between pimply buttocks. Another man was talking to the woman behind the bar. We went over to customer number four, in the corner, a fat bearded man wearing a filthy, sagging jumper and a baseball cap. He appeared to be impaled on his stool.

  ‘Den, this’s Jack,’ said Chink. ‘It’s about the horse.’

  Chink left, moved down the bar.

  Den looked at me, the turn of head took effort, screwed-up red eyes. His nose had sores on
it and it was running. He didn’t move to shake hands. I looked at his hand on a beer glass and I was glad that he didn’t.

  He drank. ‘Bloody racehorse, mate,’ he said. ‘Not your bloody …’ He didn’t finish, put a hand up his fetid jumper, hand-knitted if I was any judge, and scratched himself, a task for which one hand was clearly inadequate. Then he reached down to the floor, groaned at the effort, and produced a plastic bag.

  I put my back against the bar.

  Den looked into the bag, dug out a small plastic-covered brown book with a window on the cover.

  ‘Lookit this,’ he said, opening it.

  I took it gingerly and looked. It was Lost Legion’s official history. The most recent owner was given as Dennis James Chaffee. The writing was legible although a fluid had stained the pages. Some things are best left unspeculated upon.

  ‘Dennis James Chaffee is you?’

  ‘Yup. Me uncle. Left it to me. My bloody horse.’

  ‘Very nice,’ I said. ‘How much?’

  ‘Well,’ Den said, his face concertinaed. ‘Bloody up to you, mate. Gimme’n offer. Fuckin racehorse. Class, not your …’

  ‘A hundred,’ I said.

  Den pushed back the baseball cap. Grey scalp and sparse spiral strands of greasy hair came into view. ‘Stickit up ya arse, mate,’ he said. ‘Fuckin hundred, thing’s worth … fuckin six hundred.’

  I put the horse’s book on the counter. ‘Just an idea I had,’ I said. ‘I can buy the kid a well-trained old horse for three. Nice to meet you.’

  I was near the door when Den shouted, hoarse voice, ‘Did I fuckin say no?’

  I turned. A beckoning movement from Den, an awful hand urging me back. I returned.

  ‘Four,’ he said. His eyes were sliding around the room. ‘Fuckin bargain. Lucky I need the money.’

  ‘Take a cheque?’

  Now he looked at me. ‘Fuuuck,’ he said, shaking his head.

  ‘No?’

  ‘Fuckin no’s right.’

  ‘Know how to transfer ownership?’

  He shook his head. ‘Me old lady done that.’

  I got out Harry’s envelope. Den winced, for a moment he thought something police-related was happening to him. Lost Legion’s new owner was going to be A. J. Aldridge. Mrs Aldridge, cook extraordinaire, Harry’s English housekeeper of forty-odd years.

  I took the book and filled out the transfer of ownership form. Then I wrote out a receipt.

  ‘A receipt for two hundred,’ I said. ‘Chink’ll deliver the other two when they send the book.’

  I went out to the brute vehicle. Harry’s window descended as I approached. ‘Two hundred now, two more when it’s registered,’ I said.

  Harry nodded, not unhappy, looked at Cam. Cam found an envelope in some dashboard cavity, removed notes, passed the envelope to me.

  I went back. Den had new drinks – another beer and a shot glass of something dark. Rum it would be.

  ‘Two hundred cash,’ I said. ‘Sign here.’

  Den signed the form and the receipt. He might just as well have made crosses: Den, His Mark. ‘Listen,’ he said, uneasy, eyes floating, ‘I’m not helpin you load the thing. Don’t go near it, fuckin thing’s lucky I don’t drill it.’

  ‘Chink will load it. When the time comes.’

  I caught Chink’s eye. He came over.

  ‘I’m buying this horse,’ I said. ‘Should be able to pick it up inside a week.’

  Chink nodded. To Den he said, ‘I’m puttin a goat in with it. Don’t let anythin happen to that goat.’

  ‘Don’t need no fuckin goat,’ said Den. ‘Got me own root.’ He laughed, the sound wild pigs make.

  On the way back, in a Latrobe Valley coal town waiting in the drive-through lane to buy Harry’s snacks, I said, ‘Good day’s work. Rose early. Travelled for hours. Enjoyed hand-combat with the man they call Mr Talkative. Then I met Gippsland’s most wanted sperm donor and snapped up a gentle riding pony for Mrs Aldridge. Bargain price, too.’

  ‘Well,’ said Harry, leaning across Cam to study the menu, ‘the Lord could smile on us for savin the beast. Run two thousand faster than nature intended.’

  ‘No one mentioned speed,’ I said.

  ‘Outback Burger?’ said Harry. ‘New that. Whaddya reckon?’

  ‘Roadkills,’ said Cam. ‘Find flattened kangaroos, wombats, grind em up, add sixteen secret bush spices …’

  ‘Two Big Macs,’ said Harry. ‘Jack?’

  I was thinking of home, of a quiet whisky and soda, followed by beef and pork sausages, cooked in the oven in red wine, accompanied by mustard mash and glazed carrots.

  ‘No thanks,’ I said. ‘I’m on a food diet.’

  Sarah Longmore lived on the top floor of a grand building in St Kilda, three storeys of redbrick Victorian, bay windows at each end, long balconies with cast-iron lacework, six chimneys in sight from where I stood at the ornate gate.

  I pressed button number five, felt the camera on me and looked: it was behind a thin strip of plateglass set in stainless steel in the wall to the right of the gate.

  The gate unlocked, two clicks, the kind you hear in prisons when you visit clients. I went down a wide chequerboard path bordered by box hedges. Beyond them were long and narrow lawns, ironing-board flat, edged with beds of lavender. In the centre of each lawn stood an old oak, still green. The broad front door had another board of five buttons.

  I pressed.

  ‘Come in, Jack.’ Sarah Longmore’s voice, excellent quality, her real voice.

  More prison clicks.

  I pushed at the intimidating door, put my hand on the wood above the shining brass plate, reluctant to mark a surface polished by hand, not sealed with some toxic chemical. The door swung as if weightless. I went into the building’s hallway, fully six metres square with a tiled floor, an ornate pattern, vaguely Arabic. It was lit from above, natural light from landing windows and a skylight two floors up.

  I went up four flights of stairs wide enough for women wearing hoops to pass. At the second floor’s tall window, I paused to get my breath. A gardener appeared below, a man in a uniform with an electric mower. Nothing so raucous as a Briggs & Stratton two-stroke was allowed to bother the inhabitants of this building.

  There were two doors leading off, solid cedar six-paners. I moved aside a brass cover on the one nearest. It hid modern locks, two of them.

  The door opened.

  ‘Jack.’ Sarah Longmore in dark grey trousers, a loose polo-neck top, soft-looking garments, no make-up that I could see. It was hard to believe that she was the dirty-faced metal-grinder in overalls.

  I followed her down a short, wide passage into a sitting room full of light from three sets of french doors that opened onto a balcony. The furniture was old, expensive, and the back wall was crammed with pictures, dozens of them, almost butted against one another, every shape and size, frames fancy and plain. I recognised Williams, Blackman, Tucker, the Boyds, Olsen, Dobell, Perceval. It was an expensive way to cover a wall.

  ‘Nice collection,’ I said.

  ‘They belong to my father,’ she said. ‘He lets me live here. Reluctantly. Coffee?’

  I said no. The morning coffee had been taken. She fetched a big shallow cup from another room. We sat in armchairs.

  ‘We were talking about the break-in,’ I said.

  ‘Yes. My car was being serviced, about a month ago. I went to the gym but when I got there I was feeling terrible. I had flu coming on. So I took a cab home and fell asleep on the sofa. It was early, before six. When I woke up, the place was in darkness. Then I heard voices.’

  I looked at her neck, as perfect as that of the dancer Marietta di Rigardo in the painting. Marietta with bruise.

  ‘A man came in,’ she said. ‘I could see his shape in the doorway. I shouted. He vanished but I heard him bump into someone and say, “Fuck, get out”.’

  ‘Not a break-in?’

  ‘They came up the fire escape and in the kitchen door. Probably climbed th
e back wall from the lane. Otherwise you have to get through the street gate and the front door.’

  ‘The kitchen door was locked?’

  ‘Deadlocks and an alarm. Nothing damaged, the alarm didn’t go off.’

  ‘What time was it?’

  ‘Just before seven.’

  ‘When would you usually get back from the gym?’

  ‘Around eight. I eat somewhere afterwards. Anyway, I had a few moments of panic and I rang Mickey.’

  ‘You’d broken up with him, he was seeing your sister. Why him?’

  ‘There wasn’t any bad feeling. That’s why this is so fucking ridiculous. I often spoke to him. He was an interesting man. An arsehole and an interesting person and someone you could rely on. For some things. Is that incomprehensible?’

  ‘Not to me. You didn’t think of the police?’

  ‘There wasn’t anything taken, they hadn’t broken in. Can you imagine the look a woman gets from the cops when she calls them over and tells them that?’

  ‘I can. Go on.’

  ‘I rang Mickey and twenty minutes later Rick arrived with the gun.’

  ‘Rick?’

  ‘His driver.’

  ‘Did it surprise you that Mickey would send someone around with a pistol?’

  Sarah shook her head. ‘No. Mickey is … he was the kind of person who had guns.’

  I didn’t pursue the matter. ‘You were happy to take it?’

  ‘Not at all. I told Rick I didn’t want it but he had his instructions, he was embarrassed, I had to take the damn thing. I put it in the linen cupboard but it haunted me.’

  ‘When last did you see it?’

  ‘Every time I opened the linen cupboard. Well, not the gun, the box. It was in a box, like a chocolate box. I put it under the towels.’

  ‘Anything else?’

  She rose, the graceful rise on muscled thighs, and went to a table behind a sofa, lit a cigarette with a slim metal lighter, looking at me.

  ‘Two Sundays ago, I came in, I’d been in the country, and I opened the bathroom cabinet and someone had moved things. Someone had been in the place.’

  ‘The home help? Moved the aspirin.’

  Sarah smiled, the half-furtive smile. She shook her head. ‘It’s not silly. I have a thing about order. Not all of me, one side doesn’t care. But where I live I know when something’s moved. And there’s no home help.’