Peter Temple - Black Tide

Barry stoked a handful of chips into his mouth, offered me the packet. ‘War on drugs,’ he said, chewing loudly, head panning the length of the street. He licked his front teeth. ‘Heard that arsehole in Canberra talking about it the other day. Winnable war. Familiar ring that.’

I said, ‘Stay in Hay this time.’

More chewing noises, eyes flicking at the street life, turned to me. ‘Jack, think about sticking in Hay yourself. The real thing here is this Connors.’

‘Meaning?’

‘He’s TransQuik.’

‘Tell me.’

‘Don’t ask. Leave it. They want snow in Darwin, these boys, it falls.’

‘You could say a bit more.’ I looked into his eyes.

He wasn’t going to say anything more, crumpled his chip packet, tried to hit a parking metre, failed.

‘Bastards move,’ he said.

Stuart Wardle, the journalist who gave Tony Rinaldi a cryptic question to ask the man from Klostermann Gardier, wasn’t in the phone book. I tried the Media, Arts and Entertainment Alliance and told a tiny fib, quite harmless.

‘I shouldn’t,’ said the woman. ‘He’s not financial.’ She gave me an address and a phone number. A woman answered on the tenth ring, no name, cautious tone.

‘Stuart’s been missing for about three years,’ she said.

I told her my story.

The big two-storey terrace house was in Parkville, a few blocks from Harry Strang’s immodest dwelling. The front door opened on a chain. I could see the right eye, nose and half the mouth of a tall woman with long hair.

I said, ‘Jack Irish. On the phone?’

‘Some kind of identification?’

I found my Law Institute Practising Member card. Lyall Cronin took it, looked at it, handed it back.

‘I don’t know if that reassures me,’ she said, unhooking the door.

She was somewhere in her thirties, a plain woman, curved nose, hollow cheeks, a judgmental face, tall, square-shouldered, black hair pulled back, wearing a green army-surplus shirt and old denims. Barefoot. Pale ovals around her eyes said she’d been wearing dark glasses in a sunny place. That ruled out Melbourne.

I followed her down the long, broad passage, round the staircase. ‘I’m in the darkroom,’ she said. ‘Sorry to be paranoid. I’ve been somewhere illegally. They can buy muscle anywhere. And they do.’

The passage walls were covered in black-and-white photographs and dozens of framed photographs leant against the walls at floor level. Many of them seemed to be of women and children, sad, stoic women and wide-eyed, runny-nosed children.

‘I don’t usually fall under suspicion of being muscle,’ I said.

Lyall glanced at me over her shoulder. ‘You take up enough room,’ she said.

The darkroom was off to the right in what had probably once been a large downstairs bedroom. There were two sinks and a long stainless-steel bench with an enlarger at one end. Deep trays were stacked in a rack above the sink. Next to it was a tall, narrow window, its black internal shutters open. Outside, a potato vine was threatening to make the shutters superfluous.

Lyall pointed at a stool. I sat down. She went behind the counter and resumed her task: guillotining the edges of a stack of eight by ten black-and-white prints. Line up an edge, adjust, slice, quarter-turn, adjust, slice.

‘Got to get these off today,’ she said. ‘Well, what can I tell you about Stuart?’

Slice. She had strong hands, prominent veins, long blunt fingers, short nails.

‘His disappearance to begin with.’

‘I was in East Timor and Bradley Joffrin, who lived here then, was also away. He makes movies. Made Disclaimer. No?’

‘No.’

‘He’s well known in some circles. Used to make anthropological documentaries. Anyway, Bradley was away somewhere, I forget where, PNG probably. He was in PNG a lot around then.’

She held a print to the light from the window. ‘No,’ she said and floated it into a big waste bin. I glimpsed a dark face, head tilted, smiling, a machine pistol.

‘When was that?’

‘July ’95. I came back first, Stuart and Bradley weren’t here. That wasn’t unusual. Stuart never left messages, anything. Just came and went, never did any cleaning, never cooked, ate whatever was around and then he’d stuff money in the jar. Half the time it was less than his share, then it’d be four times as much. Anyway, we were his tenants.’

‘Stuart owned the house?’

‘His sister owns it. That didn’t matter. Except that Stuart was supposed to manage the place and he didn’t give a continental. We got used to it, averaged it out, used the extra money to get a cleaner in when we were really pissed off. Anyway, this was a pretty weird household all round, everyone coming and going.’

She studied another print, cropped out bits with her hands, seemed to forget me. I waited.

‘No,’ she said, floated the print into the bin. Picked up another one, gave it the eye, put it down on the killing surface. Slice.

‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘Sometimes you wonder who took the picture. Bradley came back a few days after me and then about, oh, I suppose a week later, Stuart’s sister rang. Kate. She’s a textile designer in Scotland. Their parents are dead, some awful story. She told me one night when she stayed here but I’ve blotted it out. Heard too many awful stories. Well, blotted it out with help. We were smoking this Sumatran stuff Bradley used to get from his airline steward mate. It didn’t mix with tequila, I can tell you.’

I said, ‘Stuart’s sister rang.’

She studied me. I looked back. On inspection, she appeared less plain. ‘Bringing the witness back to the point, Mr Irish,’ she said without rancour.

I hung my head in acknowledgment.

‘Kate said Stuart always rang her on her birthday. Rang her or came to see her. So we got a bit uneasy, felt a bit bad about not having been a bit uneasy a bit earlier, looked in his rooms. Didn’t know what to look for. Eventually we went to the cops. Bradley and I thought he’d walk in the door at any time. But Kate was so upset we had to do something.’

Lyall sliced the last edge off the last print. ‘That’s that,’ she said. She looked at a man’s watch on a woven leather strap on her left wrist, broad wrist. ‘Let’s have a beer.’

I followed her out of the darkroom and turned right, into a kitchen. It was a cheerful, neat and businesslike room: French doors to the right, bench along the back wall, mugs and crockery in a rack, a big chopping board, good knives on a magnetic strip, big bowl of apples, glossy green and red peppers.

‘Water will be fine for me,’ I said. I’ve been down the dark tunnel and starting early is a good way to take another trip.

She made no comment, poured a glass of water from a filter jug, took a stubby of Vic Bitter out of the fridge and twisted off the cap. We sat down at the pine table.

‘I don’t drink on the job, make up when I get back,’ she said, looking at the stubby. She drank a third of it in a swig.

‘Who do you work for?’

‘No-one. Well, I suppose I work mainly for the agency. Populus. It’s in Paris. And New York. It was a breakaway from Magnum. Know Magnum?’

‘Robert Capa.’

‘The one.’

‘I thought photography was all electronic now? Digital. Whatever that means.’

She had a crooked, cynical smile. ‘I’m a Luddite. My old man was a hot-metal printer, wouldn’t make the shift to cold type. I’m the same about digital. I like seeing the picture emerging, coming at me out of the chemical swamp.’

Pause. ‘Well, that’s me. What’s a lawyer doing looking for someone?’

‘Favour for a friend.’

‘And there’s a connection between this missing person and Stuart?’