Peter Temple - White Dog

We thrust, no parrying, and parted. I was at my door, when McCoy shouted, ‘I’m having a party Friday night. Don’t come.’

I went inside and, in the back room, the nominal kitchen, made a pot with loose tea bought from a terrifyingly correct shop in Brunswick Street. The bleached-looking owners wore loose garments that were probably made from pulped Age Culture sections.

I waited for a decent time, and, from a height, filled the lovely china cup given to me by Isabel. I had brought it here from my old office, a relic of the time when I was a respectable person. If the roof fell in now, if some disaster pulverised the place, chips of this cup would quite wrongly tell an archaeologist that on this site there was once civilised life.

Precious vessel in hand, I went to the front window, sipped, looked at the wet tarmac, the shining cobbles, at the two lines of swooping writing on the wall above the front door of McCoy’s atelier.

Guy de Paris

Garments of Distinction

The lettering was so faded that you had to know what it said to read it. In the last light, I thought about what to make of Janene Ballich and the ripples from her. The man who’d parked beside me was saying that she was connected with Mickey Franklin in a way that mattered.

A hooker and her ambitious pimp — she was missing so long she had to be dead, he was dead. And Katelyn Feehan aka Mandy Randy? Where was she? Like Janene, she was recruited from the Officers’ Club by Wayne Dilthey to join his catering corps ministering to the needs of the rich.

The rich. Mickey Franklin and the rich, Mickey and the Massianis, Mickey and Anthony Kendall Haig and Charles Hartfield and Bernard Paech.

Did Sophie Longmore, Mickey’s last screw, know anything about these people? Not likely. They went back too far and Mickey wouldn’t have talked about them. Where was Sophie? Gone somewhere. I’d probably been told, hadn’t paid attention.

I went to the table and rang Sarah Longmore’s mobile.

‘Yes,’ she said, more command than greeting.

‘Jack Irish.’

‘The journos have got this number,’ she said. ‘It’s supposed to be silent, I’ve had two slimes, they start out trying to ingratiate…’

‘Where are you?’ I said.

‘At work. At what I choose to call work. I’m about to leave.’

‘I’d like to have some of your time.’

‘You can have all my time if you’re prepared to be hounded by fucking tabloid scumbags and television thugs. They followed me into the police station today when I went to sign the bail book. The cops had to kick them out.’

‘That’s trying,’ I said. ‘They don’t have work staked out?’

‘Not yet. I’m taking considerable pains to see that they don’t.’

‘There tomorrow? I could come around.’

‘All day. From around ten.’

A silence and then she said, ‘Or we could do it today. Have a drink somewhere. Whatever.’

The ethics of an after-hours drink with a client. What ethics? I’d had a during-hours beer with her. Anyway, she wasn’t my client, I was Cyril Wootton’s hireling. And even if she were, some lawyers spent large parts of their after-hours drinking with their clients, the bigger the client, the more after-hours drinking.

‘That would be helpful,’ I said. ‘Save time.’

‘I’m a bit wary of public places,’ she said.

I hesitated only for a moment. ‘We could meet at my place,’ I said. ‘It’s not far out of your way.’

Sarah didn’t hesitate at all. ‘Fine. Where is it?’

I gave her directions, then made haste to get home and inflict some order on the place. At least it was clean, courtesy of a recent purge. The bell rang when I’d got the fire going well and was stuffing old newspapers into the box seat under the sitting-room window. I went down and opened the door.

She was in jeans and a short leather jacket, tiny drops of water in her finger-combed hair. A sexy look, it made me nervous.

‘Hi,’ she said. ‘I’m feeling awkward. I haven’t pushed you into this, have I?’

‘I thought it was my suggestion?’ Behind her, I could see the rain drifting like net curtain across the streetlight on the edge of the park.

‘Made under duress.’

‘Come in. I haven’t got any German beer, just Cooper’s.’

‘Cooper’s is not just.’

When I came in with the beer, she was standing in front of the fire. ‘A very welcoming room, Mr Irish. Is there what would once have been a Mrs Irish? Or similar?’

I shook my head, gave her a big glass, a bottle of beer in it. ‘Neither. I’ve got names I need to ask you about.’

‘Ask.’

I didn’t know whether to stand or sit. I stood on the other side of the fire. ‘David Massiani.’

‘Met once. All smiles and arm-punching. When David’d gone, Mickey said, you’ll never meet a more insanely treacherous cunt. Mickey worked for the Massianis once, you know that?’

‘I do. That’s all?’

‘Yes. May I smoke?’

‘This room’s no stranger to smoke.’ That was putting it mildly.

She took the Camel packet from an inside pocket, plucked one. I pulled a splinter from a piece of firewood, lit it and offered. She put the cigarette in her mouth, came closer, tilted her head back, looked at me though the flame, close, drew.

‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘You know how to live off the land here.’

‘We get by,’ I said. ‘Subsistence living. Grow our own truffles, force-feed the geese. In the evenings, we make our own amusement.’

She laughed, a laugh seen in her eyes. How was it that you always knew whether people were really amused? Why was I so pleased to have made her laugh?

I drank a good bit of the Cooper’s and wiped my lips. ‘Anthony Kendall Haig,’ I said.

‘Yes.’

There was something more than affirmation in her voice. She smoked, blew the grey stream at the fire, it was claimed by the updraught. This fireplace sucked like no other fire chamber I had known. It was one of the most important survivors of the explosion that sent the building’s roof into the North Fitzroy sky, tiny pieces falling on the football oval, on St George’s Road, on the bowling greens. Pieces of my dwelling fell on the tennis court where I once played Drew Greer for almost three hours, and lost.

‘Yes?’ I said.

‘Mickey once worked for him too. In Brisbane. He’s an interesting man. Sophie said he was the money behind Seaton Square. There was some argument going on between him and Mickey, I think. You’ll have to ask her.’

‘I’d like to ask her lots of things. Your father promised to arrange it. Can you put me in touch?’

‘I’ll ring her.’

‘Why’s Haig interesting?’

She had some beer, smoked, looking at the fire. ‘He’s got this rough exterior, left school at fourteen, a self-made man. Then you find out he can talk about art, history, music. Unusual person.’

I waited, admiring her cheekbones. ‘And?’

‘I slept with him,’ she said.

‘During the Mickey affair?’

‘Yes. Just a fling.’

‘Did Mickey know?’

‘No. We were on the rocks, it was right at the end. The night I had the fight over the parking space, that’s the night I met him. He came to dinner at Mickey’s.’

I tried the names Charles Hartfield and Bernard Paech. No, she said.

‘Gary Webber. An artist. I understand you attacked him.’

Sarah closed her eyes. ‘Oh fuck,’ she said, calm voice, ‘that’s from my father, isn’t it?’

‘We don’t want it going off in our face in court,’ I said.

She drank. ‘I was about sixteen, trying to hang out with this bunch of painters. I thought they were so cool, they had this outlaw artist air, they were all drop-outs from something, school, art school. And Gary Webber, he was the coolest. One night, I went to the studio, upstairs in Smith Street, it was late, and three of them started pushing me around, they were off their brains. I thought it was a joke. You play along. I played along.’