by Peter Temple
When Drew came a few days later, he said, ‘They say they think the first explosion was in the store, an LPG cylinder. Apparently there was an old inspection pit and that went up too, full of gas. Plus other cylinders about the place. Not unusual, the woman says. Only the scale. Generally, it just destroys lone amateurs, your backyard self-taught welders and artists who like buggering around with steel and fire. Should happen to McCoy.’
Sophie Longmore shook her head. ‘She wasn’t a beginner, she’d done welding courses, she checked everything three times.’
She drank coffee, touched her lips with a paper napkin. Short nails. She bit her nails.
‘The inquest will tell us,’ I said. I didn’t say it with conviction.
‘I think people who can get an innocent person charged with murder can get an explosion past an inquest,’ she said.
Her eyes didn’t leave me, she had the look of someone leading up to something. Practising the law teaches you to recognise the expression. ‘That’s possible,’ I said. ‘We’ll have to wait.’
Sophie took her bag off the chair, opened it and took out an A4 envelope. ‘I think she was being watched,’ she said. ‘Why would she be watched?’
I wanted to be away, into the cold morning, a top of fourteen, said the radio, that would only be a few hours away, then the slide into the serious cold. Rain expected, showers in the city, gale-force winds for the bay and strong winds inland, ice, frost, snow for the alpine areas. A sheep alert for country Victoria. How did they respond to sheep alerts in the country? Wrestle the jumbucks into thermal longjohns?
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘People have been known to think they’re being watched when they’re not.’
Sophie looked at me without blinking for longer than necessary. ‘Not unusual,’ she said. ‘Is that the expression?’
I felt tired. So early in the day. Excusable perhaps on these short days. The circadian rhythms interrupted, a form of jetlag. ‘I have to go,’ I said. ‘Work.’
‘I took these pictures,’ she said, offering the envelope. ‘They’re actually very bad. The negs are in here too, it might be the printing.’
‘Pictures of what?’
‘Sarah was getting out of the car and said, that’s her again. I saw the woman and I took a few shots, she turned her back and walked away. She was talking to someone in a car.’
‘Why do you want to give me these pictures?’
Sophie didn’t look at me, eyes down, drank coffee, looked up, her father’s pale eyes, down again.
‘I don’t want her remembered this way,’ she said. ‘I worshipped her. She was everything to me.’
‘Are you asking me to do something?’
‘I wouldn’t dream of asking you to do anything yourself. You’ve gone through enough. I hoped you’d know someone who could … help.’
I looked out of the window. The wind was disturbing hairstyles, pushing open unbuttoned black overcoats.
Just say no.
‘What was Mickey’s relationship with Anthony Haig?’ I said without looking at her.
Sophie sighed. ‘He had money in Seaton Square. Most of the money, I think. When it stalled, he wanted to get out.’
‘I thought the money came from a finance company?’
‘The way Mickey talked,’ she said, ‘Haig and the company, well, they’re the same thing. He was ballistic about Haig.’
‘Haig’s got an employee called Bernard Paech.’
She nodded. ‘Bern, they call him Bern.’
‘He was also once a director of Mickey’s company. If Haig was calling in the money, how did that work?’
‘I don’t know. Mickey didn’t explain a lot, Jack.’
‘But you went to your father to bail him out?’
‘In love,’ she said. She finished her coffee. ‘But I’m not stupid. I wouldn’t have asked my father if I thought Mickey was a loser. Mickey’d made a lot of money out of development. And Seaton Square, well, it’s such an incredible opportunity.’
An incredible opportunity. An opportunity to change the character of part of the city. People like Mickey were social planners, they decided the future by deciding where they could make money. Was this the genius of capitalism? How did Venice get the way it was? What about Florence? Paris? Vienna?
‘I need to think about this,’ I said. ‘Give me a number.’
Sophie took her case off the chair, snapped it open and found a pad and a pen. She was writing when I said, ‘When did you decide that Sarah didn’t kill Mickey?’
She didn’t look up. ‘The idea never crossed my mind.’
The pictures in hand, I said goodbye, went into the windy street.
‘Leave it, Jack,’ said Drew. ‘It’s finished.’
‘Money in my account, hospital paid. Leave it?’
He moved his chair, left, right, not far. ‘It probably is Longmore, pre-empting a damages claim.’
‘No. He looked at me as if I were a blackmailer. Contempt.’
Shifting the chair, movements of the head and the mouth. ‘Well, you’ve had a bad time, I wouldn’t discount the possibility that you might have misread that.’
‘Well, fuck bad time, I know contempt, I’m not that scrambled.’
‘He didn’t treat me like the papal envoy either,’ he said, ‘but he’s a hirer, he hires, he fires, we’re just service providers in his life, fence-builders on the fucking estate. Dig holes, line the fucking poles up, string the wire, fuck off, we’re nothing. And offshore accounts, he wouldn’t want to shout about them.’
‘So I just declare it as income?’
‘Consultancy fee. Tax don’t care. Grateful that you told them.’
I said, ‘I don’t think she killed Mickey.’
His phone rang. ‘Put him on, thanks. Laurie. Yes, yes, sorry. I am guilty, mate, guilty as charged. The same to you in spades. Listen, can I ring you back, five minutes? Thanks.’
Drew looked at me as he spoke. Sad brown eyes. I’d never noticed sadness in his eyes. Had it always been there? How did you recognise sadness in eyes? Was I seeing my own stupid sadness in him?
He put down the phone. ‘Free for a drink later?’
I said, ‘I don’t think she killed Mickey.’
‘Jack, Jack, it doesn’t matter who killed Mickey. We’ll never know, we don’t care, we had a client who may or may not have killed Mickey but we don’t have her anymore and so it’s over.’
I got up.
‘Not rushing you,’ he said. ‘Hang around here all day. Come back and work here, the offer always stands.’
I said, ‘Kind of you, it could become some sort of legal rehab centre, there’s probably a grant available. I’d like to tell you that I’m no more brain-damaged than I was before. Can I see Sarah’s file?’
Drew sighed, looked down. Then he picked up his phone. ‘Karen, give Jack the Longmore file, will you?’
‘Thank you,’ I said.
He opened his hands. ‘Ring me if you want to have a drink later.’
I collected the file and walked down the elegant street to the Lark, admired it as I came. I loved the car and it was nothing but trouble. A metaphor for something, the Lark.
The office was cold, air stale. I left the front door open, opened the back one, and a gale went through. When the air was changed, I closed the doors, put on the heater, made tea, sat down in the client’s chair with Sarah’s file. It didn’t take long to read. The prosecution case was that she’d had an affair with Mickey, been replaced by her sister, was known to have the weapon that killed him, was seen near his apartment building on the night of 16 March, at around the time of his murder. Prosecutions had proceeded on much less.
I read bits again, mulled. The gun part was bad. She’d admitted once having it. Being near the scene, that was terrible.
The witness was a woman called Donna Filipovic. Her statement said she’d heard about Mickey’s murder on the radio and contacted the police. She lived in an apartment block near Mickey’s. She’d
noticed a woman about six months earlier when there was an argument about a parking space. The woman was about to reverse into it when another driver pulled in. The woman got out of her car and wouldn’t let the man open his door. He eventually reversed out and drove off.
Ms Filipovic told the police that on the previous night, just before midnight, she was walking her dog when she saw a woman come out of the side entrance of Mickey’s apartment block. The woman came towards her, walking quickly, passed her, and got into a car.
From a large number of photographs of different women shown to her by the police, she’d identified Sarah Longmore as the woman she’d seen before and saw the night before. She said that she was not in any way prompted by the police officers but had been left alone with the photographs.
A heatless lemon-yellow rectangle of sunlight had fallen across me. Dust motes moved in it, not in any hurry, presumably some of them skin and dandruff, tiny bits of me that had abandoned ship, floating about, carrying my DNA.
Nothing gained from reading the file except bad feelings. Did it matter if Sarah had killed Mickey?
I had no wish to pursue that line.
The witness on the night, near the time, that would have tested Drew, shown whether he was the equal of those in the bar’s murder squad, the criminal silks, men and women steeped in violence who could convince juries to give psychopaths the benefit of the doubt.
I drank the cold remains, flicked back through the pages, looked up at the piece of sky, torn clouds, ragged, all the shades of grey.
Something flickered in the mind.
The witness. Her name was Donna Filipovic.
I sat, uncrossed my legs, crossed them again. The name. I thought about talking to Popeye Costello. Probably snaffled fucking Donna now that I think of it.
I went to the table, found the number, I gave the receptionist my name.
‘Please hold on while I see if he’s available,’ she said, a concerned help-line voice. She was back in seconds. ‘If you’ll leave a number,’ she said.
I went back to the client’s chair and sat in the gathering gloom, sunlight gone, almost falling asleep, jerked awake by the phone.
‘Yes,’ said Popeye Costello.
‘When we were talking, you said a name,’ I said. ‘You said the name Donna.’
‘Yes?’
‘Is that also a Foreign Legion name?’
‘No, that’s the bitch’s name.’
‘And the surname?’
He hesitated.
In the west, the sky showing streaks of orange, an unhealthy colour, like the flames of a burning tip.
‘Filipovic,’ he said. ‘Donna Filipovic.’
The address the homicide squad had for Donna Filipovic was an apartment on the fifth floor of a building called Bolzano, about two blocks from Mickey Franklin’s dwelling. She wasn’t in the phone book.
Admission was by key or concierge, a man in a dark suit who came out of a door in the marble lobby, adjusting a striped tie.
‘May I be of assistance?’ he said through the intercom system, from inside the glass doors. He had the perfectly groomed grey hair and voice of an assistant from the men’s department of the long-gone George’s department store in Collins Street.
‘I’m a lawyer,’ I said. I took out my Law Institute card and held it to the glass. ‘I’m trying to get in touch with one of your tenants on behalf of a client.’
He raised his chin and his nostril crimped. ‘I’m afraid we admit no one without the tenant’s permission. May I have a name?’
‘Filipovic,’ I said, ‘Donna Filipovic.’
‘Could you spell the surname?’
I did. They didn’t require him to call people ‘Sir’ here, that would be a relief.
‘I’ll make inquiries,’ he said.
It was early afternoon, the street quiet by inner-city standards, the temperature falling. A door in the foyer opened and a woman with pink-purple hair came in carrying a shopping bag from David Jones. She went to the lifts. Only visitors would come through the front door of this building, the residents would park in the basement, come up the stairs to the foyer or take the lift.
Mr George’s came back. The shiny black tips of his shoes caught the downlights.
‘We have no one of that name,’ he said, a small, pleased smile.
I took out my notebook, found a page, any page, looked at it. ‘You certainly did in March,’ I said. ‘Have you lost your records?’
He put his head to one side, shrugged the tiniest shrug. There was uncertainty in him.
I said, ‘I don’t normally do this kind of thing myself but it’s important to a valued client. May I have your name?’
He licked a lip. ‘Ashton, Morris Ashton.’
‘Mr Ashton, I’m saying to you as a matter of fact, I repeat, as a matter of fact, that Ms Filipovic had an apartment in this building in March this year. If you don’t want to be helpful, I’ll get a court order today to see your register of owners and tenants.’
While I looked into his eyes, he considered this statement. No more than three or four seconds went by.
He pressed a button. The doors parted. ‘If you’d care to come to the office with me,’ he said.
I followed him. The office was neat, no security screens, two desks, a computer on each, a bank of filing cabinets, a copier.
‘May I copy your card?’ he said.
I took it out. He put it on the copier surface, closed the top, punched the button. The light moved.
‘Thank you,’ he said, opened the machine, gave me the card. ‘Please sit down, this won’t take a moment.’
‘I’ve been sitting all day,’ I said.
He sat down, clicked at a keyboard, waited, clicked, put his head closer, he was short-sighted.
‘No,’ he said. ‘I’m afraid there’s no record of that name. Do you have the apartment number?’
I gave it.
He clicked. ‘Ah, there’s no registered occupier. It’s a corporate apartment. The person may have been a guest. Is that possible?’
‘I suppose I’ll have to ask the owners,’ I said. ‘Who are they?’
He looked at me, uneasy. ‘We’re not at liberty to disclose that information,’ he said.
‘Mr Ashton,’ I said. ‘I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that this information isn’t secret, it’s on the public record. Are you trying to be obstructive?’
Flutter of eyelids. He didn’t have much experience in dealing with this kind of bluster.
‘That apartment is owned by Amaryllo Holdings,’ he said. ‘One of three.’ He gave me the spelling, the details.
‘So anyone could claim to have been staying in the apartment and you wouldn’t be able to confirm or deny that?’ I said.
‘It isn’t any of my business,’ Ashton said. ‘The owners are free to have anyone they like stay in their apartments. We require only that they tell us when the premises are occupied.’
I gave him the date of Mickey’s death, 16 March. ‘Was the apartment occupied then?’
He was even unhappier now but it was too late. He looked it up. ‘Yes, it was.’
‘And when did that cease?’
‘Um, about two weeks after that date.’
‘When did that period of occupancy begin?’
‘A week before that. It had been unoccupied for about three months.’
As I walked back to the car, it was on my mind that I should have done this first. I should have gone for the only important witness, not buggered around with the victim. We hadn’t really believed Sarah, that’s why we’d gone for Mickey. Not we. It was me. I’d put off looking at the witness.
In the car, I rang Simone Bendsten and gave her the company name. She rang back as I pulled up down the street from the office.
‘Owned by another company, Vindolanda No. 3, registered in Monaco,’ said Simone. ‘That will almost certainly be a dead end. Amaryllo’s local address is Alan Duchard, Gaitelband, barristers and solicitors, in Prahran.
’
A firm I’d heard of before. I said thanks, went inside and looked at Sophie Longmore’s photographs. Four prints, ordinary snapshot 10 x 15s, seriously bad black-and-white photographs, taken from inside a car. Sophie had drawn arrows on them pointing at the subject, a youngish woman in black, but glare all but ruined two. The third was better but the woman was half-obscured by a car, looking away. The fourth was the least bad, the subject was in the street talking to the driver of a car. Unfortunately, her head was down and her straight hair fallen forward, curtaining her profile. There was a front-seat passenger in the car, a head could be made out, but that was all.
All too hard, all too pointless. Sarah was dead and the rest didn’t matter much now. Sophie could choose the ways she wanted to remember her sister.
I knew what nonsense that was as I said it to myself. There was no choice in these things, the memories came anywhere: in the shower, at the traffic lights, studying cans in the supermarket, anywhere you were alone. And, worst of all, they came in dreams, in the mind’s mysterious cinema. There they were real, the past was undone, you felt the touch of those you had loved, the happiness was restored. That was the worst, the cruellest.
I rang Sophie Longmore’s mobile number. She answered after two rings.
‘Jack Irish,’ I said. ‘I have to say I can’t do anything more in this matter and I don’t know anyone who can. I’m sorry.’
Twittering on the line, she was far away or some obstacle stood between us.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said, again, she might not have heard me.
The sounds stopped. ‘Jack, please,’ she said, ‘you’re the last person who has to say sorry.’
I wanted to end the conversation at that point, but I didn’t want to be the one to do it.
‘Well,’ she said, ‘thanks again, Jack, I didn’t tell you, that morning, Sarah left a message on my voicemail.’
