Silk Chaser

by Peter Klein

  ‘The police drawing? Bullshit. That stupid thing in the paper didn’t look anything like me.’

  ‘No, not that one. I got an artist friend of mine to sketch another one up for Maxine.’

  Matt turned around and started lathering up his hands again. Obsessive compulsive; carefully and methodically rubbing the liquid soap into his palms and through his fingers.

  ‘You know, that doesn’t surprise me, you doing that. Getting your artist friend involved. Sticking your fucking beak in where it’s not wanted. You must have been snooping around Chas Bannon’s to find out about me.’

  His eyes were fixed on mine like magnets now, glued to me from the back of the mirror. Following me around just like they had in Billco’s sketch. They’d turned into narrow, angry slits. I could see the anger and hear it in his voice. I stood watching him warily, keeping my distance and blocking the door. It was amazing to see the true Matt emerge from his disguise, like a clever actor discarding his costume. He’d fooled a lot of people, me included, for a long time. All that joviality; the cheerful personality. Good old easygoing Matt. It was all just a facade.

  ‘I didn’t recognise you at first,’ I said. ‘But the new sketch caught your eyes. I knew I’d seen you somewhere, but I only recognised you when I walked in and saw your face in the mirror.’

  He rinsed the soap off his hands as carefully as he’d lathered them up. Watered off the inside of his palms, then made sure the backs of his hands and fingers were thoroughly done. Some ritual. Then he shrugged and made a face of resignation at me from the mirror? ‘I suppose it’s all over then, isn’t it?’

  I nodded. ‘It’s over, Matt,’

  ‘What do you suggest we do now, then?’ he said.

  I pulled out my mobile, watching Matt cautiously as I called up a name. The phone picked up and Beering’s voice greeted me.

  ‘It’s Punter. I’m with the strapper killer in the members’ toilets at the back of the Manikato restaurant.’

  A stunned silence for about half a second. Then, ‘You’re what?’

  ‘You better get here. Like, now.’

  ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘We’re just fine.’

  ‘Don’t move! I’ll be there straightaway.’

  I snapped the mobile shut. Hadn’t taken my eyes off Matt the whole time I’d been talking to Beering.

  ‘They’re coming to get me, then?’ he said. Pattered on as if I’d just called him a cab. Seemed to accept the situation. Perhaps he was glad the game was up.

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘It’s probably best that way,’ he said. He held his still dripping hands awkwardly up in front of him like he didn’t quite know what to do with them, and motioned with his chin to the basket of hand towels by the vase.

  ‘Would you mind passing one over?’

  I should have seen it coming from a mile off. I only glanced to where he was looking for a second, but that was all he needed. He charged at me like a runaway horse, except runaway horses don’t carry knives. This one did, a menacing glint of steel with my name written on the blade. He ran at me like he was possessed. I was already hard against the door and slammed back into it, managing to get in one decent drop kick against his stomach. I succeeded in shoving him away, but only for a moment, then he came for me again in a swearing, slashing frenzy.

  ‘I should have done a proper job on you the first time,’ he growled at me.

  I groped desperately for anything I could use as a weapon. Grabbed at a bunch of the hand towels which I instinctively wrapped around my left fist. Matt laughed cruelly at my futile effort to arm myself. He brought his knife up slowly in front of him, teasing me with its point, and slowly advanced. I held my left hand out like some sort of shield. It was a poor substitute, but it wasn’t all I had to defend myself with. I reached down with my free hand and unbuckled my belt, ripped it out of its keepers. That drew another laugh from him. I flicked the length of the belt at his face like a stockwhip and he respectfully took a half step back as the heavy buckle hissed past just short of his face. It wouldn’t really stop him, but at least it gave him something to watch out for.

  ‘Come on then, you weak prick,’ I said. ‘Bit harder this, isn’t it, than creeping into some sleeping girl’s bedroom.’

  He didn’t like that. A flaring of the nostrils and a narrowing of those angry slits. Billco really had captured those eyes.

  ‘Well, it’s true, isn’t it?’ I taunted. Nothing to lose and it just might buy me some time. Time for Beering to come. If he ever came.

  ‘Up against a bloke your own size now. Big difference, isn’t there?’

  I flicked another roll of the belt at him, put some power into it, and he winced slightly as the buckle barked against his knuckles.

  Behind him, a door opened and some punter walked in. I’d forgotten that the toilet had two doors, the far door leading through to another section in the members’ betting area. The guy freaked out when he saw us. Matt with the knife and me fending him off like some gladiator with my towelled-up hand and the belt. He ran out the way he’d come in, shouting for police at the top of his voice. Matt picked up the plastic canister of hand wash from the basin and threw it at me. I blocked it easily with my fist but it glanced off and hit me in the forehead, disgorging its soapy liquid into my eyes. Then I heard the crash of the door flung back on its hinges as Matt bolted.

  I took off after him, wiping my eyes with the sleeve of my jacket as I ran. Bloody soap stung like crazy and my eyes were watering like a sprinkler. I heard a shout off to one side but didn’t stop to find out, just sprinted after Matt as I saw him disappearing through the crowd. He didn’t have much of a break on me, thirty metres maybe, but it’s hard work trying to push your way through a packed betting ring at a walk, let alone at a gallop. I side-stepped one gambler reading his formguide and elbowed another bloke to his side as I rushed through the gap. Copped a spray off him, but there was no time for apologies. I saw Matt running ahead of me as I raced past Big Oakie White’s stand. Caught a glimpse of the big fella watching dumbfounded as I sprinted by. Up ahead, Matt had cannoned into an elderly lady and sent her sprawling. A group clustered around to help her up. Matt ran on towards the members’ exit and jumped the turnstiles into the public area.

  ‘Punter! Where’s he gone?’ yelled Beering. He had two policemen in tow who he must have grabbed on the way through. About bloody time, although to be fair only a few minutes had elapsed since I’d rung him. I stopped for a second and pointed to Matt who we could see running through the terraced area towards the exit gate about a hundred metres away.

  ‘Quick, there he goes,’ I said.

  We stormed after him as best we could and burst through the old-fashioned exit turnstiles to find ourselves outside the track opposite the railway station. A lone yellow taxi drove off from the rank with Matt grinning at us from the back window. He’d slipped the net.

  We reconvened in Beering’s office. He was working his phone non-stop, answering calls and making them. One of his calls was to Detective Wells from Homicide and fifteen minutes later, he and his offsider, Tony, arrived.

  They’d tracked the taxi down, but it had already dropped off its fare in Malvern.

  The driver said he’d let the man out onto the busy shopping strip in Glenferrie Road and that’s the last he’d seen of him.

  ‘Shit, he could be anywhere by now,’ said Beering.

  ‘Even so, we’ll comb the area,’ said Wells. ‘Right, what else do we know about this guy?’

  ‘We know he’s a regular club member,’ I said. ‘Can’t we bring up his details on the database?’

  Beering reached for his phone, got hold of the marketing manager.

  ‘. . . I don’t care if it was the Queen who won the previous race, let someone else do the presentation and get your arse down here like it was yesterday.’

  Annie, the marketing manager, came flouncing into Beering’s office in a huff. Complained of not looking after the club’s sponsors a
nd so forth. She was in her mid-thirties, dressed for business, and carried plenty of attitude at being pulled away from her corporate entertaining duties. She soon dropped the attitude when Beering told her why he wanted her so urgently. Amazing what effect the words strapper killer had around the racecourse. She got to work straightaway on Beering’s desktop computer, firing it up and opening up the membership file.

  ‘Okay, we’ve got nearly nine thousand members, guys. You tell me where to prune it down,’ she said.

  ‘His name’s Whittle,’ I said, ‘Matt Whittle.’ I spelled it out for her.

  Annie keyed in his name and then looked over at us. ‘I haven’t got any Whittles.’

  ‘What? You must have.’

  ‘No, definitely no Whittles,’ she said. ‘I’ve got lots of Whites, but no Whittles.’

  We all clustered around behind her, staring at the screen, willing it to give up the name. It was as she said, devoid of anyone called Whittle.

  ‘Are you sure that’s his surname?’ asked Beering.

  ‘It’s him all right. It’s Col Whittle’s stepson. Hang on,’ I had a sudden thought. ‘Maybe he’s not using his stepfather’s surname.’

  ‘Makes sense,’ said Beering. ‘A lot of kids don’t always take up a step-parent’s name. But if not, then what’s his real name?’

  ‘All right,’ said Wells, ‘so we haven’t got his surname for now. Let’s run with his first name and see what comes up. Annie, can you try a sort by Matt?’

  She typed a few key strokes, highlighted the screen and did a sort by members’ first names.

  ‘There’re fourteen Matts listed,’ she said.

  ‘That’s doable,’ said Tony. ‘We can check those addresses out.’

  ‘Wait,’ said Beering. ‘How many Matthews you got?’

  Annie did another sort and we could all see the whopping list it generated. ‘Two hundred and seventy-two Matthews,’ she said.

  ‘Plus the fourteen who’ve registered as Matt, makes nearly three hundred-odd addresses to check out,’ said Wells. ‘Shit.’

  ‘I know someone who might be able to filter it down,’ I said.

  They all looked at me expectantly.

  ‘Matt’s got a mate here today who might know more about him.’

  ‘A mate,’ said Beering. ‘Wouldn’t have thought this creep would have any of those.’

  ‘Maybe that’s too nice a word. Drinking buddy is more like it. You want me to see if I can find him and bring him back? He’s probably still over in the café.’

  ‘I’ll come with you. Let’s go,’ said Beering, already reaching for his hat.

  I pointed out Ric exactly where I’d left him; propping up a pylon with a drink watching the races on the TV monitor. I don’t know what Ric must have thought when Beering flashed his badge and told him he needed to ask him some questions about Matt back in his office. I didn’t tell him anything on the walk back; I left that for Beering, who broke it to him about as subtly as a golfer hitting off from the tee.

  ‘Now then, what this is about is your mate, Matt. He’s been identified as the strapper killer.’

  Ric looked incredulous. ‘Matt? Him, the strapper killer?’

  ‘Yeah, yeah, Matt,’ said Beering, impatient to get on with it. ‘Do you know where he lives?’

  ‘Shit, I hardly know the bloke. I mean, the only time I ever see him is at the races to have a beer with him. We were only just drinking with him half an hour ago like we normally do every Saturday.’

  Wells chipped in. ‘Ric, this is really important. Do you have an address for Matt or do you know his surname? Maybe you’ve got his mobile number?’

  Ric shook his head. ‘I’ve never known him by any other name apart from Matt; I only ever see him at the races. We’ve never swapped numbers. But he lives locally, I dropped him home in a cab one day.’

  Beering nearly jumped over his desk. ‘You know where he lives?’ he thundered. ‘Then get over ’ere in front of this computer and pick ’im out.’

  Poor Ric looked shell-shocked. Dragged from a pleasant afternoon drink at the races into a full-on police interrogation. Annie pulled over a chair next to her and let Ric sift through the list of Matts and Matthews she had up on the screen.

  ‘Okay, that makes it easier if he’s a local,’ she said. ‘I’ll delete all the non-local suburbs from the list.’

  Ric looked blankly at the computer. ‘Well, I don’t know exactly where he lives.’

  ‘For God’s sake, man, you just said you shared a cab home with him, didn’t you?’ said Beering.

  ‘Yeah, but I’m not sure where.’

  ‘Well, which suburb is it; Caulfield, Caulfield South, Glen Huntly, Murrumbeena?’

  Ric still had the blanks. Wells had to help him out.

  ‘You said you dropped him at his house, right?’

  ‘Not his house.’ He frowned as if trying to remember. ‘It was one evening we shared a taxi back from the track and he got me to drop him off home. Well, it wasn’t home, it was his street, though. He said to the driver to pull up and he could walk the rest of the way ’cause it was just around the corner.’

  Wells looked pleased. ‘Okay, that’s good. Take another look and see if you recognise any streets.’

  We waited silently as Ric worked slowly and thoroughly through the list. He didn’t get any quicker, even with Beering impatiently pacing the room, hands-behind-back style. But Ric wasn’t going to be hurried. He pointed at a name, then another which Annie highlighted. By the time he’d gone through them all, there were eight addresses all around the cusp of Murrumbeena and Carnegie. Beering pulled out a Melways directory from a shelf and spread it open on the desk.

  ‘This help?’ he asked. ‘Can you recognise any of those from the map?’

  Ric peered back and forth between the directory and the computer screen for a moment, before giving a frustrated sigh.

  ‘No. They’re just names, I’d only be guessing. But there’s a way I could remember. If I took the same route the cab took, I’d know where we dropped him, even though it was dark. We went down Grange or Koornang Road and I dropped him off at an intersection there somewhere, before the taxi drove me home to Beaumaris. There was a milk bar, a little corner shop. If I saw that again, I’d know.’

  Over the next forty minutes we cruised up and down Grange and Koornang roads three times. Wells was driving, Ric was in the front with him and Beering and I shared the back. A second unmarked car carrying Tony and two other policemen followed behind us. Ric thought it must have been Grange Road that the taxi driver had gone down, but we trawled up and down and there was no milk bar on any side street. In fact, there wasn’t any milk bar full stop. We didn’t have any better luck in Koornang Road either. We swept down past a small group of community shops; a greengrocer, newsagent and a florist.

  ‘You sure that’s not them?’ asked Wells. ‘Things always look different in the dark.’

  ‘No, it was just the one corner shop on the left-hand side driving south. I’m sure of that,’ said Ric.

  We drove all the way down to North Road before Ric made us turn around and go back up again. Wells drove on a little bit further and then pulled over to the side of the road opposite a development site. He turned the engine off and started drumming his fingers on the console.

  ‘Maybe we oughta try the next one up, Murrumbeena Road,’ he said to Ric.

  Beering, who’d been studying the road directory, agreed. ‘There’s two or three members’ addresses here with streets that criss-cross Murrumbeena and go all the way through to Grange.’

  Ric didn’t look happy. ‘I know I saw it. I’m sure it was in one of these two streets.’

  ‘Yeah, but it don’t seem to be there, does it?’ said Beering.

  ‘Perhaps it used to be,’ I said.

  Wells spun around to look at me. I nodded to the empty development block opposite us. It had a bulldozer and a tip truck parked within it’s wired-off fence. Outside was a skip bin full of rubble. Si
tting on top of the rubbish was an old neon advertising sign cheekily proclaiming: Peters Ice-cream, the health food of a nation!

  ‘That could be what’s left of the milk bar,’ I said.

  We all sat looking at where the milk bar had stood before it was demolished. ‘Good call,’ said Wells to me. ‘You reckon this is the spot?’ he asked Ric.

  Ric nodded confidently back. ‘This is it. Corner of Koornang and Leielia.’

  Beering rustled around next to me sorting through his list of names. ‘But there’s no Matthew or Matt registered as living in Leielia Street.’

  ‘You sure?’ asked Wells. ‘What’s the nearest Matt or Matthew on that list to this street?’

  Beering shuffled around with the Melways and his list again. He was pretty quick at sorting through them. Helped that he knew the area, I suppose. ‘Nearest I’ve got is listed eight blocks away. A bloke by the name of Matthew Power.’

  Wells shook his head. ‘I can’t see why he’d get a cab to drop him eight blocks from home, no matter how paranoid he might be about revealing his address.’ He turned to Ric again. ‘You’re sure his home was in this street?’

  ‘He said just around the corner.’

  I had a thought which I ran past Beering. ‘This list is generated from first names, right?’

  ‘Yeah, it’s all we’ve got to work with. Matts and Matthews.’

  ‘But there’s none in this street.’

  ‘Which is why I think we’ve got the wrong street.’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘We’re asking the database the wrong question. Can you get hold of Annie again?’

  ‘Yeah, why?’

  ‘Call her and ask her to run a sort by members in Leielia Street.’

  Beering called her and she gave us the answer almost straightaway.

  ‘There’s only one member with an address in that street. Goes by the name of M T Renford.’

  I looked at Beering and Wells. ‘I’ll bet that’s him. M for Matt and Renford is probably his mother’s maiden name or real father’s surname.’

  20

  Ric and I found ourselves standing by the roadside, staring forlornly at the back of two unmarked police cars as they roared off down the road. As soon as Wells and his team decided to raid Matt’s house, we’d both been evicted rather unceremoniously from the car and told in no uncertain terms to stay right away from the area. Wells said he didn’t want civilians contaminating evidence or placing ourselves in any unnecessary danger. I thought that was a bit rich, given what I’d been through that afternoon. And so we were left stranded on the corner, the decision ours whether to hoof it back to Caulfield or hail a cab. We ended up walking back, talking as we went. So much for Ric’s form as a reluctant conversationalist; now I could hardly shut him up.