Black Tide (14 page)

‘Would you know her new name? If she took on a new name.’

‘Of course she took on a new name. What’s the point of taking on a new husband if you don’t take the name? Might as well be married to the old one.’

He cocked his head, put a fingertip to the middle of his mouth. ‘George might know.

George knows everything. He actually listens to what people are saying. I gave that up years ago. No-one’s told me anything remotely interesting since I was doing a certain Royal’s hair in London. And that’s a while ago, although you wouldn’t think it to look at me, would you? Absolute bitch of course, but the gossip? She’d just given the man she married for his impressive equipment the heave-ho. Anyway, she couldn’t bear being vertical for more than short periods. No-one was safe. I can tell you, I’ve felt that jewelled claw on my thigh. Rippling thigh.’

‘George?’

He looked around and shouted, ‘Linda, darling, get George to come out here, will you?’

To me, he said, ‘The old thing’s in there fiddling the books.’

A man who could have been his slighter, shorter brother came out of a door at the back of the room. He was holding black-rimmed glasses at mouth level.

‘What?’ he said, not happy at being summoned.

‘Chrissy Donato. She married Gary Connors. That didn’t last. What then?’

‘Married a man called Sargent. He owns all those ghastly wedding reception places.

They bought the Mendels’ mansion in Macedon.’

‘Thank you, George. You may return to your culinary accounting chore.’

‘Very fucking kind of you,’ said George, pivoting.

92

On the tram, I thought about Gary. He might have more than one residence. People earning $350,000 a year could afford holiday houses. Perhaps the case of beer and the six bottles of wine were for his holiday house. Not a long holiday. The Mornington Peninsula perhaps? Somewhere along the Great Ocean Road? It wasn’t a promising line of inquiry. Nothing about Gary said holiday house. And if he’d gone away for a holiday, he would be using his cards.

I rang Des from the office.

‘Des, should have asked you. Gary have a holiday place? Somewhere he might go that you know of?’

Des sucked his teeth. ‘Wouldn’t know, Jack. The second wife might know.’

17

Chrissy Donato-Connors-Sargent had travelled some distance from a Housing Commission house in Broadmeadows. She now lived on the slopes of Mount Macedon, down a country lane behind high stone walls. I switched off and listened. Birdsong, the faraway buzz of a ride-on mower, the whop of a tennis ball being hit hard.

Chrissy received me in a conservatory full of jungle plants looking out onto a broad brick-paved terrace, beyond which was a thirty-metre pool, azure in a moment of sunshine. The tennis sound was coming from behind a creeper-covered fence.

‘Mr Irish, Mrs Sargent,’ said the large brown man in a dark suit who’d allowed me in.

She was sitting upright in a white metal-framed chair. There were at least ten other chairs in groups around two glass-topped tables.

I shook a long-fingered hand. Somewhere in her forties, Chrissy was taut-skinned, with short, shiny brown hair, strong cheekbones, big pale eyes. She was wearing grey flannels with turn-ups, brown brogues and a man’s business shirt, striped.

‘Sit down,’ she said. ‘Tea? Something else?’

I said neither, thank you.

The manservant nodded, departed.

‘So Gary’s missing,’ she said, turned her mouth down. ‘I can’t find it in my heart to regard that as bad news.’

‘That’s a widespread attitude. But his father would like him found.’

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Chrissy had a steady gaze. ‘Even bastards have fathers, I suppose, but isn’t it a bit late for him to be interested in Gary?’

‘Why’s that?’

‘Well, they kicked him out when he was a little kid. Fostered him or something. He was sent to this chook farm in Tasmania. It was like a prison farm, he said. They took all the fosters they could get. He used to talk about how he had to get up in the dark, do four hours’ work before school, four hours afterwards. I thought the experience had helped make him the shit he is.’

Fostered? On a chook farm in Tasmania? That didn’t sound right to me. I’d have to ask Des about this. ‘His father’s major concern is the $60,000 he lent Gary.’

‘Ah,’ said Chrissy, ‘now you’re talking Gary.’

A gate beyond the pool opened and a man appeared, a tall man, no visible hair on his head, wearing only small, loose running shorts, white socks, tennis shoes. His thin, sinewy torso shone with sweat. He wasn’t so much tanned as burnt the colour of a goldfish.

‘Tennis machine’s chucked in the towel,’ Chrissy said.

The man walked to the pool’s edge, bent down, untied his shoelaces, pulled off his shoes, ripped off his socks. Then he turned to face us, looked up, gave a hip-high wave, took off his shorts and underpants, kicked them away. He stood looking in our direction for a few moments, turned, bent his knees, did a flat racing dive. Jet aircraft with its undercarriage down. His arms were moving before he hit the water and he settled into an effortless killer crawl punctuated by racing turns.

‘Be a bit cold in there, wouldn’t it?’ I asked.

‘Alan’s got a thing about fitness,’ said Chrissy, wry expression. ‘Helps him sleep. Asleep long before I get to bed.’

‘I’ve really only got one question, Mrs Sargent. Sounds silly. Where would Gary go if he was scared, desperate, thought someone was trying to kill him?’

Chrissy didn’t treat the question seriously. ‘Someone like me, you mean? Have you got any idea how many people would like to kill Gary? It’d be like the Myer sale after Christmas. Push doors down to kill Gary. People killed in the crush.’

‘No idea then?’

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She watched Alan churning the water. ‘Men are mad,’ she said. ‘In love for about sixty seconds, it’s just the way you look, your tits. Can’t love you for anything else.’

Alan did another duck-dive turn, emerged, ferocious head. Lean arms cleaved the water.

‘Cept my dad,’ she said. ‘He wasn’t like that. Loved mum. She was fat. He used to touch her ear, give it a little pull, always remember that. Walk with me to school, holding my hand. Remember that. Died when he was forty-eight.’

We sat in the huge fenestrated space, the house expensive beyond dreams, servants waiting somewhere, a beautiful woman, dresser of hair, a hardness to her mouth, fibro house in Broadmeadows floating out there in her past, sweet, sad memories of a patch of dying lawn, a father and a mother and a little girl. Arms around each other.

Below us, a rich man, thin, all body fat dissolved, was pushing himself: against water, against age, against the inability to sleep unless exhausted.

I tried again. ‘Gary didn’t have a holiday place that you know of? Anything like that?

Somewhere he might go?’

Chrissy laughed. ‘No. Not in my time. And not ever, I’d say. Gary wouldn’t know how to take a holiday. Not a normal holiday. Sex tour, gambling junket, yes, holiday no.’

‘There is one more thing. Personal thing.’

‘Ask,’ Chrissy said.

‘When you broke up with Gary, was that for any particular reason?’

‘Particular? Well…’ She looked at me and smiled her wry smile. ‘Gary couldn’t leave women alone. It’s a sort of insecurity thing. He couldn’t stand to think that someone didn’t care about him. He wanted women to fall in love with him. That was one problem. Then there was the violence. And the coke. He was just barely in control. The gambling, that was out of control. He was making big money at TransQuik in ’85, ’86,

’87, and there’d be Sundays when all we had was loose change. And I had the bruises.’

‘What was his job at TransQuik?’

‘I never quite worked it out. He used to go to business meetings a lot. All over. Europe, Asia, America.’

‘On his own?’

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‘Mostly. Brent Rupert, he was one of the bosses, he used to go to Manila and to America with Gary.’

She came to the front door with me. As we left the conservatory, I looked back. The thin man was emerging from another turn, water streaming from his head.

In the broad passage, Chrissy said, ‘Something wrong about TransQuik. Always felt that from Gary’s behaviour. Alan says someone told him there’s funny money in the company. They had this American manager, Paul Scanga. He’d been in the American army. Dead eyes and these thick, short fingers. Creepy. Gary and I weren’t sleeping together by then. Don’t know why I was hanging on, beats me now. One night, Gary’s off his face, he says Scanga wants to sleep with me, it’s okay with him. I was packed and out of there in fifteen minutes. Less. He was lying on the sofa laughing at the television. Gave me a wave like this.’

She made a twirling gesture with her left hand. It spoke of profound indifference.

Beauty and manual dexterity do not of themselves bring happiness, I thought as I drove down the road towards the freeway. In the side mirror, I saw a car two behind me shift out for a better view. A green Jeep Cherokee. The driver was wearing dark glasses. He shifted the car back in.

Just another impatient driver on a busy road?

Down the freeway. The Lark liked freeways, a compact cat of a cop car bred to chase perps in sloppy oversprung V8s with big fins along Los Angeles freeways. Beyond the airport, an arrogant, paperweight Porsche came along, drew abreast, a hummingbird really. The driver, a bald man wearing thin dark glasses, back from a business trip to Sydney no doubt, heard the sound of the Stud’s eight, the music of a serious piston ensemble, looked at the short, squat body, looked at me and decided to try it on.

Generally, you let them go. That was sensible. And sometimes you didn’t. And that was silly. But it was nice, silly but nice, simply to drop down a notch, get the growl, feel the torque bunched like a bicep. Then tread the button and, with one smooth kick of power, leave the other person behind. What more innocent pleasure has the century produced?

I let Mr Porsche go and thought about the dead security consultant Koch. Once employed by TransQuik. American. Ex-army. Scanga, TransQuik’s manager when Gary worked there. American. Ex-army. Gary the security officer going to business meetings in Europe and Asia. Two dead travel agents, Novikov and Gary’s friend Jellicoe. Rinaldi’s allegation that Steven Levesque could derail a prosecution for murder.

I looked in the mirror for a green Jeep Cherokee.

Nothing.

96

18

‘What’s that noise?’ asked Harry Strang.

We were sitting in a coffee shop in Ballarat, waiting for McCurdie. The sun was out and at the pavement tables the locals were exposing fishbelly skin. They looked stunned, like people from Irkutsk transported to Hawaii by aliens.

‘Miles Davis,’ said Cam. ‘A John Denver for people who don’t like words. And voices.’ He was staring at the wiry man in black piloting the espresso machine. ‘I know that bloke from somewhere.’

‘Miles,’ said Harry. ‘Miles. Good name for a horse. Rode a bloke called Miles Ahead in the Irish St Leger. Bugger of an animal. Huge thing. Caught wide and ran fourth.

Bloody miles behind.’

The man brought the coffees over. ‘Two lattes, one short black,’ he said.

Harry examined his coffee. ‘That’s black,’ he said. ‘I can tell you’re a man knows black.

Wear it. Make it.’

‘Let me know if it’s strong enough,’ the man said. ‘We can do it again.’

‘Got you,’ said Cam.

The man cocked his head.

‘Demons,’ Cam said. ‘Played a few for the Demons. Right? Crackers Keenan’s day.’

The man smiled, a self-effacing little smile, said, ‘I wasn’t much good.’

‘You were good,’ Cam said. ‘Crook ankle, I remember.’

‘Crook everything after some games.’

I saw McCurdie crossing the road. He was dressed for town: brown sportsjacket with bulging side pockets, grey flannels with turn-ups some distance above big brown shoes, checked Gloster shirt and a green tie wide enough to double as a table napkin. Even from a distance, I could see evidence that it had often served this secondary purpose.

McCurdie came right up to the window, peered into the cafe. Cam tapped on the glass, just below his nose. McCurdie recoiled like a startled horse, focused, recognised us. A smile of relief. He came in, had a good look around as he worked his way through the tables to get to us.

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‘Pretty smart place this,’ he said, sitting down with care.

‘Ensures we won’t see anyone we know,’ said Harry.

A waitress appeared.

‘Cuppa tea, please,’ said McCurdie.

‘English Breakfast, Irish Breakfast, Earl Grey…’

McCurdie frowned at the table.

‘Make it the Irish,’ said Harry. He waited until the waitress had gone. ‘Done the paperwork then?’

McCurdie looked uncomfortable, scratched himself under his jacket. ‘Reckon.’

‘Who’s the new owner?’

‘I. and J. Grogan. He’s the wife’s cousin. Had a few horses before.’

‘Any luck?’

‘One run third at Murtoa.’

‘We’ll put that down as No,’ Cam said. ‘He appreciate the finer points of this?’

McCurdie nodded.

‘Explain the rules?’

‘He knows what he gets he gets from me.’

‘Settled in at Devine’s?’ asked Harry.

McCurdie nodded, more enthusiastically this time. ‘Treatin us good, that Karen,’ he said.

‘Knows horses too. Spose you know what happened to the husband.’

‘Some hoons rammed his horse float,’ said Harry. ‘Don’t go near her on the track. She’s the trainer now.’

‘Who’s the jock?’

‘Tommy Wicks.’

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‘Mind if I have a word with the jock?’

‘Yes,’ said Harry. ‘Don’t go near him.’

The tea came in a pot with small jugs of milk and hot water. McCurdie eyed the makings with unease, big hands in his lap.

Harry poured the tea, as if that was his duty. ‘Milk?’

McCurdie nodded.

Harry pushed the sugar towards him. ‘Given the boy the drum,’ he said. ‘Field’s a bit small. Wouldn’t be too bad that. Problem is there’s two dead-uns in it I can see.’

McCurdie drank his tea in two mouthfuls, poured a refill, added hot water, milk, sugar.