by Peter Temple
I went back to Hayes amp; Cherry. Malcolm introduced me to James, a fair-haired teenager so clean and so dapper that he appeared to be genetically destined to sell aids to cleanliness and grooming.
‘Tall,’ he said. ‘And thin. Wearing a beanie and dark glasses.’
‘Beard? Moustache?’
‘Moustache, quite a big moustache. Dark.’
I said to Malcolm, ‘You said the driver had a beard, didn’t you?’
‘The one on the other days did. On Thursday, I didn’t get a good look at him. I was too enraged at the sight of the other one coming out of the vehicle.’
‘Moustache, definitely,’ said James. ‘Not a beard. He had a weak chin. It sloped back.’
‘How old?’
‘Thirty, perhaps a bit older.’
In the car, driving back to the Carsons’, I said to Orlovsky, ‘We may have to rethink this. They may have smart technology but these people are not A-list kidnappers, they would be lucky to get onto any list. Not without expanding the alphabet.’
‘Is that good or bad?’
‘Bad, very bad. The stupid are capable of anything.’
‘Unlike the clever, who are generally capable of nothing.’
‘Nothing this clumsy,’ I said.
‘On the other hand,’ Orlovsky said, ‘they may not be stupid. Perhaps they just don’t care very much.’
I didn’t want to hear that. I said, ‘Don’t say that. Not caring is much worse than stupid.’
The Express Post envelope arrived just after 10 a.m. the next morning, addressed to Tom Carson. The writing had been done with a ruler and the sender was a B. Ellis, who lived at 11 Cromie Street, North Melbourne.
There was nothing in the envelope except a Smartie box, a cheerful package, aglow with the colours of the sweet flat beans.
But it didn’t contain chocolate pills. It contained something wrapped in aluminium foil.
Two joints of a little finger, clean, odourless, fresh as chicken from the best butcher in Toorak.
14
Leaning forward, elbows on the desk, chin in his hands, Pat Carson looked gaunt, shrunken, every minute of his age. He was breathing deeply but he seemed to sigh out more air than he took in.
With me in the study were Noyce and Orlovsky and Stephanie Chadwick. Noyce was clasping and unclasping his hands, swallowing a lot.
‘I’ve told Tom and Barry,’ he said. ‘They called Tom out of a meeting with the institutions.’
I looked at him. ‘Institutions?’
‘The big investors, super funds, that kind of thing. For the float. To sell the CarsonCorp float.’
Orlovsky was in his trance again, unwavering gaze on Pat Carson’s courtyard garden.
‘It’s the police now,’ said Pat Carson. ‘You were right, Frank. Should’ve bloody listened. Pigheadedness’s done a lot for this family, startin from the top.’
Noyce nodded rapidly. ‘I think that’s the course of action to follow, yes,’ he said. ‘We had no way of knowing this sort of thing would happen. And we let Alice’s kidnapping weigh too heavily on us.’ He looked at pale Stephanie, who was sitting near her grandfather. He coughed. ‘I’ll speak directly to the Chief Commissioner. Ensure they pull out all the stops.’
I didn’t say anything. I was scared about what I had to say, ashamed that my instinct was to go far away, and so I was thinking about waking in the Garden House, showering in the huge slate-floored shower room, putting on the towelling dressing gown, thick and soft and smelling faintly of cinnamon. Thinking about the three newspapers on the table in the hall and how somehow the kitchen knew you were up and breakfast came under cover on a trolley pushed by a kitchen hand in white: today, fresh orange juice in a tall, cold glass beaker, cereals, creamy scrambled eggs and thick-sliced smoked ham with grilled tomato. The server made sourdough toast in the kitchen.
‘The butter’s from Normandy,’ he’d said. ‘It’s very good.’ He went away and came back with coffee in a stainless-steel vacuum flask.
Orlovsky had come to the table wearing only his own towel, a sad threadbare thing, drank a glass of water and made himself a grilled tomato sandwich. ‘It starts with food,’ he said darkly.
‘And ends as food,’ I’d said, having no idea what he meant. ‘Live a little.’
‘Frank?’ Pat was eyeing me. ‘When Graham’s talked to this fella whoever he is, you deal with the cops on behalf of the family. Okay? No offence, Graham, Frank knows the set-up, knows how the buggers work.’
‘Fine,’ said Noyce, nodding vigorously, not happy, ‘that’s fine, that’s a good way to do it. Right, Frank? No time to lose either.’ He started to rise.
‘If that’s what you want to do,’ I said.
Orlovsky came out of his state, turned his cropped head slowly. Noyce sat down.
‘That’s what we should do, not so?’ Pat Carson said. He was on to me, his chin was out of his hands, up, his head tilted, twenty years off his age.
I tried to work out the best way to do this, to be truthful and to escape. I couldn’t. ‘It’s your decision,’ I said.
Noyce said, ‘On Saturday evening, you said…’
Time to say it.
‘And on Thursday and on Friday,’ I said. ‘Today’s Monday, Graham.’
‘Don’t understand,’ said Pat, eyes crinkled. ‘What’s all this? We shoulda done it, we didn’t, now we do it.’
‘It’s too late,’ I said.
Orlovsky was studying me like some strange object in a gallery, a curious piece of sculpture perhaps, judgment held in check only by fear of not quite getting the point.
Pat sat back, put his hands on the desk, spread the fingers on the silken mahogany, lowered his chin. I hadn’t done him any good. In his eyes and his hands and his shoulders and his chin, you could see the resentment. I heard the round snick into the breech, waited for the bullet, wanted the bullet.
Stephanie leaned across and put her left hand on her grandfather’s right hand, kept it there.
Sack me. I willed him to say the words. I wanted to be away from this grand house, back in my own life, such as it was.
Anne Carson’s face in the Portsea photograph came into my mind. The schoolgirl screwed by her driver. The girl who opened the holiday house gate for grown men, drunk men with breath as pungent as woodsmoke. The girl in the back of the yellow van with the cocky locksmith.
There was something in her face, something in the eyes, the look of a child wanting praise, wary of displeasure.
A girl with only a stub for a little finger. It would be bandaged now. By what crude hands? Perhaps they had given her a painkiller. Perhaps they had given her a shot of something before. Before and later. Heroin was as easy to buy as aspirin, easier in some places, an excellent painkiller. And they could keep doing that, she’d do a bit of projectile vomiting, then she’d be relaxed, she wouldn’t feel too bad about the whole thing.
‘Tell me, Frank, tell me.’ Pat Carson’s voice was soft. He was still sitting back, chin almost touching his chest, shaggy eyebrows raised.
The old man didn’t want to fire me. He wanted me to tell him what to do. He didn’t know that I didn’t want the responsibility, that I was scared of having it, that the idea of telling this family what was best for the safety of the girl made me feel sick at the stomach. To carry the bag for them was one thing. I was just an expensive courier. But to shoulder the weight of a girl’s life, a girl lying somewhere, probably in the dark, terrified, in pain…
‘They’ve had her for more than seventy-two hours,’ I said. ‘Keeping someone hidden, it doesn’t get easier. These people are sweating, they’re under the gun. And they’ve lifted the stakes, they’re trying to pump us up to something. It’s too late for the cops.’
Pat was moving his jaw. He still wasn’t sure what I was saying.
‘They told you not to bring in the police and you didn’t,’ I said. ‘If you had, the newspapers, television, the radio, they’d have co-operated with the cops for a whi
le. Media blackout. But the media won’t keep quiet for long. Seventy-two hours, that’s about it. Then it’s just a question of who goes first. I’m assuming that the kidnappers know this, that they’ve read about other kidnappings.’ I paused. ‘In particular, about your other kidnapping. They may be those kidnappers. I doubt it very much, but it’s possible.’
I looked at Orlovsky. He was interested in his hands. I looked at Noyce. He’d got the point, didn’t necessarily agree with it. So had Stephanie, who recrossed her legs at the ankles and bit her lower lip. She looked like someone who slept badly, never felt rested, feared the small hours. I knew that feeling.
‘Mr Carson,’ I said. ‘My fear is that the police won’t even get a ten-minute media blackout now. It’s too long after the event. And the force leaks. Too many people are involved. You can’t keep it secret. That’s why they have to go to the media and beg them not to print stories like this.’
‘Yes? That means?’
‘It means the kidnappers will assume that you went to the police straight away and the police arranged a media blackout. On Thursday. That you disobeyed instructions from the start. Like Alice again, Mr Carson.’
Noyce held up a hand, like a schoolboy in class. ‘Mr Carson,’ he said, a pressing tone of voice, ‘I think we need to talk to Tom about this.’
Pat looked up, looking at me not at Noyce. He blew out breath, a sad sound, half sigh, half whistle. He leaned forward, put his forehead on his clasped hands, closed his eyes.
We sat there, not looking at one another, for a long time. Finally, Pat spoke, voice barely audible.
‘In your hands, Frank. We’re in your hands.’
Hands.
Without thought, dread making a ball rise in my stomach, press against the solar plexus, I looked at my hands lying between my thighs, palms upward. My mother’s voice was in my head, the sharp intonation, the pauses:
We will fall into the hands of the Lord, and not into the hands of men. For as his majesty is, so is his mercy.
I didn’t have the hands for this kind of thing anymore, not the hands, not the heart. The ability to take responsibility for the lives of others had gone from me in a few horrible moments, left my being and floated away. I hadn’t known that then. Learning it took time. Much too much time.
Weak at heart, I said, ‘I want to talk to the girl’s mother. And to take the calls from now on. I want them diverted to me.’
That done, that leaden step taken, Orlovsky and I walked back to the Garden House in silence. Inside, hands in pockets, he stood looking out at the garden, patches of sunlight falling on it, drifting like memories, not warming anything.
‘I know the money’s nice,’ he said, ‘but are you out of your fucking skull?’
I was sitting in an armchair, an armchair stuffed with horsehair, firm. ‘I didn’t walk when I should have,’ I said. ‘I wanted the money. They call the cops now, it’s on the radio this afternoon, TV tonight. She’s dead. Dead today. I had to tell them that.’
Silence. He didn’t look at me. The phone beside me rang.
‘Calder.’
‘What’s this crap about talking to Christine? Whose idea is this?’
Tom Carson, gruff voice.
I waited a few seconds. ‘You don’t want me to? That’s fine with me. I’m happy to take leave of the Carsons now. This second.’
Tom’s turn to pause. Then he said, no change in tone, ‘What I’m saying is, isn’t there anything more useful you could be doing?’
Orlovsky was looking at me, a little cock of the stubbled head.
‘In these matters,’ I said, ‘what’s useful is pretty much a matter of judgment, usually retrospective judgment. I’d be pleased to leave the judgment to you. And to give you a partial refund.’
Another pause, just a second, then Tom said, ‘You sound like a lawyer. Except for the refund. Tell Noyce to arrange the chopper.’
15
The helicopter landed on an expanse of mown grass a hundred metres from the complex of modern buildings. Its rotors blew away grass cuttings in all directions, a violent cuttings storm that caused the two people waiting to turn their backs and put their hands to their faces.
I waited until the noise stopped and the blades stopped before I got out, walked out from under the drooping swords and shook hands with the tall middle-aged woman and the younger and shorter man. She was wearing a white polo-neck shirt and black pants. He was in a dark suit, white shirt, striped tie.
‘We haven’t seen anyone from the family for quite a while,’ the woman said. She was English, could talk while exposing horse teeth and pink gums.
The man looked at her, their eyes met. ‘No criticism intended, of course,’ she said. ‘We understand how busy people are these days.’
I didn’t say anything, nodded at them.
The man smiled at me like a doorman at a five-star hotel. ‘We absolutely do,’ he said. ‘Do understand. Now Mrs Carson’s not in a terribly receptive mood, Mr Calder. Her doctor will give you a full briefing.’
‘Is she violent?’
The man was taken aback, tilted his head, raised his eyebrows, little downturning of the mouth. ‘Well, she can be that way inclined. It’s the price one pays. A trade-off. The alternative…’ He let the alternative hang, float off.
‘Forget about the briefing,’ I said.
‘It would be advisable, Mr Calder.’ A serious tone.
‘No. I don’t have the time.’ There wasn’t any pleasure in working for the Carsons unless you could behave like one.
They looked at each other, assigning responsibility.
‘You’ll have someone with you,’ the man said. ‘That is our policy.’
We walked across to the building, down a wide verandah with groups of plastic outdoor furniture, through a glass door into a reception area done in pastel colours with chrome and grey commercial chairs. It was empty, no one behind the counter.
‘Quiet around here,’ I said.
‘Generally, visits are by appointment,’ the woman said. I wasn’t looking at her but, at the edge of my vision, I saw the wet teeth and gums. She went to the counter and picked up a handset, said a few words.
We went down corridors lit by slit windows, passed doors with numbers, went through a gravelled courtyard with a square of grass and a drought-stricken birdbath, and came to a door at a dead end.
A woman in her twenties was waiting for us in front of the door, facing us, another short woman wearing the same white polo-neck and black jacket and pants uniform. Jaggedly cut hair, a home job, dyed blonde, dark roots, no neck to speak of. Martial arts said the balanced stance, the level shoulders, the loose arms. The cockiness.
‘This is Jude,’ the man said. ‘She’ll be with you while you talk to Mrs Carson.’
Jude moved her lips, some attempt at communication.
The man opened the door with a key. Jude went in first. Then her handler. I followed him in. It was a small square room, lit from a skylight. There was a door in the far wall and beside it a low window, one pane of thick security glass. In the wall beneath the window was a stainless-steel drawer front. A chrome and grey chair stood in front of it.
‘With other patients, we would ask you to visit from this room,’ the man said. ‘However, Mrs Carson won’t come near the window.’ He flicked a switch beside the window and a monitor above the door lit up.
It showed a grey view of a room, rectangular items of furniture, a figure slumped on one of them.
‘Your visitor’s here, Mrs Carson,’ the man said.
The woman didn’t respond. He unlocked the door and opened it. Jude went in first. The man ushered me in after her, closed the door behind us.
‘A visitor, Christine,’ said Jude.
Christine Carson was lolling on her spine in a chair carved from a cube of dense grey foam rubber, no cover on it. There were three more foam chairs in the room. That was it. No other furnishings, no pictures. A television set was behind security glass in the wall t
o my right, controlled by big soft rubber buttons below it. To my left was another room reached through an archway. I could see the end of a low grey foam rectangle, presumably a bed. Light came through slit windows, panes of security glass set in the masonry, behind Christine.
‘Don’t call me Christine,’ said Christine. ‘You’ve never been asked to, never will be.’ She looked at me. ‘I don’t know you. Have you been sent to kill me?’
She was about forty, thin, big eyes in a long face made longer by close-cropped hair. She was wearing a shift of some stretch fabric, high neck, long sleeves, only her bare feet showing. I couldn’t see Anne in her.
‘No, not to kill you, Mrs Carson,’ I said. ‘I gather that’s a job you’d rather do yourself.’
She looked at me for a while, cold grey eyes, a few shades lighter than the furniture, straightened up in her chair. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘you don’t pussyfoot around, do you? Get this bitch out of here and we can fuck. Or she can stay and watch.’
‘Christine, don’t-’ said Jude sternly.
‘Shut up, I won’t have servants speak to me in that tone. What’s your name?’ Christine was looking at me.
‘Frank Calder.’
Christine stood up. She was tall. ‘Well, Frank Calder,’ she said. ‘You look like a man who’s seen a bit of the world.’ In one movement, she put her hands to her garment and pulled it over her head, threw it at Jude, stood there naked, pelvis thrust forward, smiling.
I didn’t look away. There were scars on her wrists, her stomach, on one of her breasts, on her neck. She’d inflicted a lot of pain on herself.
‘Mrs Carson,’ I said, ‘this is entertaining but I’m here to ask you a serious question. Do you know of anyone who would kidnap your daughter Anne?’