Peter Temple: Black Tide

‘Cyril,’ I said, ‘in this matter, I’ve swum in the blue-green algae, snorkelled the solid-matter ponds. Get someone else.’

He sighed, the sigh of a man who has just seen the get-out chance in the eighth miss the start by six lengths.

There was a silence. ‘I have a professional responsibility to my client to act with the utmost expedience,’ said Wootton eventually.

‘Right,’ I said. ‘Professional responsibility to the client. Crass of me. Still rooting that hairdresser client whose hubby did a runner with the Tattslotto win? The man you suggested I needn’t hurry to find? Or not find?’

Much longer silence. In the background, men were making playground noises.

‘Jack.’ He was on the verge of saying Please. I couldn’t let that happen.

I sighed. ‘When?’

‘Flight’s due in at 4.30. Say 5.45 tops. Mrs Davenport’s staying on.’

‘Gee, that’s an inducement.’ I paused. ‘I’ve got something I want you to do for me.’

He paused. ‘My dear fellow, you have only to ask.’

‘My,’ I said. ‘By the way, your responsibility is to be expeditious. Expedience you wouldn’t have any trouble with. Second nature.’

I was sitting in Wootton’s chair with my feet on his leather-topped desk when the foursome arrived: Tony Ulasewicz, Wootton, the two hookers from the Gold Coast.

‘My lawyer, Jack Irish,’ Wootton said. ‘Jack, meet Sylvia Marlowe and Carlette Foley.’

I stood up and shook hands. Sylvia looked achingly like the late Audrey Hepburn on mild steroids. Close to my height in short heels, clear, direct grey eyes, straight and shiny dark hair, almost no make-up, skin like eggshell. She was wearing a two-button pinstriped short-skirted suit, no blouse and her excessively long legs were bare. I took her to be the ex-ballet dancer. Carlette, on the other hand, looked like a pentathlete: short and wiry, cropped red hair, freckles, wide-legged stance, baggy black pants, tight sleeveless black top showing muscled arms. She radiated health and fitness; all she needed was a number written on her bicep in felt-tipped pen.

‘Tony you know,’ said Wootton. ‘Tony flew down with the girls.’

‘With the what?’ said Sylvia, looking at Wootton. She was half a metre higher, stronger and much, much prettier.

Wootton smiled, ran the side of his index finger along the underside of his clipped moustache. In the silence, you could hear a small abrasive sound. ‘Hah,’ he said. ‘Excuse the old-fashioned expression. Absolutely no disrespect intended. Absolutely. With Sylvia and Carlette, two-’

‘I’m sure everyone understands, Cyril,’ I cut in. ‘I suggest you leave me with Ms Marlowe and ask Mrs Davenport to come in and record Ms Marlowe’s sworn statement.’

‘Audio and video,’ said Wootton.

‘Video?’

Wootton went to the desk, beckoned me over and pointed to two buttons on the second shelf of the bookcase behind his chair. ‘When you’re ready, press both. Camera’s focused on the client’s chair. Press both again when you’re finished.’

‘Video all right with you, Ms Marlowe?’ I asked.

She looked doubtful. ‘What’s it for?’

‘Just backup in case the police query your testimony,’ said Wootton. ‘We won’t use it unless we have to. Easier than getting you down here again.’

‘Why don’t I just give a statement to the cops? Cut out all this.’

‘Let’s just say,’ said Wootton, ‘that we’re not entirely confident that the officers of the law always have the interests of justice at heart. I’ll send Mrs Davenport in.’

Mrs Davenport came in and gave Sylvia her disapproving headmistress look. How the patients must have loved her when she was the receptionist for a specialist in sexually-transmitted diseases.

Sylvia looked her up and down coolly. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘now that matron’s here, can we get on with it?’

Both women were smart and articulate and Sylvia took a pleasingly droll view of the world. We had a few laughs in the mere forty-five minutes it took to do the statements. Henceforth it was going to be hard to shake the case that Brendan O’Grady never left the company of Sylvia, Carlette and Tony between 9 p.m. and 8 a.m. on the night Frank Zakia was shot dead in Camberwell. Identity wasn’t a problem.

‘I think I can be said to know what Brendan O’Grady looks like,’ said Sylvia. ‘If necessary, I can supply distinguishing marks and measurements.’

Mrs Davenport’s eyebrows twitched.

‘I don’t think it’ll come to that,’ I said.

Mrs Davenport took fifteen minutes to produce the documents. She brought them in holding them upright by the edges as if to minimise contact with the paper.

I read the statements to each woman in turn, they read them and signed three copies. Mrs Davenport and I witnessed their signatures and she was out of the front door before the ink was dry.

‘I’ll be on my way, too,’ I said. ‘Pleasure to meet you. Have a good trip back.’

Sylvia looked me in the eye. ‘What’s to do in this dump at night?’

I wasn’t tempted. Tempted is a mild state. There is something a step or two up from tempted.

‘I’m sure Mr Wootton will see to it that you don’t want for anything,’ I said.

Wootton was quivering like a retriever waiting for the gunshot. ‘Absolutely,’ he said. ‘Booked you into the Sofitel. Everything you want. I’ll come around myself…’

She ignored him, maintaining her disquieting hold on my eyes. ‘Can’t you take care of that?’ she said, wickedness in the tilt of the Hepburn head.

I did the professional smile. ‘Love to but I have to take the children to their school concert.’

She smiled too. ‘Lying. Still, hookers scare some men.’

‘Scare them rigid.’

‘I wish,’ she said. She put out her right hand, suddenly businesslike. ‘Enjoy the concert.’

We shook hands. Our palms made a shell. Then she did a terrible thing: she scratched my palm with the nail of her longest finger. A gentle, sharp stroke of a scratch. An erotic frisson went through me, I fell through time, years dissolved, my legs felt unworthy of my weight.

My mother had a friend, much younger, Jane Beacham, a tall and slim woman, married to a stockbroker. I was sixteen. I have no idea how old she was. We were standing next to Jane’s car, the BMW without door pillars, on the broad driveway of my grandfather’s Brighton mansion. Late afternoon. I remember Jane’s strong blonde hair, roots dark with sweat after tennis, the gleam that lay on her light-brown skin, that she didn’t look at me, that she was looking at my mother, laughing, punching me gently on the upper arm with her left hand, holding my right hand playfully, her palm upward, not letting go.

Then she said, ‘Oh God, the time. Off, off. Lucy, darling, lovely afternoon. Jack, you’re my mixed partner for Portsea. Knock their socks off. People coming for dinner. Boring brokers. Nothing done, absolutely nothing. Neil will be livid.’

I remember the smell of juniper on her breath.

And I remember something else: her eyes locked with my mother’s, she drew a fingernail down the inside of my hand, from the callused flesh at the base of the fingers to the centre of the palm.

And there, in that tender delta, her long nail scratched.

Wanton. Exquisite. Unbearable.

‘Changing your mind?’ Sylvia said, still holding my hand.

I broke the clasp. ‘Another time perhaps,’ I said unsteadily. ‘Cyril, a word.’

He followed me onto the landing.

I gave him a card with Gary Connors’ name on it. ‘The favour,’ I said. ‘Just the most recent spending. Anything with his name on it. Might not be on his plastic. Might have paid cash.’