I was in the kitchen watching the coffee drip into the glass jug when my mobile rang. Vella.
‘I should’ve called you before,’ he said. ‘The girl was dead at least thirty-six hours.’
Thirty-six hours? I’d made the demand for the photograph at lunchtime the day before I went to the station…
‘The picture?’
‘Manipulated. Taken with a digital camera. Two pictures brought together. One of her alive holding up the newspaper. Then they changed the newspaper, put another one in its place. They were expecting you to ask for proof. So they took the picture before they killed her.’
I felt tired in my legs, in my arms, in my shoulders, tired and sick.
‘She was electrocuted,’ Vella said. ‘Probably in the bath. There’s more. Not pretty. Want to know?’
‘No. That’s enough.’
‘Not going anywhere fast here. You got anything to add?’
‘No.’ What was there to tell him? That I was running SeineNet on the Carsons’ mainframe and risking his job every second that it was up? And for what? I didn’t know for what.
I was looking at nothing out of the window when Orlovsky came to the door. ‘Can’t believe it. These things can take hours. Fourteen Guinane games registered with the U.S. Patents Office, earliest one is 1985. I might be able to find it on the net. Get most of the early games.’
‘She was dead when they sent the picture,’ I said. ‘Electrocuted. The picture’s been manipulated.’
I looked around. Orlovsky had his forehead against the doorjamb, eyes closed. ‘I’ll find the game,’ he said. ‘Today. I’ll find it today.’
‘Before you do that,’ I said, ‘get Cassie Guinane’s housemate on SeineNet.’
HER NAME was Margaret Patton then and it was Margaret Spears now and it took me three hours to find her in an expensive house in expensive Albert Park. She was very reluctant to see me.
‘We’ve only just moved in,’ she said. She was fortyish, fair and pretty, flushed cheekbones, a doll’s face, a grownup doll wearing a dress with pleats in the front. ‘We got back from England three weeks ago.’
Her husband came down the passage, a tall man, sleek dark hair. ‘Hamish Spears,’ he said, putting out a hand. ‘It’s related to this awful Carson thing, is it?’
I shook his hand. ‘Frank Calder. Yes, it is. I’m sorry to be a nuisance.’
Margaret Spears said, ‘I don’t understand how Cassandra is connected…’
‘We don’t either,’ I said. ‘But we think there’s a possible connection. If I can have ten minutes.’
‘Of course you can,’ said Hamish Spears. ‘Come in. I’m an accountant. Abergeldie, Smith, Alberstam. We’ve done some work for CarsonCorp. Shopping-centre business. Nice people to do business with.’
Carson, the magic name, opener of doors, inspirer of greed and fear.
He led the way into a chintzy sitting room with a pale rose-coloured carpet and plump furniture. ‘Frank, I’ll leave you two alone,’ he said. ‘Maggie, give Frank a drink.’
She cocked her head. I shook mine.
‘Please sit down,’ she said. ‘It’s so long ago. What can I tell you now?’
‘I’ve read the transcript of your interview with the police in 1986,’ I said. ‘There wasn’t much you could tell them.’
‘No,’ she said. ‘Well, I didn’t really know her. It was just a notice-board thing. And we were both private people. To tell you the truth, we were unlikely house-sharers. She saw my notice on the board. My parents had bought the house and I needed a tenant. We weren’t friends or anything. I was a bit straitlaced, I suppose.’
‘And she wasn’t?’
‘Well. After she moved in, someone told me she’d had an affair with a lecturer when she was an undergraduate. In second year. That’s not very straitlaced, is it?’
‘No. Men came to the house?’
‘No. Only her father. He was a frightening type.’
‘In what way?’
Margaret shrugged. ‘Big and angry-looking. A beard. He always seemed to be angry with her. Never came in. She’d go out and they’d talk in the street or in his Land Rover. Dirty, covered in mud. She seemed frightened of him. Terrified, really.’
‘You didn’t tell the police that.’
‘Didn’t I? I suppose it didn’t seem important. They weren’t interested in her father. Boyfriends, anyone I’d seen her with at uni, that’s what they wanted to know about.’
She paused, scratched her hairline with perfect nails, moved her head quickly. She was uncomfortable.
I waited.
‘I really didn’t want to get involved,’ she said. ‘Frankly, the father scared me too.’
I waited, looking at her. She couldn’t hold my gaze, swallowed. There was something else she wanted to say.
‘I was a coward. Just a girl from the country. I didn’t want the police going to her father and saying that I said she was scared of him. Anyway, I was just reading that into her behaviour, I didn’t know that.’ She frowned. ‘I didn’t know her. If I’d known her…’
‘That’s perfectly understandable,’ I said, smiled at her, waited, wouldn’t be the one to speak.
She exhaled loudly. ‘Yes, well, about four years later, the strangest thing happened. The place next door had been standing half-renovated all the time I’d been in my house. This man who owned it, a Greek, a Greek person, he’d work on it for a weekend, then he wouldn’t be seen for six months. Anyway, one day he knocked on the door and said he’d found this book in the rubbish skip in his back yard and was it mine? You know, you get burgled and they find your stuff dumped all over the place?’
‘You’d been burgled?’
‘Often. Well, at least twice before then. It was a diary. And it had Cassandra Guinane written on the cover. I rang the Guinanes and her brother came around and fetched it. I suppose he’d have passed it on to the police if there was anything important in it.’
‘I’m sure he would have. You didn’t open it?’
‘Of course not.’
‘Of course not. So you never actually saw Cassie with anyone?’
‘No. Well, the closest was, that was months before, someone dropped her at the end of the street. It was a Sunday morning. I was going to get milk or something, the papers, and we met. She said she’d been to Mount Hotham, it was lovely in the summer, no one there.’
‘You didn’t see the person?’
‘No, just the car. A Mercedes.’
‘That’s not in your interview either.’
‘Isn’t it?’ She seemed genuinely surprised.
‘No. Probably just an oversight. You forgot about it.’
Frowning. ‘No. That’s what they were interested in. They asked lots of questions about things like that. I’d have told them that. I couldn’t not have told them that. I did tell them that.’
‘Well, I probably missed it, easy to do that. Thank you for seeing me. I won’t take up any more of your time.’
At the front door, she said, ‘This hasn’t been of any use, has it?’
‘It may have been.’
Hamish Spears appeared at the end of the passage. He shouted, ‘Frank, sure you won’t stay for a drink?’
As I was getting into the car, the phone rang: Orlovsky.
‘These boys,’ he said, the faintest note of satisfaction in his voice, ‘I’ve got the earliest game. Got a tune.’
With trepidation, I punched Barry Carson’s number. He answered immediately, crisply.
‘Frank Calder,’ I said.
‘Frank. You might have said goodbye.’
‘I saw your father. He didn’t want to talk to me and I didn’t think anyone else would either.’
‘Rubbish. The old man was distressed, nothing about you. You don’t bear any responsibility for what happened. Risked your life on the escalator. I appreciate that enormously. We all do. Have they told you about the photograph? I asked Graham to be sure you were told. He hasn’t got much to do no
w that the float’s postponed.’
Barry didn’t sound like a bereaved relative, didn’t sound like someone whose niece had been violated and slaughtered.
‘They told me,’ I said.
‘Good. There was nothing anyone could have done. Your advice was sound. Professional. We bear the blame for not taking it in the first place. See the papers today?’
‘No.’
‘Tom’s stood down as chief executive. He’s retiring, in fact. I’ve taken over.’
Perhaps a small dinner party to celebrate. Would he do that, the police out there looking for his niece’s killers? Probably. He was a Carson.
I said, ‘I’d like to talk to Alice again. Tonight.’
Silence. There was faint music behind him, voices in conversation, as if he’d left a dinner table, was talking in the next room.
‘This is in the hands of the police now, Frank. If you have any ideas, they should be told.’
I hesitated. ‘This is very important,’ I said. ‘I’ve been the police, I think I can do this better than the police.’
Silence and the music. ‘Frank, her mother says she’s taken Anne’s murder in a strange way. You can understand that. This is not a good time.’
‘Good time? It’s never going to be a good time. Ever. You don’t have walls high enough. Did the cops tell you about the call? An eye for an eye’s not a fair exchange?’
‘Yes. Mr Vella told me. We’ve put Jahn, Cullinan in charge of family security now, Frank. Should’ve from the beginning, just my father’s strange ideas.’
‘I’ll put this simply. I’m not on the payroll. I don’t want to be on the payroll.’
Another silence. A long silence, the music.
‘I’ll give you Alice’s number,’ Barry said. ‘It’s silent, so tell her who you are straight away or she’ll be alarmed. She’ll talk to you.
She liked you.’ A beat. ‘I can’t think why.’
‘Inexplicable,’ I said. ‘One more thing. Do you ski?’
‘Yes. Not much anymore. Why?’
‘Where?’
‘Hotham mostly. We’ve got a place up there, family place, a lodge. Why?’
‘Just a survey I’m doing about the habits of the rich.’
Laugh, a small laugh. ‘Frank, we’re going to have to put you on the payroll. To ensure your discretion.’
At Orlovsky’s house, we opened SeineNet and looked up the investigating officer in Cassie Guinane’s case. His name was Terence Sadler and a file note said he’d taken early retirement in 1990.
THE PHONE in London rang and rang and rang and I knew with no possible logic to support me that it was summoning no one, ringing in a place where no one would answer it. I sat on the kitchen chair in Orlovsky’s computer room, he sat at his keyboard, our eyes locked, both of us listening to the ringing.
‘Alice isn’t home,’ he said.
When all was lost, when I was nodding at him, she answered.
‘Yes.’ Breathless voice.
‘Frank Calder, Alice, we talked the other night.’
Deep breath. ‘Frank. Oh, hello. I was getting in the car and heard the phone ringing.’
There was warmth in her voice and it warmed me. ‘I know I’m not a welcome sound,’ I said.
‘No, no, not at all, no.’ No hesitation. ‘After we talked the other morning, I felt better than I’ve felt, well, ever, really. Since, I mean. From the day the American man left, the psychiatrist, no one ever said anything again. Everyone looked at me in a way, as if there was something wrong with me, do you know what I mean? I’d catch them looking at me in a certain way…’
She tailed off.
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I think I know what you mean.’
‘It’s nicer to talk when I can see your face.’ She laughed.
‘I always felt they didn’t believe me when I told them…what happened. It’s stupid but the more they asked me questions, the more I felt they didn’t believe me. They asked me the same questions over and over.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘They were scared they’d missed something.’
‘I understand that, why they’d do that, they have to do that, but I was just a girl. And I was young for my age, I think. When people keep asking you the same questions, you think they want different answers. Your answer’s not good enough. You’re not telling the truth. Am I sounding stupid?’
‘Makes perfect sense to me.’
‘My father’s like that. There’s a wait after you say something. And the man with the beard and the soft voice, he scared me so much, I can’t tell you. I didn’t know what a psychiatrist was. It was like…it was the beard more than the voice. Lie down and relax, he said, that was the most awful thing he could say…’
This was another Alice, an Alice released from bondage.
She said, ‘Frank, it’s a terrible thing to say, when I heard about Anne, I had this thought, not really a thought, a feeling, well, a thought. I thought: now they’ll believe me, now they’ll believe me. Is that awful?’
‘That’s not awful at all, Alice,’ I said, ‘that’s got nothing to do with awful. People can only pretend to understand other people’s pain. And they can only do that for a while. Then it annoys them, they think: how bad can it have been? If you talk about it, they want you to shut up. If you don’t, they think you’re sulking.’
I looked up and met Orlovsky’s eyes, he looked away.
Alice laughed, a laugh of relief, tension dispelled. In the trade, if she was holding a gun on people I’d have taken that as a good sign.
‘Alice,’ I said. ‘I want to play something to you, I want you to listen to something. May be nothing, probably won’t mean anything to you, just a silly hunch. Can I do that?’
‘Of course.’ There was a firmness to her voice, an adult, grownup firmness.
I held out the telephone to Orlovsky’s machines, gave him the nod.
A hippety-hoppety tune, a childish tune, a few bars, repeated.
I put the receiver to my ear. ‘Hear that, Alice?’
The line was open. She was there, you know when someone is there.
Silence.
‘Alice?’
She made a sound, a tiny sound, a sound in her throat, and put the phone down.
After a while, I put my phone down. Orlovsky had his elbows on the table, chin on his hands, looking at me.
‘The authors, they’d have written that tune, would they?’ I said.
He nodded.
‘What’s the game called?’
‘Shooting Star.’
‘Nice name.’
‘Yes.’
‘Tomorrow,’ I said. ‘Early. I want to see them.’
‘See them? Are you mad? If all this means anything, they’re crazy kidnappers and murderers. For fuck’s sake, go to the cops, tell your mates what you know.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I want to see them. This happened on my watch.’
‘So did Afghanistan. You planning on going back there? Have another crack at them? Bring the boys back to life?’
I looked at him for a time, then I said, ‘We’ll need some ID.’
‘I’m going along, am I? That’s taken for granted?’
‘No,’ I said. I got up. ‘I’ll drop the pay envelope around.’
I was in the passage when he shouted, ‘What kind of ID, you bastard?’
It was 10.30 p.m. when I rang the Carson compound. The switchboard spoke to Stephanie Chadwick, put me through.
‘Hello, Frank,’ she said. ‘This is a nice surprise.’ She’d been drinking.
‘Stephanie,’ I said, ‘does the name Cassie Guinane, Cassandra Guinane, mean anything to you?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘No, I don’t know the name.’
‘She was in your class at school.’
‘Was she?’ She laughed, an uneasy sound. ‘Lots of unmemorable girls in my class. Why?’
‘I think her brothers may have kidnapped Anne. And Alice.’
I heard her draw breath. ‘Have
you told the police?’
‘No. I don’t want to yet, not till I’m certain. Sure you don’t remember her? Tall, dark, pretty?’
‘No. Well, perhaps vaguely. The name.’
‘I’ll be in touch.’
‘Yes. Goodnight.’
Sleep was hard to come by, my nights with Corin seemed to be in the distant past. I thought about the Carsons, their laundered clothes, their Italian soaps and French butter, their Jamaican coffee beans freshly roasted each morning. I thought about Pat not acknowledging my presence and Stephanie’s lascivious kiss and pelvic thrust and Martie Harmon’s story of Mark salivating at the memory of seeing women abused. I thought about the security men patrolling the walled compound and the Carson child taken from them and put to death. And I wished I had never heard the name Carson.
I left my bed long before dawn, no rest in me, and ran down the snakeskin streets. See them. See the Guinanes. What was the point? The point was to see if my skin tightened, to see if I was in the presence of people who murdered a girl in a bath, of a man who pushed a dead girl through the streets in a wheelchair, pushed the wheelchair down an escalator.
That was the point. That was the point.
ON THE way, too early to pay the call, we parked in Eltham’s main street.
Orlovsky lit a cigarette with the slim stainless-steel lighter he’d always had. Then he had a thought, offered me the packet. I took one. He lit it, regretted it instantly.
‘That’s not good,’ he said. ‘You shouldn’t smoke, I’m not comfortable with you smoking.’
I knew what he was talking about. I’d taken a cigarette off him on the night C Troop went to hell.
‘Omens now,’ I said. ‘Mick, it’s just a fucking smoke. Why don’t you get your palms read? Palms. Soles of your feet. You could get your dick read. There must be some meaning there.’
He blew a thin stream of smoke at me. Contemptuous smoke, his composure regained. ‘Flippancy,’ he said. ‘You cloak yourself in flippancy.’ Then he changed tack. ‘Ever given your command instinct any thought? What it might stem from?’
‘I have,’ I said. ‘It stems from a fear of being led by idiots. The only worse fear is of being followed by idiots.’
Cigarettes didn’t last long, promised more than they could deliver. I’d forgotten what hot and acrid teases they were, tiny unbalancing hits. I threw the end out of the window.
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