Peter Temple - Shooting Star

Noyce closed the door behind him, a precise, solid click. ‘The more he’s paid, the more he worries,’ Pat said. He pointed at an open drinks cabinet against the wall to his right. ‘Help yourself.’

I went over and poured two fingers from a whisky decanter, water from a beaded silver jug, sat down again.

For a moment, Pat and I sat in silence in the comfortable room, calm yellow light around the table lamps, whisky glowing in the heavy crystal glasses. We looked at each other, the hirer and the hired.

‘Two hundred, not much money,’ Pat said. ‘For the trouble.’

‘No.’

‘Why, do you think?’

‘Could be they’re not too clever, don’t know what the market will bear. Could be that, could be they just want a quick and easy deal, off they go, spend it on drugs in a few weeks. Two hundred thousand, that’s four bundles, briefcase, sports bag, shopping bag, doesn’t weigh too much.’

Pat studied me. ‘What else?’

‘It’s just a trial to see how we behave.’

‘A trial.’ He picked up his glass, swilled the liquid. I could see the high-water mark it left. ‘A trial you can do with half a million, more.’

I had concerns about things other than the amount of money but I didn’t express them, tasted the whisky, just bathed the gums in the anonymous liquid from the decanter. Single malt. Fire in it, and peat smoke and tears. The Carsons probably owned the distillery, the spring, the heather, the whole freezing spray-blasted gull-screaming granite Scottish outcrop.

‘They don’t know what your pain threshold is,’ I said.

‘Pain threshold,’ he said. ‘That’s when we scream, is it?’

‘Yes. Two hundred thousand it’s not likely to be. If they ask for half a million, you might say, that’s too much, get the cops in.’

He thought about this, studying me, eyes just slits, took a sip of whisky, said musingly, ‘What is our pain threshold? A million? Two million? Ten million?’

‘I wish it were two hundred thousand,’ I said. ‘It’s not too late.’

Pat shook his head. ‘No. We give the bastards what they want and we hope. Get Anne back, then we look for them, Frank. To the ends of the bloody earth.’

But I couldn’t leave it. ‘Anne,’ I said. ‘She’s always lived here?’

‘Just about. Since Alice’s kidnappin. That’s when we bought up around us, bought four places, made the owners and the bloody real-estate jackals rich.’

‘And the whole family came to live here?’

‘Tom and his wife and Barry and Kathy and their two. Mark and Christine and the little ones, and Stephanie and her fuckin husband, don’t like to say the bastard’s name, Jonathan fuckin Chadwick.’

‘Mark’s got other children?’

‘Little ones. Michael and Vicky.’

‘And their mother’s not well?’

‘Their mother…’ Pat hesitated. ‘Had a breakdown. She’s in…a place, some kind of place.’

I said nothing, kept my eyes on him, didn’t nod. Sometimes it works.

Pat drank some whisky, took a red handkerchief out of the top pocket of his jacket, wiped his lips. ‘Drugs,’ he said. ‘No point in beatin around the fuckin bush. Lovely girl, Christine, but she’ll stick anythin in her body. Christ knows why, had everythin a woman could want. We sent her to Israel, Tom’s idea. Got this clinic there, they put em to sleep and they flush em out. Buy a decent house for what they charge. Waste of money, comes home, back on the bloody drugs in six weeks.’

‘And Mark’s in Europe?’

‘A lawyer, Mark,’ Pat said. ‘He was. Bright spark. First grandchild’s cleverest, the wife used to say. Some bloody Hungarian sayin. That’s what she was, Hungarian. Lots of sayins, the Hungarians. Sayin for every bloody occasion. Could’ve used Mark in the business. But, doesn’t help to push em. Come to it themselves, that’s the way. He didn’t. Didn’t do anythin anyone bloody wanted. Married at twenty, girl three years older, shotgun, still at the uni. That’s Anne, scraped in under the wire. Anyway, Christine’s from a decent family, couldn’t see what Carol was gettin hysterical about.’

‘Carol?’

He didn’t understand the question for an instant. ‘Carol?’

‘Who’s Carol?’

‘Oh. Forget who you’re talkin to. Carol. Mark’s mother. Tom’s wife. Carol Wright she was. Fancied themselves, the family, the father anyway. Stockbroker. There’s a bloody amazin job for you, all care and no responsibility, buyin, sellin, makin or losin, the bastards get a cut. I shoulda gone into that, snowball’s bloody chance I’d a had, boy left school at twelve.’

He sipped the malt, went far away.

‘So Tom married Carol Wright,’ I said. For the moment, he didn’t mind talking about the family.

Pat came back, hesitantly. ‘That’s it. Tom went to school with the brother, name escapes me. Mind you, the fella did a bit of escapin himself. Director of companies, that was his occupation. I ask you. Barry tells me the bugger’s livin in some banana republic where the warrants can’t get to him.’

‘And Barry’s wife?’

‘Married into the English aristocracy, Barry. Katherine, met her on a skiing holiday, that’s upper bloody crust for you. Some place in America. Don’t know what my old dad would’ve said. Know he’d a liked the bit where the bloody chinless prick of a father tapped me for six thousand quid to pay for his girl’s weddin. Then Louise, that’s my daughter, she goes and marries into the local silver-tails, the Western District mob. They play polo, know that?’

‘I’ve heard that.’

‘Horses got more brains than the jockeys. But Stephen’s not a bad bloke, good father. She’s happy.’

‘And Mark became a lawyer.’

‘Clever lad, got a job with these Collins Street lawyers. Tom put some business their way, that wasn’t a good idea. Bastards probably thought Mark was drivin the gravy train. Made him a partner.

Twenty-five years old, couldn’t run a chip shop.’

He fell silent, looked away. He was beginning to regret talking to me about the Carsons. I was just a bagman. ‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘Mark’s in Europe, some deal with the Poles, I don’t know. The deals change all the time. Poles, Russians, Chinese, Indonesians, bloody South Africans, white ones.’

‘Anne,’ I said. ‘She’s happy here?’

‘Difficult child.’

‘Difficult how?’

‘School problems. Other things. In a cage here, it’s not natural…’ He tailed off, looked at his glass, drained it, mind turning elsewhere. ‘Dennis?’ he said.

I shook my head. ‘I’d be surprised. Got slack, careless. Too long in the job without anything happening.’

‘I hope so. You can understand. Bloke doesn’t have little Alice on his mind like the rest of us.’

I wanted to know more about Alice, but there was a knock at the door.

‘Come in,’ said Pat.

It was a tall, slim woman in her thirties, late thirties, well cut dark hair on her shoulders.

I stood up.

‘Carmen’s mother,’ Pat said. ‘She manages the place, keeps it tickin over. Part of the family.’

‘Lauren Geary,’ said the woman. She was wearing a wine-red high-collared blouse and a long black skirt. Chin up, she had an air of competence, a person who managed things, commanded obedience. She put out a hand. ‘You’re Mr Calder. Graham told me.’

We shook hands.

‘I’m sorry to interrupt, Mr Carson,’ she said, ‘but Carmen’s told me something.’

Pat nodded.

‘She remembers seeing a man near the record store two or three times. There’s a tram stop but once he was still there when they came out.’

‘Yes?’

‘Well, trams go by every few minutes. It’s peak hour. So he couldn’t have been waiting for a tram.’