Peter Temple: Black Tide

‘That would’ve got the stewards’ attention,’ said Cam.

‘No. Hoops’ business. Monkeys fightin, that’s the attitude then. Anyway, the little shit wasn’t goin to dob. Told em he fell over gettin his boot off, hit his chin on the locker.’

It wasn’t hard to think of Harry Strang king-hitting someone, even now. Not when you looked at the set of his shoulders, the big hands on the leather-covered steering wheel. What was hard to accept was that Harry’s 20-year riding career had ended at Deauville in 1961 with him winning by three lengths on Lord Conover’s Leneave Vale. A few yards beyond the post, the horse pitched forward, folding at the knees, stone dead. Harry went with him, crushing all the ribs on his left side and breaking his left arm in two places. He made a complete recovery, but he left Europe, came home, housekeeper with him, never rode again. It was as if the fall had given him extra time. He was almost unlined, clear eyes, vigour in the walk.

The drive became less nerve-racking when the traffic thinned after the airport turn-off.

‘Put on that John Denver,’ Harry said. ‘Don’t mind which.’

‘Do I have to?’ Cam said. ‘Can we vote on it?’

‘Yes and no,’ said Harry. ‘There’s a good fella.’

‘Rocky Mountain High’ came at us from speakers everywhere: roof, seat backs, side panels, window ledges. It was like being embalmed in Rocky Mountain High jelly.

‘Went up in one of them little planes, this bloke,’ Harry said. ‘Can’t get a hang of why. Come down like a duck full of shot. Tragedy.’

‘There’s a silver lining,’ said Cam. ‘He won’t be making any more recordings.’

Harry shook his head. ‘No ear, some people.’

In self-defence, I fell asleep soon after the Melton turn-off, put my head against the cushioned door pillar for a moment, closed my eyes, gone. I came to with the car stopping in the Kyneton racecourse carpark.

‘TAB gets it when they’re heading for the gate,’ said Harry. ‘Tell the yokels to start dribblin it on at 12.40. Need to get five hundred on above twenty to be comfy.’

He took a fat yellow envelope out of his jacket pocket and handed it to Cam. Over his shoulder, he said to me, ‘No personal bets today, Jack, see you don’t suffer for it. The missus saw a bloke with a camera in a car down the street from the front gate.’

‘What’s that mean?’

Harry looked at Cam, shrugged. ‘Who knows? Could be there’s people think we’re pissin on their barbies, want the faces.’

Burnbank Boy looked serene in the mounting yard and came out of gate three like a fire truck. Johnny Chernov got him on the rail, settled nicely, let two no-hopers go up and make the pace. No worries here, textbook stuff. But at the turn, he was suddenly in a crowd, five, six horses bunched. In the viewfinder of the Sakura Pro FS100, I thought I could see defeat on Johnny Chernov’s lips. I was right. Boxed to the end, we ran sixth out of eleven.

We met back at the car. We always kept away from one another at the races.

‘Funny old game, racin,’ Harry said, taking off the old overcoat he wore to the races. ‘Coulda sworn we had that one down.’

‘Talking about pissing on barbies,’ Cam said, looking at Harry. ‘You happy with this hoop?’

I had no idea what he meant.

‘Pendin,’ Harry said. ‘Pendin investigation. You drive.’

We drove home in silence. No John Denver. No turf stories.

Gary Connors’ apartment was off Toorak Road. There was a look about it that said it had once been an

inoffensive three-storey block of units, probably built in the early ’50s. Now it was mad-Umbrian-fortress-meets-germ-warfare-laboratory, probably the victim of shaven-headed architects in black T-shirts calling themselves PostUrbana or DeConstructa. It was painted the colour of rust and had narrow gun-embrasures with metal shutters for windows and a huge stainless-steel front door with a brass porthole above it.

‘Funny lookin place,’ said Des.

‘A lot of funny people this side of the river,’ I said. ‘Rich and funny.’

‘That’d be right for bloody Gary.’

We were looking through a narrow steel-barred gate set in a two-metre high roughcast wall. Beside it were six steel letterbox mouths. A parking area was visible to the left of the building. Only one bay was taken: by a white Audi.

‘Gary’s?’ I asked.

Des shook his head. ‘Green, Gary’s.’

I tried the gate. It opened. We went down a concrete path bisecting a plain of raked gravel, small white stones.

Des stopped to poke the gravel with his walking stick. ‘Bit of grass’d be nice,’ he said. ‘This stuff’s for bloody cemeteries.’

‘Moved on from grass around here.’

Beside the vault door were buzzers numbered one to six. They’d gone beyond names too, except for number one, which had Manager on a brass plate under it. Each buzzer had a speaker grille.

Des took a full key ring out of his raincoat pocket and looked through the keys. ‘Number five,’ he said. I pressed the buzzer. No sound, but a yellow light came on beside the buzzer. I looked at the door. We were on camera. I pressed again. Again. Again. We looked at each other. Des offered me the keys.

The deadlock was silk-smooth. The door opened silently to reveal a square hallway with grey slate on all six surfaces. There were doors on either side of the room and a lift door straight ahead, all stainless steel. We took the lift to the third floor. Stainless-steel-lined lift, silent.

‘Bugger me, Bill,’ said Des, wide-eyed. ‘Like a bloody coolroom. Never seen anythin like it.’

On the way over, he’d lapsed into calling me Bill; there didn’t seem to be much point in correcting him. In the long run, what’s a generation? Besides, I rather liked it. No-one had ever called me by my father’s name.

The lift door opened onto a small version of the entrance hall, doors on either side. Number five was to the left. The brass buzzer was high on the door and when I went to push it I looked up into a pinhole security camera.

We waited, tried again, waited.

‘Let’s get in there,’ said Des.

Again, a smooth deadlock. The door opened silently to reveal a small empty entrance hall carpeted in dark grey. I looked for the alarm. It wasn’t on. I clicked the light switch beside the door. A spotlight came on over a framed black-and-white photograph of a young female ballet dancer erotically slumped in exhaustion. It was a restful way to enter a dwelling.

To the left of the front door was a small security monitor. Two closed doors led off the room.

‘Des, wait here.’

I opened the righthand door. It was a sitting room, carpeted in the same grey and with some good pieces of furniture: modern leather armchairs in the style of Jean-Michel Frank, small writing desk, probably French, elegant side tables. There were more dark-framed ballet photographs, a collection of treen objects on the mantelpiece, an antiqued gilt-framed mirror, table lamps everywhere. Everything about the room said ‘decorator’.

The rest of the apartment said the same thing. Gary’s bedroom was dark and masculine, the kitchen stark and surgical, the period-style bathroom missing only Winston Churchill smoking a cigar in the giant clawfooted tub. Panelled doors concealed a washing machine and dryer.

The place was clean, too, the feel of a serviced apartment. I came back into the sitting room. Des was standing in the doorway, nodding his head.

‘Bloody posh,’ he said. ‘S’pose this is where me sixty grand went.’

‘Des,’ I said, ‘I’m not mad about this kind of thing but as an anxious parent, would you like me to look around?’

‘Look,’ he said, no sign of parental concern visible.