Peter Temple - Shooting Star

We both smiled back at him. ‘Right,’ said Orlovsky, ‘right, computers, that makes sense.’

‘Yeah,’ said the man, ‘that’s it.’

‘Could you just show us that?’ said Orlovsky. ‘We have to report that we’re satisfied the usage is for legitimate purposes.’

‘You’re like an arm of the fucking cops,’ Keith Guinane said. ‘Come in, I’ll show you.’

As he opened the door, I saw movement in the second doorway along the passage. He led us down a wide passage with a polished concrete floor, mudbrick walls, doors opening on both sides at the end. The second door on the left was open. He went in first.

It was a big room, dark, heavy curtains drawn. There were benches along the inside walls and on them computing equipment, screens glowing with coloured images of people running, all slightly different. At first, I thought they were photographs but there was something of the comic strip about them.

A man was standing in the righthand corner, his back to a screen. He was the double of Keith, right down to the clothes and the long dirty hair combed back.

‘This is my brother, Victor,’ said Keith. ‘These people are from the electricity company,’ he said to Victor. ‘We’re using so much power, they thought we were growing dope under lights.’

Victor laughed, a screeching sound. ‘Growing dope under lights,’ he said, delighted.

It was like rewinding a tape, playing it again, listening to the same speaker.

…growing dope under lights. Rewind, play: … growing dope under lights. Alice on the monitor in the television studio:

Not similar, the same. At first, I thought it was someone talking to himself, having a conversation with himself.

‘Well, that’s all we need, Mr Guinane,’ said Orlovsky. ‘I can see where the juice’s going. Sorry we had to bother you, but you can understand, there’s not many houses pulling this kind of current.’

‘Yeah,’ said Keith Guinane. ‘I know. Just doing your job.’

He went out first, then Orlovsky.

The door across the passage was open. I had a moment to see a section of wall. It was covered with photographs, at least a dozen framed photographs of different sizes, some of them school photographs, class pictures, all arranged around a big picture of Cassie Guinane. On a table in front of the pictures, a candle was burning, a candle in a silver candlestick on a small table covered by a white lace tablecloth.

There was something odd about the school photographs.

I took an extra pace across the passage, focused on a picture of girls in school uniform.

A girl had been blacked out.

In every school class picture, a girl had been blacked out.

It would be Stephanie Carson. Stephanie Chadwick.

We went down the passage, walking behind Keith Guinane. On the way, I put out my hand and touched the wall, ran my fingertips along it.

Mudbrick, mud-plastered mudbrick.

Adobe.

…and I thought they were lovely, adobe, sort of Moorish-style and we unpacked and I went to have a shower and I got out all wet, water in my eyes and I had to steady myself and I touched the wall…Repulsive, revolting, the feel of it…I ran out, I didn’t have anything on, I think I was screaming, I gave my mother a terrible fright…

Alice, talking to me. How long ago that seemed.

We found a place in Eltham to have coffee, waited for it in silence at a table on the pavement, Orlovsky smoking.

‘The voices,’ said Orlovsky. ‘Remember what Alice said about the voices?’

‘I remember.’ I got out my mobile and rang inquiries, got a number.

And she still went to school every day, driven by Eric, got good marks.

‘Yes,’ said a woman in the school records office after I’d lied to her, ‘Cassandra Guinane was a pupil here. She finished in 1979.’

‘Stephanie Carson?’

Pause. ‘Carson. Yes, finished in the same year.’

‘Was that a large class?’

‘No, about twenty.’

I said thank you. The coffee arrived. Orlovsky took a sip, looked disapproving.

‘Tastes like something made from a parasitic plant that attaches itself to mangrove roots,’ he said.

I was thinking: This is the moment to ring Vella, meet him, lay it all out. The moment to stand clear, leave it alone. My watch is over.

I hadn’t killed Anne Carson. There was never a moment when I could have saved her, never a moment when anyone could have saved her. She was doomed the instant the Guinanes decided on her, decided that she would be the next sacrifice to the memory of Cassie.

But why the Carsons? Was it possible they thought Mark took Cassie from them? Mark was probably an abductor and a murderer, had probably killed Anthea Wyllie, got his sister and Jeremy Fisher to lie for him, give him an alibi. Jeremy Fisher’s career had gone like a rocket after he lied for Mark. Tom Carson had moved all the CarsonCorp business to Jeremy’s firm, Jeremy was in charge of the Carson stock exchange float, a man grown rich on the Carsons.

Did Graham Noyce know about Mark? Who knew what Noyce knew? He fixed things for the Carsons. He didn’t want me near Mark. Because of the float, he said, didn’t want any bad press about a Carson, any Carson.

And Barry Carson? Barry didn’t mind me having a look at Mark, encouraged me. Barry hated Mark, wouldn’t be in the same room with him. Perhaps Barry was less worried about a Mark Carson scandal because he didn’t mind the float prospects being hurt. Was he the person cultivating the idea that Tom was too old to lead the company into its new public incarnation? Tom thought so.

But none of that mattered. The Guinanes had killed a girl. Done things to a terrified girl and then electrocuted her, executed her.

Had they done it in the shrine to Cassie?

Why was it a Carson girl?

It didn’t matter. Time to go. Back to Afghanistan.

You planning on going back there? Have another crack at them? Bring the boys back to life?

‘I’m going back,’ I said.

Orlovsky was looking into his coffee cup. ‘I don’t feel inclined to pay for stuff like this,’ he said. ‘What?’

‘I’m going back.’

He fixed dark eyes on me, ran fingertips over his lips. ‘To what end?’

I didn’t want to answer the question. It wasn’t reasonable to want that man in the camouflage pants, those men in camouflage pants, weak chins, mocking eyes, to want those men to tell me what they’d done, to show me where they’d kept the girls, to show me where Anne’s hair got wet before they took her picture, where they’d combed it, to show me the bath they electrocuted her in, to show me where they kept her body, kept it cold.

But I wanted them to do that, the Guinanes.

I’d put my hand out to her, touched her lovely face, felt the cold.

What had David Klinger said?

…even bloody cold storage, some silent fridge thing he devised.

Orlovsky said again, ‘To what end?’

There was no reason in it. I had no explanation to offer.

Orlovsky saw that. I saw it in his eyes.

‘Take a cab home,’ I said. ‘It’s on the house.’

We sat there looking at each other.

‘Just don’t fucking smoke,’ he said. ‘No fucking smoking.’

We didn’t go to the impressive front doors this time. We went around the house, going fast on the dirt, making a noise, took a hard right at the back of the sprawling building, another mudbrick building to the left, braked to a stop, came out of the car at a fairly efficient speed, not in condition for this kind of thing, crossed the space, ran over the terrace towards the back door.

Not an old door this time, an ordinary door, four panels, also saved, scrounged from some other life, tried the doorknob.