by Peter Temple
‘Only if employed by the business,’ said Charlie. ‘People walk in off the street, waste Mr Chippendale’s time, won’t go away like a cat, cost Mr Chippendale money, come and go as they please, those they don’t get any award wages. Those they should be grateful for anything they get. Air to breathe.’
‘I can see the force of that view,’ I said, making a final delicate pass with the scraper. ‘I think this one’s done.’
‘Think?’ Charlie said. ‘You have to know.’
He took the scraper out of my hand and went over to where the burnisher was lying on a workbench.
‘I’m off for breakfast,’ I said. ‘Then I’ll finish up. Cam’s picking me up at ten.’
Charlie didn’t look at me. ‘Gambling,’ he said. ‘I blame myself.’
‘You can do that,’ I said, ‘or I can blame you.’
6
‘Winter’s comin,’ said Harry Strang. ‘Need a bit of fat to see you over the winter. Fat’s bin scarce.’
We were in Harry’s study, Harry behind the desk designed and made by Charlie Taub, a piece of furniture that elevated the joining of wood to a breathless height. Behind me, the mahogany bookshelves rose five metres, the walkway for the upper shelves reached by four sliding teak and brass ladders. Behind Harry, I could look through French windows across a brick terrace to a deep garden. A stand of four mature maples was scarlet against a high, dark hedge.
Lyn, the robustly sexy Mrs Strang, came in, escorted by Mrs Aldridge, Harry’s housekeeper through thirty years and three marriages. Cameron Delray, Harry’s lean and taciturn offsider, and I followed Harry’s example and stood up. Lyn had the silver teapot and the bone-china tea-set. Mrs Aldridge had the accompaniments: small, perfect chocolate eclairs, warm shortbread the colour of melted butter.
‘One of each for you, Mr Strang,’ Mrs Aldridge said. ‘And no more than one.’
Lyn made a fist, a fair-sized fist, and touched Harry’s cheek with the knuckles. ‘Listen to the lady,’ she said.
When they had gone, Harry poured tea. He took four eclairs and three shortbreads. ‘They mean well,’ he said. ‘Used to dream about stuff like this when I was ridin.’
I took milk. Harry took lemon. Cam added hot water. We ate and sipped in silence. Then Harry said, ‘Now. Business. Jack, had a talk yesterday. Fellow called McCurdie. Grows somethin or other, dabbles in the cattle out Echuca way. Come via Tony Ericson.’
He bit off half an eclair, looked at the plump layered remains, put them in his mouth. His eyes closed. ‘Hmm, lovely. Why does the Lord put bad in with the good? Anyway, this McCurdie. Bit slow but then a lotta the Woops only got one gear forward. Cam’s run the ruler over him. Cam?’
Cam was looking out of the French window. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘before this year he had nothing for years and he wasn’t ever Bart Cummings. But the strike rate’s not bad. Five years ago, run three horses, sixteen starts for three, two, three. Year before, bit better. Four horses, nineteen starts, four, three, four. Much the same the year before.’ He drank some black tea. ‘A Bob Jane.’
‘A what?’ Bob Jane was the name of a chain of tyre dealers. Racing always held another mystery.
‘Retreads old tyres. Won a race in Albury in ’91, nineteen hundred metres, horse called Live Marine.’
‘Like that name,’ said Harry. He was a connoisseur of horse names, knew thousands, approved of few.
‘Nice name,’ said Cam. ‘Nice age, too. Fourteen. Retired at nine this Marine. Won six out of seventy-five, placed fourteen. Never closer than eighth in the last twelve. Pensioned off, never heard of for five years, presumed dead or carryin kids in some paddock. Come 1991 and aged fourteen, it was like Fred Stolle coming back to win Wimbledon.’
I said, ‘I see. Bob Jane.’
‘This year McCurdie’s got two new little payslips, both won at nineteen hundred.’
‘Had other comeback nags before Live Marine,’ Harry said. ‘But then the luck run out. Now McCurdie’s feelin a twitch in the underwear again.’
I drank some tea. Mrs Aldridge’s tea both soothed the stomach and cheered and stimulated the brain cells. What did Mrs Aldridge know about the chemistry of immersing small leaves in boiling water that was unknown to all other tea-makers? Yet another mystery.
Harry held up a video cassette. ‘Brought this to show me. Looks like a man with the DTs took it. Bring the cups over.’
On the way across the passage to Harry’s elegant twelve-seater cinema, I admired his outfit of the day: Irish houndstooth tweed suit, soft white shirt, silk tie, Lobb’s plain toecap shoes the colour of caramelised onion.
Cam pressed the buttons. We watched a three-horse race run on what looked like an abandoned racecourse. The camera operator suffered from both St Vitus’s Dance and an uncontrollable urge to play with the zoom. In spite of this, it was clear that a large grey won by about five lengths.
‘I see what they mean about country racing being in bad shape,’ I said. ‘Collapsed grandstand, field of three, crowd of one, jockeys riding in shorts.’
‘That’s the creature,’ Harry said. ‘Vision Splendid. Twelve years old. Give Jack the history, Cam.’
‘Sir Rocco out of Clancy’s Angel. Bred by H. and J. Morrisey, Angaston. Owned by two Adelaide lawyers, sold to Ken Gumble, trains at Mornington, as a three-year-old maiden. Gumble sold half share to a lawyers’ syndicate. Lightly raced, forty-four starts, five wins, six seconds, eight thirds, total career winnings $164,500. Not placed in eighteen months, then given to a riding school in Bendigo. That’s where McCurdie bought it two years ago. The school’s run by a friend of his daughter’s.’
‘He’s run this Vision, has he?’ I asked.
‘No,’ Cam said.
‘Man of patience,’ Harry said. ‘Admire that.’
‘Could be patient,’ said Cam. ‘Could be slow.’
‘The beaten nags there,’ said Harry, pointing to the screen. ‘That’s McCurdie’s two three-year-olds. Winners the both.’
‘Winners in Quambatook and Moulamein,’ said Cam, ‘where two slabs of Vic Bitter buys off the whole field.’
‘So he’s looking for another Albury,’ I said.
‘Not this time,’ Harry said. ‘Albury he can do himself. No, he’s lookin for the jeweller’s shop, join those white-shoe boys up in Queensland. Problem is, he’s got no capital.’
‘Man of ambition,’ said Cam. ‘Admire that.’
Harry smiled. ‘Cheeky. Thought we might go for a little sky-borne inspection. Put a pro on this antique horse. Too bloody far to drive. Jack, you in?’
‘Try to keep me on the ground.’
‘Good man. Well, let’s get out to Kyneton and see what this Burnbank Boy can do for us.’
At the Flemington Road lights, Harry sat tapping his big fingertips on the wheel. ‘Mystery’s gone out of racin,’ he said. ‘Blame the cameras. See everythin. Used to be like war out there in the back straight. Life and death. Fellas do anythin. Anythin.’
Cam was reading the Age. Neither of us said anything.
Harry opened the ashtray that held the wine gums and chose one. ‘Prime example that Wes Gales. Dangerous little bastard. Hard. Cut the teeth over the border, Mindarie, Halidon, places like that. Out to buggery.’
We were in the big navy BMW, tenth in line at an intersection that didn’t allow more than seven or eight through at a time. The green arrow came on. Harry revved the machine. The first car was slow off the mark. It wasn’t even going to be eight this time. The car ahead of us went through on red. Two lanes of traffic started coming at us.
‘Bugger this,’ said Harry. He put his foot down, took the BMW into a screaming right-hand turn. We passed across the face of death, alive by a metre or so.
‘Sluggish,’ Harry said. ‘Tuned by these galahs just the other day. Charge like proctologists. Cheaper to keep a horse in trainin. Wes Gales. Wonder what happened to him? Saw him stick his whip up a fella’s arse once. On the favourite, Mavourneen’s Kiss, good name that, went around on her a few
times. We’re just at the school at Flemington, Wes pulls the arm back and rams it up him. Hole in one. The fella, Carter, he gives a big squeak, sits down, that’s it, runs near last, poor sod. Stable wants his clangers on a plate.’
‘Good old days,’ said Cam. He didn’t look up from the newspaper.
‘Hard old days. Inside the door, Carter takes a swing at Wes. Big mistake. Wes slaps him a few, knocks him down, gives him a bit of grace with the slipper.’
‘How’d the stewards like that?’ I said.
‘Not a word said to the stewards. Had to look after yourself back then. I said to Gales, he was lookin pleased, I said, “Wes, you wouldn’t put the stick up my arse, would you?’’ He says, “Only do it to blokes don’t enjoy it.’’’
‘Cheeky,’ said Cam.
Harry straddled lanes, preparing to take the vehicle between a semi-trailer and a truck carrying huge sheets of glass. ‘My word,’ he said. ‘So I king-hit him. They got the doctor in, the boy’s that slow to start answerin questions. Know yer name, what day’s it and suchlike.’
‘That would’ve got the stewards’ attention,’ said Cam.
‘No. Hoops’ business. Monkeys fightin, that’s the attitude then. Anyway, the little shit wasn’t goin to dob. Told em he fell over gettin his boot off, hit his chin on the locker.’
It wasn’t hard to think of Harry Strang king-hitting someone, even now. Not when you looked at the set of his shoulders, the big hands on the leather-covered steering wheel. What was hard to accept was that Harry’s 20-year riding career had ended at Deauville in 1961 with him winning by three lengths on Lord Conover’s Leneave Vale. A few yards beyond the post, the horse pitched forward, folding at the knees, stone dead. Harry went with him, crushing all the ribs on his left side and breaking his left arm in two places. He made a complete recovery, but he left Europe, came home, housekeeper with him, never rode again. It was as if the fall had given him extra time. He was almost unlined, clear eyes, vigour in the walk.
The drive became less nerve-racking when the traffic thinned after the airport turn-off.
‘Put on that John Denver,’ Harry said. ‘Don’t mind which.’
‘Do I have to?’ Cam said. ‘Can we vote on it?’
‘Yes and no,’ said Harry. ‘There’s a good fella.’
‘Rocky Mountain High’ came at us from speakers everywhere: roof, seat backs, side panels, window ledges. It was like being embalmed in Rocky Mountain High jelly.
‘Went up in one of them little planes, this bloke,’ Harry said. ‘Can’t get a hang of why. Come down like a duck full of shot. Tragedy.’
‘There’s a silver lining,’ said Cam. ‘He won’t be making any more recordings.’
Harry shook his head. ‘No ear, some people.’
In self-defence, I fell asleep soon after the Melton turn-off, put my head against the cushioned door pillar for a moment, closed my eyes, gone. I came to with the car stopping in the Kyneton racecourse carpark.
‘TAB gets it when they’re heading for the gate,’ said Harry. ‘Tell the yokels to start dribblin it on at 12.40. Need to get five hundred on above twenty to be comfy.’
He took a fat yellow envelope out of his jacket pocket and handed it to Cam. Over his shoulder, he said to me, ‘No personal bets today, Jack, see you don’t suffer for it. The missus saw a bloke with a camera in a car down the street from the front gate.’
‘What’s that mean?’
Harry looked at Cam, shrugged. ‘Who knows? Could be there’s people think we’re pissin on their barbies, want the faces.’
Burnbank Boy looked serene in the mounting yard and came out of gate three like a fire truck. Johnny Chernov got him on the rail, settled nicely, let two no-hopers go up and make the pace. No worries here, textbook stuff. But at the turn, he was suddenly in a crowd, five, six horses bunched. In the viewfinder of the Sakura Pro FS100, I thought I could see defeat on Johnny Chernov’s lips. I was right. Boxed to the end, we ran sixth out of eleven.
We met back at the car. We always kept away from one another at the races.
‘Funny old game, racin,’ Harry said, taking off the old overcoat he wore to the races. ‘Coulda sworn we had that one down.’
‘Talking about pissing on barbies,’ Cam said, looking at Harry. ‘You happy with this hoop?’
I had no idea what he meant.
‘Pendin,’ Harry said. ‘Pendin investigation. You drive.’
We drove home in silence. No John Denver. No turf stories.
7
Gary Connors’ apartment was off Toorak Road. There was a look about it that said it had once been an
inoffensive three-storey block of units, probably built in the early ’50s. Now it was mad-Umbrian-fortress-meets-germ-warfare-laboratory, probably the victim of shaven-headed architects in black T-shirts calling themselves PostUrbana or DeConstructa. It was painted the colour of rust and had narrow gun-embrasures with metal shutters for windows and a huge stainless-steel front door with a brass porthole above it.
‘Funny lookin place,’ said Des.
‘A lot of funny people this side of the river,’ I said. ‘Rich and funny.’
‘That’d be right for bloody Gary.’
We were looking through a narrow steel-barred gate set in a two-metre high roughcast wall. Beside it were six steel letterbox mouths. A parking area was visible to the left of the building. Only one bay was taken: by a white Audi.
‘Gary’s?’ I asked.
Des shook his head. ‘Green, Gary’s.’
I tried the gate. It opened. We went down a concrete path bisecting a plain of raked gravel, small white stones.
Des stopped to poke the gravel with his walking stick. ‘Bit of grass’d be nice,’ he said. ‘This stuff’s for bloody cemeteries.’
‘Moved on from grass around here.’
Beside the vault door were buzzers numbered one to six. They’d gone beyond names too, except for number one, which had Manager on a brass plate under it. Each buzzer had a speaker grille.
Des took a full key ring out of his raincoat pocket and looked through the keys. ‘Number five,’ he said. I pressed the buzzer. No sound, but a yellow light came on beside the buzzer. I looked at the door. We were on camera. I pressed again. Again. Again. We looked at each other. Des offered me the keys.
The deadlock was silk-smooth. The door opened silently to reveal a square hallway with grey slate on all six surfaces. There were doors on either side of the room and a lift door straight ahead, all stainless steel. We took the lift to the third floor. Stainless-steel-lined lift, silent.
‘Bugger me, Bill,’ said Des, wide-eyed. ‘Like a bloody coolroom. Never seen anythin like it.’
On the way over, he’d lapsed into calling me Bill; there didn’t seem to be much point in correcting him. In the long run, what’s a generation? Besides, I rather liked it. No-one had ever called me by my father’s name.
The lift door opened onto a small version of the entrance hall, doors on either side. Number five was to the left. The brass buzzer was high on the door and when I went to push it I looked up into a pinhole security camera.
We waited, tried again, waited.
‘Let’s get in there,’ said Des.
Again, a smooth deadlock. The door opened silently to reveal a small empty entrance hall carpeted in dark grey. I looked for the alarm. It wasn’t on. I clicked the light switch beside the door. A spotlight came on over a framed black-and-white photograph of a young female ballet dancer erotically slumped in exhaustion. It was a restful way to enter a dwelling.
To the left of the front door was a small security monitor. Two closed doors led off the room.
‘Des, wait here.’
I opened the righthand door. It was a sitting room, carpeted in the same grey and with some good pieces of furniture: modern leather armchairs in the style of Jean-Michel Frank, small writing desk, probably French, elegant side tables. There were more dark-framed ballet photographs, a collection of treen objects on the m
antelpiece, an antiqued gilt-framed mirror, table lamps everywhere. Everything about the room said ‘decorator’.
The rest of the apartment said the same thing. Gary’s bedroom was dark and masculine, the kitchen stark and surgical, the period-style bathroom missing only Winston Churchill smoking a cigar in the giant clawfooted tub. Panelled doors concealed a washing machine and dryer.
The place was clean, too, the feel of a serviced apartment. I came back into the sitting room. Des was standing in the doorway, nodding his head.
‘Bloody posh,’ he said. ‘S’pose this is where me sixty grand went.’
‘Des,’ I said, ‘I’m not mad about this kind of thing but as an anxious parent, would you like me to look around?’
‘Look,’ he said, no sign of parental concern visible.
Gary hadn’t been home for a while. The use-by date on a four-pack of yoghurt in the fridge put the time at a minimum of three weeks. A brass bowl in the kitchen was full of change and half a dozen or so crumpled shopping sales dockets and credit card receipts.
I went around the cupboards. One of them, at eye-height, contained another security system monitor. I switched it on. It came to life instantly, very smart technology, split screen showing the front doorstep downstairs, the empty entrance hall outside the apartment and the fire escape landing beyond the kitchen door. You could see the front door of the apartment across the hall. I switched off and opened more cupboards until I came to the liquor cache. The wine rack held three bottles of Coldstream Hills pinot noir, there was whisky, vodka and gin, and, in a small fridge, four bottles of Carlsberg.
Des followed me into the bedroom. The laundry basket held four dirty business shirts, two golf shirts, three pairs of casual trousers, underpants, all with Henry Buck’s labels. The built-in cupboard housed an array of expensive, conservative clothes.
‘Boy’s got taste,’ I said. ‘Taste and money.’
‘Know where he got the bloody money from,’ Des said. ‘Taste’s the mystery.’
I had a look in the medicine cabinet in the bathroom. Much is revealed in medicine cabinets. Gary’s told me only that he had indigestion and a sex life.
