Peter Temple - White Dog

It was a big room, big windows on two walls, panelled in wood painted a warm mustard colour. On the back wall were photographs of sod-turnings, deep pits, concrete pours, groups of men in hardhats celebrating tree-raisings on tower buildings. The right-hand wall held family photographs: weddings, a degree ceremony, parties, many photographs of a big, dark man with two boys, toddlers in some pictures, getting bigger. I could identify Steven Massiani, the smaller of the boys, always a serious face. His brother, David, was plump to begin with, a big open face. In the later pictures, he was his father’s height, the same jaw, the same eyes, the same stance.

Massiani said goodbye and put down the phone. ‘Mr Irish.’

We shook. ‘Thank you for seeing me,’ I said.

He opened his hands, made a small movement of his head, gestures that said: it costs me nothing to see you.

‘I like your office,’ I said.

‘It was my father’s,’ said Massiani. ‘I haven’t changed anything.’ He had a soft voice, a priest’s voice, a voice for the confessional. ‘It’ll always be his office, I’m afraid.’

‘I thought you’d be in one of the towers,’ I said. ‘High up.’

He shook his head. ‘This is the first building Dad owned. Bought in 1959. People always expected him to knock it down but he loved this building. All he did was fix it up and put in a new lift, that was just before he died. He liked fast lifts. It’s much too fast for the height.’

‘He didn’t change the name,’ I said. ‘Call it the Massiani Building.’

‘It’s the Isaacs Building while we own it. My dad said people who changed the names of buildings would also desecrate tombstones.’

‘Is there a Massiani Building?’

He smiled. ‘He didn’t like memorials. You wanted to talk about Mickey. We had very little to do with him after he left us.’

‘I’m just scratching around,’ I said. ‘Our problem is that Andrew Greer’s client didn’t kill Mickey, so we are forced to ask who did.’

‘Of course, that’s your job. He worked for the company for five or six years, we gave him opportunities. Then he left to follow his own course. My father encouraged him in that. Mickey wasn’t a corporate person. Do you know what I mean?’

‘I think I do.’

‘Yes. We invested in his early projects as a sign of support for him. He had no standing in the financial community.’

Massiani steepled his hands, pale fingers, small nails, nibbled at.

‘You have no investment in Seaton Square?’

‘No. We’ve learned our lesson in the suburbs.’

‘It seems to have been a disastrous exercise.’

He unsteepled, steepled again. ‘Scaled down, less ambitious, it may still be viable. Mickey was always shooting for the moon.’

‘Always?’

‘Well, he was an ambitious person.’

‘May I ask you a hypothetical question?’

A shake of the head. ‘About Mickey’s death, I’m not the person to ask, Mr Irish.’

‘It’s not about what you know,’ I said. ‘Before this, if someone suggested that Mickey was in danger, would you have guessed personal or business reasons?’

‘An impossible question,’ he said.

Behind his head, a helicopter appeared, a long way away, coming from the northwest, moving like a black insect crawling on dirty water. The windows were double-glazed, no sound reached us.

‘I understand he was a close friend of your brother,’ I said.

‘Close?’ A small frown. ‘I don’t know about close. They went to the races, the beach house, a drink after work, that kind of thing. It was before David was married.’ He scratched a cheek. ‘A long time ago.’

The small telephone on the desk buzzed. ‘Excuse me,’ he said. He picked it up. ‘Yes.’

He swivelled his chair. I looked at him in profile, a neat face.

‘Bruce,’ he said. ‘Thanks for calling. Yes. Sometime soon, can you do that? Monday would be excellent, fine. Yes, it is that matter. And there’s another small thing. Good. Yes. Wait to hear from you. Thank you, Bruce, I appreciate this.’

He turned back to me.

‘The impossible question,’ I said. ‘It would help our thinking.’

‘This is a headkicking industry, Mr Irish,’ he said, ‘but I haven’t heard of many developers murdered just for being developers. Is that an answer?’

‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘What kind of work did Mickey do when he was with you?’

‘Anything my father gave him to do. For a year or so. Then it was dealing with the contractors, mostly. That’s more than a full-time job, it’s actually more than a job, it’s a preparation for hell. That can lead people into doing silly things.’

‘Such as?’

He was looking at his fingernails. ‘Well, I suppose you know this royal commission into the building industry has heard some allegations about cash payments, that sort of thing, that go back to Mickey’s day.’

‘Mickey was involved?’

‘Involved? If he was involved, we were involved. And we weren’t. No, I’m saying it’s possible he knew more about what the contractors were doing than he ever told us. Told my dad, that is. I had nothing to do with Mickey, he didn’t report to me.’

His phone rang. He said a few polite words, replaced the tiny handset.

‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘I’m sorry Mickey’s not available to tell the commission what he knew about those days. Needless to say, the contractors won’t share that view.’

‘The commission was going to call Mickey?’

A shrug. ‘No idea. Probably not. I’m just saying that we’d have been happy to have Mickey alive to testify if required. Anyway, I’m not bagging Mickey. He could get things done. He was good with people then.’

‘He lost that gift?’

‘Some people are good intermediaries, good at negotiating on behalf of others. When they represent themselves, they’re less good.’

‘Have you heard anything about his behaviour in the weeks before his death?’

‘Only that he’d been acting… erratically.’

‘Why would that be?’

A shrug. ‘The problems with the project, I suppose. Possibly added to by a bit of chemical dependence. That’s what I heard.’

‘Before he joined you, what did he do?’

A look of thought. ‘I don’t know. My father took him on, someone recommended him. He had part of an engineering degree, he dropped out of uni. Queensland. He came from Brisbane.’

‘The crown’s case is that Mickey owned the weapon that killed him,’ I said. ‘Does it surprise you that he would have a gun?’

Massiani waved a hand. ‘People have guns,’ he said. ‘Some people feel a need to have something to protect themselves with.’

‘Did he marry Corin Sleeman while he was working for MassiBild?’

‘After he left.’

I had run out of questions. I got up. ‘I’m grateful for your time.’

‘I hope the Longmore woman gets off,’ he said. ‘If she didn’t do it. One of Australia’s finest families.’

An edge revealed, the micro-bevel on a blade.

Without consideration I said, ‘Mickey’s talent with people, that seems to have extended to his sex life.’

I thought I saw something in Massiani’s eyes, as one registers the faintest cloud shadow on a bright day. He rose, shorter than I’d expected, and came around the desk.

‘My father had a saying,’ he said, ‘to the effect that when it comes to men, some women have a connection missing between the head and the body.’

‘That sounds like a piece of ancient wisdom,’ I said. ‘Where did the Massianis come from?’

He offered his thin, unworked hand. ‘Corsica. We’re wogs. You’ll know the term.’

Steve Massiani opened the door for me. I said goodbye and walked down the corridor. The woman behind the desk said, Goodbye, Mr Irish. The lift slid me to the ground floor, a slick, silent, hurtling passage.