Peter Temple - White Dog

I went to the exhibits in the middle of the room, two death masks of Napoleon, one plaster, one bronze, on a slender plinth under glass and spotlit from above.

‘The jewels,’ said Haig. ‘Found them in Cuba. His doctors on St Helena made a gypsum cast of the emperor’s head after he died. One of them, his name’s Antommarchi, he sold copies and then he went to live in Cuba. It’s more than possible that the plaster one is an original, from St Helena.’

‘Did you ever meet your father?’ I said.

‘I tracked him down in Broken Hill. Buggered by work but happy. Brought up two kids after his wife died. He wouldn’t take anything from me, I had to force money on him, then he gave it to his kids. His other kids.’

‘And he gave you the book?’

Haig was on the other side of the plinth, looking at the masks. ‘The book was special for him. He knew every word in it. He told me that in the beginning he had to look up all the conjunctions and the prepositions. I wish I had his little dictionary but he’d lost it.’

I said, ‘Someone paid my hospital bill and put fifty grand in my bank account.’

He looked up. ‘That was me,’ he said. ‘If it bothers you, please give it away.’

Disarmed, unhorsed.

‘Why?’

‘An impulse, a whim. I liked Sarah very much. You got hurt trying to help her.’

‘You’d do that on a whim? That much money?’

Haig laughed. ‘I’m a rich man, you won’t believe what I’ve done on a whim.’

‘Do you know someone called Donna Filipovic?’ I said.

No furrow in the brow. ‘No.’

I took a chance. ‘A company called Amaryllo, registered in Monaco, I understand you’re connected with it.’

Haig smiled. ‘Connected?’

‘Through Charles Hartfield.’

Haig raised both hands, wide, blunt-fingered, passed them across his temples, smoothed hair needing no grooming, lowered his hands, held them palm up.

‘Jack,’ he said, ‘What’s this? Sarah’s dead. You don’t have to find a defence for her anymore.’

‘Did you remember Sarah telling a story about an argument with a driver near Mickey’s apartment? It was the night you met, dinner with Mickey.’

‘No.’

Looking at him over the emperor’s death masks. ‘The witness Donna Filipovic,’ I said. ‘She’s lying, she wasn’t there, she never saw Sarah that night. Someone fed her that story.’

‘The family, they’re paying you to go on with this?’

‘No,’ I said.

He stared at me. ‘Let’s say for argument’s sake Sarah didn’t kill Mickey,’ he said. ‘Then you ask, who would take the trouble to kill him and set her up?’

I didn’t reply.

Haig exhaled loudly, a sad shake of the head. ‘Why would anyone bother?’ he said. ‘Given the fuck’s mood swings, allround mental state, the drink, the drugs, Mickey was going to do the job himself. Just a matter of how long.’

‘You provided the finance for Seaton Square and then you wanted to pull the plug on him,’ I said. ‘He was enraged with you. That’s right, isn’t it?’

‘Jack, Jack,’ he said, ‘Mickey fucked up Seaton Square almost from the kick-off. All he got right was getting hold of the property. And that’s another story. After that, it was like the Cresta fucking Run in a shitstorm. Everything was a stuff-up — everything. He wound the thing up and up. I’ll tell you I’m no stranger to ambitious development but this was insane. And he wouldn’t listen to anyone. Well, he’d listen, sit there nodding his fucking coked-up head, yes, yes. Then he’d go off and do the opposite.’

He paused, shaking his head again. ‘Mickey enraged with me? I can tell you, many times I’d have shot the cunt if I’d had a gun. And fuck the consequences.’

Silence in the museum of Bonaparte, no sound except the stern ticking of the brass clock, said to come from the emperor’s first place of exile, Elba.

‘But while you’re looking for people to blame, Jack,’ said Haig, ‘try the people the stupid prick bribed over Brunswick. In his worst moments, he was going to take them down with him.’

‘I need a piss,’ I said.

‘This way.’

We left the room. He opened another door.

‘Through the dressing room. You’ll find your way back. Straight down the passage.’

A four-poster uncanopied bed was tightly made, the dark wooden floor shone, the curtains were open. I could see across the wet smudged city to Williamstown.

I went into the dressing room. It held the stock of a small, expensive men’s outfitters. On the shelves to the left were laundered shirts. Socks and underwear and sweaters were in glass-fronted drawers. Two racks held shoes, twenty pairs at least. On the right hung suits, sportsjackets, trousers, casual jackets, overcoats, raincoats. A regiment of ties was draped over rods on either side of the long mirror at the end of the room.

The door to the bathroom was open. It was big and plain, not a bathroom the interior decor crowd would create. Someone wanted this chamber to be a place for ablutions only: two small basins, a glass shower stall the size of a small room, a toilet, no bath.

I had my pee and went back to the party, found Haig. ‘I have to go,’ I said. ‘I’ll send you the tax receipt from the Salvos. Thank you for the thought.’

He walked me to the landing, touched me again in the affectionate way. ‘We’ve got a lot in common, Jack,’ he said. ‘Working-class fathers, rich mothers. How’d you like her father?’

‘Not much,’ I said. ‘Not a great deal.’

‘Even more in common than I thought.’

A hand offered, we shook.

‘You’ve got to look after yourself,’ he said. ‘Life’s full of bullshit. Full of Mickeys. The trick is to walk away from them. I’m learning that, I’m nearly there.’

I was halfway down the staircase when he said, ‘Jack.’

I stopped, looked back. He was standing with his hands clasped in front of his chest. ‘I’m going to my house in Corsica next month,’ he said. ‘Private flight. Why don’t you come? Good this time of year, hot, dry, it smells like nowhere else on earth. The maquis, the sea. Sweetness and salt. Napoleon said it was the only place he would recognise blindfold.’

‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘Can I let you know?’

‘Ring Bern,’ he said. ‘We’ll have a good time.’

I departed Marengo. A block away, I eased the Stud from between German bookends, an Audi and a Mercedes, and set out for Fitzroy. A wet night was on the city, the towers glowing in the damp air that softened everything, carried a smell of burnt fossil fuel.

Home, the place where they have to take you in. There weren’t any of them left but I could still be sure of admittance because I had the key.

I parked outside the boot factory and went upstairs to the cold rooms.

Four men in an old Studebaker Lark, on a Sunday afternoon, we went to the football in the indoor stadium. At the first change, St Kilda leading by eight goals, I brought out the samosas I’d smuggled through security, concealed on my body. We ate in silence for a while, then Norm wiped his lips of flakes, held out his hand for another one, and said, ‘Jack, bin sayin the team’s on the edge of a big one.’

Eric coughed. ‘Scuse me,’ he said. ‘Scuse me, what you bin sayin is the team’s full of duds and the coach shoulda stayed in Warrnambool,’ he said. ‘I’m the one’s bin predictin this.’

‘You idiots,’ said Wilbur. ‘Saints bin twelve-odd goals in front and the Hawks come back and win. Idiots.’

‘Not today,’ said Norm. ‘That was another bunch. This lot puts me in mind of the Lions in ’48.’

‘Jeez,’ said Wilbur, ‘I reckon yer short-thingy memory’s goin. Round 11 in ’48, Lions play the Saints, Lions top of the ladder, Saints got one draw from thirty-one games, one draw from thirty-one games, that’s sparklin form, not so? Who’d yer reckon wins?’