by John Elliott
By now, having left the waterfront, they were traversing a series of narrow lanes which bisected blocks of semi-derelict import-export warehouses. On a brick wall, beneath high, boarded-up windows, Sonny made out the acid-lime and orange letters of the entreaty ‘EXECUTE LUTHER WENDE!’ The driver squinted his eyes and checked his passenger in the mirror. ‘Rat City,’ he said in a heavy Panalquin accent. ‘They’ve bust a gut to get human life back round here, business start-ups, loft conversions, artists’ studios, new-age crafts, psychic jamborees, you name it, but all they’ve got is rats. It’s a wonder we’re not stricken with the plague. You know Panalquin?’
‘Not really. I don’t often come over.’
The driver nodded. ‘Well, see over there,’ his arm indicated a swathe of waste ground pitted with broken up foundations and studded with truncated reinforced concrete pillars, ‘that’s where Minty Wallace was born and brought up, the so-called “King of the Southside” or “The Boss of the Waterfront”. Now look at it. Zilch. Zero. At one time he had his mitts on all the outfits, all the enterprises. You couldn’t wipe your arse or flush the toilet without a tribute going to him. They say he even tried to go international at the height of his reach. Think of it. The criminals saw ahead how things were working out. It was rumoured he had a Japanese partner. Charlie Vesseps, who used to bankroll a speiler in Carson Street, we just passed it back there, told me he had seen them with his own eyes. I forget the word. They cut each other’s fingers off or something. Anyway, Charlie said in the end it didn’t come to anything and then before you knew it Minty had had his day. You can’t do business if there’s no business, right? Nowadays, if there was a new Minty Wallace no one would know their name. They wouldn’t show themselves. It would all be done with computers. Only figures scrolling on a screen. No need for people. No need to rebuild this shithouse.’ He swung out to pass an articulated truck, which had drawn up alongside the sagging wire fence of an abandoned machine shop. The factory floor was open to the sky. Everything of value had been stripped. ‘A lot of them stop here for a quickie,’ the driver went on. ‘It’s quiet and there’s no hassle. Love among the ruins and the rats, huh.’
Catching the red light at the junction with the inner ring road, the driver took the opportunity to load and switch on a tape, as his passenger seemed disinclined to enter into conversation. The soft, sibilant strains of the languorous bossa nova accompanied him as he moved off and accelerated up the incline. Under the lilt of the whispered, caressing tones of the male vocalist, he began to tap his fingers on the rim of the steering wheel and dream himself on board his own oft imagined pleasure boat, setting the course for deeper waters. He changed lanes and dropped behind a large Mercedes. In the tack and yaw of the elusive beat, which the singer seemed to lose only to stress again more insistently, he cut through the waves away from the harbour. The craft’s wheel responded to his lightest touch as he changed down and braked for a slow up in the traffic ahead. A black retriever, long since dead, sat by his side as he admired the mast, the sail, the trim of the deck. The sea, now green, now white spuming, then aquamarine, was ever changing like the names he gave to his precious boat: Swallow, Happiness, Sea Mew, Future, but they could wait. The fine line of paint from the sign writer’s brush could wait. More important was the feel of the polished timbers beneath the soles of his feet and the sight of the sail billowing out and the land disappearing to the stern. Escape. Escape and ‘ao vento que passa meu coração’ as long as the song kept playing.
A Japanese yakuza, Ute Manoko? Sonny had heard more than his fill of local stories about Minty Wallace and his notorious organisation. Most of them could be attributed to the teller’s need for self-aggrandisement or their desire to flirt with the thrill of the illicit, the overtly antisocial, enticing reverse of the daily coin, where naked greed and ruthlessness shone forth for all to see. In their yarns, Wallace’s stature became embellished, his power exaggerated, so that each of his mythologisers could feast once more on their scraps of recounted terror, their personal moments of danger, the raw violence they had witnessed at first hand. A possible Japanese connection, however, was a new and different slant. Did Panalquin combine both the mysterious Gallo Mart building and traces of Manoko? Was Wallace the common denominator? Who really was Elizabeth Kerry? In a strange way, like Monse, he was beginning to charge her with the responsibility for prolonging his recently unwanted life. In his head, bits of the scant recalled refrain of ‘The Kerry Dancing’, if that was its right title, blended into the music from the driver’s tape. ‘Gone too soon,’ he murmured out loud.
‘You say something?’
‘Not really. I was listening to your music. Do you understand Portuguese?’
The driver shook his head. ‘My lady friend got me the tape. She likes to dance Latin American style. We go to classes Sunday afternoons.’ He slowed into a roundabout, took the second exit and proceeded downhill.
Larches, interspersed with the occasional silver birch, on either side of the road indicated that they were finally leaving the rawness of industrial Panalquin for the douce confines of the suburb of Massard. Here, spread through this elongated wooded dell, were the dreams made realities of the town’s wealthier citizens.
Their substantial properties lay concealed behind high walls or lengthy fences. Access to them was gained by winding drives shielded by rhododendrons and azaleas. A prevailing mist shrouded their lawns, punctured here and there by the stiff outstretched branches of a monkey-puzzle tree. Gazebo windows, moist with condensation, overlooked mossy steps leading down to sunken gardens, where only the rasping croaks of frogs revealed the presence of ornamental ponds under whose thin carapace of lily pads glided expensive and exotic fish.
Each residence had originally been custom built to its owner’s specifications. Thus Swiss and Austrian style chalets intermingled with sandstone baronial mini-castles, whose towers, in turn, afforded glimpses of vernacular mock-Tudor halls. Neoclassical façades bordered the grounds of low, extensive haciendas. Displaced French Riviera villas adjoined baroque hunting lodges. All of them proclaimed: ‘This is somewhere else in some other time.’
‘You’ve got the celebrated Tree House over there,’ the driver said, pointing to a red gravel driveway, which quickly disappeared from sight. ‘I bet you’ve heard of it.’
‘Yes, I have.’ People always want me to look, Sonny thought. They never tire of things to show me. His suspicion that the driver was following his own idiosyncratic route rather than the fastest way to their destination was being confirmed.
‘It’s still a cause célèbre round here. They never solved it. The police . . . ’
Sonny stopped listening. He had come across the so-called Tree House years before in Yokohama when he was still a fitful student of architectural developments. Initiated by the soon to be disbanded Alsor Partnership, then modified structurally and aesthetically by Louise Vanderenden of Son Quy Associates, it had been erected in 1969. Vanderenden had swept away its original conception as a dialectic of inside and outside, the laboriously concocted trompe l’oeil, the primacy of water and foliage within the walls, the fake garden without, to create a serene open space cradled by curtain walls and personalised by the moving of paper screens. Against her advice, the clients, Mr and Mrs George Balsemeth, had insisted on floodlighting the grounds so that they and their guests might contemplate nocturnal nature whilst remaining invisible within the darkened house. Bit by bit, in order to facilitate their viewing areas, they began to modify the internal design, up to the point where Vanderenden finally declared the structure could no longer be considered as her work. Interviewed by the Maoist tendency magazine, The North Will Also Be Red, she stated, ‘My former clients have elevated the contemplation of an elm tree above the harmonious functioning of the efficient synthesis I provided.’
These arcane and long-forgotten aesthetic skirmishes, of course, as Sonny knew well, were not the reason why the driver had drawn his attention to the property. The cause was much mo
re direct and salacious. The Massard Tree House had been home to a sensational mystery. Sonny had heard about it from work colleagues soon after his arrival in Greenlea. The phrase, ‘like the Massard Bird Woman’, he learnt, was a local way of conveying something intangible and unresolved.
The sordid affair had begun, as so many of them do, with the discovery of a dead body. It had been found in the Balsemeth house, lodged in the bizarre setting of a ripped up car seat, surrounded by cardboard boxes, household rubbish, ferns, branches and twigs, which quickly fed in to the public imagination as a form of nest.
The post-mortem revealed that the deceased was a woman in her early forties who displayed many traits of a sixty-year-old. Severe malnutrition and dehydration were contributory adjuncts to the primary cause of death, namely myocardial infarction.
Throughout the subsequent investigation, the corpse stubbornly remained known as Female X, even though many suggestions and theories proliferated as to her real identity. What was clear was that she was not part of the known fluctuating population of local or regional bag ladies, vagrants or beggars, nor could she be traced back to mental asylums, reception centres, prisons or religious or secular charities dealing with the detritus of modern society.
Frenzied news coverage immediately blazoned sensational headlines across the country: ‘BIRD WOMAN AT MASSARD’, ‘CUCKOO IN THE NEST’, ‘DEATH ROOST’. They boosted circulation and stoked the public appetite for seeing the rich being dragged towards the gutter, their well-manicured fingers stained with the most depraved and sordid acts. Hints of abduction, forcible confinement, torture, perverse sex rituals and recently verified acts of Satanism further titillated the public mood and increasingly pressurised the police.
Overwhelmed by the media hullabaloo, George and Vivienne Balsemeth constantly maintained their utter bewilderment at the extraordinary turn of events that had engulfed them. ‘It is inconceivable that this tragedy could have happened in our house. We were only absent for half a day,’ George was reported as saying.
His wife had concurred. ‘There is no part of the house that goes unsupervised for more than a day. Our West Highlands, Scotty and Leviticus, would have detected the presence of an intruder at once. The poor dears would have been besides themselves.’
The investigators, for their part, attacked the problem diligently and systematically. They grilled the Balsemeths, their prime suspects, separately for hours during repeated periods of custody. They interviewed their relatives, friends and anyone who had floated in their circle of influence. They threw the dirt they had gathered, but all to no avail. At the end of the day, they were unable to tie the enigmatic body either directly to them through physical evidence or to any of their blood relations or the wider grouping of business colleagues, workers or ex-employees. Postmen, utility service men, meter readers, odd-job men, gardeners, door-to-door knockers, anyone who could have had some knowledge of the property were tracked down and their statements filed. Local burglars, plus a raft of general low-lifes, were continuously chivvied. The kites they flew in response to the questioning of sex rings and drug connections proved to be simply fantasies in line with the already well-fuelled rumour mill. Nothing stuck. All was conjecture. The identity of Female X remained an impasse.
Interior Ministry officials discreetly sanctioned approaches to the underworld for help. Minty Wallace, among others, was contacted. The word, however, was final in each case. ‘This isn’t one of ours. You are on your own.’
As the pressure intensified and leaks embarrassed the Ministry, the cops started praying for a suicide they could close the whole thing on, but the Balsemeths were made of stern stuff. Shocked to the core by the invasion of all they held sacrosanct, bent and bloodied by the vile accusations that had been put to them, they nevertheless maintained their indefatigable self-esteem and their undoubted love for one another, no matter what the smear or calumny. Moved by their pained aura of patrician disdain and their visible stoicism, powerful friends and Massard neighbours slowly rallied to their aid muttering, ‘There but for the grace of God, I suppose.’
Eventually, as always, interest waned and the media decamped. Police resources were withdrawn. Several false leads kept emerging in a by now apathetic world. The affair shrank back to purely parochial dimensions; though the file stayed technically open. It provided a useful depository, over the years, for the attention of those who had taken a wrong turn, misjudged advancement or simply failed to read the signs. The Bird Woman and her nest transmuted into apocryphal tales and local jokes through which Sonny had absent-mindedly pieced together the varied threads of wildly disparate accounts.
‘ . . . I remember Cheb Alakhin saying on television, “Some things we just don’t know. From time to time we need an unsolved mystery like the corpse at Massard.”’ The driver, having finished his spiel, gave a satisfied grin and checked his passenger’s reaction in the mirror. ‘We’re nearly there.’
Sonny grunted, feeling certain that he had been taken for a ride. They were out of Massard and approaching the crest of a hill. At its summit, the cab turned left and pulled up.
‘Old Station Yard. This is what you asked for.’
Sonny paid with ill-concealed bad grace, halving his intended tip. A bad beginning, he thought, as he got out, stretched his legs and looked around him. The taxi drove off. A mistaken journey, he repeated to himself. Indeed, the mistake was only too palpable, for nowhere in his field of vision was there a supermarket sign or anything like a Gallo Mart depot. Instead, immediately in front of him were an empty showroom, three boarded-up shop windows and, on the corner, a smallish two-storey building. A tawdry rough cast bungalow guarded by an old-fashioned petrol pump lay to his right, while on his left was a high, blackened yellow brick wall sealing the yard’s boundary. The situation was ridiculous. He had let a woman, who he had never met, entice him to this depressing and completely uninteresting spot purely by his chance interception of her vague hints of mystery and conundrums to be solved. By chance, he paused on the words, thinking back to the virtually deserted office and the timing of the call. Had it really been by chance? As much chance, say, as Chance Company process, which was less haphazard than its users supposed. Harvard Smith—Chance Company—Elizabeth Kerry—Amadeo Cresci Foundation—himself as chance presence or chosen recipient? Still wondering, he walked over to the two-storey building.
Inside the narrow doorway, a metal plate held the typed and handwritten list of inhabitants from top to bottom: A Freer, Fur Importers, Lions Inc, Financial Advisors, Zenia Ropotski, Clairvoyant, the next slot was vacant, Happy Landings Carpets. Tracing the indent of the empty space with his forefinger, Sonny leant forward and pressed the attached buzzer. No one answered. He pressed again and waited. Somewhere above, its rasp disturbed the silence of a place whose threshold he might or might not cross.
He stepped back and studied the grimy and weather-streaked windows in turn. Behind one of them, he envisaged a poky office leading to a dowdy hallway. A worn brown carpet, no doubt provided at a special discount by Happy Landings, covered the floor. Against the wall stood a rickety table holding a kettle and two mugs, one of which Zenia Ropotski delicately raised to her over-lipsticked mouth when she slipped in to pay a social call between client consultations. ‘The fates, my dear,’ she whispered, before letting the mug rim rest briefly against her bottom lip, ‘have ravaged us all.’ Nothing could be seen through the dirty glass. He pressed the buzzer one last time. No answer. The office was most likely empty, denuded of furniture and fittings, or else someone still sat or stood there, someone of unknown name and gender, someone who had lost the inclination to advertise their presence or answer the irrelevant pressing of a buzzer.
Sonny moved away. He had no desire to try the others. Across the yard, the petrol pump, on closer inspection, proved to be disused. The bungalow awaited demolition. Keep out skull and crossbones signs were nailed to its door and windows. It was time to leave and cut his losses. There was nothing here that fitted with El
izabeth Kerry’s message. He was tempted to crumple up the sheets of paper and throw them away. His hand slid towards his pocket ‘C’est du cinéma!’ He repeated Mado’s contemptuous phrase, but then what would life be worth without those moments in the dark when our eyes were fixed on the absurdly blown-up image of things we normally would not see? He dropped his hand. The message stayed where it was, then, after one last look, he rejoined the pavement outside the yard entrance to find a bus to take him back to Panalquin quayside.
However, he had not gone thirty paces before his progress was blocked by two women and a man, who was clasping a large terracotta jardinière to his chest. Sidestepping out of their way, Sonny caught a glimpse of an opening leading to a patch of waste ground, and what looked like a temporary car park lined with makeshift stalls. The space, he realised, lay immediately to the rear of the building in Old Station Yard. Four giggling young women coming towards him looked him up and down and turned into the entrance. He tagged along behind.
The stalls dealt either in plants or garden accoutrements. He quickly passed those with pot plants and packets of seeds and headed to those up against the back of the building that he had half-heartedly sought to enter. The windows on this side were small and barred. One at the top bore the inscription: Lions Inc. The rest were frosted.
Business in the corner was concentrated on the sale of jardinières of different sizes and pieces of ornamental sculpture, ranging from cats, dogs, turtles and one startled fawn, to truncated classical columns chiselled with acanthus leaves. As none of these items interested him and none of the windows afforded a view into their interiors, he was about to leave when, at the far side of the car park, he spied the familiar black and red striped colours of Sunrise Tea & Coffee being lowered on an awning above a white wagon. The attendant slid the pole out of the ring and disappeared round the side. With a sense of routine resumed, Sonny left the shadows he had been chasing for the certainty of an espresso.