Peter Temple: Black Tide

Sitting in the Barcelona chair, high above the twinkling world.

A doomed person. People lay in wait for me. I wanted to keep Des Connors out of the poorhouse. Des Connors, stonemason, workmate of my father, father of Gary.

I saw the fat white seal face, mouth open, the small hotspot of flame in the muzzle as a gunman fired at McCoy.

Preposterous.

How could a backstreet Fitzroy no-practice solicitor become entangled with international dealers in arms and drugs? The viperous Brendan O’Grady seemed as nothing now, no more than the kindergarten bully.

Miss, Brendan’s hitting me.

Stuart Wardle. The man who had the question for Carlos Siebold. The man who vanished.

I opened the envelope from Eric the Geek. Two pages of fragments found on Stuart Wardle’s hard disk, most of them no more than a line or two, one longer. I went straight to the long one.

Someone saying:

…flying Marcos gold from Clark Air Base to Pine Gap. Eagle Ex was adding a heroin sweetener. All we had to do was collect the stuff, deliver the gold to one place, the smack to another. Some of the smack was in transit for the States. That’s what Leeton was for. That’s why we bought Leeton. Eagle wanted a complete loop. Today the business is really complicated. Not just a carrier. It’s a buyer and carrier and bulk distributor and money-launderer. It’s driven most of the little shits out of business, killed them if necessary.

Of course, he’s got the firewalls up now. Moved on. But he’s been in blood up to his navel, the bastard.

Leeton? What was Leeton? I’d heard the name recently. Miles Crewe-Dixon talking about TransQuik. The TransQuik buying spree after Klostermann Gardier bought half the company. Leeton Stevedoring, that was it.

I looked at the other fragments. None of them made any sense. Except one. It read: Connection. I didn’t know we were in bed with these Yank bastards until it

Who was the person speaking?

Someone being interviewed by Stuart.

Stuart had bought a video camera and a tripod.

Suddenly, the adrenaline let-down, the burst of cortisol dissipating. I felt drained of all strength, tired, hungry, a headache coming. The premises ran to one can of consomme, one can of tuna and six packets of wafer biscuits. I constructed a meal from these ingredients, ate it, showered, and went to bed, out with the light.

In the morning, waking with a start again, I caught a tram into the city and paid $880 for a dark suit and a silk tie at Henry Buck’s. It felt like a suit day, not a ballistic vest and black windcheater day. I drank coffee in McKillop Street while they hemmed the trousers. Then I caught a tram back to the apartment block and got the Lotus out of the basement.

As I turned into St Kilda Road, it occurred to me: had the men seen me arrive at my office the night before? I was sure there was no four-wheel-drive in the street when I parked.

How could they have been waiting for me, then?

Unless they were following me. Unless they’d somehow got onto my trail, perhaps followed me on my trip to see Miles Crewe-Dixon, followed me back to the office.

Eyes flicking to the rear-view mirror, I drove back through the city, up Swanston Street and, at the last second and without indicating, turned into the Tin Alley entrance to Melbourne University.

No vehicle followed me. The Lotus fitted neatly into an illegal parking spot. I waited for five minutes, watching Tin Alley: young people, the odd older person, no-one who looked remotely like someone sent to kill me. I got out and did a walking tour of the campus, passed through the old stone law school, thought about my father meeting my mother somewhere here, Drew and me as students, loitered often to look for someone behind me. Then I went back to Tin Alley, left the campus and crossed Royal Parade, went up to Degraves Street and worked my way around to the lane behind Lyall’s house, the lane that led to the garage.

A large bin was in the lane, waiting to be wheeled into the street. I looked at my new suit. What a terrible idea. Where do ideas like this come from?

I pushed the bin against the wall, got onto it with great difficulty, swung a leg over the wall.

Lyall was in the kitchen, looking at me through the window. Her head went to one side in a birdlike movement of inquiry. I completed the ascent, dropped awkwardly and painfully to the other side. She opened the back door, a barefooted person in jeans and a white school shirt, sleeves rolled up. She leaned against the jamb, arms folded.

‘An unorthodox method of entry,’ she said, the hint of a smile in the eyes not the mouth. ‘Not unwelcome but puzzling.’

I was trying to brush the marks off my pants, I said, ‘Variety. They say it’s important in a relationship. Variety and surprise. I read that. Also I’m trying not to be seen by certain parties.’

She came across the courtyard, came up to me, close, I could smell her, took me by the $880 lapels.

‘Dark suit, spotted tie, every inch the lawyer,’ she said, lips a handspan away, closing in. ‘And I know my inches. Not home for two nights. The stalker is out there.’

‘I was abroad,’ I said, hoarsely. ‘Learning how not to make a Molotov cocktail.’

‘Useful negative knowledge.’

I wanted to make love to her without a second’s delay.

The instinct for survival intervened. Dave had called upon that instinct, the night I sat in his car, in the wind-blown square, on the plump seat, the last leaves losing their hold on the trees.

‘Listen,’ I said, ‘Stuart’s car. I need to look for something.’

She didn’t release my lapels immediately, kissed me on the lips. ‘Feel free,’ she said.

‘That comes later.’

I opened the driver’s door, put a hand under the front seat. The crumpled McDonald’s packet. I opened it. Wrapping of a McFeast, smears of something now fossilised. Plastic cup. A cash register slip.

A cash register slip with a date.

Stuart Wardle bought this wholesome meal at a McDonald’s in Morwell in Gippsland on July 8, 1995.

I closed the car door gently, fearful of disturbing the vehicle on its axle stands.

Not time for caution now. I rang Simone on the mobile.

‘One last request,’ I said. ‘Brent Rupert. Can you see if you can find out what happened to him? Any mention on the local newspaper databases.’

‘Give me fifteen minutes,’ she said.

I went inside. Lyall was in the kitchen, at the stove, looking good from the back.

‘Hungry?’ she said. ‘I’m having an early lunch. Pasta with a tomato and anchovy sauce.’

Food. I was famished, instantly salivating.

‘Yes, please,’ I said.

We ate lunch, drank a glass of red wine, talked and joked, weak sunlight on the floorboards. A feeling of unreality came over me. Was I the person at Painter’s bloody egg farm? Was I the person waiting to die beside the rubbish skip outside McCoy’s?’

While Lyall was making coffee, I rang Simone again from the sitting room.

‘Easy,’ she said. ‘The last story about Brent Rupert is his death in an explosion. It says he was a near-recluse believed to be suffering from a serious illness.’

Muscles in the back knew something. The musculature knew more than the addled brain.

‘When was this?’

‘Early hours of July 9, 1995. Gas cylinders under his house appear to have exploded.’

Stuart Wardle was eating a McFeast in Gippsland on July 8, 1995.

‘Where did he live?’

‘On the Gippsland lakes. Near Metung.’

I thanked her and went back to Stuart’s car to look at the mileage on the tripmeter: 667 km.

In the glove compartment was a VicRoads guide to country Victoria. Where would half of 667 km get you if you were travelling from Melbourne, passing through Morwell? I followed the Princes Highway with my finger, adding up distances.