Peter Temple - Shooting Star

I didn’t say anything, looked around, weighed and measured the quality of the moment: three men on a strip of stained concrete, mournful wind worrying at the tin buildings around us, making them creak and whine and croon and speak of failure and loneliness, and this one man so scared that he could evacuate his bowels at any moment.

All these things reminded me of why I’d thought I would be happier growing things.

I let go of the twist of hair, put my hand under the man’s chin, cupped it. ‘Craig,’ I said, ‘don’t go away, don’t say a word to anyone about today.’

Relief in his eyes.

‘Look at me.’

He couldn’t look up at me, just sniffed and said, ‘Not a word, I swear, I promise you.’

‘Do that, your lovely bride-to-be’s family won’t have to murder you. Why’s that?’

He nodded, eyes closed.

On the way back, in the sluggish highway traffic, I said, not looking at Orlovsky, ‘Arsehole skills. Not too rusty, are they?’

He took a long time to answer, lit another stolen Camel, one of the last. ‘The difference between us,’ he said, ‘is that I’m just doing this for the money. You’re another matter entirely.’

‘One of those things with sliding doors,’ said the tweed-jacketed Malcolm Cherry of Hayes amp; Cherry, a narrow shop in Revesdale Street that sold bathroom fittings. ‘A pretty battered one with curtained windows. Tarango? Durango? A name like that. People movers, I understand they’re called. What does that make your ordinary car?’

I looked at the price tag on an impressive piece of plumbing, chrome-plated pipes forming a sort of shower cage. Showering once a day, roughly a dollar a shower for twenty years. ‘This is not your ordinary shower,’ I said.

‘Nice, isn’t it? Prince Philip has one.’

‘He always looks clean. This vehicle?’

‘Parked in our loading zone. People do it all the time. Run off to get something, back in minutes. There’s a marvellous deli two doors down. Some of them are coming in here, God forbid you’d complain.’

‘But the people mover?’

‘Repeat offender. Not the vehicle, the people in it. Before they were in an old stationwagon. White.’

‘The same people. You’re sure? How many?’

‘Absolutely. Two. The vehicle pulls up, passenger gets out, well, falls out is closer. He could use a shower. He’s always in a tracksuit.

A garment not too familiar with the Surf, I can tell you. And a baseball cap. Red.’

‘Anything on the cap? A logo, anything?’

‘Makita. And he wears these huge runners. Big plastic things. Like boats. Grotesque. And off he goes. Then the driver has the effrontery to think he can lounge around until the other creature comes back.’

‘Did you get a look at him, the driver?’

‘Not a good look. Too much facial hair. And dark glasses and some kind of headgear. It looked like a back-to-front cap with the peak cut off. Strange.’

‘The passenger. Wear glasses?’

‘Those ghastly black frames like Buddy Holly. Or is that Roy Orbison?’

‘How old?’

‘Hard to say. Fifties. More.’

‘And this happened again on Thursday with a different vehicle?’

‘Again, only worse.’ Malcolm Cherry flicked a finger at something on his tie. ‘This Tangelo thing pulls up and, lo and behold, the older dero-type gets out. Wearing the cap. I thought, bugger this, this time I’m ringing the council, get the bloody parking inspector around here from wherever he’s hiding. I’m at the back, on the phone, waiting for someone to answer, when the vehicle leaves.’

‘What time was this?’

‘Just before five, I suppose. But hold on, hold on. A minute later, the young fellow who works part-time here goes out and what does he find?’

I could feel the tiny pulse in my throat. I shook my head.

‘The bloody vehicle’s in the lane. Someone’s reversed it into the lane. That’s private property. Only three businesses are entitled to use the lane. Us, the record store and the florist. I said to James, that’s it, and I’m out the front door.’

He paused. ‘And at that moment, out comes the Tarango or whatever and off it goes.’

‘Didn’t get the rego, did you?’

‘No. Didn’t really think about it. Get it next time.’

‘What was he doing in the lane? Young fellow see anything?’

‘James says the driver was just closing the sliding door when he walked by. Wasn’t picking up anything from the shops, checked straight away. Business vehicles only, that’s the agreement.’

‘James,’ I said, ‘I wouldn’t mind a word with him.’

Malcolm looked at his watch, a big chrome-plated deep sea diver’s instrument, the sort of thing you wouldn’t be scared to wear in the Prince Philip shower cage. ‘He went off for a coffee just before you came in. Be back any minute.’

I went for a walk down the street, around the corner, in the glass side door of TRIPLE ZERO! the record store. I was in a small vestibule, pulsating music audible, facing another door. I opened it and the sound was like a blow to the whole upper body. It hit you, then it invaded you, stuck probes up your nose, into your mouth. My fillings seemed to be transmitting sound and I could taste them. I subdued the impulse to flee, stood my ground. When my brain accepted that it could function in these conditions, I went around the bend into the long leg of the store. It didn’t look like a place that sold recorded music. It looked like a series of minimalist lounges separated by Art Deco pillars, teenagers sitting around, standing, in groups, in pairs, alone. Near the entrance was what looked like a bar from some fifties film. It was all so casual, not a store, a hangout. But when you walked around, you could see there were clear lines of sight from the bar and from a glass window in a partition wall and there were camera pinholes everywhere. Management didn’t want their radical store to also serve as a shootin and rootin gallery.

I walked around. No one paid any attention to me. With a bigger crowd, you could lose sight of another person in here, no doubt about that. But Carmen hadn’t lost sight of Anne because on Thursday she wasn’t with Anne. She was waiting for Anne to arrive from trucking with Craig. Then they would step out the front entrance and into Whitton’s double-parked car and get home at the expected sports day time. Conspirators all.

There was no point in looking for Anne on Thursday’s security video because she was never in the store. Anne didn’t get to the end of the laneway, to the delivery door into TRIPLE ZERO! There was a vehicle in the lane. To reach the door, she had to pass between it and the wall. Perhaps the vehicle’s sliding side door was open. Perhaps someone came around the back as she was abreast of the door. Perhaps the person took her by the shoulders and pushed her into the vehicle. Perhaps there was someone else inside, someone who dragged her in, put something over her face, prevented her screaming…

I went back to Hayes amp; Cherry. Malcolm introduced me to James, a fair-haired teenager so clean and so dapper that he appeared to be genetically destined to sell aids to cleanliness and grooming.

‘Tall,’ he said. ‘And thin. Wearing a beanie and dark glasses.’

‘Beard? Moustache?’

‘Moustache, quite a big moustache. Dark.’

I said to Malcolm, ‘You said the driver had a beard, didn’t you?’

‘The one on the other days did. On Thursday, I didn’t get a good look at him. I was too enraged at the sight of the other one coming out of the vehicle.’

‘Moustache, definitely,’ said James. ‘Not a beard. He had a weak chin. It sloped back.’

‘How old?’

‘Thirty, perhaps a bit older.’