by Peter Temple
Steven Levesque. The handsome man with the wayward hair and the genuine laugh. I nodded. ‘What’s he got to do with it?’
Drew sighed, shook his head. ‘Levesque is TransQuik. Was, anyway. Levesque and the Killer Bees. Carson and Rupert and McColl. You should talk to my mate Tony Rinaldi. Remember Rinaldi? The fat bloke who used to sing?’
‘Yes. Quit the DPP’s office last year.’
‘Well, you don’t miss everything.’
‘Only the important things. How is it that you miss nothing?’
‘Nice little drop this,’ Drew said, examining the label. ‘Barone Ricasoli. A red baron. I miss nothing because I’m a citizen of the world, playing a full part in civic life. You, on the other hand, allow the affairs of the public sphere to pass you by while you master pigeonhole joints.’
‘Dovetail. Tricky things.’
The main course arrived: dark meat falling off the bone, pool of glistening dark sauce, sweet potato with flecks of something, baby green beans, crunchy.
We didn’t talk for a while. Finally, Drew said, ‘Jesus, how can I get Donelly to owe me money, lots of money? Are these bits of apricot?’
‘Stick around, make yourself known, your turn will come. Sooner or later, he’ll be up for pinning a kitchenhand to the wall with a knife.’
The bottle was low. I signalled to the swimmer for another. ‘So Tony Rinaldi knows about TransQuik?’
‘Oh yes. More than he should, I reckon. I had a few glasses with Anthony one night, his wife went off with a librarian from Camberwell library. Female librarian. That hurt the boy. Bloody Eltham artist is one thing, big dick notwithstanding. At least he had a dick.’
We went back to savouring the shanks. The new bottle arrived. I waived the approval ritual, went directly to Go.
‘A bitter man, Tony Rinaldi,’ said Drew. ‘First the wife’s knee-trembling in the library stacks, then he gets shafted in the DPP’s office. He reckons the DPP’s a silent partner in this new place, The Dining Room. Top of Collins Street. Know it?’
I shook my head. I’d been too dazed by encountering Linda’s perfume to notice much when I was last at the top of Collins Street.
‘Like eating at the Melbourne Club, I gather. Only with decent food and Jewish members. Victorian grandeur, my client Simeon Haldane, Melbourne Grammar and Cambridge, tells me. That’s Simon with an e stuck in. You went to Grammar, you’d probably know Simeon. About your vintage. Same dissolute appearance.’
‘Charged with what?’
‘Usual. Male minors, all orifices, possessing a range of educative pictorial stuff. Bit of light caning.’
‘Sounds like an ordinary day at boarding school.’
‘Simeon sat two tables away from the Premier at lunch at The Dining Room last week. The leader eats there all the time, takes the visiting money for dinner. Stuff themselves on prime Victorian meat. That’s all Simeon wanted to do really.’
We breasted the tape together, put the implements down on plates naked save the bones.
‘No,’ I said. ‘Simeon doesn’t stand out in my mind. Could be any one of fifty people from school. Why did Rinaldi get the boot from the DPP?’
Drew was looking at his empty plate in sorrow. ‘Not clear to me. Something to do with the Levesque gang. Tony was moving the flamethrower freely at that point, the wife, the librarian, the DPP, all blazing. Also, it was bottle three.’
I poured. ‘Want to go to the footy on Saturday?’
‘The footy? What, just pick a game? Any old footy?’
‘Saints and Geelong.’
‘Christ, what a pair. So, we’d be going for nobody, just like to see a game? Any old shitty game? That’s it?’
‘No. We’re going for the Saints.’
Drew emptied his glass of Barone Ricasoli’s 1986 Chianti Classico. ‘We? You and the Prince?’ Incredulous tone, loud. People looked at us.
‘Well, not the Prince as a whole.’
Drew glanced around, a what-the-fuck-are-you-looking-at glance. ‘The old buggers? You and the old buggers?’ Even louder, more incredulous.
‘Yes. Drew, steady, the other customers think we’re about to have a fight.’
He sighed, looked around again, apportioned the rest of the Ricasoli. ‘This is, well-you hear some strange things. I’ll be fucked.’
I couldn’t think of the right thing to say.
Drew sighed a few more times. ‘Jesus, Jack, are you all off your fucking heads? The Brisbane bloody Lions at least represent a bit of the old Roys. So they train in Brisbane. What the fuck does that matter? Everybody plays all over the place. Footy in fucking Sydney, Brisbane, Perth, wall-to-wall cankerous Poms at every game. Where the hell did Fitzroy end up training? Not in Fitzroy. Some players never came near Fitzroy except to front up to the faithful to raise a few bucks. Footy players are just mercenaries, can’t you grasp that? They’re not like your old man, his old man, however fucking many bloody Irish played for the Roys. These are just contract players. And that’s been going on a long time. Didn’t stop the team being Fitzroy, did it? Did it?’
‘So Saturday’s pretty much taken up then?’ I said.
‘Hang on. All we have to do is pretend that the Roys aren’t having many home games this season. When they play in Melbourne, they’re home. In Brisbane and Sydney and Adelaide and fucking Perth, they’re away. That’s not hard is it? Fewer home games. Get a grip on that and we’ve still got the Roys.’
A large woman at the next table said loudly, ‘Like bloody hell. Never heard such bullshit before.’
‘Settle down,’ said her companion. ‘You shouldn’t listen to other people’s conversations.’
‘Well, he’s got a point,’ said one of the four youngish men at the table on the other side.
‘Point?’ said another of the men. ‘Are you out of your…’
‘Drew, this may be an opportune moment to leave. I can’t charge breakages incurred during an all-in brawl against Donelly’s bill.’
We went to the pub down the street for the cleansing ale, took taxis home. I was in bed trying to focus on the men and their father’s novel when the phone rang. It was Drew, serious.
‘Listen,’ he said, ‘got home, poured a last little one, bit in a bottle going to waste, thought I’d give Tony Rinaldi a ring since he’d come to mind. Cheer him up, take his mind off librarians. Well, I remembered some of those company names, y’know? Your bloke.’
‘Yes.’
‘So I said to Tony, what’s the name Klostermann Gardier mean to you? Know what he says?’
‘No.’
‘He says, he’s had a few sherbets himself, he says, Where’d you hear that? That’s a name gets people killed.’
14
I rang Drew from Taub’s and caught him on his way out to court.
‘Four bloody appearances today,’ he said. ‘In this condition, how can I get justice for the victims of a system designed to punish the poor?’
‘Four of those?’ I said. ‘And not a single dead-set guilty and remorseless criminal arsehole? Tony Rinaldi. Will he talk to me about that stuff?’
Drew sighed. ‘Ask him. I think I told him last night that I’d mentioned to you that he had an interest in the people in question.’ Pause. ‘I think I told him. Well, I must have.’
I said, ‘Thank you. Go the Saints. Goodbye.’
Go the Saints. I’d said it. The first time. It felt like coming out.
Tony Rinaldi now had chambers in William Street. The secretary said he was in conference. I left my mobile number. Today we had to measure up for a library.
Charlie devoted the trip to Kooyong to explaining to me why no-one could be a joiner of any consequence without undergoing what sounded like a fifty-year apprenticeship starting at age four and supervised by the Marquis de Sade.
‘So it’s twenty-five years just sweeping up the shavings,’ I said as we arrived at the address. ‘I can imagine the feeling on the day they let you hand them a chisel.’
It was seve
ral million dollars worth of old neo-Georgian house behind a high wall. Through wrought-iron double gates, we could see a gravelled driveway that turned the corner of the house. Beside the gates, a wooden door was set in the wall. I tried the handle. It was open. We went up the path to a massive black front door under a portico. I pressed a polished brass button.
The door was opened by a tall, thin man in his thirties, designer cheekbones, black clothes, short fair hair. Alternate fingers of both hands wore rings, red stones on one, green on the other. He looked at us in turn, a look for each. Charlie was in his formal wear: white painter’s overalls, clean, marked only by a faint oil stain here and there, and the jacket of a pinstriped suit he claimed to have got married in. It was not a claim anyone was going to dispute. I was in a dark suit and striped business shirt. With me carrying Charlie’s sliding measuring sticks, we made a fetching couple.
The man tilted his head, brought his hands up and clasped them under his chin. Now the ring stones alternated, red, green, red, green.
‘Stop and go,’ I said. ‘What about amber?’
He concentrated on me, unsmiling. ‘You are who? Or what?’
I looked at Charlie. He was studying the garden.
‘Here to take measurements,’ I said.
‘Oh. The carpenters.’
Charlie lost interest in the garden. ‘Carpenters build a house for you,’ he said. ‘You need carpenters?’
‘Yes,’ said the man. ‘To build some shelves. When you bring in the materials, please use the tradesmen’s entrance off the lane.’
‘Wrong house,’ said Charlie. ‘Let’s go.’ He turned and set off down the path.
‘Say hello to Mrs Purbrick for us,’ I said. ‘Tell her Mr Taub is now booked up for the foreseeable future.’
‘Ah,’ said the man.
‘And tell her Mr Taub is a cabinetmaker. A cabinetmaker is to a carpenter as a Rolex is to a sundial. Find that comparison illuminating?’
‘Ah,’ he said again. ‘The library.’ He put his hand to his mouth.
Charlie was almost at the gate.
‘Mr Taub,’ the man shouted, running after him. ‘Please come back. Mr Taub. I’ve made a mistake, Mr Taub! Please!’
Charlie stopped, turned his head. His expression was unforgiving.
‘Mr Taub, I’m so sorry about the misunderstanding. We are expecting carpenters. At some time. Shelves in the…in the pantry, I believe. I’m David, Mrs Purbrick’s personal assistant.’
Charlie turned, examined David, then put out his right hand. David looked at it, hesitated, like a man offered a snake. Then he put forward four fingers held straight and tight, thumb up. Charlie’s hand engulfed them. This hand could without effort turn David’s slim and elegant digits into red slime.
It didn’t. ‘Pianist’s hand,’ said Charlie holding up David’s hand for inspection.
I could see David’s neck colour faintly, a drop of blood in a saucer of milk. ‘Very bad pianist,’ he said.
‘Nonsense,’ said Charlie. ‘The hands. Got the hands. Practise every day. Where’s the room?’
David led the way through the front door into a room the size of my sitting room, not so much a hall as a gallery, four-metre-high ceiling, polished floorboards, no cornices or skirtingboards, no furniture, half a dozen paintings. Big paintings, paintings the size of windows. The only one I recognised was a Michael Winters, a Greek landscape with an elusive brooding quality; a painting you would like to see a lot of.
We went through double doors into a corridor lit by skylights that led, eventually, to another set of doors. Halfway down, David indicated left. ‘I’ll get Mrs Purbrick,’ he said and kept going.
It was an empty room of modest size, perhaps five metres square, two long, narrow windows, each framing a bare elm. Like the hall, it was devoid of ornament. Charlie paced out the measurements. I went to the lefthand window. The garden was formal, brick paving, old hedges and trees.
‘Mr Taub. How punctual you are.’
A blonde woman of unknown age reduced to about forty by cutting, injecting and sanding was in the room, holding out a hand, palm down, to Charlie. Everything about her was short: hair, forehead, eyelids, nose, upper lip, chin, neck, torso, fingers, legs, feet, skirt. This led to a certain imbalance because her chest could not be called short. Many things it could be called. But not short.
Gingerly, Charlie took her fingers between thumb and forefinger. With his other hand, he pointed at me. ‘My assistant,’ he said, ‘Jack Irish.’
Mrs Purbrick extended her left hand to me. I took it. For a second, the three of us stood there like a small ill-assorted Maypole dancing team without a pole. Then she dropped our hands and gestured dramatically at the room. ‘Mr Taub, this is yours. Yours. All yours. Do with it what you will.’
She pirouetted, arms bent, fingers pointing outwards. ‘I want to be surrounded by books. I love books. Books. I must have a room where I can breathe books. Floor to ceiling. I saw Sir Dennis’s library. I knew only one made by you would be good enough.’
She smiled at us in turn, a little longer at me. There was a certain glitter in the eye.
‘The deposit is fifteen thousand dollars,’ I said.
‘The books,’ said Charlie. ‘Big books, small books? Library, you make it to fit the books.’
Mrs Purbrick had moved over to stand close to me. I hadn’t seen any movement but a hip was in contact with my left leg.
‘Mr Irish,’ she said, ‘David will give you a cheque for the deposit. Mr Taub, build it and the books will come. To fit. David will arrange the right size books, don’t you worry.’ She looked at David, standing in the doorway. ‘Size is David’s concern.’
From the doorway, David said, ‘Absolutely. Size is my department. Isn’t it, Mrs Purbrick?’
She turned her head and smiled at him. You could see that extending her mouth sideways required effort and the lips could snap back like an old-fashioned purse. ‘Bring the car around, will you, darling.’
His lips twitched and he disappeared. Her hip moved against my outer thigh, a contact and a rub, measured in millimetres. I found the experience disconcerting but not unpleasant.
Charlie took the measuring sticks from me. ‘Write,’ he said.
I got out my notebook. Mrs Purbrick made hip contact again, smiled and said, ‘I’m in your incredibly talented hands, gentlemen. If you need anything at all, shout for David.’
At the door, she turned. Our eyes met. I thought the movement of her hairline indicated an attempt at a wink.
Charlie took about a hundred measurements and I said each one back to him before I wrote it down. Everything would be built in the workshop and brought here in sections to be installed over a few days. This meant that a mismeasurement of even a centimetre could be disastrous. When we’d finished, I found David and he let us out in a courteous and respectful manner.
I drove around to Gary Connors’ apartment block and found a park right outside. ‘What’s this?’ asked Charlie. ‘Bunkers they need in Toorak now?’
‘I’ll be five minutes,’ I said. At the front door, I pressed the button with Manager under it. A rich voice said, ‘Can I help you?’
‘I’d like to talk to you about Mr Connors in unit five.’
‘In what connection?’
‘His whereabouts.’
‘May I ask who you are?’
‘I’m a lawyer representing his father.’
‘Do come in.’
The doorbolt clicked. I went into the lobby. The door on the left was opened by a man in his sixties, neat grey hair on a mound-shaped head, military moustache, reading glasses half-way down his nose. He was wearing grey flannels, a white shirt and a striped tie, a school tie. He put out his right hand.
‘Clive Wendell,’ he said. He didn’t look the type to be caretaker of a postmodern bunker. A converted Edwardian mansion full of retired graziers would have suited.
I introduced myself. We went into his sitting room. It was chintzy, silv
er-framed photographs on every surface, kelims on the floor, two regimental swords on a side wall.
‘About ready for the pre-lunch gin,’ he said. ‘Join me?’
I declined. He went over to the drinks tray, poured a modest amount of gin into a glass, added tonic from an open bottle. Perhaps not the first G &T of the day.
‘Police did mention Connors’ family,’ he said, sitting down. There was something wrong with his left leg or hip.
‘When were they here?’
Wendell sipped, put his glass on a side table, leaned over and picked up a black ledger with red binding from the coffee table. ‘The book,’ he said. ‘The good book. Thank God for the book. Relied on memory, I’d be buggered.’ He pushed his glasses up, flicked pages, stopped. ‘Fifth of April, morning.’
‘What did they want?’
He looked puzzled, put the book in his lap, lowered his glasses. ‘Well,’ he said. ‘Family reported Connors missing.’
I nodded. ‘Of course. The police wanted to look around the flat.’
‘Yes. Thorough too, I can tell you. No need to worry on that score. You can tell his father. No need for concern. Took the matter very seriously indeed.’
‘He’ll be pleased to hear that.’
‘Sure he will. Worrying business. Still worry about my daughter. In Canada with three teenagers and I still worry.’
‘We all do. Did they find anything of interest, do you know? They’re being very non-committal with Mr Connors senior.’
He drank a teaspoon of G &T. ‘Can’t help. Wish I could. Had me let them in, shooed me off. Wouldn’t let me through the door. Didn’t want the waters muddied, I imagine. They were up there for a good forty-five minutes.’
‘I suppose they identified themselves, left a card, that sort of thing,’ I said.
More G &T. ‘Absolutely. We don’t let any old person in the front door here.’ Wendell repositioned his glasses, raised the ledger and read. ‘Detectives Carmody and Mildren, Australian Federal Police.’
‘Federal Police. Not the local police?’
Puzzled again. ‘Connors’ father hasn’t had dealings with them?’
‘He reported his concerns to the local police. I suppose they handed the matter on.’
