by Peter Temple
‘Why Napoleon?’ I said. We were looking at a single patent-leather shoe with a buckle of gold.
‘My father. He was a Corsican. Stefanu Leca. Steve Leca.’
He went to a bookshelf and took down a small, battered, cloth-covered book. ‘The Life of Napoleon, by A. J. Danville,’ he said. ‘My dad bought this and a little English dictionary at a secondhand bookshop in Brisbane. He didn’t have any English. He got it from this book. At night, cutting cane all day.’
Haig showed me the edge of the book, dark marks.
‘Blood from his hand, the first few days. He’d never done any manual work. His father was a tailor.’
‘Where does Haig come from?’ I said.
‘My mother. My father was working on her father’s property near Bundaberg. He’d taught himself engines, bricklaying, plumbing, he could do anything, fix anything.’
He put the book away and stood with his back to the shelf, his face half in shadow as it was in the portrait. ‘My father put the daughter of the house up the pole. They chased him off the property like a fucking dog, threatened to kill him. She went to Sydney to have the baby, stayed there with her aunt, didn’t go back to Queensland till I was three.’
‘So you were raised as Haig.’
‘Yes, didn’t know anything about my father till just before my mother died. I was always told I was adopted. Then my mother told me. She was ill and she told me.’
I went to the exhibits in the middle of the room, two death masks of Napoleon, one plaster, one bronze, on a slender plinth under glass and spotlit from above.
‘The jewels,’ said Haig. ‘Found them in Cuba. His doctors on St Helena made a gypsum cast of the emperor’s head after he died. One of them, his name’s Antommarchi, he sold copies and then he went to live in Cuba. It’s more than possible that the plaster one is an original, from St Helena.’
‘Did you ever meet your father?’ I said.
‘I tracked him down in Broken Hill. Buggered by work but happy. Brought up two kids after his wife died. He wouldn’t take anything from me, I had to force money on him, then he gave it to his kids. His other kids.’
‘And he gave you the book?’
Haig was on the other side of the plinth, looking at the masks. ‘The book was special for him. He knew every word in it. He told me that in the beginning he had to look up all the conjunctions and the prepositions. I wish I had his little dictionary but he’d lost it.’
I said, ‘Someone paid my hospital bill and put fifty grand in my bank account.’
He looked up. ‘That was me,’ he said. ‘If it bothers you, please give it away.’
Disarmed, unhorsed.
‘Why?’
‘An impulse, a whim. I liked Sarah very much. You got hurt trying to help her.’
‘You’d do that on a whim? That much money?’
Haig laughed. ‘I’m a rich man, you won’t believe what I’ve done on a whim.’
‘Do you know someone called Donna Filipovic?’ I said.
No furrow in the brow. ‘No.’
I took a chance. ‘A company called Amaryllo, registered in Monaco, I understand you’re connected with it.’
Haig smiled. ‘Connected?’
‘Through Charles Hartfield.’
Haig raised both hands, wide, blunt-fingered, passed them across his temples, smoothed hair needing no grooming, lowered his hands, held them palm up.
‘Jack,’ he said, ‘What’s this? Sarah’s dead. You don’t have to find a defence for her anymore.’
‘Did you remember Sarah telling a story about an argument with a driver near Mickey’s apartment? It was the night you met, dinner with Mickey.’
‘No.’
Looking at him over the emperor’s death masks. ‘The witness Donna Filipovic,’ I said. ‘She’s lying, she wasn’t there, she never saw Sarah that night. Someone fed her that story.’
‘The family, they’re paying you to go on with this?’
‘No,’ I said.
He stared at me. ‘Let’s say for argument’s sake Sarah didn’t kill Mickey,’ he said. ‘Then you ask, who would take the trouble to kill him and set her up?’
I didn’t reply.
Haig exhaled loudly, a sad shake of the head. ‘Why would anyone bother?’ he said. ‘Given the fuck’s mood swings, allround mental state, the drink, the drugs, Mickey was going to do the job himself. Just a matter of how long.’
‘You provided the finance for Seaton Square and then you wanted to pull the plug on him,’ I said. ‘He was enraged with you. That’s right, isn’t it?’
‘Jack, Jack,’ he said, ‘Mickey fucked up Seaton Square almost from the kick-off. All he got right was getting hold of the property. And that’s another story. After that, it was like the Cresta fucking Run in a shitstorm. Everything was a stuff-up – everything. He wound the thing up and up. I’ll tell you I’m no stranger to ambitious development but this was insane. And he wouldn’t listen to anyone. Well, he’d listen, sit there nodding his fucking coked-up head, yes, yes. Then he’d go off and do the opposite.’
He paused, shaking his head again. ‘Mickey enraged with me? I can tell you, many times I’d have shot the cunt if I’d had a gun. And fuck the consequences.’
Silence in the museum of Bonaparte, no sound except the stern ticking of the brass clock, said to come from the emperor’s first place of exile, Elba.
‘But while you’re looking for people to blame, Jack,’ said Haig, ‘try the people the stupid prick bribed over Brunswick. In his worst moments, he was going to take them down with him.’
‘I need a piss,’ I said.
‘This way.’
We left the room. He opened another door.
‘Through the dressing room. You’ll find your way back. Straight down the passage.’
A four-poster uncanopied bed was tightly made, the dark wooden floor shone, the curtains were open. I could see across the wet smudged city to Williamstown.
I went into the dressing room. It held the stock of a small, expensive men’s outfitters. On the shelves to the left were laundered shirts. Socks and underwear and sweaters were in glass-fronted drawers. Two racks held shoes, twenty pairs at least. On the right hung suits, sportsjackets, trousers, casual jackets, overcoats, raincoats. A regiment of ties was draped over rods on either side of the long mirror at the end of the room.
The door to the bathroom was open. It was big and plain, not a bathroom the interior decor crowd would create. Someone wanted this chamber to be a place for ablutions only: two small basins, a glass shower stall the size of a small room, a toilet, no bath.
I had my pee and went back to the party, found Haig. ‘I have to go,’ I said. ‘I’ll send you the tax receipt from the Salvos. Thank you for the thought.’
He walked me to the landing, touched me again in the affectionate way. ‘We’ve got a lot in common, Jack,’ he said. ‘Working-class fathers, rich mothers. How’d you like her father?’
‘Not much,’ I said. ‘Not a great deal.’
‘Even more in common than I thought.’
A hand offered, we shook.
‘You’ve got to look after yourself,’ he said. ‘Life’s full of bullshit. Full of Mickeys. The trick is to walk away from them. I’m learning that, I’m nearly there.’
I was halfway down the staircase when he said, ‘Jack.’
I stopped, looked back. He was standing with his hands clasped in front of his chest. ‘I’m going to my house in Corsica next month,’ he said. ‘Private flight. Why don’t you come? Good this time of year, hot, dry, it smells like nowhere else on earth. The maquis, the sea. Sweetness and salt. Napoleon said it was the only place he would recognise blindfold.’
‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘Can I let you know?’
‘Ring Bern,’ he said. ‘We’ll have a good time.’
I departed Marengo. A block away, I eased the Stud from between German bookends, an Audi and a Mercedes, and set out for Fitzroy. A wet night was on the city, the tower
s glowing in the damp air that softened everything, carried a smell of burnt fossil fuel.
Home, the place where they have to take you in. There weren’t any of them left but I could still be sure of admittance because I had the key.
I parked outside the boot factory and went upstairs to the cold rooms.
Four men in an old Studebaker Lark, on a Sunday afternoon, we went to the football in the indoor stadium. At the first change, St Kilda leading by eight goals, I brought out the samosas I’d smuggled through security, concealed on my body. We ate in silence for a while, then Norm wiped his lips of flakes, held out his hand for another one, and said, ‘Jack, bin sayin the team’s on the edge of a big one.’
Eric coughed. ‘Scuse me,’ he said. ‘Scuse me, what you bin sayin is the team’s full of duds and the coach shoulda stayed in Warrnambool,’ he said. ‘I’m the one’s bin predictin this.’
‘You idiots,’ said Wilbur. ‘Saints bin twelve-odd goals in front and the Hawks come back and win. Idiots.’
‘Not today,’ said Norm. ‘That was another bunch. This lot puts me in mind of the Lions in ’48.’
‘Jeez,’ said Wilbur, ‘I reckon yer short-thingy memory’s goin. Round 11 in ’48, Lions play the Saints, Lions top of the ladder, Saints got one draw from thirty-one games, one draw from thirty-one games, that’s sparklin form, not so? Who’d yer reckon wins?’
Norm finished chewing, put up a hand and added smudges to his glasses. ‘Don’t do to dwell on the past,’ he said. ‘Unhealthy.’
At the halfway mark, St Kilda’s lead was all but vanished. I went off and got the pies. When they too were almost gone, Norm said, ‘Big worry, this lot. Puts me in mind of the day the bloody Hawks come from twelve-odd goals behind …’
‘Shut up,’ said Wilbur. ‘Just shut up and eat.’
In the last quarter, matters improved. The Saints stood up. So did we, often, as we watched our team humiliate Carlton. The arrogant Blues, the benchmark for football arrogance, they were run off their legs.
On the way to the Prince, the Youth Club agreed that they had all predicted the famous victory, seen it coming from a long way, always been on the cards, matter of time.
Serving the beer, Stan said, ‘Well, looks like your team could miss the wooden spoon this year. Not coming last, that’s like winning a grand final for the Saints.’
Norm looked at him, adjusted his thumb-blurred monster glasses for a clearer view. ‘The problem with you, Stanley,’ he said, ‘is you don’t have yer dad’s judgment. Now yer father, had he not bin dragged screamin from this place by wife number two, Morrie’d be shoutin us a round.’
‘Have I taken any money?’ said Stan, chin up, skewered through the heart. ‘Have I asked for money?’
I was home by seven, lighting a fire on a winter’s night, filled with the sweet humming happiness of having seen my team win. Did people who often saw their teams win lose this feeling? That was so far beyond my experience as to be unthinkable.
I stood in front of the fireplace, watching the Avoca kindling flare on top of the grey, powdered and weightless remains of an Avoca tree, hands deep in the pockets of the old footy coat. It was a terrible garment, elbows and cuffs threadbare, lining torn. The pockets held tickets, bits of biscuit, matchsticks, keys to forgotten doors, coins no longer current, a plastic lighter, coughdrops coated with fluff and crumbs. On the front were stains: beer, tomato sauce, the brown fluid that leaked from pies, champagne from a bottle uncorked in the parking lot after a Fitzroy win.
I was thinking about uncorking a bottle, about what to eat later, when the phone rang.
‘Comin your way,’ said Barry Tregear. ‘Only got a minute.’
‘Time for a drink?’
‘No, mate. Just a word.’
‘Hoot,’ I said.
I was unwinding the cork from the screw when I heard the horn. Opening the front door of my building, feeling the shock of cold, seeing the wind shaking the bare oak branches, I regretted not putting on the footy coat.
The passenger door of the dark Falcon was unlocked. I got in, grateful for the warmth of the cabin.
‘You’d be a happy man,’ said Barry. ‘Sticking it to the blue boys like that.’
‘My word,’ I said.
He was studying me. ‘Christ, you’re thin,’ he said. ‘Eating?’
‘I’m eating.’
‘Yeah? The salad sambo? Get into the junk, mate. Build you up quick. Now, this stuff. First, the girl. Feehan. Hooker. Reported missing 15 February 1995. No trace. Then there’s Dilthey. What I read says he’s got a couple of tickets in Queensland, small stuff. Local, there’s nothing. He had a job in the table-dancing business for a while. Someone says he was running a few girls and boys but they couldn’t find them. Then he’s in a motel in Kaniva. Tied to a chair, mouth taped up, hands broken, smashed, face the same. And shot up the nose with a .22. Twice.’
Barry’s window slid down. He lit a cigarette with a lighter.
‘Clearly person or persons didn’t like the boy,’ he said. ‘The file’s open, empty basically, no one saw anything, one other customer that night, it’s a Sunday, he heard nothin. The bloke who runs the place, he’s asleep. More asleep than is usual as I read the document. Medication.’
He scratched his head. ‘That’s it.’
‘What was Dilthey doing out there?’ I said.
‘There’s a map in the car, he’s written down mileages to buggery in South Australia.’
He lit a cigarette, slit eyes on me over the flame. ‘Read your statement,’ he said.
‘Like the way I express myself?’
‘Pure fucken poetry,’ he said. ‘You get there, it’s an appointment, in the door. But you don’t go down to the business end, you fuck around for a bit, lookin at the art shit. Then when you’re what, ten metres away, the bang?’
I didn’t like what was coming. I didn’t want to hear it. ‘More or less the way I phrased it,’ I said, ‘but I put lots of work into the rhythm.’
Sucking on the filter cigarette, eyes on me. ‘Behaved the way you should’ve, you’re not sittin here thin but nevertheless fucken alive.’
‘The bang gang couldn’t find anything.’
‘No,’ he said. ‘Possibly cause they’re not dealin with a cunt tries to send the Frankston falafel shop to kingdom come with the barbie gas his cousin’s husband cleverly took the trailer to Geelong to buy.’
The gloss off the evening.
‘Well,’ I said, ‘you’d like to know for certain, wouldn’t you?’
Barry shook his head, eyes closed. ‘Christ, Jack,’ he said, ‘you don’t need to know anything for certain. I go into that fucken hospital, you’re lying there looking dead, white like a tissue, stuck full of tubes, fucken wired for ten speakers.’
The wind had strengthened, it was whip-cracking the thin oak branches outlined against the streetlight. At the light’s faint edge, I could see two figures on the open ground: a man being pulled home by a large dog.
‘You don’t need to know,’ Barry said, looking ahead, into the dead glass. ‘Never mind fucken certain, you don’t need to know anything.’
‘Yes, well, I’ve got something on the stove,’ I said. ‘Thanks, mate.’
He looked at me, I couldn’t bear the gaze, nodded, said goodbye, left the car.
The quick, neat swing of the vehicle, red tail-lights burning for a few seconds, gone. I went upstairs, poured wine, sat in front of the fire, uneasy now.
When I came back from hospital to the long-empty house, there were no messages on the machine; no blinking red light greeted me. The thought came from nowhere, released by Barry Tregear’s words.
In all that time, not a single message? Had I forgotten to switch on the machine that morning? Pushing the button was part of the ritual of leaving, but sometimes, distracted, I forgot.
I was pouring another glass of wine when I remembered Sarah on the mobile, I was outside Enzio’s: I tried you at home, left a message. I’ve had a call from
someone, a man.
That message at least should have been waiting for me. My machine had been wiped.
I couldn’t push it away anymore. Whoever murdered Mickey murdered Sarah. And I was supposed to die there too, in the brick and tin shed, blown to pieces, just collateral damage.
I rang the most recent number I had for Cam, left a message. He rang back in seconds. When I told him what I was after, he said, ‘Jesus. Well, I can ask around in the hospitality industry. Don’t hold your breath.’
‘She’s upmarket,’ said Cam. ‘My bloke says they must be paying top dollar, she only goes out once or twice a night.’
We were in South Melbourne, in the area behind the Arts Centre, parked down from a new six-storey apartment block faced with a marble-looking material.
Cam was behind the wheel. I hadn’t seen the car before, an HSV, a Holden given performance-enhancing substances so that it growled like a refined cousin to the Lark. ‘Goes out alone?’ I said.
‘The boyfriend, he fetches and carries.’
‘Boyfriend?’
‘The pimp.’
‘And now?’
‘She’ll come out with the dog in a minute or two,’ he said. ‘I’ll see if she’ll have a word.’
‘Beware of the dog.’
‘That’s her.’
A tall woman in a raincoat over black pants and wearing a headscarf was crossing the narrow forecourt leading a dog the size and shape of a football. She turned to come our way, down the wet pavement.
‘Vicious-looking brute,’ I said.
‘There’s a gun in the glovebox,’ said Cam. ‘Shoot the thing if it goes for me.’
‘Just pick it up, drop-punt,’ I said. ‘See if you can hit that Merc on the other side.’
When she was ten metres away, Cam got out. He was in a charcoal suit, a decent bit of white cuff showing. He walked around the car. I could see that she’d seen him, a flick of a glance. She was a handsome woman, long nose, full lips.
Cam stepped onto the kerb. He said something. She stopped, the dog stopped. Cam went up to her, not too close. The dog strained at its leash. I could see her face while he talked. She wasn’t happy but she wasn’t alarmed.
