Black Tide

by Peter Temple

  ‘Depends. Some are exceedingly well read, the others go into politics or crime.’

  I found her smile attractive. And heartening.

  ‘His sister had rung a few times,’ she said. ‘And there were three or four calls for Bradley. I wrote all the messages in the logbook.’

  I looked around some more. ‘The room was like this when you first came into it after your trip?’

  ‘Yes. Nothing’s been touched. It’s been dusted, that’s all.’

  ‘Nothing on the desk? Wastepaper baskets empty? Filing cabinets empty?’

  ‘Yes. He’d done a big clean-up. I don’t know about the filing cabinets, never saw them open.’

  ‘The clean-up, was that unusual?’

  ‘I’ll say. Two in two months was outstandingly unusual. Two a year was more like it. He used to buy those huge orange garden rubbish bags.’

  ‘So he’d had a clean-up two months earlier?’

  Lyall nodded. ‘I helped him put the bags in his car. Five of them. Took them to be shredded somewhere. Paranoid about his waste paper.’

  ‘Where would he keep his papers? Bank statements, credit-card statements, bills, receipts, that sort of thing? The tax stuff?’

  ‘There were some in the filing cabinets. The missing persons guy took them.’

  ‘Never gave them back?’

  ‘Probably gave them to Kate. I don’t know.’

  ‘Can I see his bedroom?’

  It was purely functional: double bed, one bedside table with lamp, chest of drawers. A built-in cupboard covered one wall.

  ‘We tidied up in here,’ Lyall said. ‘Did his washing.’

  ‘Any signs of packing? Clothes missing? Luggage?’

  ‘Are you sure you’re a solicitor?’ she said. ‘My feeling is you’ve done this kind of thing before.’

  ‘Instinct,’ I said. ‘I rely on instinct.’

  She smiled, finished the beer. ‘Hard to tell about clothes. Stuart wore jeans and T-shirts most of the time and he had plenty of both. His little aluminium suitcase isn’t here. He only ever took that.’

  On the way downstairs, I said, ‘His car’s here, you said.’

  ‘It’s still in the garage. There’s nothing in it.’

  ‘Check the boot?’

  Pause. ‘I don’t know. Bradley might’ve. He had it put on these jack things, sort of mothballed.’

  The garage was reached through a door in the courtyard wall. A newish Honda was parked behind an old BMW coupe on jacks. Five wheels were leaning against the back wall.

  ‘You might like to wait outside,’ I said. ‘Just in case.’

  Lyall took her lower lip between her teeth. A full lower lip, square white teeth. She handed over the keys, didn’t move.

  The ignition key unlocked the boot. The lid didn’t come up automatically.

  I got fingertips under the numberplate and lifted. It resisted. Came up suddenly. Empty. A strong smell of brake fluid leaked from a plastic container.

  I looked around. Lyall had the fingers of her right hand to her mouth. But not alarmed. People who went into other countries illegally to take snaps would presumably not alarm easily.

  ‘Nothing,’ I said.

  The glove compartment held a Melway map book for greater Melbourne and a VicRoads map book for country Victoria. Half-under the front seat was a crushed McDonald’s packet.

  I looked at the instruments. Only 56,657 km on the clock. Reconditioned engine, perhaps, clock turned back. Was that legal? The trip meter read 667 km.

  Nothing here.

  Back in the kitchen, I said, ‘A final request.’

  Lyall was getting another Miller’s out of the fridge. ‘I find it hard to refuse you,’ she said. ‘An uncomfortable feeling.’

  We exchanged looks again. Plain. A very strange perception. ‘Would you mind if someone gave Stuart’s computer a lookover?’

  She tilted her head. ‘Is that all?’

  ‘It’s all I can think of at the moment.’

  ‘Keep thinking,’ she said. ‘Something will come to you.’

  21

  It began to rain on the way back to the office, nondescript Melbourne rain that didn’t even seem to fall. It seeped. The Stud’s erratic wipers, hard-contact, soft-contact, no-contact, always added another pleasurable dimension to winter. Coming down the straight towards the Swanston Street roundabout, straining to see through the smear, my mind was on Lyall Cronin.

  At the front door, a little tipsy, she’d said, ‘My regards to Mrs Irish and all the little Irishes. Or should that be little Irish?’

  I looked at her. She pushed her hair back with her left hand. She wasn’t asking a question about the plural form and I did not have to answer the question she was asking. ‘No Mrs Irish,’ I said. ‘One little Irish, living with a fishing boat skipper called Eric. Somewhere out there beyond Brisbane. I try not to think about it.’

  ‘Well, then,’ she said, ‘my regards to the current stand-in for the previous Mrs Irish.’

  That was the moment. The moment to say nothing, smile, offer a handshake, say thank you. The moment to be non-committal. To be non-committal and professional.

  Bugger that. Linda was being kissed on the ear in public. ‘Things are quiet on the stand-in front. I don’t think I’ve given you my card.’

  Many arrogant men in expensive leased cars are encountered at the Swanston Street roundabout. At any time of the day. I think they live in North Carlton. One of them hooted at me. I hit the brake, he came close to climbing the kerb. Nice moment. Immature, yes. There is a certain immaturity in taking pleasure at seeing terror in the eyes of a Mercedes driver. But parts of us are forever immature. I can name my bits.

  No messages at the office but, better than messages, a cheque from Belvedere Investments, aka Cyril Wootton enterprises. I took my seat behind the tailor’s table. Assumed the position. Tried to think. Stuart Wardle was possibly not a line of inquiry worth pursuing. So what if he knew something about Klostermann Gardier and Klostermann paid Gary large sums. That didn’t link them in any useful way.

  Stuart Wardle was probably a dead-end.

  Still. The neatness of his office. Clean-ups.

  I’ll say. Two in two months was outstandingly unusual.

  An untidy man who cleaned up before he disappeared. Suicides sometimes did that. Nothing in the wastepaper baskets.

  Nothing in the filing cabinets. No personal papers.

  No papers in Gary Connors’ apartment. No papers in Jellicoe’s house. Cleaned by professionals? Like the two men who called themselves Detectives Carmody and Mildren of the Australian Federal Police and spent forty-five minutes in Gary’s apartment on April 5.

  Gary. Gary was the point. On the last day that I knew anything about his movements, he was being watched by a man called Canetti, an ex-Fed with an ACT driver’s licence.

  This whole business was beginning to look complicated. Complicated and hazardous. Rinaldi thought Gary’s link with Klostermann Gardier was a good enough reason to back off. Barry Tregear thought Gary’s TransQuik connection was unhealthy for me.

  Don’t ask. Leave it. They want snow in Darwin, these boys, it falls.

  I could tell Des that I’d made no progress, couldn’t really do any more. It was the sensible thing to do. Rinaldi would approve, Barry would approve, Drew would approve.

  Des’s trim weatherboard, in a street full of helpful and strong young women, was going to be shot out from under him. An elderly man, no house, no capital, on the pension, where did that leave him? In some narrow partitioned-off space in a squalid firetrap of an accommodation house, possessions in a suitcase, lying on a stained mattress on a sagging bed, coughing phlegm, staring at the spotted ceiling, smelling the reek from the lavatory down the passage, hearing the body noises of the hopeless people on either side.

  I took out the photograph. I’d looked at it every day since Des gave it to me. The three men in singlets on the scaffolding on the fateful day. A man turned away, unidentifiabl
e. In the middle, a man laughing. The tendons in this man’s neck stand out like balsawood struts under damp tissue paper. He has muscular stonemason’s arms and a head too narrow for his short, slicked-down hairstyle. It is Des.

  And next to him in the tiny picture is my father. He is big, big shoulders, arms, a full head taller than Des, dark hair combed back, wry mouth, amused, head turned to Des.

  It was possible to see, in this small photograph, that my father is looking at Des with affection, enjoying his laughter. Des was a friend. That was the reason for finding Gary, for getting Des’s money back. My father would have wanted me to help him.

  My father would want me to help him.

  The thought came to me unbidden and with it the cover of Linda’s left-behind book, The Mountain from Afar.

  Oh God, men and their fathers.

  Music. Like the mountain, from afar.

  I got up and went to the window. In the closing day, the street gleamed wetly, its heavily cambered surface like the black cracked back of some ancient serpent rising between the buildings. The music was coming from Kelvin McCoy’s atelier. Classical music, Debussy, at a guess. The thought of McCoy finding inspiration for his greasetrap paintings in Debussy stopped me dead in my tracks.

  I went across the street, stood at the door and listened, unashamed.

  A woman’s voice over the music. Then McCoy’s ruined tones, saying loudly, ‘Relax, darling. It’s nothing to me. Absolutely nothing. I’m an artist, I work with naked women every day.’

  Work? With naked women?

  Indeed.

  I stopped off at Taub’s to collect Charlie, got him out the door in twenty minutes. At the Prince, Norm O’Neill was reading the Herald Sun sports section.

  ‘Jack, Charlie,’ he said, waving the tabloid, ‘where’d ya reckon they get these footy writers? From the kinder? Bloody born yesterday. This clown here, knows nothin about the Sainters. All this dickhead knows, club coulda come down from Mars just last year.’

  And to make an end is to make a beginning. Was that what T. S. Eliot said?

  This thought in mind, I requested a round from the publican. Stan was looking a model of geniality, your plump old-fashioned landlord, dispenser of wisdom and good cheer. What drug could work the miracle of complete personality reversal?

  ‘Doubled the offer,’ he said, putting down my beer, leaning across the bar, not so much whispering as sniggering. ‘They want the old photos pretty bad.’

  And then he winked, leered, took on a turbo-charged plump model of geniality look. A-Mr-Pickwick-on-human-growth-hormones look.

  I put my face close to his. ‘Stanley, you’re not listening. The photographs aren’t just old photos. You’re trying to sell sacred objects. They’re worth more than your life. Much more. The people who’ll kill you don’t give a shit about life sentences. They could depart any second. You with me?’

  Stan pulled back, still beaming like Mr Pickwick, Mr Pickwick turned compassionate outreach worker. ‘Jack,’ he said. The one word had an understanding and non-judgmental tone. ‘Jack, excuse me, you’re a nice bloke but you don’t understand the dynamics of change. Don’t mean to offend, you’re gettin a bit like the old farts. Livin in the past.’

  He examined me benignly. ‘Not just the photos, Jack. The party don’t just want the photos. Thought you’d grasped that.’

  I took a big drink of beer. ‘Tell me, Stan. Slowly.’

  ‘Want the freehold. Melbourne HQ of the Brisbane Lions. New name. Listen to this. The Lions’ Lair.’

  ‘Inspired.’ I drank more beer.

  He gave me an encouraging look, the look Harry Strang had given McCurdie when the rustic trainer managed to pour his own tea.

  ‘My suggestion that,’ said Stan. ‘Shoulda seen the bloke’s face light up. Marketing magic. Total synergistic marketing. These kids can’t see the big picture. Takes years of interface with actual point-of-sale.’

  ‘Actual point-of-sale? Is that the same as pulling beer? Beer that tastes of soap.’

  He ignored the question. ‘Me in charge, naturally. Pokies. Bistro. Big screen. Knock all the walls out down here. Arches. Then there’s the upstairs. Guess.’

  ‘Too hard. Haven’t had enough years of interface.’

  ‘Consider this. Two loft-style serviced apartments upstairs. How’s that for out-of-the-square thinking?’

  I gave him the cross-examination stare. ‘Not so much out of the square, Stan,’ I said, ‘as out of your cotton-picking mind. Goodnight.’

  I drained the glass, no heart for this discussion. Any discussion. Goodnight all. Went home.

  Home felt a bit more homely when I’d cleaned out the grate and made a fire. I cheered up, put on music, Clementine Liprandi, voice like a faraway trumpet. In the freezer, four small Italian beef sausages from Smith Street’s finest butcher were huddled in an ice cave, joined like Siamese quads. Into the microwave to defrost. Sausages and mash. Potatoes in the basket, still firm of body. I peeled, quartered, immersed, went out to the car to get the case of Heathcote shiraz from the boot. Rain hung in the air, was the air, dampened the honking, humming, wailing night sounds of the city.

  Glass in hand, I pressed for the messages. Rosa. Drew, missed by minutes. No Linda.

  No Linda.

  That’s the way it’s gonna be, liddle darlin, I said to myself, put on the television for the news. A female reporter with a startled look took us through a small hostage drama in North Balwyn. Generally, the police, endowed with a strong sense of theatre, like to shoot someone to end a hostage drama. However, the protagonist wimped out and was led away, alive, unperforated. On to a bus crash in Queensland, very few dead, allegations of sexual misconduct against two army officers, calls for the resignation of a football administrator, a hostile reception for the Prime Minister at a welfare conference.

  I missed the sport while I was mashing. When I got back, ‘The 7.30 Report’ was on and Dermott O’Sullivan was interrogating the Federal Treasurer, David Maclay. The subject was Money, Power and Politics.

  O’Sullivan: So Mr Maclay there’s no unhappiness in the party about the influence of people who hold no elected office?

  Maclay: Absolutely not. Dermott, we’re a party of consultation and consensus. We listen to all our members and supporters. And we listen to all the voters of Australia. Always have, always will.

  O’Sullivan: But some people get listened to more than others.

  Maclay, shaking his head in sad disbelief: Dermott, seriously. Of course some opinions carry more weight than others! I don’t ask people in the supermarket queue how to manage interest rates. Does the ABC choose the people on its opinion programs at random from the phone book?

  O’Sullivan, tilt of head, smile: And I’m sure you’re in the supermarket queue on a daily basis, Minister. But my point is that people in the party, elected people, have expressed concern that some unelected individuals seem to command huge power.

  Maclay: Dermott, I’m really disappointed in you. Why don’t you just come out with it? If you want to play Follow-My-Leader, at least try to be the leader. You owe the idea that a great Australian achiever, and I’m referring to Steven Levesque, has some undue influence on government to your ill-informed commercial media colleague Ms Linda Hillier. People expect more from the ABC, Dermott.

  Was there no escape from Steven Levesque? First Linda and now Dermott.

  Maclay carried on: In my twenty-odd years in politics, Dermott, I’ve never heard of or felt the influence of Steven Levesque. If you know something I don’t know, please tell me.

  O’Sullivan smiled, his wry smile this time: His companies are among the biggest donors to your party in all States, his former partner is the Attorney-General, the Premier of Victoria is said not to choose a tie without consulting him. And you know nothing of his influence, Mr Maclay?

  Maclay: Dermott, whether you give the party five bob or fifty thousand dollars, you buy exactly the same amount of influence. Nil.

  O’Sullivan: So th
e fact that Fincham Air last year won the coastal surveillance contracts for Northern Queensland and the Northern Territory owes nothing to Mr Levesque’s relationship with your party?

  Maclay, frowning: What are you getting at, Dermott?

  O’Sullivan: Fincham Air is partly owned by a company called CrossTrice Holdings. And one of CrossTrice’s directors is Lionel Carson, formerly a partner of Mr Levesque’s in TransQuik Australia.

  Maclay: So?

  O’Sullivan: CrossTrice also owns a quarter of Consolidated Freight Holdings, TransQuik Australia’s owner.

  Maclay: You’re being irresponsible, Dermott. And silly. My understanding is that Steven Levesque no longer has any active involvement with CFH or TransQuik Australia. But even if he did, what has he to do with Fincham Air winning a government contract?

  O’Sullivan assumed the look of a person holding four kings.

  Are you aware, Minister, that a Brisbane newspaper will tomorrow publish a story saying that a former employee of Fincham says she saw photocopies of the other tenders for the contract before Fincham submitted its bid? And that she heard an executive of the company say, ‘Steven says increase the flight frequency and go in a million under CattonAir.’ She says she understood ‘Steven’ to refer to Steven Levesque.

  Maclay’s expression was bland, the look of a person who has dealt himself four aces.

  I think you’ll find, Dermott, that the newspaper will not be publishing that allegation tomorrow. I understand the person concerned now says she was misrepresented and the journalist involved has apologised to Fincham. But I don’t want to be drawn into this sort of nonsense. And, Dermott, for your own legal wellbeing, I don’t think you want to propagate defamatory material of this kind.

  The ambush had failed: blanks in the magazine. O’Sullivan was unnerved by Maclay’s display of superior knowledge and the interview fizzled out.

  I found Barry’s slip of paper, picked up the phone and dialled inquiries. ‘Canberra,’ I said. ‘A Dean Canetti. I don’t have a home address.’

  A woman answered the phone, tired voice, young children in the background.