Peter Temple - Black Tide

‘You’d like a person for that.’

The crooked smile. ‘Like him, love him. Love him’s fine. In love with him’s the problem. I was in love with him for years. Never mentioned it. No point. He’s gay. Huge loss to womankind.’ She raised her glass. ‘Straight womankind. Cheers.’

The Hill of Grace was like drinking a liquidised alcoholic plum tart. We sat down on sofas opposite each other in front of the fire, now in aggressive form.

‘Talent for reconstructing fires, Mr Irish,’ she said, looking at the blaze through her glass. ‘To be honest, I’ve got to confess to vaguely false pretences. I don’t think that what I remembered will be of much use to you. Thought it would be nice to see you again.’

I said, ‘Well. That’s cheeky. Think you can get away with wasting a high-powered suburban solicitor’s time. Make nuisance calls.’

She turned her head, half-profile. I remembered thinking that she had a judgmental face. ‘I rather hoped so.’

‘If it’s show and tell,’ I said, ‘I considered phoning you the other night. Imagined getting the busy-this-year-feel-free-to-call-thereafter.’

We looked at each other.

‘So,’ she said, the smile. ‘Shown you mine, got a glimpse of yours.’

We both looked into the fire, uncertainty about the next step in the air.

‘I didn’t think about eating,’ she said. ‘You forget that other people don’t have lunch at 4 p.m. Are you before or after eating?’

‘Possibly beyond,’ I said. ‘I had a pie mid-afternoon. The local pie tends to steer the mind away from food for a while. Days. Weeks sometimes.’

‘I’ll get the other half then,’ she said. ‘Needs to breathe a bit. That’s what they say.’

‘No arguing with they,’ I said. ‘They know everything.’

I watched her leave the room, admired her lean buttocks. At the door, she turned her head, caught me looking. The smile. I got up and stood beside the fireplace.

She came back with a large plate, wedges of cheese and a packet of water biscuits. Under her arm, another Hill of Grace. She put the plate on the coffee table, found a waiter’s friend on the mantelpiece and removed the cork like a professional.

Then she walked around the sofas, came right up to me. We looked at each other. She wasn’t wearing lipstick. I swallowed. ‘Very professional with a corkscrew,’ I said, hearing the awkwardness in my voice.

‘Very handy with a poker,’ she replied. She put up a hand, ran it over my shoulder quickly, a ghost touch, a phantom touch, felt down my body, in the groin.

I put fingertips to her mouth, brushed her full lower lip. There was a flush on her cheekbones.

Her hand went behind my head, long, strong fingers, pulled me down, kissed me on the lips, a full kiss, mouth slightly open, hard, then soft.

I put my hands on her hips, pronounced hipbones, pulled her to me, felt her pubic bone against my erection, frisson of pleasure down the spine into the pelvis. When my hands went under her cotton sweater, touched the skin of her waist, she shuddered.

‘My learned friend,’ she said, breath against my face, voice even deeper than usual. ‘Let’s just do it.’

We came back downstairs in time to save the fire.

‘Try the uncompromising goatsmilk something,’ she said. ‘The one with the ash on it. A cheese bore at that place in Richmond sold it to me.’ She cut off a wedge, chewed reflectively. ‘I’ve never understood the ash,’ she said. ‘Must be religious.’

‘Ash Wednesday. Penitent cheeses. Sprinkling ash on foreheads. You could be right.’ I tried a crumbly portion with a sip of the Hill. The combination of tastes forced me to close my eyes. ‘In this case, the religious connection is clear,’ I said. ‘I think I’ve been forgiven.’

She sliced cheese, pushed the plate across. ‘This other stuff’s not bad either. Made by a woman in Tasmania.’

We ate cheese, drank wine, talked, all strangeness gone. She didn’t know anything about football but seemed to know an alarming amount about many other things, laughed a lot.

I got up to put some more wood on the fire. The wind had risen, hollow sound in the chimney. I leant against the mantelpiece.

Lyall had her back against the sofa arm, legs on the seat, firelight on her face, handsome features, once thought plain. She held up her glass. ‘Sexy evening,’ she said. ‘Much nicer than getting pissed alone and making phone calls that wake up people in other time zones.’

‘Clear improvement on house cleaning, too.’

‘I inquired about you,’ Lyall said, eyes on mine. ‘You’re described as a person of dubious reputation who escaped prosecution for shooting and killing two ex-policemen.’

I said, ‘Well, there’s a perfectly simple explanation.’

‘Tell me when I’m lying down in case I faint at the gruesome detail.’

In the morning, I woke early, sat upright, no idea where I was. Lyall put a hand on my arm, drew me down.

Later, at the front door, I said, ‘Good drop that Hill of Grace.’

She came up close, turned her palms outward, put them on my thighs, high up, little fingers in my groin. She offered her mouth. I kissed it, a lingering, delicious contact, unwillingly terminated.

‘Beard rash is the danger,’ I said, short of breath.

She stood back, put two fingers on my chin, rubbed. ‘Beard rash. Taking on plague proportions says the World Health Organization.’

Looking.

‘Phone,’ she said. ‘Phone or I’ll stalk you. Clear?’

I rubbed my chin stubble. ‘Stalking’s a criminal offence in Victoria.’

A nod. ‘So press charges. See where it gets you.’

I said, ‘Press something. Several things.’

A walk home early on a winter day, cold city coming to life, elm, oak and plane leaves in damp and dirty drifts, pungent exhaust fumes, some rich people getting into expensive cars, clean, pink people, wrestling wide-eyed children dressed like lumberjacks into babyseats. At the Grattan Street traffic lights, the woman passenger in a grey four-wheel-drive, blonde, thin-lipped with anger, eyes burning, was speaking to the driver. He was dark-haired, pale, in a suit, looking straight ahead. His window slid down and he threw a half-smoked cigarette into the street, didn’t look where it went. A shaving cut under his sideburn had left a tear of dried blood. As the window hissed up, the woman screamed, ‘In our bed you fucking bastard.’

I exchanged a glance with the elderly woman waiting with me. ‘It’s the children I worry about,’ she said.

Home, under the shower, nozzle turned to Punish. Feelings of wellbeing and elation tinged with vague feelings of guilt. I was getting dressed, thinking about Lyall, when I saw Gary’s keys on the chest of drawers given to us by Isabel’s brother.

One sock on, I picked up the keys. There were six: building front door, unit front door, back door, alarm system, mailbox. And a long key.

Post box key. Why hadn’t I noticed this before?

That was why his mailbox was empty. He had a post box somewhere. Where?

Toorak post office, probably, Toorak Road. His unit was only a few blocks away.

No number on the key. I couldn’t try every post box at the Toorak post office without getting arrested.

I went downstairs, ate muesli. Thinking. Gary’s post office box number wasn’t a secret. I finished the bowl of Tutankhamen’s after-life travel rations, found the telephone book, found the number. I was dialling when my stupidity dawned on me. This couldn’t be done on my phone. For all I knew, my phone was connected to the public address system of a shopping centre.

At the office, I checked the answering machine. Mrs Davenport. Cyril Wootton would have to wait.