Peter Temple - Black Tide

I went across the road and knocked on McCoy’s front door. Knocked. And knocked.

At length, a sound like a barrel rolling down stairs. Then animal sounds, piglike grunts, grunts becoming words. Vile, enraged words. The door shuddered, shuddered again, was wrenched open with enough force to bounce it off the inside wall.

McCoy filled the entire doorframe. Unclothed from the waist up, a sarong-like garment below. On inspection, I could see that it was a canvas painter’s drop cloth, splattered and smeared with paint and other things too awful to contemplate, big enough to protect the floor of a small warehouse. The upper portion of McCoy was massive, hirsute, covered with what looked like coconut fibre, the stovepipe throat merging imperceptibly with the shell head, a head now dense with stubble thinning out only around the eyes. And then reluctantly.

And the eyes, the eyes: small black buttons pressed into grey plasticine. Vicious buttons, merciless buttons, killer buttons.

‘My phone’s not working,’ I said. ‘Use yours?’

‘Certainly,’ said McCoy. ‘What time is it?’

‘Nine o’clock. That’s a.m. In the morning.’

He scratched his head. ‘Wouldn’t know the day of the week offhand, would you?’

His downstairs phone was in the vast creative area. I tried to keep my eyes averted from the works in progress but couldn’t help noticing that McCoy was branching out, extending his artistic horizons. That explained the noises-not inner-city noises-heard recently. A chainsaw was propped against a big section of tree trunk which it had been mauling to no apparent purpose.

I looked away, dialled the power company, went through six stages, pressing numbers, the hash key. Then I got the All our wonderfully helpful staff are not quite ready yet to face a day of dealing with you whingeing shits message five times. Ghastly wailing soulful Irish-type music was played in the intervals. Finally, a human came on, zipping himself up, presumably.

‘I’m worried about my bills,’ I said. ‘I’m not getting them.’

‘Name and address, sir.’

I gave him Gary Connors’ name and address.

‘The bills have been sent, sir. In fact, there’s a fairly large amount owing. Disconnection is the next step.’

‘Sent where? What address?’

She gave me a Toorak post office box number.

‘There must be some sorting mistake being made,’ I said. ‘I’ll pay the bill today.’

I rang Wootton’s courier, an obese and melancholy retired postman called Cripps who purred around the city in a yellow 1976 Holden fetching and delivering on a strictly cash basis. The fee seemed to be fifteen dollars no matter where or what. I had no doubt that Cripps would take a body to the Northcote tip for fifteen dollars. I told him where and what and to pick up the key from the cook at Meaker’s.

‘Twenty dollars,’ he said, flat voice.

A terrible thing, inflation.

‘In the envelope with the key,’ I said. ‘Deliver to the same person.’

Cripps did the entire deed in ninety minutes.

In Meaker’s, drinking a long black, I read Gary’s mail. Lots of it. I flipped through for envelopes without windows. Very few. I opened the few. Offers from people who’d undoubtedly found him on mailing lists. No personal correspondence. I opened some of the windows. Bills, ordinary bills, two credit-card statements, these worthy of later examination, some threats of disconnection, a plea to renew membership of the Pegasus Total Fitness Centre, a notification from the body corporate of his building of a five per cent rise in fees.

Nothing. Twenty dollars down the drain. I fanned out the window letters. One caught my eye. Shire of Moyne, an address in Port Fairy. Port Fairy. Gary’s car was found between Port Fairy and Portland. Why would the Shire of Moyne send Gary a bill? Did they think he’d pay them for retrieving his car?

A bill for rates. $260.00. Under property description, it said: Sligo Lane RSD 234.

I rang Des, found him home, drove out to his place. He was pottering around in the front garden, waiting for me. I leant on the front gate.

‘Quick question, Des. Why would the Shire of Moyne send Gary a bill for rates?’

‘Shire of Moyne? Never heard of it.’

‘Shire’s office is in Port Fairy.’

‘Port Fairy, ah.’ He nodded. ‘Port Fairy. Didn’t know he’d hung on to that. Told me he had it on the market. That’s donkey’s ago.’

‘Had what on the market?’

‘His Aunty Kath’s old place, little farm. She left it to Gary. No-one else to give it to. No kids the two of em. He went first, Colin. Nice bloke. Col Dixon. Had cows, them black and white ones.’

‘This is where?’

‘Warrnambool way, out the backblocks there.’

‘Got a photograph of Gary, Des?’

‘Only when he was little. Well, there’s one with his mum when they give him his handcuffs. In uniform.’

‘What does he look like?’ How had I got to this point without knowing what Gary looked like? Because appearance doesn’t matter when you’re looking for someone’s plastic trail.

Des considered the question. ‘Smaller than you,’ he said. ‘Bit thinner. Goin bald, dunno where that comes from, mother’s side probably. That’s about it.’

‘Anything you’d notice about him?’

Des frowned, sniffed, brightened. ‘Oh yeah, gold tooth here.’ He pointed to his right canine. ‘And he’s got a big ring, gold ring, on the little finger.’ He held up the large pinky of his left hand. ‘They haven’t found a body, have they?’

‘No. Just curious.’

The day was raw, heavy cloud churning in off the ocean, spits of rain driven near-horizontal by a wind that was headbutting the weary windbreaks that defended almost every farmhouse. We drove around the backroads for almost half an hour but failed to find anywhere from which we could get a sight of Gary’s inheritance.

‘He’d be alone you’d expect?’ asked Cam. We were parked at the side of the road. I’d told him the whole story on the way down, cruising lawlessly at one-fifty in the muscular Brock Holden.

‘As I understand it.’ Which was imperfectly to say the least.

Cam lit a Gitane, studied the herd of Friesian cows eyeing us, looked around at the wet landscape. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘he’s there, you sit tight, I’ll have a yarn with him, give him my real estate agent card.’

He reached over for a laptop computer on the back seat, opened it, then fiddled with the sides, took off the keyboard. An automatic pistol and about twenty rounds of ammunition lay snug in grey foam. He extracted the weapon, handed it to me.

‘What happened to the Ruger in the little aluminium briefcase?’ I asked.

‘Today it’s all computers,’ he said. ‘Just pull the slide back and aim. See if you can miss me.’

‘Shouldn’t I be doing the talking?’

Cam glanced at me. ‘You sold any real estate?’

I shook my head.

‘There you are,’ he said, started the engine, a muted, powerful growl. We went to the intersection, turned left into Sligo Lane. About three kilometres on, we turned left and went through an open gate onto Gary’s late aunty’s farm, onto a rutted track.

Just below the brow of a small hill, the track turned left. We went over the top and a collection of battered farm buildings in a hollow came into view.

Cam said, ‘Make a fire on a day like this.’

‘No vehicle.’

‘Round the back, in a shed. Might take a drive around there, do that, your rep, don’t bother the missus, know where the man on the land’s to be found. Out in the shed, worryin about cockchafer, ryegrass.’

The track turned into a trident, the middle prong running to the house, the outer paths going around it to outbuildings. Only its chimney was giving the small tilted weatherboard the strength to deny complete victory to time and the prevailing wind. The roof was rosy with rust. Side weatherboards had fallen off the house, revealing rough timber studs, dark with age, and laths oozing plaster. Two verandah posts dangled uselessly, bases succumbed to wet rot.