Peter Temple - White Dog

‘Dennis James Chaffee is you?’

‘Yup. Me uncle. Left it to me. My bloody horse.’

‘Very nice,’ I said. ‘How much?’

‘Well,’ Den said, his face concertinaed. ‘Bloody up to you, mate. Gimme’n offer. Fuckin racehorse. Class, not your…’

‘A hundred,’ I said.

Den pushed back the baseball cap. Grey scalp and sparse spiral strands of greasy hair came into view. ‘Stickit up ya arse, mate,’ he said. ‘Fuckin hundred, thing’s worth… fuckin six hundred.’

I put the horse’s book on the counter. ‘Just an idea I had,’ I said. ‘I can buy the kid a well-trained old horse for three. Nice to meet you.’

I was near the door when Den shouted, hoarse voice, ‘Did I fuckin say no?’

I turned. A beckoning movement from Den, an awful hand urging me back. I returned.

‘Four,’ he said. His eyes were sliding around the room. ‘Fuckin bargain. Lucky I need the money.’

‘Take a cheque?’

Now he looked at me. ‘Fuuuck,’ he said, shaking his head.

‘No?’

‘Fuckin no’s right.’

‘Know how to transfer ownership?’

He shook his head. ‘Me old lady done that.’

I got out Harry’s envelope. Den winced, for a moment he thought something police-related was happening to him. Lost Legion’s new owner was going to be A. J. Aldridge. Mrs Aldridge, cook extraordinaire, Harry’s English housekeeper of forty-odd years.

I took the book and filled out the transfer of ownership form. Then I wrote out a receipt.

‘A receipt for two hundred,’ I said. ‘Chink’ll deliver the other two when they send the book.’

I went out to the brute vehicle. Harry’s window descended as I approached. ‘Two hundred now, two more when it’s registered,’ I said.

Harry nodded, not unhappy, looked at Cam. Cam found an envelope in some dashboard cavity, removed notes, passed the envelope to me.

I went back. Den had new drinks — another beer and a shot glass of something dark. Rum it would be.

‘Two hundred cash,’ I said. ‘Sign here.’

Den signed the form and the receipt. He might just as well have made crosses: Den, His Mark. ‘Listen,’ he said, uneasy, eyes floating, ‘I’m not helpin you load the thing. Don’t go near it, fuckin thing’s lucky I don’t drill it.’

‘Chink will load it. When the time comes.’

I caught Chink’s eye. He came over.

‘I’m buying this horse,’ I said. ‘Should be able to pick it up inside a week.’

Chink nodded. To Den he said, ‘I’m puttin a goat in with it. Don’t let anythin happen to that goat.’

‘Don’t need no fuckin goat,’ said Den. ‘Got me own root.’ He laughed, the sound wild pigs make.

On the way back, in a Latrobe Valley coal town waiting in the drive-through lane to buy Harry’s snacks, I said, ‘Good day’s work. Rose early. Travelled for hours. Enjoyed hand-combat with the man they call Mr Talkative. Then I met Gippsland’s most wanted sperm donor and snapped up a gentle riding pony for Mrs Aldridge. Bargain price, too.’

‘Well,’ said Harry, leaning across Cam to study the menu, ‘the Lord could smile on us for savin the beast. Run two thousand faster than nature intended.’

‘No one mentioned speed,’ I said.

‘Outback Burger?’ said Harry. ‘New that. Whaddya reckon?’

‘Roadkills,’ said Cam. ‘Find flattened kangaroos, wombats, grind em up, add sixteen secret bush spices…’

‘Two Big Macs,’ said Harry. ‘Jack?’

I was thinking of home, of a quiet whisky and soda, followed by beef and pork sausages, cooked in the oven in red wine, accompanied by mustard mash and glazed carrots.

‘No thanks,’ I said. ‘I’m on a food diet.’

Sarah Longmore lived on the top floor of a grand building in St Kilda, three storeys of redbrick Victorian, bay windows at each end, long balconies with cast-iron lacework, six chimneys in sight from where I stood at the ornate gate.

I pressed button number five, felt the camera on me and looked: it was behind a thin strip of plateglass set in stainless steel in the wall to the right of the gate.

The gate unlocked, two clicks, the kind you hear in prisons when you visit clients. I went down a wide chequerboard path bordered by box hedges. Beyond them were long and narrow lawns, ironing-board flat, edged with beds of lavender. In the centre of each lawn stood an old oak, still green. The broad front door had another board of five buttons.

I pressed.

‘Come in, Jack.’ Sarah Longmore’s voice, excellent quality, her real voice.

More prison clicks.

I pushed at the intimidating door, put my hand on the wood above the shining brass plate, reluctant to mark a surface polished by hand, not sealed with some toxic chemical. The door swung as if weightless. I went into the building’s hallway, fully six metres square with a tiled floor, an ornate pattern, vaguely Arabic. It was lit from above, natural light from landing windows and a skylight two floors up.

I went up four flights of stairs wide enough for women wearing hoops to pass. At the second floor’s tall window, I paused to get my breath. A gardener appeared below, a man in a uniform with an electric mower. Nothing so raucous as a Briggs amp; Stratton two-stroke was allowed to bother the inhabitants of this building.

There were two doors leading off, solid cedar six-paners. I moved aside a brass cover on the one nearest. It hid modern locks, two of them.

The door opened.

‘Jack.’ Sarah Longmore in dark grey trousers, a loose polo-neck top, soft-looking garments, no make-up that I could see. It was hard to believe that she was the dirty-faced metal-grinder in overalls.

I followed her down a short, wide passage into a sitting room full of light from three sets of french doors that opened onto a balcony. The furniture was old, expensive, and the back wall was crammed with pictures, dozens of them, almost butted against one another, every shape and size, frames fancy and plain. I recognised Williams, Blackman, Tucker, the Boyds, Olsen, Dobell, Perceval. It was an expensive way to cover a wall.

‘Nice collection,’ I said.

‘They belong to my father,’ she said. ‘He lets me live here. Reluctantly. Coffee?’

I said no. The morning coffee had been taken. She fetched a big shallow cup from another room. We sat in armchairs.

‘We were talking about the break-in,’ I said.

‘Yes. My car was being serviced, about a month ago. I went to the gym but when I got there I was feeling terrible. I had flu coming on. So I took a cab home and fell asleep on the sofa. It was early, before six. When I woke up, the place was in darkness. Then I heard voices.’

I looked at her neck, as perfect as that of the dancer Marietta di Rigardo in the painting. Marietta with bruise.

‘A man came in,’ she said. ‘I could see his shape in the doorway. I shouted. He vanished but I heard him bump into someone and say, “Fuck, get out”.’

‘Not a break-in?’

‘They came up the fire escape and in the kitchen door. Probably climbed the back wall from the lane. Otherwise you have to get through the street gate and the front door.’

‘The kitchen door was locked?’

‘Deadlocks and an alarm. Nothing damaged, the alarm didn’t go off.’

‘What time was it?’

‘Just before seven.’

‘When would you usually get back from the gym?’

‘Around eight. I eat somewhere afterwards. Anyway, I had a few moments of panic and I rang Mickey.’

‘You’d broken up with him, he was seeing your sister. Why him?’

‘There wasn’t any bad feeling. That’s why this is so fucking ridiculous. I often spoke to him. He was an interesting man. An arsehole and an interesting person and someone you could rely on. For some things. Is that incomprehensible?’