Peter Temple - White Dog

‘Mr Ashton,’ I said. ‘I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that this information isn’t secret, it’s on the public record. Are you trying to be obstructive?’

Flutter of eyelids. He didn’t have much experience in dealing with this kind of bluster.

‘That apartment is owned by Amaryllo Holdings,’ he said. ‘One of three.’ He gave me the spelling, the details.

‘So anyone could claim to have been staying in the apartment and you wouldn’t be able to confirm or deny that?’ I said.

‘It isn’t any of my business,’ Ashton said. ‘The owners are free to have anyone they like stay in their apartments. We require only that they tell us when the premises are occupied.’

I gave him the date of Mickey’s death, 16 March. ‘Was the apartment occupied then?’

He was even unhappier now but it was too late. He looked it up. ‘Yes, it was.’

‘And when did that cease?’

‘Um, about two weeks after that date.’

‘When did that period of occupancy begin?’

‘A week before that. It had been unoccupied for about three months.’

As I walked back to the car, it was on my mind that I should have done this first. I should have gone for the only important witness, not buggered around with the victim. We hadn’t really believed Sarah, that’s why we’d gone for Mickey. Not we. It was me. I’d put off looking at the witness.

In the car, I rang Simone Bendsten and gave her the company name. She rang back as I pulled up down the street from the office.

‘Owned by another company, Vindolanda No. 3, registered in Monaco,’ said Simone. ‘That will almost certainly be a dead end. Amaryllo’s local address is Alan Duchard, Gaitelband, barristers and solicitors, in Prahran.’

A firm I’d heard of before. I said thanks, went inside and looked at Sophie Longmore’s photographs. Four prints, ordinary snapshot 10 x 15s, seriously bad black-and-white photographs, taken from inside a car. Sophie had drawn arrows on them pointing at the subject, a youngish woman in black, but glare all but ruined two. The third was better but the woman was half-obscured by a car, looking away. The fourth was the least bad, the subject was in the street talking to the driver of a car. Unfortunately, her head was down and her straight hair fallen forward, curtaining her profile. There was a front-seat passenger in the car, a head could be made out, but that was all.

All too hard, all too pointless. Sarah was dead and the rest didn’t matter much now. Sophie could choose the ways she wanted to remember her sister.

I knew what nonsense that was as I said it to myself. There was no choice in these things, the memories came anywhere: in the shower, at the traffic lights, studying cans in the supermarket, anywhere you were alone. And, worst of all, they came in dreams, in the mind’s mysterious cinema. There they were real, the past was undone, you felt the touch of those you had loved, the happiness was restored. That was the worst, the cruellest.

I rang Sophie Longmore’s mobile number. She answered after two rings.

‘Jack Irish,’ I said. ‘I have to say I can’t do anything more in this matter and I don’t know anyone who can. I’m sorry.’

Twittering on the line, she was far away or some obstacle stood between us.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said, again, she might not have heard me.

The sounds stopped. ‘Jack, please,’ she said, ‘you’re the last person who has to say sorry.’

I wanted to end the conversation at that point, but I didn’t want to be the one to do it.

‘Well,’ she said, ‘thanks again, Jack, I didn’t tell you, that morning, Sarah left a message on my voicemail.’

The sounds again, the pre-electronic sound of cat’s whisker scraping on crystal. It began to rain, I was looking at big tropical drops hitting a car outside, wet explosions, watched them become freezing spaghettini.

Across the way, a light came on upstairs in McCoy’s premises. I said nothing, felt the cold in the room, in the heart, in the stomach, in the bone.

‘Jack?’ she said.

‘Yes, I’m here.’

‘She said she was feeling cheerful for the first time in weeks and it was because of a man.’

‘Sorry,’ I said, ‘didn’t hear that, you’re breaking up. So I’ll say goodbye.’

I sat in the gloom, my mind wandering around in the tall maze that was the whole business. I didn’t intend to. I didn’t want to think about it at all, but that wasn’t possible. I had to accept that I couldn’t leave it alone.

Janene Ballich, table dancer. Why had the man in the car given me her name that night? Who was he? What part did Janene Ballich play in the story of Mickey Franklin? I’d been to Gippsland, I’d talked to Popeye Costello, all I got were more names: Wayne Dilthey, Katelyn Feehan aka Mandy Randy, Donna Filipovic. Janene was missing, probably dead. Wayne was definitely dead, shot in some country town. Where was Katelyn?

Time for a beer. No Charlie tonight, he was playing bowls, handing out another thrashing to the youngsters in Brunswick.

It couldn’t be coincidence that I’d hear Donna’s name in Popeye’s office and then find that she was the witness against Sarah who could place her near the scene of the crime. I remembered Popeye’s whistle when he saw Katelyn Feehan in the photograph with Wayne Dilthey.

The cunt. Pinched her off me. Probably snaffled fucking Donna… Snaffled Donna from table dancing and giving personals? To join Wayne’s pleasure-service business? Donna, who just happened to be spending three weeks in a corporate apartment owned by a company in Monaco when she saw Sarah. Where had she been living when she first saw Sarah, during the altercation with the parking-space thief?

Was Donna lying, prepared to commit perjury in a murder trial? What could induce her to do that? How could she know about the argument with the driver unless she’d seen it?

I got up, stretched, put on my overcoat. I was at the front door when I remembered. That was the night Sarah said she’d met Anthony Haig. She was on her way to dinner with Mickey and Anthony Haig on the night of the parking fight.

You’d talk about something like that. You left your car standing in the street and held a driver captive in his own car. You’d still be full of adrenalin and indignation when you arrived at your destination, the story would spill out, it would be remarkable if it didn’t.

So Donna could have been given the story by someone Sarah had told it to. Or by someone who heard it from that person. Sarah might have told the story to dozens of people. She would certainly have told it to Sophie, and Sophie… make that hundreds of people.

Monaco? A company in Monaco. I went back to the table, found my file, the stuff from D. J. Olivier, skimmed down the pages.

Subject’s company Saint Charles involved in hundreds of property dealings. Finance generally offshore. Frequent provider is First Crusader Finance, Monaco. This entity run by Charles Robert Hartfield, once partner in Melbourne solicitors Alan Duchard, Gaitelband…

The Melbourne address of the company that owned the apartment Donna stayed in was Alan Duchard, Gaitelband, barristers and solicitors of Prahran.

I rang Telstra inquiries, was rejected as incomprehensible by the voice recognition software, gave the name Saint Charles to a grumpy human, got a number, declined the exorbitantly priced direct connection.

It was picked up on the third ring. ‘Saint Charles.’ A man.

‘I’d like to speak to Anthony Haig.’

‘I can try to raise him. Your name?’

‘Jack Irish. I’m a solicitor.’

‘Hold on.’

Silence. I held, looking at the bare walls, just the framed professional certificates. A painting or two would be nice. Why had I never done that? Why had I kept this place looking like the abode of a lawyer monk?