by Peter Temple
Something of substance struck the closed serving hatch between bar and kitchen opposite us. A moment of silence, then I thought I heard the sound of someone being strangled, the noise of a last, agonising intake of breath.
We looked at one another, waited. Silence from the kitchen.
Norm thumped the bar, thrice. ‘Stanley, service needed here,’ he said at full volume. ‘Customers bloody dyin of thirst.’
The door to the office opened and Stan came out, running a hand over his pig-bristled scalp. I thought I saw a flushed patch on his pink cheekbone, an incipient bruise, bluing by closing time, dark in the shaving mirror in the morning.
‘No need to get excited,’ he said, breathless.
‘A round if you please, landlord,’ I said.
Stan went to work, casting glances over his shoulder at the service hatch. When he had the glasses down, I said, ‘Conjugal bliss behind the scenes, I gather.’
He put both hands on the counter, leaned across, was about to speak.
‘Stanleeee!’
Liz at the office door. ‘Your father,’ she said, in the tone a clergyman might adopt to announce the arrival of his teenage daughter’s forty-four-year-old biker boyfriend.
Stan hastened away. He was back inside a minute. ‘He’s after you,’ he said, not pleased.
Nor was I. Stan’s father, Morris, ran the Prince for forty-five years before his wife nagged him into retiring to Queensland. Now he sat in his sun-kissed villa hating it and fretting over his Melbourne properties. I handled Morris’s dealings with his tenants, and had I used the normal billing practices of city firms over the years, I would now want for nothing.
The Prince’s office had not changed since my last visit. It was still running on the Rogerson’s Pharmacy calendar of 1979. I went around the desk to the cove where the telephone sat surrounded by dusty paper cliffs. Now I could see a change: a small television set on the filing cabinet. It was on, soundless.
‘Morris.’
‘Jack, my boy, listen, what’s going on down there?’
‘Nothing. Signed Enzio’s lease yet?’
‘Yes, yes, that’s not it, I’m taking your word he’s reliable, not that I don’t always, don’t get me wrong. Jack, that’s not the point.’
‘Morris,’ I said, ‘what can I do for you? I’m tired.’
‘What’s going on with Stanley? Shuddup, Zelda, I’m on the phone. Sorry, Jack. He rings every day. He’ll get the pub, what’s the hurry now?’
‘Maybe he wants to do something else, maybe he’s tired of running a pub. I don’t know.’
‘Something else? What else? The little prick doesn’t know anything else. He doesn’t even know how to run a pub yet. I think I’ll come back, take over.’
‘Morris, I’ll ask him. Ring me tomorrow.’
‘Find out, Jack. Something going on there. The wife if you ask me. I warned him about her.’
‘Goodnight, Morris. Post that lease.’
Sarah Longmore on the television, outside court. She looked even younger on screen. I rose and turned up the sound. Drew appeared, looking like a pillar of the law. ‘I have no comment at this time,’ he said.
I was hardly back in my seat when Stan was opposite.
‘Wits’ bloody end, Jack,’ he said, softly. ‘She says I get him to sign it over now or she’s off.’
I reflected that some people did not know a golden opportunity when it sounded like the Crack of Doom.
‘Off?’ I said. ‘Off where?’
Stan’s eyes flicked to the Youth Club but they weren’t listening, they were discussing the value of things their doctors prescribed for them. I detected a certain negativity.
‘Taken to visiting the sister in Castlemaine,’ Stan said. ‘Didn’t want to know her before she went to this wedding. Her niece. Now it’s up the bloody highway every second day, stays over.’
‘Siblings often grow closer over the years,’ I said, speaking from no knowledge at all.
Stan shook his head. ‘Not a word about the sister. Listen, Jack, it’s all smiles before she goes, gives me a kiss, that’s a novelty I can tell you. Comes back, she’s like a bloody snake, vicious, don’t dare open my trap.’
‘And you read what into this?’
With a gentle finger, he touched his flushed cheek-bone, a tumescence now evident. ‘Mate, what do you think.’ It wasn’t a question.
‘Came back today, did she?’
Sombre nods.
‘And you’d like to patch things up, get title to the place?’
‘Well, yes.’ More nods.
I leaned forward. We were closer than we’d ever been. ‘Stanley,’ I said. ‘Consider this possibility. Morris signs the Prince over to you. The next day, Liz leaves. She wants a divorce. She’s got twenty years of sweat equity in this business. You’ll have to sell it and give her half.’
Stan’s eyes went large, went thin. He shook his head, smiling, not the cheeriest of sights.
‘Forget that,’ he said. ‘She’d be the one walking out. She’d get bugger all.’
I tasted my beer. Not bad for the Prince, where it usually failed any test, no doubt tainted by something living in the pipes.
‘Bugger all,’ said Stan, eyes willing me to agree. ‘That’s right, not so? She’s the guilty party. Believe me, I’d get the evidence.’
‘Stan,’ I said, ‘where have you been? That stuff went out twenty years ago. It wouldn’t matter if you got pictures of Liz with Rickos and his Crazy Cuban Castanet Caballeros, all eight of them, naked except for sombreros.’
‘Half,’ he said. ‘You sure?’
Eric Tanner tapped me on the shoulder while continuing to talk to the members.
‘Never mind bloody doctors,’ he said. ‘What do they know? Bloody drugs. Probably bloody lollies. Gazebo effect. You heard of that, Wilbur? Scientific term. Ask the dentist, he’ll tell ya. I say, ya time’s ya time.’
He turned to me. ‘Listen, Jack, we goin to see the Blue Boys cop a hidin this Satdee? In the circus tent.’
‘Put your life on it,’ I said. ‘On second thoughts, put something of value on it.’
5
Sarah Longmore’s studio was in Kensington, on the rough edge, near the Dynon railyards in a cracked and potholed dead-end street with unpaved verges, weeds battling to survive.
Just before a six-metre corrugated iron wall, I turned into a small cinder yard. A yellow Ford ute, better days seen, had its blistered nose to a building — partly brick, partly cinderblock, partly rusted tin. I parked the Lark next to the ute, switched off the wipers, sat listening to the engine note. The machine had been in the oily and expensive hands of Kevin Trapaga, Studebaker fanatic, and it was making the lovely stroked-cat sound, the V-8 cat. This would last for only a short time, so it was important to savour every moment. Then I could go back to driving Linda’s Alfa.
With reluctance, I switched off and got out. The day was cold, wet, clamorous. I could hear trains, what sounded like steel being dumped from a height, the regular banging of a stamper of some kind, and, from inside the building, the screeching sound of metal-grinding. A steel-framed sliding door was the only entrance. I put a hand to it and pushed hard. It slid easily, taking me by surprise.
The inside was one huge, dim space, easily ten metres high at the peak. Unlit fluorescent lights hung in two rows from wooden beams, the floor was a patchwork of surfaces — oil-stained concrete, uneven bricks, cracked pavers, a rectangle of wood, bleached and blotched, probably covering an inspection pit.
Objects stood around, welded metal forms, human-like but bigger, one-and-a-half human size perhaps. In the gloomy corner to my right were what could be witches around a suggestion of a pot. The thing nearest the cauldron was carrying something. A piglet? A child?
Close to them were what I first took to be two boxers, angular stainless steel figures close together, the impression of a left being thrown at an averted head. But as I walked, I saw that one figure appeared to be bound and the ot
her had a projection from his hand. He could be cutting the throat of the bound figure.
I looked left and saw a pack of dogs, six or more, attacking something, mounting each other in their lust to get at it. But then I noticed the thighs, the calves, the ankles, the feet. They resembled humans on all fours, humans with long dog heads, engaged in some hungry act.
Did people buy these creations? Where would you put one?
The grinding noise was coming from a lit area behind a pile of metal scrap — two car bodies, a stack of car doors, a large disembowelled machine, possibly a litho printing press, offcuts of steel and aluminium sheeting, a pick-up-sticks pile of rusted steel rods.
I came around the heap.
In a clearing, in a pond of bright light, a person in filthy overalls was kneeling on someone much bigger, face down, arms outstretched, applying a metal grinder to the head.
I took a step back and looked through the empty socket of a car door. There is a sinister, expectant pleasure in watching someone using a tool that spits on protective gear, makes from a small clumsiness a whine of ground bone and sends a lovely arc of warm blood into the air.
There was no clumsiness. Sparks streamed from the felled knight’s metal shell until the worker raised the grinder in both hands, held it up like a howling icon, killed it.
Silence.
I stepped around the car skeleton and the person saw me. The yellow helmet visor reflected the glare from a light on a tripod.
‘I’m looking for Sarah Longmore,’ I said.
The person stood up, pushed up the visor, pulled off a glove by its fingertips. Then she combed her hair with her fingers.
‘Jack Irish?’
‘Yes.’
‘Thanks for coming.’
Sarah Longmore wore no make-up, her short hair stuck up in several directions, her face was dirty, smeared, her eyebrows furry. She didn’t look like the dark-suited woman in court. I thought she looked better this way.
‘I told Andrew I’d come to see you,’ she said, ‘but he said that wasn’t the way it was done.’
Her accent was hard to place: not Australian, not quite upper-class English.
‘Drew’s good on the way things are done,’ I said. ‘This is also more interesting than my place.’
‘What time is it? I lose track.’
She pulled at the zip that ran diagonally across her chest, exposed a black T-shirt.
‘Just after four,’ I said.
‘Beer time. There’s tea, coffee, water.’
I could stomach a beer. On many days, I felt that a beer would go well with the muesli, then it would be nice to have another one to get the day moving, get things stabilised.
‘Beer, thanks,’ I said.
‘It’s in the shed.’
I followed her, walked around the prone cruciform figure to a lean-to in the back corner of the building, a building inside a building, a rough fibro structure with a window and a flue coming out of the roof. The foreman’s hut, presumably. Inside, there was a drum wood-burning heater, a formica-topped kitchen table with an electric frying pan and a toaster on it, two kitchen chairs, two 1950s Swedish-style easychairs. A small fridge, new, stood in the corner.
‘It’s not cold,’ she said. ‘Is that okay?’
‘Fine.’
‘I lived in Berlin,’ she said. She took two brown bottles off a shelf, put them on the table, uncapped them with a Swiss army knife lying ready. ‘The people I was with drank beer all the time. Morning, noon and night. You get a taste for it. Warm German beer.’
She handed me a bottle. Dresdner Pils. I took a swig. A brown-tasting beer, medicinal.
‘Well,’ she said. ‘Sit.’
We sat in the chairs, bottoms too far down, knees too high, held our bottles on the wooden arms.
‘Andrew says you’re a lawyer who does other things,’ she said. ‘Finds people, witnesses, things like that. That’s odd for a lawyer, isn’t it?’
Sarah Longmore looked at you with the eyes of a child. I felt that she might say anything: My dad says you’re a stupid prick. Mum says you always hold on to her a bit too long.
‘A long story,’ I said. ‘Are you happy about being questioned?’
‘Well, I’ll say when I’m not.’
‘The plea, that’s final?’
She had the beer bottle to her lips, indenting the skin. She lowered it.
‘Mr Irish,’ she said, ‘I’ve had all the shit I can take in a week. You can go now.’
I nodded. ‘The innocent should always plead not guilty. The murder weapon.’
She closed her eyes for a long time, shook her head, opened her eyes. ‘Mickey gave it to me. I had a break-in, other strange stuff. He got worried. I didn’t want the fucking thing.’
‘May I ask what kind of relationship you had with Mickey?’
‘Sexual,’ she said. ‘Are there other kinds?’
‘Apparently. Do you know much about his affairs?’
Sarah raised her eyebrows.
‘His business affairs.’
She shook her head. ‘Not a lot, no.’
You could get to like the taste of Dresdner. Did Bomber Harris’s teenage aircrews hit the brewery, send the fluid flowing through the burning streets, turning to steam?
Now she drank, a decent swig, almost a third of the bottle. ‘That’s good,’ she said. She got up and went to a black leather jacket hanging over a chair, groped it, found a packet. Camel. ‘Started again,’ she said, stripping the cellophane. ‘No non-smokers in ghastly fucking remand, I can tell you. Clean for three years. Do you?’
I shook my head. I had no desire to smoke a cigarette, the hit was so small, you needed another one straight away. But it always saddened me, self-denial, it spoke of times gone.
There was a plastic lighter on the table. She lit, sucked. Her cheeks hollowed, she blew smoke.
‘The relationship with Mickey, did that end over your sister?’
She put her head back, wry smile. ‘No. I got tired of it. He wasn’t fun to be with anymore. Bad moods, always half-pissed.’ She tapped ash onto the floor. ‘And you’ll want to know that the sex had gone to hell too.’
‘Seemingly trivial details like that can help,’ I said. ‘They’ll say there was an overlap.’
‘Overlap?’
‘Mickey was seeing both of you at one point.’
‘Screwing you mean?’
‘Yes.’
‘News to me but it’s no surprise.’
I looked away and after a while she sat down and said, ‘You radiate disbelief. If I’d found out at the time, it wouldn’t have surprised me. Sophie wants everything I’ve got and Mickey wanted everything, full stop. Until he had it. Then it had no value.’
‘How did you meet?’
‘At an exhibition about eighteen months ago. He rang me the next day.’
‘How long did it last?’
‘I packed it in three months ago.’
‘Did he ever say anything about being in danger?’
‘No. I can’t imagine Mickey saying anything like that.’
‘Get any feeling that he might be?’
She looked at her short nails. ‘No. Well, his driver always sat at the next table. That’s all.’
‘Did he eat?’
‘The driver?’
‘Yes.’
‘Vegetables. He only ate vegetables.’ She smiled.
It was cold in the room. The foreman would have had the drum heater going, the place snug, the dirty window bleeding condensation.
‘Do you sell your work?’ I said.
Sarah tilted her head, her mouth turned down, a mock-severe look. ‘Offer them for sale? No. They’re usually commissioned. Do they challenge you?’
I had some beer. ‘I find them full of challenge,’ I said.
She held up her cigarette, looked at it. ‘Good,’ she said. ‘Then all the fucking cutting and the welding and the grinding haven’t been entirely wasted.’
I thought about
Charlie Taub. He would think that the cutting and welding and grinding were a complete waste of human effort.
‘Andrew will have to cast serious doubt on the prosecution case,’ I said. ‘If possible, he’ll want to offer an alternative explanation for Mickey’s murder. That’s the difficult part.’
She nodded. ‘If I could help, I’d help, Jesus, believe me I’d help.’
‘They’ve got a witness, says she saw you near Mickey’s on the night.’
‘That’s impossible. Perhaps she saw someone she thought was me.’
‘She’ll say she saw you on another occasion having an argument with a man about a parking spot.’
Sarah frowned, touched her mouth.
‘Did something like that happen?’
‘Yes. Months ago. This bastard nipped in behind me and took my park. I was reversing. I was enraged, I got out and he told me to piss off. I wouldn’t let him get out of his car. Finally, he got scared and reversed.’
‘We’ll have to get back to this, it’s not good,’ I said. ‘Tell me about the bruise.’
‘What?’
Sarah lifted her chin, took a drag, her eyes were on the ceiling, showing her neck, a long column and pale, tendons showing, a shadow visible on the right side.
‘They’ll say you got the mark from Mickey.’
We sat in the sagging Swedish Modern chairs, looking at each other, hearing the sounds from the world outside, muted by distance and obstruction but still hard and clanging.
The cigarette was over. She got up, went to the stove, opened the door and tossed the butt in.
‘I’ve often had bruises,’ she said.
I waited, drank some more beer. There was a new noise now, a siren, intermittent, a lonely sound. Sarah turned.
‘I was unloading some stuff from a truck last Wednesday. A bit slipped, caught me in the throat.’
She unzipped her right sleeve, showed me her forearm. On the intimate inner-arm skin below the elbow was a lavender blotch. ‘I bruise easily. Banged this against a piece of scrap yesterday. Hardly felt it.’
The siren had stopped. The other noises had gone too, as if its mournful wail had been a signal to desist.
