Black Tide (22 page)

Good chance? No.

‘Well, keep me posted,’ I said.

He didn’t reply. Probably nodding.

I went home via St George’s Road to pick up a Chinese takeaway. The shop was empty.

As always, Lester barked, ‘How many?’

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‘One,’ I said.

Today, he didn’t just get on with the packing. He looked at me for a long time. Then he said, ‘Jack? What happen to two?’

I sighed, ‘Two went to Sydney. Didn’t come back.’

He seemed to be relieved. ‘Sydney,’ he said, as if that provided a complete explanation.

‘Yes. Be another two, Jack.’

‘I might be at the end of my twos,’ I said. ‘You get just so many twos.’

Home. An A4 envelope in the letterbox from Bendsten Research. Linda on the answering machine. I switched off after her first word. Steel needed. Then I hit the button again, closed my eyes.

Jack, I should say this to you in person but I’ve got to say it now. I’ve been involved with someone else here. I didn’t look for it, it just happened, a really stupid thing at work.

The ear-kissing.

It’s over now. It was probably over before it began. Anyhow, listen, I had to tell you.

I’m feeling a bit soiled. Soiled and stupid, so I’ll keep away from you. Perhaps later…I don’t know if you’ll ever want to see me again. You could let me know about that.

Whenever…whenever you like. Or not let me know.

Pause.

So. Well. That’s it. My feelings…no, I’ll just say goodbye. Goodbye.

I slumped in the chair. I’d known it was coming. Absolutely no doubt. You know. I’d been feeling sick about it for weeks. So why did I now feel even sicker? Love. Not a word for casual use. The life-scarred use the word with extreme caution. If you’re lucky, you go through life held up by people loving you. But you don’t know you’re being held up. You think you’re buoyant. You think the buoyancy came first, the love is a bonus you get for being buoyant. And that can go on for a long time. But then one day, the love isn’t there any more and you’re sinking, waving arms and sinking, all the old sources of love gone, the newer ones turn out to be fickle. They move on. No-one to hold you up, you’re just a skinny boy, all ribs, knees and feet, out in the deep water, can’t touch bottom.

Shake yourself. To carry on is all. Who said that? Rilke?

The phone rang. Drew.

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‘Put on your television. Seven.’

I found the remote, clicked.

27

The Audi came up in an undignified way, backwards, cable round the back axle, expensive German workmanship bouncing, grinding against the chalky cliffside, doors yawning, water spilling out. Bits of rubbery seaweed, greasy-looking, clung to the door pillars, dangled from the wheel housings. Halfway up, the front windscreen, shattered, opaque, big hole towards the passenger side, fell out, chose detachment rather than dishonour, committed itself to the ocean.

The newsreader said:

No bodies were found in the vehicle. Police believe the car’s doors opened on impact and the driver and any passengers may have been dragged out by the powerful rip along the stretch of coast called The Teeth.

We saw the car close-up, being yanked over the crumbling lip of the land.

The voice-over said:

Police were called to the scene between Port Fairy and Portland early this afternoon when the pilot of a helicopter on its way to Portland saw the vehicle at the foot of the cliffs. Police rescue squad members abseiled down to attach a cable to the car.

The television helicopter went up, the view expanded: coastal downs, low vegetation, five or six vehicles beside a track, well back from collapsing cliffs. And the sea, dark blue, waves creaming against jetblack rocks. On the land, cattle, pale cattle, were grazing near the track. The cable was coming from a bulky, square vehicle, figures standing around it.

The vehicle is registered to a Melbourne company, Beconsecure International. Police have asked that anyone with information about the whereabouts of the company’s director, Mr Gary Connors, of unit 5, 23 Montcalm Avenue, Toorak, contact the Police Helpline.

For a while, I sat in the comforting leather armchair, in the low light from the television, cold takeaway Chinese on my lap. I felt like going to bed, sleeping for a week. Instead, I dialled Des Connors. It rang for a long time.

‘Hello.’ He sounded far away and weak.

‘Des, it’s Jack Irish.’

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A cough, clearing of the throat. ‘Jack.’ More clearing. ‘Bit of a snooze. Front of the telly.’

‘Des, have you heard from the police?’

‘Police? No.’

‘They found Gary’s car today.’

‘What?’

‘Gary’s car. They found it between Port Fairy and Portland. In the sea. Went over the cliff. No body found.’

Silence. More throat-clearing.

I said, ‘You all right?’

‘In the sea?’

‘At the bottom of the cliff. Place called The Teeth. Track runs along the coast from there. On private land. A farm.’

‘A farm, well,’ Des said. ‘Bit of a shock. Always thought he’d come to a sticky. Good thing his mum’s not here to hear this.’

‘We don’t know that Gary was in the car, Des,’ I said. ‘Could have been stolen, dumped.

Happens all the time.’

No-one stole a car in Melbourne and dumped it intact over a cliff near Portland.

Des sighed.

‘The police will want to ask you some questions about Gary. If you like, I’ll talk to them in the morning, give them your number, get them to make an appointment to see you.’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Yes. Thanks.’

‘Goodnight, Des. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.’

‘Goodnight, Bill.’

I poured a glass of the open red, opened the envelope from Simone. A printout of a short item in the Capital City column of the Australian Financial Review, dated 27 July 1996.

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It was headed: HANSARD LOST FOR WORDS.

Late on Wednesday, a somnambulant colleague found himself in the empty Press Gallery of the near-empty Senate chamber. The following exchange between conspiracy-fixated Independent Senator Martin Coffey and the Attorney-General, Senator Clive McColl, startled him from sleep:

Can the Honourable Senator confirm that recently a combined Federal Police and Victorian Police operation called Black Tide was closed down under pressure from the highest level of government?

Senator McColl: I take Senator Coffey’s question on notice.

Could this have the makings of a story, our scribe wondered? The next day, to check his notes, he consulted Hansard’s account of proceedings in the Senate for 24 July.

That verbatim record heard Senator Coffey ask:

Can the Honourable Senator confirm that last year an important Federal Police operation was cancelled on financial grounds?

Late yesterday, Senator Coffey’s office said that the Senator had no reason to dispute Hansard’s record of proceedings and that, after discussions with Senator McColl, he considered the matter closed.

Simone had underlined the words Black Tide.

Telephone ringing.

‘Jack, we talked on Wednesday. About your Canberra trip.’

The tired man with the advice about Dean Canetti.

‘Yes.’

‘The person you were interested in. They found his car today.’

‘I saw that.’

‘He was in it when it took the dive.’

‘They didn’t say they knew that.’

‘No. Reasons for that. He was. They found the wallet. You don’t have to look for him anymore.’

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‘No.’

‘Well, thought you’d want to know.’

‘Yes. Thanks.’

‘Goodnight.’

I spent a distracted evening: not reading, not thinking, not watching television. Finally, I put out the lamps, went upstairs, stood beside the side window and looked down on the narrow street, streetlight gleaming on wet parked cars. Nothing moved. I went to bed. In the strange way of these things, I fell asleep instantly, slept like an exhausted child until 7 a.m.

28

For breakfast, I had muesli. Ancient muesli. Recovered muesli. It tasted as I imagined food found beside a mummy in a pyramid would. Then I drove out to Des Connors’

house in Northcote. Not much traffic, rain weeping out of a sky the colour of the best man’s tie.

Des was up, saw me arrive and opened the front door before I got there. He was wearing a blue suit with wide lapels, a white shirt and a tie with red spots.

‘Come in, Jack,’ he said.

‘Not this time. Lightning visit. You’re looking pretty spruce.’

‘Havin lunch with the girls down the street. They don’t work Mondays. Vegetables only, she said. Dunno about that.’

‘Very healthy,’ I said. ‘I’ll be ringing the cops in about twenty minutes. When they come around, tell them you came to see me and we went around to Gary’s place, had a look to see if he might be away on a trip. That way they won’t get too excited if they decide to look for fingerprints and find ours.’

Des nodded. ‘Just tell em what we did.’

‘That’s right. Those keys of Gary’s. I might take them, have another look.’

He was back with them in thirty seconds.

We went out to the gate. ‘Should be a grievin parent,’ he said. ‘Can’t find it in me, Jack.

All I can think is I done me dough. Goodbye house.’

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I leaned over the gate, grasped his left arm. ‘Even if the dough’s done, Des, you’re staying in this house. Out feet first. In about fifty years.’

He blinked a few times. ‘Sure, now?’

‘Give you my word, good enough?’

He looked at me, some moisture in the eyes. ‘Reckon,’ he said. ‘Bill Irish’s boy.’

The things we bring upon ourselves.

I spent the day on the Purbrick library, cutting mortices. No hollow-chisel morticer in this workshop. A drill press, yes. Charlie wasn’t averse to amateurs like me getting rid of most of the waste with the drill press but he could do the whole job much faster with a chisel, a piece of steel honed to the point where it could take shavings off a fingernail.

Early on, Charlie had shown me how to use the drill press to make it easier to get rid of waste in a mortice. But you sense things. It wasn’t that he didn’t want me to use the drill press. It was just that he didn’t show any enthusiasm for it. Some machines he loved. He loved the tablesaws, loved the big industrial planer, gave it a pat like a man patting a bottom, an incorrect man patting a female rump, a lingering feel in the pat.

The message unspoken was that a person who took the occupation seriously would use a chisel to create a mortice. And when you’d felt dry, fine-grained timber succumb to the knife-edge, you agreed.

We had lunch in front of the stove. My soggy salad sandwich was from down the road.

Charlie had corned beef, mustard, homemade sauerkraut, bread baked by the husband of one of his granddaughters, a stockbroker called Martin something who specialised in mining stocks. Charlie brought in half a loaf for me from time to time. It was sourdough rye, dense, intense, exactly what a rich Harvard MBA would produce in his kitchen for relaxation. On Sunday, get in touch with the earth. Monday, get back to screwing the planet.

‘Six syringes outside today,’ Charlie said. ‘Coming to what, the world? Children.

Shouldn’t be smoking, they stick needles in their arms. Who’s to blame? I ask you that.’

‘The blame question,’ I said. ‘They ask that a lot on the radio. And in the papers. Very good question. It can also be a very stupid question.’

Charlie pondered this, staring at the last bite of sandwich in his huge hand. ‘Men make their own history,’ he said, ‘but not in circumstances of their own choosing. Karl Marx.’

‘Yes?’

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‘So some you can blame on the past, on other people, some you can’t.’

‘I like the sound of that,’ I said, feeding my sandwich wrap to the fire. ‘How do you work out which bit you can blame on which?’

‘Think,’ Charlie said. ‘You think a lot.’

He stood up, rehearsed sending down a bowl, and went off, mind now turned to the prospect of inflicting further humiliation on the teen set at the bowls club.

It was darkening outside before I’d cut all the tenons, trial-fitted the pieces and was ready for the glue-up. Although Charlie had at least ten good reasons for not gluing-up near the end of the day, I loved to come into the workshop in the morning and take the clamps off a piece of furniture.

Glue-up tomorrow? No.

Cold hide glue for this job. You needed the slower drying time in case anything went wrong. I laid out the pieces on the low assembly table, used three brushes to apply the glue, worked at a steady pace. Then I fitted everything together, slid home the joints, applied the clamps, fifteen short and six long sash clamps, no metal touching wood.

Next came fiddling with the clamp pressures, checking all corners with a square, measuring the diagonals with Charlie’s measuring stick invention to ensure squareness.

Finally, I stood back and marvelled at my confidence, my cleanliness, at the fact that complicated glue-ups that had once terrified me more than my early court appearances ever did were now everyday matters.

Weary, fingers second-skinned with glue, pleased with myself, I went home. It was raining steadily, but the discovery of Gary’s car had brightened my world. A dead Gary you didn’t have to look for. If I could find some way of securing Des in his house, the whole matter was closed. Everything. Whatever business Dean Canetti had with Gary, it was over. And whatever Black Tide was, it wasn’t any of my business.

In my domain, cleansed, restless, I toyed with the idea of ringing Lyall Cronin, handsome and world-weary photographer, suggesting a drink, perhaps a meal. Had she been mildly suggestive at the end of our encounter?

She’d been mildly pissed.

My confidence failed me. Not for the first time.

I was thinking about what to eat when the street gate buzzer sounded.

154

Simone Bendsten, fetching in short red weatherproof jacket, rain beaded on her hair.

Behind her, a dark Honda was double-parked, engine running.

She held out an envelope. ‘This was in my letterbox, addressed to you. Mysterious. Got to run.’