by Peter Temple
When it was over, Linda lay on her back, her legs over me.
‘We never went anywhere,’ she said.
‘Anywhere? How far away is anywhere?’
‘Far. Europe. America.’
‘I’ve been there.’
‘Not with me. With the mystery hand on the train, but not with me.’
‘How could we go anywhere? I’d barely got a grip on you when you left for Sydney.’
‘You encouraged me. I thought you wanted to get rid of me. Not at the time, I didn’t think that at the time. It came to me later.’
‘I had your interests at heart.’ I rolled over, took her chin in my hand. ‘What I didn’t know,’ I said, ‘was that once a starfucker, always a starfucker.’
Linda had been married to a doctor, left him for a rock musician.
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I’ve fucked the stars. Rock stars, TV personalities. But that’s behind me now. I’m going for the lesser lights in the galaxy. Butchers, I want. Newsagents. Seedy suburban solicitors even.’
‘As it happens, I can help you there.’
‘Yes?’ She had her right hand on me.
‘Yes, I know an excellent butcher and a…’
In the pre-dawn, misty rain in the streetlights, a much happier person left the boot factory, a rumpled, low-crotched figure fit only to be abroad in darkness. Today, I would vary my route, stumble along… no, the usual route was better. Stick with a known way.
As was always the case, I felt a surge of wellbeing as the recalcitrant muscles and tendons and sinews warmed up and stretched. I prepared myself for the dog ambush, was caught unawares yet again when the calculating beast waited until the last second before launching itself at the fence.
My thoughts turned to gluing the entire dog to a McCoy creation, but my mood was too good to be coloured by the encounter. I stepped up the pace to the point where I could have overtaken one of those scooters for the disabled, the silent machines that carry flags.
Did the drivers ever wish for something more under the pedal, a bit of grunt? Just for emergencies, mark you. An emergency power surge that spun the back wheels, lifted the nose. That would empower the disabled, brighten an entire day.
Thinking these and other innovative thoughts, I cantered in the dark up Napier Street to Freeman, turned left for Brunswick, the sacred ground on my right, the site of the departed Fitzroy Football Club, my sacred ancestral site. Here, Irish men, my antecedents, their founding male genes coming from the Jewish quarter of Hamburg, had on pale and icy afternoons heard the crowd suck the oxygen from the air as they rose to take the screaming mark.
Sucking oxygen myself, I turned right up empty Brunswick, still moving at tram-catching pace, went past the bowling club and turned right for the trip through the gardens. They were in near-darkness, the light from the lamps diffused by the soft rain.
Then the reserves of energy were found to be nonexistent. I slowed to a controlled stagger near the lovely tree where a young woman had been found one winter morning, sitting in the comfortable fork. Dead, strangled, dumped.
Where paths met, I was at a walk. Winded.
The walking winded.
Like a real athlete, my head was up, my hands were on my hips. I was always this way by the time I got to this point. Warming down, they called it. How can you warm down?
Exhaustion with signs of distress was what it was.
Standing there, panting, I heard something.
The shift of a foot on leaves?
Something out of the corner of my left eye, just a movement of the dark trunk of a tree.
Close, two metres away.
I turned my head, saw the figure take a step towards me, a man, saw light from the high park lamp ahead gleam on something…
Oh Jesus.
At once, a sound like a fist thumping a desk and a flash, a shutter blinking on a white-hot fire, a tug at the tracksuit hood, burning on the back of my head.
Instinctively, I reached for the man, lurched, covered the distance between us, got both hands on an arm as I fell, pulled him down with me.
He hit me on the side of the head with his left hand, lost his footing, fell towards me, half over me. I let go with my right hand, tried to punch him, made contact somewhere, he made a noise, I rolled over, took him with me, I outweighed him, a slim person but strong, I was on top, no face beneath me, a mask, a silk ski mask, mud on it. I tried to hit him in the face with my left hand, then my right, missed both, realised he had no hold on me.
I got to my feet.
He was bringing the weapon up.
I swung a kick at him, connected, turned and ran. Not for home, too far, get out into the open. I ran in the direction of the playground, the barbecue, sliding on the gravel, got off the path, looked back, saw him coming, moving well, I hadn’t hurt him.
Why didn’t he shoot? Had he lost the weapon?
No, he wanted this to be neat. He’d wanted to shoot me from close range, a clean hit, a professional hit, Alan Bergh had been shot by a professional…
Run, just run.
I could hear him behind me on the path.
He was closing on me. I could hear his running footsteps over the sound of my heart, of the blood in my ears, of my panting.
The children’s playground ahead, beyond that the road gleaming wetly in the streetlight, the school, a light on in the school, a cleaner at work…
If I could reach the road.
Just reach the road.
I wasn’t going to reach the road before he caught me.
I looked over my shoulder and saw the dark figure close behind, all black, white blurs for eyes. I changed direction to run through the swings, run between the swings, the ground wet and slippery underfoot.
No more breath in my body, slowing down, he was going to run up behind me, shoot me in the back of the head.
Shoot me. Metres from me.
I saw the swings, solid planks suspended on heavy chains.
I was between them, on an isthmus between the troughs worn away by children’s swinging feet.
Behind me, I heard his breathing.
He was almost on me.
Going to die.
I grabbed the swing to my left, grabbed the nearest chain, swung the heavy plank, it jumped up awkwardly, twisting.
He was a metre away, in stride, both hands on the pistol.
I brought the swing seat around shoulder-high.
It smashed into his forearms, knocked them sideways, he fired, the flat sound, no muzzle flash seen, the shot way off course.
His momentum brought him up to me, I smelt his breath, sweet, his left hand was off the gun…
His right hand was bringing the gun back towards me, not worried about neatness now, just a desire to kill me.
I had the swing seat in both hands, threw it over his head, grabbed the chains, pulled them together, no thought in any of this, wrapped them around his throat, twisted with all my strength. He had a hand at his throat, both hands, I twisted, twisted, maniacal strength in my arms, in my torso.
He went down on his knees in the swing’s depression, making a gargling noise.
I didn’t stop twisting, couldn’t stop, went on…
When I stopped, I didn’t look at him, walked away.
Without a backward glance, I walked home, slowly, little shudders passing though my arms, my shoulders, more like tiny convulsions, spasms, a great feeling of tiredness upon me.
At home, I was sick for a long time, then I rang the police emergency number, told a woman that there was a body in the north playground of the gardens, at the swings, gave her my name, address and telephone number.
It was twenty minutes before they knocked on my door. I was showered, shaved, dressed. My breathing was normal.
He was a weary-looking uniformed cop, blue-chinned, probably at the end of his shift.
‘Jack Irish?’
I nodded.
‘Rang about the body?’
‘Yes.’
; He looked at me for a while. ‘Reckon it’s a good joke?’
‘What?’
‘Don’t fuck with me. We don’t appreciate this kind of crap. I can charge you.’
‘At the swings.’
‘No body at the swings, there’s no body in the whole fucken park.’
‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘Must’ve been a dero having a nap. Sorry.’
When he’d gone, I went to the kitchen and sat at the table, my elbows on it, my head in my hands.
Someone was sent to kill me. Instead, I killed him.
Had I killed him?
Or had he recovered, crawled away? Perhaps someone had taken him away, dead or alive, because it was less trouble that way? It had been at least fifteen minutes before I’d phoned the police, plenty of time to remove the masked man.
I hadn’t seen his face. I had wrapped a chain around his neck and tried my best to strangle the life out of him, thought I’d succeeded, and I had no idea what he looked like.
Just the silk-masked face in the near-dark, the smell of his toothpaste.
I walked around the apartment aimlessly, made the bed so recently left. Looked at my watch. It was just after 7 a.m.
Who?
Someone who wanted the matter of Marco to stay closed.
Would they try again? They’d have to find another hit man.
Perhaps they had a supply of hit men. Hardly likely.
Who?
The same people who’d murdered Marco?
It was almost certain that WRG had used Bergh to attempt the blackmail of Susan Ayliss. In that case, he’d hired Marco. But the bid had failed, leaving Bergh and Marco as potential embarrassments. Now they were both dead.
And then I came along, asking questions about both men.
Bergh had held the key to everything. He talked to Doyle, to Mick Olsen, drug scam mastermind…
I needed to look at Bergh’s phone bill again.
No.
I needed to do nothing. This wasn’t worth dying for.
Colin Loder would recuse himself from the cocaine jackets trial and, with luck, never hear anything more about his missing album. As for Marco, his death was of no personal concern to me. I had no interest whatsoever in Marco.
Send a message to WRG that I was no longer interested in Bergh or Marco, that was what I needed to do.
Go away for a while. Go far away. Leave now. That would convey the message that I had disengaged from anything that annoyed them.
Ring Cam, ring Linda, ring Wootton, ring Colin Loder on his borrowed mobile. Ring Stan and tell him to pass the message on to the Youth Club that I’d gone away, wouldn’t be picking them up on Sunday. Ring Gus and leave a message for Charlie. Enzio. I’d have to get hold of him.
A life to run away from.
I could do that. I could spend a few weeks with Claire.
No, I couldn’t do that. They might not accept my gesture of submission and send someone to Claire’s house to look for me. I couldn’t go near anyone I knew.
I couldn’t run away from this. There wasn’t any way to backtrack, to undo.
Bergh’s phone bill. Another look at it.
The city hadn’t fully woken yet, only those without a choice were astir: the greengrocer on the corner, the newsagent, dry-eyed shiftworkers going home. I was opening my office door in ten minutes.
There hadn’t been any malice in the job they’d done, but they didn’t care who knew they’d been there.
My one filing cabinet had been emptied, every file taken from its folder and dropped to the floor.
My old Mac’s hard drive was gone.
The in-tray where I’d carelessly tossed Bergh’s phone bill was empty. So was the out-tray.
There was the faintest glow of light from the back room.
I went to the doorway. The door of the small fridge was open and a rectangle of pale-yellow light lay on the floor.
I switched on the light.
Everything had been taken out of the small sink cupboard – ancient dishwashing liquid, a tin of drain cleaner, a few scouring pads, a bar of yellow soap I’d never seen before, two rolls of paper towels, a box of tea bags, the jar of sugar.
They’d looked in the old microwave, left the door open. I went to the steel back door. It was open. They’d left that way, down the lane, carrying the hard disk.
I locked the door, looked around, feeling light-headed, queasy in the stomach.
What else had been in here?
Robbie’s suitcase. I’d put it between the fridge and the sink.
Gone.
If things had gone to plan, I would be dead now, lying in the park, dragged into the bushes, blood seeped into the tanbark, waiting to be found by some early walker’s dog. And there would be nothing in my effects to connect me with Marco or Bergh.
I went to the front room, willed myself to tidy up, failed. What was the point?
Eric the Geek had done the Bergh reversedirectory for me. Would he have kept a copy of his findings? Possibly. There was something distinctly retentive about Eric. I got out my wallet to find the card with his number, searched through the pockets, couldn’t find it. In exasperation, I pulled out half-a-dozen cards.
A small dark-blue object. For a moment, it meant nothing. Then I remembered.
The small plastic torch-like device from Robbie’s jacket, found in the inside key pocket. The device without hint of function.
I held it between finger and thumb, pressed the button, looked at the red light it emitted for a second or so, turned it over. Something had been scratched into the plastic. I held it to the light. Numbers: 2646.
I thought I knew what this thing did.
The Cathexis carpark was in the basement, entered from a concrete driveway on the eastern side of the building. I found a park two blocks away and walked back, a cold wind opening my jacket, no-one in the streets.
I didn’t turn in when I reached the driveway. I walked to the far side, then turned right and stayed close to the wall as I made haste to cover the 50 metres to the carpark entrance. The camera above it was stationary, looking down on where drivers would activate the door-opening machinery by communicating with a steel pillar.
Robbie’s device was in my hand as I walked. At the carpark’s huge door, I did a right-angle turn, went up to the pillar, saw the eye set into it, pointed the small torch and pressed the button.
The carpark door made a noise and began its rise. I was inside long before it reached my height.
No more than two dozen cars were in the brightly lit chamber. Quality not number, all foreign: Mercedes, BMW, Volvo, Saab, Audi, an Alfa, a yellow born-again VW Beetle in the corner.
I looked around. In the centre of the space, a glowing green arrow on a concrete shaft pointed upwards. I was there in seconds.
Another eye.
I pointed and pressed.
The lift door opened.
A big stainless-steel box, carpet on the floor, deep plum-coloured carpet. No ordinary lift. No floor buttons to press, just a keyboard, an eye and, above it, a green screen. Beside that, two large red rectangular buttons said ASSISTANCE and EMERGENCY.
The green screen had a message: Welcome to Cathexis. Please enter your code.
Point and press.
The screen said: Thank you. Please enter your password.
My password?
I hadn’t thought about a password. Ah, the numbers scratched on the torch. I managed to read them, typed them in: 2646.
The screen said: Error. Please re-enter password.
Time to leave. I was turning when I remembered. The apartment was in a company name. The woman at reception had said it. It had crossed my mind that it was an anagram of Rosalind.
Dalinsor Nominees.
It was worth a try. I typed in Dalinsor.
The screen said: Thank you.
The lift was moving. I breathed again. Numbers blipped on the screen, stopped at 12. The door opened.
A foyer with a pale rose carpet. Soft lighting
came from wall sconces beside four doors. Number 12 was on my right, a security camera set into the wall above it. Plus another electronic eye, another keyboard. How did the residents put up with this? Better to risk burglary.
There was a button. I pressed it. If anyone was home, I had explaining to do.
No response. I pressed again, waited. Then I gave the eye a beam with the torch.
The keyboard lit up and a voice said: ‘Entry code, please.’
If the number scratched on the torch didn’t work I was going to be trapped up here on the twelfth floor, waiting for security to arrive.
I tapped in 2646.
The voice said: ‘Thank you.’
My shoulders sagged. Bolts slid.
I went into a long hallway, unfurnished, looked around for the alarm system. It was behind the door, a steel box with a green light glowing. The entry code had deactivated the alarm.
An open door from the hall led into a huge sitting room, empty except for two leather chairs and a sofa. Outside, on a balcony, the wind was whipping the bare branches of trees in pots. I walked through into a kitchen, stainless steel and granite, sleek, no visible appliances, no signs of habitation. From the sink, you could look out over the city, blurred by the wet glass.
I went back to the hall, found the main bedroom. The bed was the size of a Housing Commission bedroom, bedding on it, striped sheets stripped back.
Facing the bed, a home-cinema-size screen was built into a wall of cupboards, record and stereo equipment beneath it.
Was this where Susan Ayliss had seen herself on screen? Live in action with Marco.
A dressing-room led off the bedroom. I had a look in the cupboards. Two held women’s garments, after-dark wear at a glance, and there were underclothes in drawers and women’s shoes in a rack. Ros Cundall obviously used the place occasionally.
Beyond the dressing-room was a bathroom that was also a gym and spa and sauna, an antiseptic Nordic-looking place. In a glass-fronted cabinet, glass shelves held cosmetics – jars and tubes, bottles of all shapes and sizes containing pale liquids and golden vials – three perfumes, atomisers, cologne, cottonwool balls, ear buds, mouthwash, toothpaste.
Nothing. I was wasting my time.
I went back to the kitchen, sighted along the granite countertop, saw the faint trails. It took a while to find the fridge but it was empty except for a bottle of Perrier water.
