by Peter Temple
On the way back, Lyall said, ‘Bringing in the firewood. Essentially a male preserve.’
I said, ‘And we want to hang onto it. Not a lot of preserves left.’
‘I want you to hang onto it,’ Lyall said. ‘I want you to feel ownership of the firewood preserve.’
‘Empathy. Essentially a female preserve.’
She had a good deep chuckling laugh.
In the sitting room, I said, ‘Would you be offended if I reconstructed this fire?’
Our eyes met. Lyall tilted her head, looked thoughtful. ‘No,’ she said, ‘I think that falls into the firewood preserve. What kind of idiot objects when someone else volunteers to get dirty and burnt?’
‘They’re out there, I’m told,’ I said, picking up the tongs to start the messy work of unpacking the heap of charred wood. ‘A dangerous strain of idiot.’
‘None around here,’ she said. ‘When you’ve got it inflamed, would you like some red? White? There’s beer. I’m over beer now, may never drink beer again. The red’s a bit special.’
I said, ‘Once inflamed, red would be nice.’
She went away while I had a go at resuscitating the fire. When I came back from washing my hands in the down- stairs bathroom, she handed me a glass. ‘It’s called Hill of Grace.’
‘I know the bounteous hill. From the time when I was a responsible social drinker. And non-millionaires could afford it.’
‘This is the bounteous 1988. Courtesy of Bradley Joffrin. Two unopened cases in the pantry. It was the day you were here. I was looking for dried food. Bit unsteady. The room’s so big, bodies could be in there. Shelves about a metre deep. They were in the corner under all sorts of things. I sent Bradley an e-mail in Los Angeles. “Two cases expensive, unobtainable wine found in pantry. Await instructions.’’ He sent an e-mail back. “Listen, bitch, you pass this way but once. Drink.’’’
‘You’d like a person for that.’
The crooked smile. ‘Like him, love him. Love him’s fine. In love with him’s the problem. I was in love with him for years. Never mentioned it. No point. He’s gay. Huge loss to womankind.’ She raised her glass. ‘Straight womankind. Cheers.’
The Hill of Grace was like drinking a liquidised alcoholic plum tart. We sat down on sofas opposite each other in front of the fire, now in aggressive form.
‘Talent for reconstructing fires, Mr Irish,’ she said, looking at the blaze through her glass. ‘To be honest, I’ve got to confess to vaguely false pretences. I don’t think that what I remembered will be of much use to you. Thought it would be nice to see you again.’
I said, ‘Well. That’s cheeky. Think you can get away with wasting a high-powered suburban solicitor’s time. Make nuisance calls.’
She turned her head, half-profile. I remembered thinking that she had a judgmental face. ‘I rather hoped so.’
‘If it’s show and tell,’ I said, ‘I considered phoning you the other night. Imagined getting the busy-this-year-feel-free-to-call-thereafter.’
We looked at each other.
‘So,’ she said, the smile. ‘Shown you mine, got a glimpse of yours.’
We both looked into the fire, uncertainty about the next step in the air.
‘I didn’t think about eating,’ she said. ‘You forget that other people don’t have lunch at 4 p.m. Are you before or after eating?’
‘Possibly beyond,’ I said. ‘I had a pie mid-afternoon. The local pie tends to steer the mind away from food for a while. Days. Weeks sometimes.’
‘I’ll get the other half then,’ she said. ‘Needs to breathe a bit. That’s what they say.’
‘No arguing with they,’ I said. ‘They know everything.’
I watched her leave the room, admired her lean buttocks. At the door, she turned her head, caught me looking. The smile. I got up and stood beside the fireplace.
She came back with a large plate, wedges of cheese and a packet of water biscuits. Under her arm, another Hill of Grace. She put the plate on the coffee table, found a waiter’s friend on the mantelpiece and removed the cork like a professional.
Then she walked around the sofas, came right up to me. We looked at each other. She wasn’t wearing lipstick. I swallowed. ‘Very professional with a corkscrew,’ I said, hearing the awkwardness in my voice.
‘Very handy with a poker,’ she replied. She put up a hand, ran it over my shoulder quickly, a ghost touch, a phantom touch, felt down my body, in the groin.
I put fingertips to her mouth, brushed her full lower lip. There was a flush on her cheekbones.
Her hand went behind my head, long, strong fingers, pulled me down, kissed me on the lips, a full kiss, mouth slightly open, hard, then soft.
I put my hands on her hips, pronounced hipbones, pulled her to me, felt her pubic bone against my erection, frisson of pleasure down the spine into the pelvis. When my hands went under her cotton sweater, touched the skin of her waist, she shuddered.
‘My learned friend,’ she said, breath against my face, voice even deeper than usual. ‘Let’s just do it.’
We came back downstairs in time to save the fire.
‘Try the uncompromising goatsmilk something,’ she said. ‘The one with the ash on it. A cheese bore at that place in Richmond sold it to me.’ She cut off a wedge, chewed reflectively. ‘I’ve never understood the ash,’ she said. ‘Must be religious.’
‘Ash Wednesday. Penitent cheeses. Sprinkling ash on foreheads. You could be right.’ I tried a crumbly portion with a sip of the Hill. The combination of tastes forced me to close my eyes. ‘In this case, the religious connection is clear,’ I said. ‘I think I’ve been forgiven.’
She sliced cheese, pushed the plate across. ‘This other stuff’s not bad either. Made by a woman in Tasmania.’
We ate cheese, drank wine, talked, all strangeness gone. She didn’t know anything about football but seemed to know an alarming amount about many other things, laughed a lot.
I got up to put some more wood on the fire. The wind had risen, hollow sound in the chimney. I leant against the mantelpiece.
Lyall had her back against the sofa arm, legs on the seat, firelight on her face, handsome features, once thought plain. She held up her glass. ‘Sexy evening,’ she said. ‘Much nicer than getting pissed alone and making phone calls that wake up people in other time zones.’
‘Clear improvement on house cleaning, too.’
‘I inquired about you,’ Lyall said, eyes on mine. ‘You’re described as a person of dubious reputation who escaped prosecution for shooting and killing two ex-policemen.’
I said, ‘Well, there’s a perfectly simple explanation.’
‘Tell me when I’m lying down in case I faint at the gruesome detail.’
In the morning, I woke early, sat upright, no idea where I was. Lyall put a hand on my arm, drew me down.
Later, at the front door, I said, ‘Good drop that Hill of Grace.’
She came up close, turned her palms outward, put them on my thighs, high up, little fingers in my groin. She offered her mouth. I kissed it, a lingering, delicious contact, unwillingly terminated.
‘Beard rash is the danger,’ I said, short of breath.
She stood back, put two fingers on my chin, rubbed. ‘Beard rash. Taking on plague proportions says the World Health Organization.’
Looking.
‘Phone,’ she said. ‘Phone or I’ll stalk you. Clear?’
I rubbed my chin stubble. ‘Stalking’s a criminal offence in Victoria.’
A nod. ‘So press charges. See where it gets you.’
I said, ‘Press something. Several things.’
A walk home early on a winter day, cold city coming to life, elm, oak and plane leaves in damp and dirty drifts, pungent exhaust fumes, some rich people getting into expensive cars, clean, pink people, wrestling wide-eyed children dressed like lumberjacks into babyseats. At the Grattan Street traffic lights, the woman passenger in a grey four-wheel-drive, blonde, thin-lipped with anger, eyes burn
ing, was speaking to the driver. He was dark-haired, pale, in a suit, looking straight ahead. His window slid down and he threw a half-smoked cigarette into the street, didn’t look where it went. A shaving cut under his sideburn had left a tear of dried blood. As the window hissed up, the woman screamed, ‘In our bed you fucking bastard.’
I exchanged a glance with the elderly woman waiting with me. ‘It’s the children I worry about,’ she said.
33
Home, under the shower, nozzle turned to Punish. Feelings of wellbeing and elation tinged with vague feelings of guilt. I was getting dressed, thinking about Lyall, when I saw Gary’s keys on the chest of drawers given to us by Isabel’s brother.
One sock on, I picked up the keys. There were six: building front door, unit front door, back door, alarm system, mailbox. And a long key.
Post box key. Why hadn’t I noticed this before?
That was why his mailbox was empty. He had a post box somewhere. Where?
Toorak post office, probably, Toorak Road. His unit was only a few blocks away.
No number on the key. I couldn’t try every post box at the Toorak post office without getting arrested.
I went downstairs, ate muesli. Thinking. Gary’s post office box number wasn’t a secret. I finished the bowl of Tutankhamen’s after-life travel rations, found the telephone book, found the number. I was dialling when my stupidity dawned on me. This couldn’t be done on my phone. For all I knew, my phone was connected to the public address system of a shopping centre.
At the office, I checked the answering machine. Mrs Davenport. Cyril Wootton would have to wait.
I went across the road and knocked on McCoy’s front door. Knocked. And knocked.
At length, a sound like a barrel rolling down stairs. Then animal sounds, piglike grunts, grunts becoming words. Vile, enraged words. The door shuddered, shuddered again, was wrenched open with enough force to bounce it off the inside wall.
McCoy filled the entire doorframe. Unclothed from the waist up, a sarong-like garment below. On inspection, I could see that it was a canvas painter’s drop cloth, splattered and smeared with paint and other things too awful to contemplate, big enough to protect the floor of a small warehouse. The upper portion of McCoy was massive, hirsute, covered with what looked like coconut fibre, the stovepipe throat merging imperceptibly with the shell head, a head now dense with stubble thinning out only around the eyes. And then reluctantly.
And the eyes, the eyes: small black buttons pressed into grey plasticine. Vicious buttons, merciless buttons, killer buttons.
‘My phone’s not working,’ I said. ‘Use yours?’
‘Certainly,’ said McCoy. ‘What time is it?’
‘Nine o’clock. That’s a.m. In the morning.’
He scratched his head. ‘Wouldn’t know the day of the week offhand, would you?’
His downstairs phone was in the vast creative area. I tried to keep my eyes averted from the works in progress but couldn’t help noticing that McCoy was branching out, extending his artistic horizons. That explained the noises-not inner-city noises-heard recently. A chainsaw was propped against a big section of tree trunk which it had been mauling to no apparent purpose.
I looked away, dialled the power company, went through six stages, pressing numbers, the hash key. Then I got the All our wonderfully helpful staff are not quite ready yet to face a day of dealing with you whingeing shits message five times. Ghastly wailing soulful Irish-type music was played in the intervals. Finally, a human came on, zipping himself up, presumably.
‘I’m worried about my bills,’ I said. ‘I’m not getting them.’
‘Name and address, sir.’
I gave him Gary Connors’ name and address.
‘The bills have been sent, sir. In fact, there’s a fairly large amount owing. Disconnection is the next step.’
‘Sent where? What address?’
She gave me a Toorak post office box number.
‘There must be some sorting mistake being made,’ I said. ‘I’ll pay the bill today.’
I rang Wootton’s courier, an obese and melancholy retired postman called Cripps who purred around the city in a yellow 1976 Holden fetching and delivering on a strictly cash basis. The fee seemed to be fifteen dollars no matter where or what. I had no doubt that Cripps would take a body to the Northcote tip for fifteen dollars. I told him where and what and to pick up the key from the cook at Meaker’s.
‘Twenty dollars,’ he said, flat voice.
A terrible thing, inflation.
‘In the envelope with the key,’ I said. ‘Deliver to the same person.’
Cripps did the entire deed in ninety minutes.
In Meaker’s, drinking a long black, I read Gary’s mail. Lots of it. I flipped through for envelopes without windows. Very few. I opened the few. Offers from people who’d undoubtedly found him on mailing lists. No personal correspondence. I opened some of the windows. Bills, ordinary bills, two credit-card statements, these worthy of later examination, some threats of disconnection, a plea to renew membership of the Pegasus Total Fitness Centre, a notification from the body corporate of his building of a five per cent rise in fees.
Nothing. Twenty dollars down the drain. I fanned out the window letters. One caught my eye. Shire of Moyne, an address in Port Fairy. Port Fairy. Gary’s car was found between Port Fairy and Portland. Why would the Shire of Moyne send Gary a bill? Did they think he’d pay them for retrieving his car?
A bill for rates. $260.00. Under property description, it said: Sligo Lane RSD 234.
I rang Des, found him home, drove out to his place. He was pottering around in the front garden, waiting for me. I leant on the front gate.
‘Quick question, Des. Why would the Shire of Moyne send Gary a bill for rates?’
‘Shire of Moyne? Never heard of it.’
‘Shire’s office is in Port Fairy.’
‘Port Fairy, ah.’ He nodded. ‘Port Fairy. Didn’t know he’d hung on to that. Told me he had it on the market. That’s donkey’s ago.’
‘Had what on the market?’
‘His Aunty Kath’s old place, little farm. She left it to Gary. No-one else to give it to. No kids the two of em. He went first, Colin. Nice bloke. Col Dixon. Had cows, them black and white ones.’
‘This is where?’
‘Warrnambool way, out the backblocks there.’
‘Got a photograph of Gary, Des?’
‘Only when he was little. Well, there’s one with his mum when they give him his handcuffs. In uniform.’
‘What does he look like?’ How had I got to this point without knowing what Gary looked like? Because appearance doesn’t matter when you’re looking for someone’s plastic trail.
Des considered the question. ‘Smaller than you,’ he said. ‘Bit thinner. Goin bald, dunno where that comes from, mother’s side probably. That’s about it.’
‘Anything you’d notice about him?’
Des frowned, sniffed, brightened. ‘Oh yeah, gold tooth here.’ He pointed to his right canine. ‘And he’s got a big ring, gold ring, on the little finger.’ He held up the large pinky of his left hand. ‘They haven’t found a body, have they?’
‘No. Just curious.’
34
The day was raw, heavy cloud churning in off the ocean, spits of rain driven near-horizontal by a wind that was headbutting the weary windbreaks that defended almost every farmhouse. We drove around the backroads for almost half an hour but failed to find anywhere from which we could get a sight of Gary’s inheritance.
‘He’d be alone you’d expect?’ asked Cam. We were parked at the side of the road. I’d told him the whole story on the way down, cruising lawlessly at one-fifty in the muscular Brock Holden.
‘As I understand it.’ Which was imperfectly to say the least.
Cam lit a Gitane, studied the herd of Friesian cows eyeing us, looked around at the wet landscape. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘he’s there, you sit tight, I’ll have a yarn with him, give h
im my real estate agent card.’
He reached over for a laptop computer on the back seat, opened it, then fiddled with the sides, took off the keyboard. An automatic pistol and about twenty rounds of ammunition lay snug in grey foam. He extracted the weapon, handed it to me.
‘What happened to the Ruger in the little aluminium briefcase?’ I asked.
‘Today it’s all computers,’ he said. ‘Just pull the slide back and aim. See if you can miss me.’
‘Shouldn’t I be doing the talking?’
Cam glanced at me. ‘You sold any real estate?’
I shook my head.
‘There you are,’ he said, started the engine, a muted, powerful growl. We went to the intersection, turned left into Sligo Lane. About three kilometres on, we turned left and went through an open gate onto Gary’s late aunty’s farm, onto a rutted track.
Just below the brow of a small hill, the track turned left. We went over the top and a collection of battered farm buildings in a hollow came into view.
Cam said, ‘Make a fire on a day like this.’
‘No vehicle.’
‘Round the back, in a shed. Might take a drive around there, do that, your rep, don’t bother the missus, know where the man on the land’s to be found. Out in the shed, worryin about cockchafer, ryegrass.’
The track turned into a trident, the middle prong running to the house, the outer paths going around it to outbuildings. Only its chimney was giving the small tilted weatherboard the strength to deny complete victory to time and the prevailing wind. The roof was rosy with rust. Side weatherboards had fallen off the house, revealing rough timber studs, dark with age, and laths oozing plaster. Two verandah posts dangled uselessly, bases succumbed to wet rot.
Cam took the left fork. We went around the house. Sheds, sheds large and small, some weatherboard, some corrugated iron, all sagging, senile, close to shot.
‘Quiet here,’ Cam said.
We completed the circuit, Cam did a U-turn, stopped passenger side on to the front gate. He reached into the back for his sportscoat. ‘Seriously in hiding this would be,’ he said. ‘Any shit at that front door, I’m goin right rapidly. Small edge on goin left, they say.’
