Peter Temple: Black Tide

Gary hadn’t been home for a while. The use-by date on a four-pack of yoghurt in the fridge put the time at a minimum of three weeks. A brass bowl in the kitchen was full of change and half a dozen or so crumpled shopping sales dockets and credit card receipts.

I went around the cupboards. One of them, at eye-height, contained another security system monitor. I switched it on. It came to life instantly, very smart technology, split screen showing the front doorstep downstairs, the empty entrance hall outside the apartment and the fire escape landing beyond the kitchen door. You could see the front door of the apartment across the hall. I switched off and opened more cupboards until I came to the liquor cache. The wine rack held three bottles of Coldstream Hills pinot noir, there was whisky, vodka and gin, and, in a small fridge, four bottles of Carlsberg.

Des followed me into the bedroom. The laundry basket held four dirty business shirts, two golf shirts, three pairs of casual trousers, underpants, all with Henry Buck’s labels. The built-in cupboard housed an array of expensive, conservative clothes.

‘Boy’s got taste,’ I said. ‘Taste and money.’

‘Know where he got the bloody money from,’ Des said. ‘Taste’s the mystery.’

I had a look in the medicine cabinet in the bathroom. Much is revealed in medicine cabinets. Gary’s told me only that he had indigestion and a sex life.

Next, the writing desk. Nothing. Just a pad and two pens. Where would his papers be? I looked in all the obvious places, then the less obvious. Nothing.

Des walked around after me, leaning on the aluminium stick. ‘Anythin about the money?’ he said.

‘Nothing.’

There was a phone-fax-answering machine on the desk. I picked up the handset and pressed the redial button.

Nothing. The last number dialled on this phone had been erased.

The answering machine light was blinking. I pressed Play.

Six or seven calls. Not a single message.

‘When you rang, did you leave messages?’ I asked Des.

He shook his head.

I went back to the kitchen and pocketed the shopping dockets and credit card receipts. On the way out, I had a look in the flat box on the wall under the security monitor. It held a video recorder. Gary could tape his callers. If he got around to putting in a tape.

The front door closed silently behind us. In the lift, I said, ‘I’d say he’s been away a fair while.’

Des shook his head in disgust. ‘Lyin low. Told ya.’

Inside the gate, I offered him the keys. ‘You might want to check Gary’s mailbox.’

‘You do it,’ he said. ‘Me fingers can’t do the fiddly things anymore.’

Box number five was empty.

Outside, Des said, ‘Reckon you could run me home?’

‘Easily. Anyone been asking about Gary?’

‘Ask me about Gary? Might as well ask a bloody sheep where the dog’s gone.’

Des lived in deepest Northcote, near the railway line. As we pulled in to the kerb, two young women, both in black, both with cropped bleached hair, comb number one, nose rings, both carrying plastic shopping bags, arrived at the gate next door. One was a full head taller than the other. Des gave them an enthusiastic wave. They waved back, smiling.

‘Lovely girls,’ he said. ‘Strong too. Mow me lawn. Push-mower. Never asked em. The small one, what’s her name, forget for the minute, one Satdee she knocks on the door, says she’s mowin for exercise, mow anything, free mowin, what about me lawn? I was in that. Thinkin of payin some bloke to do it if I could find the extra. Lots of girls live around here. Mostly girls, really. Bloody paradise for a young bloke.’

I had my doubts about that, but I didn’t mention them.

‘Got the phone on?’

‘Course.’

‘Give me the number. I’ll ask around, give you a call.’

Des studied me. ‘Dead spit of Bill,’ he said with a shake of the head. ‘Didn’t play any footy, did ya?’

‘Not much.’

‘Got photos of the old days. Laurie Diggins used to take em. Mad bugger. That day too, day yer mum read us the bit. Hold on. Give ya somethin.’

He got out. I passed him the briefcase. Watched him lurch up the path, struggle to get the key into his front door. Open. No. More struggle. Wait.

I should have gone with him, helped him.

Open. He’s in. He was gone no more than a minute, came out with a big black album in his hand. Paused at the gate, rested the album on it, leafed through. Found what he was looking for in seconds, put a finger in the place.

He came over to the car, leant down and looked at me. ‘Never took anythin out of this book before,’ he said. ‘The wife kept it up. Gave her all me old photos, ones me mum took, and she kept it up. The Brownie. Box Brownie. Took good photos.’

I said, ‘Des, don’t take anything out of the book. I’ll come around, you can show me the pictures.’

He pulled a photograph out of its corners, offered it to me.

‘The day,’ he said. ‘That’s the day.’

Back at the office, I sat at the tailor’s table and studied the small sepia picture for a long time. My mother at nineteen or twenty was striking, a face of planes and hollows, a wryness in the way she tilted her square chin. Something of her was in Claire, my daughter: the sharp cast of face, the emphatic nose, the quizzical eyes.

Women. For men, all I had on the Irish side was my father and his father in old smoke-stained photographs on a pub wall. It was all I wanted. My mother’s father, I first feared and then loathed. For the rest, women. My grandmother, my mother, my sister, my transient first wife, my daughter, my wife Isabel, missed every day.

Linda, loved, absent, presumably gone.

I shut down on women, turned my thoughts to the home of Gary Connors. There was no toilet bag in the bathroom. The second largest suitcase of a four-bag set, a three-day suitcase, was missing. Gone on a trip. But the alarm system was off. No tape in the security video recorder. And there wasn’t a single personal paper in the place-no letters, bills, statements, nothing.

I had a bad feeling about Gary Connors.

I rang Cyril Wootton.

‘Belvedere Investments,’ said Mrs Davenport, Wootton’s secretary. She was not of the customer-service generation trained to say: ‘How may I help you?’ Indeed, Mrs Davenport addressed callers in the manner in which a boarding school headmistress might speak to a teenage girl whose underwear drawer has been found to contain a choke-chain, a studded leather bra, two dozen condoms and a photograph of the chaplain, naked and handcuffed to a bicycle.

‘Jack Irish,’ I said. ‘Cyril decent?’

‘Mr Irish, this office has spent much of today engaged in an unsuccessful endeavour to contact you,’ she said.

‘The intelligent office,’ I said. ‘I’ve been reading about that. Very edge of the technology. But, I ask you, Mrs Davenport, will there still be a place in commerce for the old-fashioned warmth radiated by such persons as your good self?’

‘Putting you through,’ she said. ‘Mr Wootton, Mr Irish.’

‘Listen,’ Wootton said, ‘I’m just off to meet the persons expected, sworn statements needed today. Persons wish to catch flight home early tomorrow. Your friend wants to present the other side with the two statements tomorrow afternoon.’

‘My friend?’

‘The client is now represented by Andrew Greer.’

Andrew was my former partner, a friend from law school.

‘What happened to Cataneo?’

‘Skiing accident, I gather.’

‘Skiing? Where do you find snow this time of the year?’

Wootton coughed. ‘Exactly.’

‘Encouraging. Why doesn’t Drew do the statements?’

‘In Sydney until midday tomorrow.’