Silk Chaser

by Peter Klein

  After collecting my winnings, I dropped in at the café and caught up with the gang over afternoon tea. Myles Perry was walking back from the bar with my brother and Dianne, carrying a tray of drinks. Tiny and Louise were there with Ric, Matt and Thommo. Looked like a full house today. I grabbed a pot of tea and some sandwiches and joined them.

  ‘Jesus, you can’t stay outta the news, can you?’ said Tiny. ‘That was you, wasn’t it, the “friend” who saved Maxine?’ He nodded at my hand. ‘Looks like you’ve seen a bit of action, too.’

  I raised my eyebrows at Tiny. I still had a bandage running over the palm of my right hand. I suppose I could claim the wound as a surfing injury, but I doubt I’d fool Tiny. The others stopped talking immediately, waiting expectantly to hear my version of what had happened.

  ‘That must have been scary shit,’ said Matt. ‘I don’t know what I would have done if I walked in on something like that.’

  ‘Will you shut up and let him tell us what happened?’ said Ric.

  ‘Well, firstly,’ I said, ‘Maxine’s okay. She got off virtually without a scratch. But if I hadn’t come back and surprised him when I did . . .’ I let the obvious outcome trail off.

  ‘I can’t believe it,’ said Louise. ‘It’s like a horror movie. Maxine . . . both of you are just so lucky to have survived. Is she here today?’

  ‘No, she only goes to the track if she’s strapping one of her father’s horses or on Oaks Day.’

  ‘Did ya get a look at the bastard?’ said Tiny. ‘I saw his mug shot in the papers.’

  ‘That was all Maxine’s description. I really didn’t get a good look at him. Just walked back into her apartment and he jumped me and ran off.’

  ‘Wish I’d been there,’ said Tiny, glaring longingly into space. ‘I’d have given my eye teeth to have walked in there with old trusty.’

  ‘His favourite shotgun,’ explained Louise sweetly to the rest of us.

  ‘Be no need for a manhunt or a costly court trial, I can guarantee that,’ said Tiny.

  ‘That photo they’re showing pull any leads?’ asked Thommo.

  ‘Zilch so far. The problem is, it looks too constructed. Too much of somebody and a little bit of nobody. But it’s the best likeness Maxine and the police artist could come up with.’

  ‘Do you think you’d recognise him if you ever saw him again?’ said Matt.

  ‘Christ,’ said Ric, ‘didn’t he just say he never saw the guy properly? You sound like a cop making out he should know more.’

  ‘Well, I don’t know. Maybe he saw what the guy was wearing or remembers something about him that he couldn’t think of then. Happens all the time on TV. Sometimes they even hypnotise them and they get flashbacks and remember vital clues and stuff.’

  ‘Have a listen to yourself, will yer? You’re a fucking idiot.’

  ‘Well, it makes sense; think about it.’

  I broke up the Punch and Judy act and shook my head. ‘No. Like I said, he jumped me and bolted. It was all over in a few seconds. He slammed the door on me as I walked in. I was seeing stars after that.’

  ‘Wow, that’s heavy,’ said Myles. ‘But the way the papers had been talking about Kagan Hall, you’d reckon he was a certainty for the wrap. That dead girl they found in England; and then he goes and tops himself. All looked like the chase was up.’

  ‘I’m with you,’ said David, ‘he had us all fooled. Do you know they’re stepping up security again?’

  ‘Didn’t seem to do much good last time,’ said Louise. ‘Those big goons patrolling all around the mounting yard. They can’t possibly protect every single female strapper. It’s just for show.’

  ‘I can tell you for a fact they’ve changed their game plan,’ said David, lowering his voice knowingly.

  ‘Yeah, how?’ said Louise.

  ‘The cops have got a policewoman workin’ undercover as a strapper. They’ve got her planted with one of Dad’s horses.’ David looked pleased with himself for being the purveyor of prized information. He can be a bit too free with his knowledge sometimes and I didn’t think he should be spruiking it around where someone might overhear us at the bar. I wished he’d kept his trap shut and tried to catch his eye, but Louise was all over him by now, demanding to know the details.

  ‘Gee, that’s real detective stuff, isn’t it? Like, using her as a decoy and then the cops are waiting for him.’

  David finally caught the look I’d been giving him.

  ‘What?’ he said innocently.

  ‘What David was going to add,’ I said, ‘is that what he just told you stays right here. Wouldn’t do to spread that around the track.’

  ‘No, course not,’ said Tiny. ‘We all know each other well enough to keep our mouths shut. Ain’t that right?’ Tiny eyeballed everyone in the gang and they all seemed compelled to mutter various sounds of agreement. Most people agreed with Tiny when he asked them to.

  Maxine had called me earlier in the day and said she was staying up at Yarra Glen for the weekend at some five-star winery and resort. Freedales had a corporate planning session on and she’d been invited to participate. She asked if I wanted to come up and stay; said I could chill out during the day and we could catch up at night. I could just see myself getting white-line fever in my hotel room on Saturday away from the races. And I could almost guarantee that Saturday night would involve dinner with Rodney Ellis, QC and a table full of those terribly clever senior partners who would bore me shitless. Thanks, but no thanks. I’d declined. The working weekend would probably be good for her, though, I thought. Take her mind off what had happened and keep her occupied. After all, Maxine did like to be busy.

  On Saturday night I rang Billco. His son answered the phone and told me he was up in Byron Bay at an art show displaying some of his work. He wouldn’t be home for another five days; was it urgent? No, nothing that couldn’t wait. I said I’d catch up with him when he got back.

  On Monday morning after I read the papers, I looked at myself in the mirror and decided I was in need of some serious maintenance. Che thought so too. He’d followed me into the bathroom and jumped up onto the bath where he watched me studying my face. I hadn’t shaved since Saturday morning and it felt like I was sporting a week’s growth.

  ‘What do you think, little fella, I’m a bit overdue, aren’t I?’

  Che licked his paws as if the answer was obvious.

  ‘And while I’m at, when was the last time I had a haircut? Be at least a month.’

  Che begged to differ, thought it was longer. Chirped at me for my puzzling big cat behaviour.

  ‘I know, strange creatures, we humans. But I’m off to Terry’s for a makeover. Can you mind the office while I’m gone?’

  Terry was perched on a stool reading the formguide when I walked into his shop. He had the paper spread over the glass counter which haphazardly housed all his smoking and hair products. I don’t think Terry would ever be a candidate to make a David Jones window dresser. It was doubtful that the collection of jars and packages in that cabinet had ever been rearranged in the fifteen years I’d known him. A tin of Zippo lighter fluid had been knocked over at the front of the shelf; too fiddly to reach in and stand it up on its end, I suppose. It lay there gathering dust alongside jars of Brylcreem. What cigarette lighter fuel and hair cream had in common I could never work out, but Terry obviously thought there was synergy in displaying them all together. He had cigarettes and pipes and pipe cleaners and cut-throat razors thrown in for good measure. They were all in that cabinet along with unpronounceable Greek shaving creams and tonics which guaranteed to grow your hair back within thirty days.

  ‘Punter,’ he greeted me with a smile, ‘I’m glad you come. I bin trying to work out who gonna win the seventh at Terang. Is not easy, you know. So many runners.’

  Gotta love the way Terry does business. He’s glad to see me, but not for a haircut. No, perish the thought I might put money in his pocket for the service he claims to provide. He’d rather talk about finding
a winner at Terang. Terang, for Christ sake.

  ‘Terry, Monday meetings at Terang aren’t what you call very good betting mediums.’

  ‘They not?’

  ‘Bit risky, really. Not the sort of horses who graduate to running at Flemington on a Saturday.’

  He looked disappointed with my assessment, but wasn’t going to give it up so easily. ‘Because I bin following this horse, you see. Him was unlucky last start. He shoulda won . . .’

  ‘Terry, can you fit me in for a cut?’ I ran a hand over my chin. ‘I might get a shave, too, if you have time.’ Bit brutal the butting in, but if you don’t cut to the chase with Terry, it’s lunchtime by the time he’s even got you seated in the chair.

  I knew he was a dinosaur, but no one gave a better shave with a cut-throat razor than Terry. They don’t teach the apprentices how to do it now and I think there’s only a handful of old Greek and Italian barbers like Terry who know how to give a proper shave. He put a hot hand towel over my face and let it steam away while he got his shaving gear ready.

  ‘Hey,’ he said, ‘is bad business this strapper killer. He still on the loose. Everybody think they catch him, the other fella. You know, the one that jump offa the bridge.’

  ‘Kagan Hall.’

  ‘That’s him. He kill strapper girl in England and everyone think he must have killed girls here too.’

  ‘I think everyone was wrong about that.’

  Terry took the hot towel off and lathered me up in something that reeked of lanolin. He looked me over from left to right, then deciding I didn’t have enough on, gave me a second layer.

  ‘Is gooda stuff,’ he said by way of explanation, ‘is better when it’s more.’

  He kicked the pedal beneath the barber’s chair and laid me back at an angle. I couldn’t see the mirror, was forced to gaze upwards at the years of smoke which had stained the ceiling a dirty mustard yellow. I can remember when Terry used to actually smoke while he cut your hair. Thank god he doesn’t do that anymore, but the evidence still remains. Terry scraped away precisely and delicately. This way and that, following the contours of my chin. He pinched my nose to get into the tricky bits under my nostrils. Pulled and stretched at my cheek to make sure he hadn’t missed anything. Then he towelled my face dry and lathered me up again. He always did you twice over. It didn’t matter if you were happy with his first cut. It was just Terry’s way of giving you a close shave. When he’d finished with the shaving, he kicked the pedal and tilted my seat back to a sitting position.

  ‘Is gooda shave?’ he asked.

  ‘As always, Terry.’

  ‘Good, I start on your hair then. I give you wash first.’

  Terry started fussing around the basin getting his gear ready and I inspected my chin in the mirror. No nicks or cuts and my skin still tingled with the luxury of a cut-throat razor shave. A guy came in and Terry excused himself. My eyes followed him lazily from the mirror as he went across to the counter and served the customer. I relaxed in Terry’s old-fashioned barber’s chair and took in the back wall of his shop. His old racing photos were there as always. There was Fright, whose red, white and blue colours I easily identified as my father’s. I recognised another of Terry’s favourites, a horse called Precise in bright orange and black checked colours. Then I sat bolt upright at what I saw.

  When Terry had finished serving, he came back surprised to find me staring at his photos with the barber’s gown draped around my feet like an altar boy.

  ‘Oh, let me tell you about them horses,’ he said. ‘Fright, now she was the best. Your old man used to train her, you know? One day, he say to me . . .’

  I cut him short. ‘Terry, I know all about Fright.’

  I pointed to an ageing photo a little smaller than the others mounted to the side of the collection. I’d never heard of the horse; some forgettable hack that had won a maiden race years ago. But I knew the trainer and I’d seen the colours before.

  ‘I want to know about this one. The one with the red horizontal bands on the white vest and sleeves.’

  18

  ‘This horse?’ Terry said in disbelief. ‘Him not much good.

  Win a bush maiden is all he do.’

  ‘May I?’ I said, taking the photo off the wall.

  Terry shrugged, still mystified as to why I’d want to look at a photo of some rocking horse when he could be taking me through Fright’s glittering career. I placed the photo on the arm of the barber’s chair where we could see it better in the light. The photo was a shot of a horse called Think I Can passing the winning post in a race way back in 1966. It had an old Gothic-style italic font proudly describing the occasion. The horse’s breeding and the trainer were listed, as were the owners and the winning jockey.

  ‘Chas Bannon trained the horse for you?’

  ‘Yeah. It musta bin the second horse I ever had. Chas used to come in for a haircut and I got talking to him and next thing I ended up in a horse with him. Old Chas, he still drops by now and then. But he no have much hair these days. No getta cut as much as he used to.’

  ‘I know Chas. He’s a marvel; still training from a wheelchair. Tell me, who else was in it?’

  Terry picked up the photo carefully and wiped it over with a hand towel from the basin. The writing was fading badly, but you could still make out the owners’ names: C Bannon, T Papadopoulis, C Whittle.

  ‘Chas kept a share himself. I had a quarter and Col Whittle and his wife had the other half.’

  ‘The jockey colours, whose were they?’

  Terry scratched his head, thinking about it. ‘They not mine,’ he said, nodding back to the wall where the other photos were. ‘I never had my own colours. And when Fright come along, I always used your father’s. They must be Chas’ colours or belong to the Whittles.’

  ‘Were the Whittles friends of yours?’

  Terry shook his head while studying the photo in his hands. ‘No. They were clients of Chas. He just put us together when the horse became available.’

  ‘Did you race any other horses with them?’

  ‘No, only this slowpoke. We got rid of it shortly after it won. Chas found a buyer up in Queensland and we sold it. It never won another race.’

  ‘Do they still race horses?’

  ‘The Whittles? I haven’t seen them for must be over thirty years. Maybe Chas know where they are.’

  ‘You mind if I borrow this photo, Terry? I’ll take good care of it, I promise.’

  ‘Sure, but hey, where you going? You don’t wanta I finish cutting your hair?’

  I’d pulled the barber’s gown over my head and draped it on the back of the chair.

  ‘Might give it a miss today. Got a trainer I need to see.’

  Chas Bannon’s stables were like a little oasis in the middle of a suburban desert. He had a house and a dozen stables out in the back of his yard down in a side street across from the track. There seemed to be stables in the back of every second house when I was a kid growing up at Caulfield. But then people realised they could build townhouses on their blocks and get a better return rather than renting out stables to battling trainers. Chas’ stables were one of the few remaining which hadn’t been bulldozed down. He’d bought the place back in the fifties and once you entered through his ivy-covered gate, it was like stepping into a neat little barnyard. A couple of chooks pecked about happily on a flowerbed to the side of the driveway. He had a goat tied to a fence outside the stables, a scruffy brown thing which was down on its knees chewing contentedly at a patch of grass it could just reach at the end of its tether. Chas always kept a goat at his stables. Swore they calmed down fractious horses. Sometimes he even let them share a box with a racehorse if he thought the horse was fretting too much. I reckon the goat always got the better deal. It ate half the straw bedding and most of the lucerne hay net which was meant for the thoroughbred.

  Old Chas was sitting in his wheelchair on the porch, dozing in the sun. He was surrounded by a menagerie of cats and dogs sharing a kip o
n the couch next to him. Three of the dogs, little Jack Russell terriers, sprang to life when they heard me walking up. They jumped down protectively from the verandah and started yipping away at me and their barking woke up Chas.

  He put a hand to his brow and squinted to see who it was. ‘Oh, it’s you, Punter.’

  ‘Hi Chas. Sorry to interrupt.’

  ‘You’re not stoppin’ me doin’ anything important. Come up and join me, I was just having my lunchtime nap.’

  I stepped up onto the porch and sat down on one of the weathered cane chairs next to him.

  ‘You could be miles away in the country here, couldn’t you?’ I said. ‘Reminds me of a farmyard when you walk in and see all the animals.’

  Chas smiled contentedly. ‘I know. I love it and so do the horses. Those idiots over there,’ he said, waving a dismissive hand at the racecourse, ‘would like nothing better than to sell me up and see me pensioned off with half a dozen boxes on the course. But I own this place and I’ll train here till they cart me out in a box. And that won’t be any time soon, touch wood. Now then, son,’ he said, eying Terry’s photograph which I had tucked under my arm, ‘what can I do for you?’

  I showed Chas the photo and he put on his glasses to inspect it. A hint of a smile broke over the old man’s face as his mind trawled back through the years. ‘Think I Can. Gee, that’s going back awhiles. Where on earth did you dig this up from?’