Peter Temple - Shooting Star

‘I’m sure he would have. You didn’t open it?’

‘Of course not.’

‘Of course not. So you never actually saw Cassie with anyone?’

‘No. Well, the closest was, that was months before, someone dropped her at the end of the street. It was a Sunday morning. I was going to get milk or something, the papers, and we met. She said she’d been to Mount Hotham, it was lovely in the summer, no one there.’

‘You didn’t see the person?’

‘No, just the car. A Mercedes.’

‘That’s not in your interview either.’

‘Isn’t it?’ She seemed genuinely surprised.

‘No. Probably just an oversight. You forgot about it.’

Frowning. ‘No. That’s what they were interested in. They asked lots of questions about things like that. I’d have told them that. I couldn’t not have told them that. I did tell them that.’

‘Well, I probably missed it, easy to do that. Thank you for seeing me. I won’t take up any more of your time.’

At the front door, she said, ‘This hasn’t been of any use, has it?’

‘It may have been.’

Hamish Spears appeared at the end of the passage. He shouted, ‘Frank, sure you won’t stay for a drink?’

As I was getting into the car, the phone rang: Orlovsky.

‘These boys,’ he said, the faintest note of satisfaction in his voice, ‘I’ve got the earliest game. Got a tune.’

With trepidation, I punched Barry Carson’s number. He answered immediately, crisply.

‘Frank Calder,’ I said.

‘Frank. You might have said goodbye.’

‘I saw your father. He didn’t want to talk to me and I didn’t think anyone else would either.’

‘Rubbish. The old man was distressed, nothing about you. You don’t bear any responsibility for what happened. Risked your life on the escalator. I appreciate that enormously. We all do. Have they told you about the photograph? I asked Graham to be sure you were told. He hasn’t got much to do now that the float’s postponed.’

Barry didn’t sound like a bereaved relative, didn’t sound like someone whose niece had been violated and slaughtered.

‘They told me,’ I said.

‘Good. There was nothing anyone could have done. Your advice was sound. Professional. We bear the blame for not taking it in the first place. See the papers today?’

‘No.’

‘Tom’s stood down as chief executive. He’s retiring, in fact. I’ve taken over.’

Perhaps a small dinner party to celebrate. Would he do that, the police out there looking for his niece’s killers? Probably. He was a Carson.

I said, ‘I’d like to talk to Alice again. Tonight.’

Silence. There was faint music behind him, voices in conversation, as if he’d left a dinner table, was talking in the next room.

‘This is in the hands of the police now, Frank. If you have any ideas, they should be told.’

I hesitated. ‘This is very important,’ I said. ‘I’ve been the police, I think I can do this better than the police.’

Silence and the music. ‘Frank, her mother says she’s taken Anne’s murder in a strange way. You can understand that. This is not a good time.’

‘Good time? It’s never going to be a good time. Ever. You don’t have walls high enough. Did the cops tell you about the call? An eye for an eye’s not a fair exchange?’

‘Yes. Mr Vella told me. We’ve put Jahn, Cullinan in charge of family security now, Frank. Should’ve from the beginning, just my father’s strange ideas.’

‘I’ll put this simply. I’m not on the payroll. I don’t want to be on the payroll.’

Another silence. A long silence, the music.

‘I’ll give you Alice’s number,’ Barry said. ‘It’s silent, so tell her who you are straight away or she’ll be alarmed. She’ll talk to you.

She liked you.’ A beat. ‘I can’t think why.’

‘Inexplicable,’ I said. ‘One more thing. Do you ski?’

‘Yes. Not much anymore. Why?’

‘Where?’

‘Hotham mostly. We’ve got a place up there, family place, a lodge. Why?’

‘Just a survey I’m doing about the habits of the rich.’

Laugh, a small laugh. ‘Frank, we’re going to have to put you on the payroll. To ensure your discretion.’

At Orlovsky’s house, we opened SeineNet and looked up the investigating officer in Cassie Guinane’s case. His name was Terence Sadler and a file note said he’d taken early retirement in 1990.

The phone in London rang and rang and rang and I knew with no possible logic to support me that it was summoning no one, ringing in a place where no one would answer it. I sat on the kitchen chair in Orlovsky’s computer room, he sat at his keyboard, our eyes locked, both of us listening to the ringing.

‘Alice isn’t home,’ he said.

When all was lost, when I was nodding at him, she answered.

‘Yes.’ Breathless voice.

‘Frank Calder, Alice, we talked the other night.’

Deep breath. ‘Frank. Oh, hello. I was getting in the car and heard the phone ringing.’

There was warmth in her voice and it warmed me. ‘I know I’m not a welcome sound,’ I said.

‘No, no, not at all, no.’ No hesitation. ‘After we talked the other morning, I felt better than I’ve felt, well, ever, really. Since, I mean. From the day the American man left, the psychiatrist, no one ever said anything again. Everyone looked at me in a way, as if there was something wrong with me, do you know what I mean? I’d catch them looking at me in a certain way…’

She tailed off.

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I think I know what you mean.’

‘It’s nicer to talk when I can see your face.’ She laughed.

‘I always felt they didn’t believe me when I told them…what happened. It’s stupid but the more they asked me questions, the more I felt they didn’t believe me. They asked me the same questions over and over.’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘They were scared they’d missed something.’

‘I understand that, why they’d do that, they have to do that, but I was just a girl. And I was young for my age, I think. When people keep asking you the same questions, you think they want different answers. Your answer’s not good enough. You’re not telling the truth. Am I sounding stupid?’

‘Makes perfect sense to me.’

‘My father’s like that. There’s a wait after you say something. And the man with the beard and the soft voice, he scared me so much, I can’t tell you. I didn’t know what a psychiatrist was. It was like…it was the beard more than the voice. Lie down and relax, he said, that was the most awful thing he could say…’

This was another Alice, an Alice released from bondage.

She said, ‘Frank, it’s a terrible thing to say, when I heard about Anne, I had this thought, not really a thought, a feeling, well, a thought. I thought: now they’ll believe me, now they’ll believe me. Is that awful?’

‘That’s not awful at all, Alice,’ I said, ‘that’s got nothing to do with awful. People can only pretend to understand other people’s pain. And they can only do that for a while. Then it annoys them, they think: how bad can it have been? If you talk about it, they want you to shut up. If you don’t, they think you’re sulking.’

I looked up and met Orlovsky’s eyes, he looked away.

Alice laughed, a laugh of relief, tension dispelled. In the trade, if she was holding a gun on people I’d have taken that as a good sign.

‘Alice,’ I said. ‘I want to play something to you, I want you to listen to something. May be nothing, probably won’t mean anything to you, just a silly hunch. Can I do that?’

‘Of course.’ There was a firmness to her voice, an adult, grownup firmness.

I held out the telephone to Orlovsky’s machines, gave him the nod.