Peter Temple - Dead Point

‘So?’ I repeated, wanting to know, at that moment.

‘So?’ Charlie said. ‘So?’

‘Are you selling?’

‘Selling?’ The large head turned around, eyes under thatch bundles regarded me. ‘My workshop? So I can go to Perth and learn to swim? So I don’t drown?’

‘Just asking,’ I said, trying as nonchalantly as possible to get oxygen to my gasping little lung sacs.

Now I walked around the workshop, touched a few machines, just to comfort them, spent five minutes studying Mrs Purbrick’s library. It was pure Charlie Taub: classical elements — pilasters, mouldings, cornices — but pared of all showiness. The eye was drawn first to the beauty of the wood, then to the perfect balance of the design, its understatement and severity, and then, perhaps, to the craft of the joiner.

The ensemble, missing only its top and bottom trimmings, stood assembled in a corner of the workshop. It had been sanded, grain-sealed, shellacked and polished by Charlie’s finishing man, the voluble Arthur McKinley, retired coffin-maker. That work had taken six weeks. To reach the stage where the finishing could begin had taken a mere eight months because Charlie had set aside three days a week for the library. Progress might have been even faster had he had someone other than me to assist him. But speed had never been a concern for Charlie. He didn’t hear clients’ questions about how long a job would take.

Once, in the early days, entrusted with a small table, anxious about my progress, I asked, ‘When does this have to be finished?’

Charlie had been rough-planing an 18-inch walnut board with a block plane, working at an angle to the grain to avoid tear-out. The thick plane steel, sixty years old at least, honed and strapped, could clean shave a Gulf Country feral pig. With each stroke, long translucent shavings whispered through the plane’s throat, bending back with the grace of a ballerina’s arm.

‘When it’s finished,’ he said, ‘that’s when.’

I went to the storeroom at the back and got out the packing blankets, World War Two army blankets Charlie had bought in the 1950s. Then I disassembled the library. There was not a screw in it; secret wooden locking wedges held it together. By 8.30 a.m., I’d finished wrapping and taping the pieces. I was waiting for the water to boil and thinking about my anchovy-paste sandwich when I heard the vehicle outside.

Cam was in his stockbroker gear — chalk-striped charcoal suit, blue shirt, silk jacquard tie — and carrying a dark-blue cardboard box. He put it on the steel trolley Charlie used as a table.

‘Breakfast,’ he said and opened the box. ‘Scrambled eggs and barbecued pork New Orleans style on Greek bread. Coffee. Blue Mountain.’

Fusion cooking was completely out of control. What chance did an anchovy-paste sandwich and a cup of tea stand? We got going, sitting on the chairs Charlie had rescued from a skip. The pork melted in the mouth, the scrambled eggs had a faint mustard and cream taste.

‘Southern barbecued pork? Greek bread?’

‘Good?’

‘That’s not strong enough. Who’s the cook?’

‘Greek bloke in Brunswick, used to live in New Orleans. He’s got a brick oven out the back, looks like a rocket ship. Fat rocket ship. Little pig’s in about eight at night, comes from his brother in the bush, the neighbour comes off shift at 4 a.m., checks it. Bit of bastin. Ready at seven.’

‘Write down the address.’

He nodded, looked at me reflectively, tongue running over his upper teeth. ‘Talked to Cyn again. She’s gettin better, not so vague now.’

‘That’s good.’

We chewed in silence.

‘The one, he’s got a tatt down the middle finger. Right hand.’

‘What kind?’

‘The Saint.’

‘No, don’t say that.’ The stick figure with the halo was St Kilda’s emblem.

‘She says she was at the stove, it came to her. The head and the halo. Halo bigger than the head.’

I took the cap off the coffee cup.

‘Can’t drink it without sugar. Needs sugar,’ said Cam.

‘No.’ I sipped. This was coffee, Harry Palmer coffee, sugar ruined it. ‘That’s it?’

‘No. Ring each side she thinks, gold.’

‘She should go back to the jacks.’

Cam opened his coffee, added sugar from two little paper bags, stirred with the plastic implement, tasted. ‘She’s not happy to do that.’

Our eyes conversed. I said, ‘Yes. Leave it with me. It’s an exceedingly long shot and I’ve exhausted my welcome. But.’

He nodded, not looking at me, eyes on his coffee. ‘Can’t find any other way.’

‘The vehicle,’ I said. ‘I’ve been thinking about the vehicle.’

‘The vehicle?’

‘From a carpark.’

‘A carpark.’ Cam looked up, into the distance, turned the eyes on me, yellow eyes, the sinews bracketing his mouth showing. Nothing more to be said.

‘Do the tatt,’ he said, ‘then we’ll do the carpark.’

‘This breakfast, I owe you.’

‘Dinner. Owe me dinner.’

When he’d gone I made a call about the tattoo. The man at the other end groaned.

‘Jesus, fuck,’ he said. ‘Use the phone book.’

‘Robbery with violence, maybe serious assault. Not inside on February 20.’

‘Use half the phone book. Tomorrow it’ll have to be. Six-thirty.’

‘Not fucking bad,’ said the driver.

It was 10.40 a.m. and we were in the furniture van outside the wrought-iron double gates of Mrs Purbrick’s neo-Georgian mansion in Kooyong. The greasy rain on Punt Road had turned to a soft, clean mist here, further testimony to the preferential treatment handed out to the extremely rich.

The driver’s name was Boz and she was a film grip, an occupation whose essence, as I understood it, was the moving of things. When not gripping films, she used this skill to cart stuff around in her vintage van. I’d met her through Kelvin McCoy, a conman artist and former client of mine who leased the building across the street from my office. Boz transported McCoy’s appalling creations to his gallery in the city. He had not been receptive to my suggestion that, on these missions, the Boz vehicle should display a Hazardous Waste sign.

‘There’s a side door,’ I said. ‘Just beyond, it’s probably best.’ I’d hired her for the day; one person couldn’t move the library bits around.

I got out and pressed the button in the wall, could have smoked a full cigarette before David, Mrs Purbrick’s personal assistant, came down the gravelled driveway. His hair was wet and he bore the telltale signs of someone not long vertical.

‘My dear Jack,’ he said. ‘Apologies in full. I was on the phone, dealing with this most dreadful rug trader. Can you believe the man’s tried the old switcheroo on us?’

‘The switcheroo? That’s impertinent,’ I said.

‘My word.’ He held up a key. ‘I have to unlock these now. It turns out all the high-tech electronic rubbish can’t keep out a 12-year-old armed with an old remote control. So much for maximum security.’

The gates swung open on silent hinges. Boz drove in and lined up the truck with the side steps to within a centimetre.

She got out, broken-nosed, six foot two, near-shaven-headed, a woman in khaki bib-and-braces overalls and a white sleeveless tee-shirt.

I introduced her to David.

‘I can see you work out,’ he said admiringly.

‘Work out?’ said Boz. ‘Work out shit, I’m a manual labourer.’

David was suitably taken aback. ‘Well,’ he said. ‘Well, I’ll leave you to it.’

It took us half an hour to move the pieces of the library into its home, an empty room with deep windows looking onto the side garden.

Then the real work began.