Peter Temple - White Dog

Goodbye, German beer. I drank the last centimetres, put the bottle on the table.

‘There were odd things first.’

She shifted in the chair, moved her head. ‘About six weeks ago I noticed a woman and then I saw her again, three times in about ten days. Each time she dressed very differently. Her hair was always different.’

‘Did she want you to see her?’

‘No, it wasn’t stalking. The first time she was leaning against a car talking to the person inside, then she was on a mobile, the other time she was in a car across from the gym. She never looked at me.’

My position in the chair was causing pain in the lower back. Could Swedish melancholy be chair-related?

‘St Kilda,’ I said. ‘I’m told it’s like a village. Friendly street prostitutes always ready to lend a hand, the milkman carries emergency coke. You’d expect to see the same people, wouldn’t you?’

She smiled, not a complete smile. ‘I’ve even got a friendly neighbourhood peeping Tom. Anyway, I didn’t see her again.’

‘After you told Mickey about her?’

‘What?’

Cold was rising from the concrete slab. It had reached my flabby calves, less flabby than before the morning running, perhaps, but not the calves of a young tennis player.

‘You didn’t see her again after you told Mickey?’

‘I didn’t tell Mickey,’ she said. ‘Sophie told him. She was with me the third time. She actually took a photograph of the woman.’

‘She happened to have a camera?’

‘She always has a camera.’

‘Has Sophie been questioned?’

‘She was at a party. She has about fifty alibi witnesses.’

‘Tell me about the break-in.’

Sarah put out a hand and picked up a watch, a cheap digital item on a plastic strap. ‘Jesus,’ she said. She stood up fluidly without using her arms. ‘Can we carry on tomorrow? I’ve got to get home and clean up, I’m meeting my father at six.’

I got up too, not fluidly, I didn’t know how to exit a 1950s Swedish Modern chair with grace. ‘I’ll call you tomorrow night,’ I said. ‘We can find a time that suits you.’

I gave her my card and said goodbye, walked back the way I had come, around the downed knight in his pool of harsh light, around the steel scrapheap, between the execution and the crawling, panting pack of dog-humans. Finally, I passed by the witches preparing to cook a small creature and came to the sliding door and opened it to the dripping world beyond.

Upstairs at the old boot factory, home, I put on lights, heating, walked around, drew in the dust on the mantelpiece. I looked out of the window at the pencil lines of rain across the streetlight, moved books from one pile to another, washed the breakfast things, turned on the radio, the television, switched them off, got Schubert going: Winterreise.

The music soothed places in the mind. I poured a whisky and soda, sank into an old leather armchair, the repaired survivor of a bomb blast that disintegrated its two companions and a sofa, bought long ago at the Old Colonists’ Club dispersal. Isabel had done the bidding, she had the ability to wait, to move in the smallest increments, to reveal nothing. That was the side of her that made her good at the law, at poker. Her other side cared nothing for calculation, for economy. Without reserve, that side gave away money, time, attention, love. She ministered to her clients, to her untidy siblings, to total strangers. Once a week, she drove across the city to take a steak and onion pie to an old man met at a tramstop who had trouble remembering her name.

This wasn’t the time to think about Isabel. Food, I would think about food. I got up and went to the kitchen to study Linda’s donation. Meat, vegetables, cheese. At the Victoria Market, she always bought indiscriminately and extravagantly. ‘What am I supposed to do?’ she once said. ‘The vegie man says he loves me, I’m radio spunk number one, bugger the Italian woman on ABC drivetime. Do I say, Thanks, Giorgio, all I want is a big red pepper?’

‘A big red pepper, no,’ I’d said. ‘You don’t want to inflame them further. Better to buy a dozen flaccid cabbages.’

Thinking about Linda, I lost interest in cooking and went back to the sitting room. The phone rang.

‘Ah, for once found without twenty attempts.’

Cyril Wootton, the plummy tones, made plummier at this hour by his refreshment stop at the Windsor Hotel.

‘Is this a business call?’ I said. ‘My office hours are nine to five.’

‘Hah hah,’ said Wootton, unamused. ‘You’re easier to find at that scungepit pub you frequent than you are at the hole you call your office.’

‘That’s pretty comprehensive, Cyril,’ I said. ‘In one sentence, you’ve insulted two of the things I hold most dear.’

‘Moving on,’ said Wootton, ‘I gather Greer’s coached you on the project’s parameters.’

I sighed. ‘Cyril, the management seminars in Mount Eliza. You promised to stop.’

In the background, I heard Mrs Wootton shouting something, not the dulcet tones of a loving spouse calling her partner to the candlelit dinner table. I thought I heard the words ‘little prick’.

Cyril coughed. ‘Prelim scan in forty-eight, that’s from twelve today,’ he said. ‘Updates every twenty-four. Face-to-face. We have a high confidentiality threshold.’

‘You have something,’ I said. ‘Something worrying. Hearing voices? Often feel dizzy, feel that the floor slopes away from you?’

‘Terminating contact,’ said Wootton.

‘Before you slip back into domestic bliss,’ I said, ‘the recorded income needs a look.’

‘I have no idea what you’re talking about. Goodbye.’

I replaced the receiver. The telephone rang.

‘This number does not accept frivolous calls,’ I said.

‘Talk to the person?’ said Drew.

‘I did.’

‘And?’

‘Well. Seen the works of art?’

‘No. Why?’

‘You should. Open a window into the mind of your client.’

Drew made a noise of acceptance. ‘She’s an artist. They don’t have the normal circuit board. Take the cunt from Eltham who stole my wife.’

‘I see she’s a painter now.’

‘Well, it’s the mimic thing. Budgie behaviour. These artistic charlatans trigger mimicry in their conquests. Doomed, of course.’

‘She’s having an exhibition.’

‘Why are you telling me this? I don’t give a fuck whether she exhibits herself at Flinders Street station at peak hour.’

‘The mother of your children, I thought you’d be interested.’

‘The children yes, an interest not often reciprocated. Ms Longmore. Tell me.’

‘Just a preliminary conversation. She gave me a German beer.’

‘And the feeling?’

‘Unease. With tinges of lust.’

‘Any chance of you approaching this in a professional manner?’

‘Pass,’ I said. ‘I’m seeing her again. Today, she had to break off for an engagement with her father. Lord Longmore. Baron Longmore.’

‘Made another date?’

‘Drew,’ I said, ‘it’s me, not your plumber. I’m tied up tomorrow, then it’s total focus on Franklin, dawn to dusk and beyond, deep into the night.’

‘You’ll tell me directly?’

‘The prelim scan result, yes.’

‘The what?’

‘You really need to speak to Cyril about management courses.’

‘Cyril,’ said Drew. ‘Jesus. We might eat out tomorrow. I’m sick of in.’

‘I stand at the onset of sick of in. I’ll ring.’

Thoughts of food again. I got out a sheet of frozen puff pastry and put it on an oven tray. I unsheathed the Japanese knife, too heavy, bevelled only on one side, soft steel blade taking a vicious edge but prone to chipping. It also rusted in hours if not oiled after washing. In all, a dangerous and temperamental implement. I liked it very much. I used it to chop three cloves of garlic to insignificance, sushi slice a Spanish onion, and cut strips of red pepper. Then I samuraied a dozen mushrooms, put them in a pot on low heat with a big piece of butter, the garlic, half-a-dozen pitted olives, torn up, and three anchovy fillets. I put the glass lid on and left the stuff to sauna for a minute while I poured a glass of the night before’s red wine.