‘Yes. I’m sure you’ve got it right. Now the other thing I want to ask you is whether you’ve remembered anything else. In the years since. It’s not uncommon. You were in shock when the police talked to you, I could see that in your responses. Is there anything else, anything at all that’s come back to you?’
We looked at each other. Alice moved her shoulders, her head, apologising with her body.
‘This is rather silly,’ she said, ‘but two things…I’m not sure if it’s just my mind playing tricks. I’m always reading something into nothing. Harmless strangers, parked cars.’
I smiled. ‘I’m constantly reading something into nothing. It’s a way of life for me. Go ahead, it doesn’t matter whether it sounds silly. What’s rather silly?’
She seemed reassured. ‘The one thing is, we use the television and computers a lot at work. I work with autistic children.’
I nodded. ‘Yes, I know that.’
‘Well, about a year after I started working there, one of the other people put on a computer game for a child and it had this music, this simple tune repeated over and over…’ She was distressed by the story. Her hands had moved from the arms of her chair into her lap. She was clenching one hand with the other, I could see the tension in her neck and shoulders.
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘I felt sick. And scared. I couldn’t bear it, it’s impossible to describe, I had to go out of the room, out of the building. I went to a toilet and…and I was physically sick.’
‘You couldn’t recall hearing it before?’
‘No, never.’
Time to leave the subject. ‘The second thing. There’s another thing.’
She was feeling even more tense now, tried to smile, just a baring of teeth, nice small teeth.
‘I went to Sardinia for a holiday last winter. With my mother and my grandparents, we were staying at this new hotel, a resort sort of place, they showed us to our cottages and I thought they were lovely, adobe, sort of Moorish-style and we unpacked and I went to have a shower and I got out all wet, water in my eyes and I had to steady myself and I touched the wall…’
She stopped. In her rushing speech, words tumbling over rocks, no still water in sight, I could hear the horror she was trying to keep out of her mind. And I could see white all the way around her pupils.
Find the words. Find a form of words.
‘Sardinia must be a nice change from London in winter,’ I said. ‘I spent a winter on the English moors one year. Very moorish winter. All I can remember is the way my fillings tasted in the cold. Normally, you don’t notice your fillings. If you’re unlucky enough to have fillings, that is. I’ve got five fillings. Sweets in childhood. But when your nose is blocked by a terrible cold, you breathe through your mouth, you suck in that freezing moorish air, and it gets to your fillings. They get colder than your teeth. And then you can taste them, it’s some chemical thing or something to do with metals. The most unbelievably awful taste, like sucking lead filings.’ Pause. ‘I often suck lead filings, so I know.’
I stopped. As I’d drivelled on with this boring rubbish, she’d looked less likely to bolt, more likely to make a polite excuse and leave.
‘The message is this,’ I said. ‘Only have ceramic fillings.’
‘Ceramic? Can you have ceramic fillings?’ She was smiling, not going to bolt, not going to leave.
‘You can have fillings made from anything you like. Titanium, Kevlar, old-fashioned stainless steel. They say you should go for the tusks of departed walruses. Not killed for their tusks, of course. Washed up walruses. Peacefully departed. Recycled.’
Alice laughed, not a big laugh, but on her mouth and in her eyes there was a laugh. I laughed with her, celebrated my own stupid ability to amuse her. In her face, I now saw the resemblance to her father. They were handsome people, the Carsons, and they selected for handsome genes, even if that sometimes meant ending up with handsome people missing the warmth chromosome.
But they could laugh. It was possible. I’d seen two of them laugh. As a sub-species, they had the capacity to laugh. The single-minded pursuit of money, the worship of it, the fear of losing it, these had made redundant, vestigial, almost everything that had once made them social animals. But the ability to laugh, that had some value and it lingered.
Time. Time to speak of the things that the mind does not want spoken of.
I said, ‘So, you touched the wall. And…’
She was more relaxed, she closed her eyes. ‘Repulsive, revolting, the feel of it…I ran out, I didn’t have anything on, I think I was screaming, I gave my mother a terrible fright…’
She opened her eyes.
I was nodding, as if I understood.
She swallowed, swallowed again, looked at me, her face coming to me in brilliant clarity, grey eyes, a sad person, sad forever, nothing could subtract from what had happened to her, nothing could bring her back into the world of people who hadn’t endured what she had.
‘I couldn’t stay there,’ she said, ‘so they moved us, put us in another part of the hotel, the main building.’
‘Adobe,’ I said.
She nodded, looked down.
‘Thank you, Alice,’ I said. ‘You’ve been brave and I admire you.’
She looked up and there were tears in her eyes.
On the way to the Carson compound, waiting to turn, Orlovsky said, ‘Mr Compassion. That’s another side. Sorry I didn’t get to see that side.’
I was looking at the couple in the Mercedes next to us. A woman with a long, pale face was driving, the man next to her was fat and angry, gesticulating. He had rings on all his fingers.
‘You didn’t qualify for compassion,’ I said. ‘You only qualified for a kick up the arse. And that was too late, anyway.’
We were in the underground garage when he said, ‘And now?’
I needed a drink badly, my back needed it. ‘Mark,’ I said. ‘There’s nowhere else.’
MARTIE HARMON worked for Hayes, Harmon, Calero, a firm of solicitors in South Yarra with an office next to a Thai restaurant.
‘Mark’s been involved with him in a couple of interesting ventures, his so-called associate,’ said Barry, speaking briskly from his car at 7.15 a.m. ‘One was importing caviar from the Caspian, a container load. I gather they paid half in advance, some fabulous sum, and the Russians sent them a container of fish meal. Hold on, I’ve got another call.’
Music, trippling piano music. I ate sourdough toast spread with Normandy butter and bitter Scottish marmalade and watched a gardener, a slim woman dressed for wet weather, choosing flowers from the cutting garden in front of the Garden House. She felt my eyes, turned and nodded a greeting.
Barry came back. ‘Frank, yes, Martie Harmon. Mark and Martie also combined to sell the Indonesians a South African crowd-control device. I don’t know how that went. I’d have thought the Indonesians already had shotguns. I’m indebted to Stephanie for this information. Tom ends up paying and he confides in her.’ ‘And she in you,’ I said, not a clever thing to say.
I could hear the music on his car stereo: a symphony.
‘Something tells me,’ he said, ‘that you may end up knowing more about this family than we would have wanted. Perhaps we should have had you sign a confidentiality agreement.’
‘Take it as signed,’ I said, to make amends.
I was Martie Harmon’s first of the day, no waiting. He was fortyish, short, plump, red-lipped, had opted to confront baldness by shaving his head.
‘Sit down, Mr Calder. How can I be of help?’ He had a warm, welcoming smile.
‘Mark Carson. I’m engaged by the family. They’re worried.’
The smile went and he made a scornful laughing noise. ‘Mark. They’re worried? Believe me, Mark worries lots of people. I no longer have anything to do with Mark. There is nothing I have to say about Mark. I don’t want to discuss Mark. Full stop.’
I looked around the office, at the framed things on the walls: a degree certific
ate, something with a Rotary cog on it, a graduating class photograph.
‘That’s it,’ he said. ‘Now if you’ll excuse me, this is a working office.’
I sat absolutely still, hands below the desk, looked him in the eyes, looked down, looked at him again, focusing on the inside back of his skull, didn’t blink.
He couldn’t bear it.
‘What are you, some kind of intimidation? Fuck that, buddy. Fuck the Carsons. I’ll get security in here in thirty seconds flat.’ He picked up his phone.
‘How’d that crowd-control device go?’ I said. ‘I reckon the best way to control crowds is to spray them with Russian fish meal. From the Caspian.’
Martie Harmon replaced the receiver, held both his hands up, pinkies facing me. ‘That’s not funny. That’s why Mark and I are no longer in any way associated. I have believed the lies and I have paid the price. Also I have done nothing wrong or unethical. So, will you go?’
I shook my head. ‘We’ve got off on the wrong footing, Mr Harmon. No one’s accusing you of anything. It’s Mark the family’s concerned about. They can’t contact him in Europe.’
Martie Harmon made a chewing movement and his shoulders relaxed a little. ‘Just as long as it’s understood,’ he said. ‘I have no involvement with the bastard, nil, zip.’
‘Understood,’ I said. ‘His father’s had a threatening phone call. From Poland.’
Martie closed his eyes, shook his head. ‘Mark and the fucking Poles,’ he said. ‘And they’re not even Poles, they’re Russians. The Poles are the frontmen. They’re the ones you meet, the ones that went to college in America.’
‘You know about this Polish business?’
‘Oh yes. Mark came to me with this crap about building a film studio in Warsaw. I told him, Mark, are you mad? This is the fucking Russian Mafia, they kill people they don’t like by putting a helium hose up their arse and blowing them up till they float away and pop.’
‘What was the deal?’
He jiggled his hands at me, like someone with palsy. ‘The Russians wanted a two million dollar, that’s U.S., line of credit. They don’t intend to draw on it, what it’s for is to bring in the other investors, sucker them in. It’s for show. Then when they invest and the fucking studio’s built, Mark owns twenty per cent of it, plus he gets twenty per cent interest on the two million no one’s ever had to put up. Fucking dream deal, right?’
‘Why would you build a film studio in Poland?’
‘Porn. The Russian Mafia wants to take over the world porn industry. They can supply women by the planeload. Ukrainians, Chechens, Tartars. All colours, shapes and sizes. They’ll do anything, all the things the girls in the West won’t do. And you can forget about your fucking safe sex. Anything goes. Mark was really taken with the idea. There’s a weird side to him, I don’t know. He can give you the creeps.’
‘How’d you get involved with him?’
Martie sighed. ‘I fucking ask myself that. Daily. Hourly. I met him about ten years ago when he was with Ross, Archer & Stegley. We used to have them on the other side every now and then. He was Mr Hotshot Young Lawyer. And compassionate, night a week at the Altona Legal Centre. Out there in the chemical smog. Then he resigned at Ross’s, gave up a partnership.’
‘Why?’
‘Well, the prick says it’s because he wanted to get out of the law, make some real money. That’ll be the fucking day. Anyway, I ran into him again, we got talking, he had this terrific-sounding proposition.’
He made a gesture of despair. ‘In short, I was a boof-head. It’s the Carson name. He trades on it to the max. He comes on like he’s fully underwritten by CarsonCorp, like he’s the entrepreneurial arm of the company. Entrepreneurial arsehole’d be more like it.’
‘This Polish deal, what could have gone wrong?’
Martie laughed. He had big teeth, capped teeth. ‘How about everything?’ he said. ‘Every last fucking thing. A, they’re bullshitting you from the word go. B, they don’t have a highly developed respect for the contract as a document binding both parties. They think a contract is like where you write down how much you’re going to give them. And C, if they find out they can’t screw you, they get really pissed off. You know the way these junkie streetkids tell you to fuck off if you won’t give them a dollar? Magnify that by a million and you’ve got an idea about dealing with the old evil empire’s new capitalists. Bring back fucking Stalin, that’s what I say.’
Orlovsky’s father wouldn’t approve of that view, I thought. ‘In this particular case, what would you say went wrong?’
He shrugged extravagantly. ‘I’d be guessing, right? But what I’d say is Mark found some fuckhead American to fall for this not-to-be-drawn-on two-million-buck-line-of-credit shit. Then the Mafia says, listen, we need some of the money for a little while, the investors want to see the gold. So maybe the prick actually forks over some cash. Then the Ivans want a bit more. Mark’s sucker sees the light and says no, sue me. What’s this, says the Mafia to Mark, we’ve got a fucking deal with you? Give us the rest of the money. Or else. And since the bastard’s been handing out CarsonCorp business cards, the Mafia feels entitled to come after the family too.’
‘Martie,’ I said, ‘as someone who knows a bit about how these ex-Communists work, would you say they’d be capable of operating here?’
‘Operating? How d’you mean?’
‘Carrying out threats, that sort of thing.’
Martie’s phone rang. He had a short non-committal conversation, not a definite word in it. ‘Get back to you on that,’ he told the caller. ‘But keep breathing.’
He looked at me, frowned. ‘Oh yes, operate here. I’ll tell you a story. There’s a bloke in Sydney, a stockbroker, he decided he’ll broker other things. So he gets involved with these Russians in selling cropdusting planes to the Philippines. Big deal, about six million bucks involved. A couple of planes arrive, tiptop. Some money paid. The buyers’ rep, he’s also an Aussie, he goes to Russia to see the rest of the planes loaded, put on the ship. No problem. Goods as described loaded. The buyers hand over the rest of the money. But when the buyers open the crates in Manila, they find they’ve bought the biggest fucking collection of aeronautical junk ever assembled, much of it dating from World War Two and not airworthy then.’
Martie had a good laugh, he liked this story, took out a spotted handkerchief and wiped his eyes and his mouth.
‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘for various reasons, the stockbroker hasn’t paid the Russians yet when the shit intersects with the fan. You’ll understand, they expected to have the money by then. And he tells them he’s got these Filipino feudal lords on his back, he’s not handing over anything until they get the right planes.’ He paused. ‘Well, the Russians made a few threats. He told them to piss off, this is Australia.’
Martie was nodding at me. I waited.
‘The bloke lives in an apartment block, just a small block for millionaires, on the harbour. North shore. The Russians ring up. They tell him, watch your boat. He can see his sixty-foot motor yacht from the balcony. Before his eyes, it explodes, they find yacht fittings a kilometre away, the blast takes out three other boats.’
He laughed again. ‘But there’s more. The explosion’s still ringing in his ears, the alarms in the underground carpark go off. The place has had about half a tanker of petrol poured into it and now a few million bucks worth of cars are burning. A miracle the whole building wasn’t blown into the harbour.’
‘What’d he do?’
‘Sent them the money. In the Swiss bank inside an hour. He thought he’d rather take his chances with the Filipino land barons. That answer your question about can they operate here?’
‘Comprehensively. Martie, I’m grateful for your time. Can I ask you just one more thing?’
‘Sure.’
‘When you say Mark’s got a weird side, that he can give you the creeps…’
Martie was less happy about this line of inquiry. ‘I don’t know, something in
the eyes. My wife saw it, my ex-wife. And she normally likes good-looking blokes, believe me. Does something about it, too.’
‘Just something in his eyes?’
He fiddled with his tie. It had little yellow ducks on it.
‘He’s got a way of talking about women, I can’t describe it, it’s like a contempt, like they exist for his benefit, like they’re dolls or something.’
‘He liked the porn studio idea.’
‘Excited by it. We were on the plane…Well, he loved it.’
‘You were on the plane.’
Martie checked his watch. ‘I’ve got a 9.30,’ he said, ‘some preparation required, so if…’
‘The plane from Europe? Is that after you’d talked to the Poles?’
A show of palms, a frown. ‘I never said I didn’t check out this deal. I never said that.’
‘No, you never said that.’
‘No, I didn’t.’
‘So you went to Poland with Mark?’
Nods. ‘I had other business in Europe, so I went, yes. Not in Poland. The other business.’
‘And you checked out the deal?’
‘Yes. We went to fucking Poland and got the spiel and I came back and talked to some people and I told him, I told him, no way am I dealing with these animals. And I was out. Out. Haven’t seen him since, don’t want to, never will. You can tell the Carsons that. Don’t know where he is, what he’s doing. He doesn’t call and I wouldn’t know how to call him.’
Swallow, the bobbing of the throat apple. ‘Mark Carson is not in my life anymore.’
‘I’ll tell them,’ I said. ‘Martie, what excited Mark about the deal?’
Martie opened his eyes wide, then closed them for a while. Long curving eyelashes, noticed for the first time. He ran both hands over his naked head, penitent’s head in other times, clasped the back of it, pointed his elbows at me. A man trying to tell me he was comfortable.
‘Couldn’t stop talking about the women in the films,’ he said. ‘They showed us some films. Blonde Ukrainian women. These Russians, three of them, they talk about the girls like…like, I don’t know, cattle, sheep. Here’s a good one. Do you like that? There are many more like her, we can deliver a dozen, easy, that is easy.’
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