Drew considered this statement, looking at me. Then he said, ‘No, your honour.’ He emptied his glass. ‘Let’s get the other half.’
Over at the trade union table, an argument had broken out between a short-haired woman with thick-lensed glasses and a man with a wispy beard. ‘The question isn’t whether it’s a women’s issue,’ said the man, ‘it’s whether it’s a union issue.’
The woman looked at the ceiling and said through tight lips, ‘This is so fucking unbelievably eighties, it makes me want to puke.’
‘A lot to be said for the eighties,’ Drew said, signalling to a waiter. ‘Bernie Quinlan kicked 116 in ’83.’
‘That was ’84.’
‘No, he only kicked 105 in ’84.’
10
There was a moment of non-recognition, then the old woman said, ‘Mr Irish, yeah, wait on.’
I heard the boards complain as she went back down the passage. Through the crack in the door came a smell of cat pee, pine-scented disinfectant, paint and food cooked to disintegration.
The old planks signalled Mrs Nugent’s return. She opened the door, revealing that she was wearing a yellow plastic raincoat. ‘Paintin,’ she said. ‘The kitchen. Here.’ She offered me a suitcase. ‘Good clothes, mind you give em to the boy’s rellies.’
‘Have no fear,’ I said. ‘It was the landlord, was it?’
I’d left my card with Robbie Colburne’s neighbour and she’d been on the answering machine when I got back from The Green Hill.
‘Yeah. Come round yesterdee. Give me $20 to clean up the place. Take anythin I liked, give the rest to the Salvos, throw it away.’ She hesitated. ‘Money’s money.’ A further hesitation. ‘The towels and that, the kitchen stuff. Kept that.’
‘Right thing to do,’ I said. ‘Didn’t find anything with an address on it? Letter, anything?’
She shook her head. ‘Them others coulda taken anythin like that.’
‘Others? Police?’
‘Police? Yeah, spose. Who else? Young blokes.’
‘Not in uniform?’
Mrs Nugent looked at me with fowl eyes. ‘Been in uniform I wouldn’t have to bloody spose, would I? Haven’t gone that stupid.’
‘No. Sorry. They take anything away?’
‘Dunno.’
I got out my wallet. She held up a hand, palm outwards.
‘Don’t want no money. Just give the suitcase to the family. Tell em the neighbour says he was a nice young bloke. Had manners. Musta bin brought up right. Only saw him the coupla times in the beginnin, don’t know he actually lived here.’
‘I’ll tell them,’ I said. ‘Thank you, Mrs Nugent.’
‘And tell em I’m sorry.’
I was at the stairs, carrying the soft-sided black nylon suitcase, when the thought came to me. Mrs Nugent opened the door as if she’d been standing just inside it.
‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘His car. Is it still in the garage?’
‘Nah. Someone come and took it. Old Percy downstairs seen him.’
Percy wasn’t at home. I drove the short distance from Abbotsford to my office in Carrigan’s Lane. The greening brass plate said: John Irish, Barrister amp; Solicitor. As I put the suitcase on the old tailor’s worktable that served as my desk, the feeling of guilt that had been with me for a while stabbed me. I should not have taken it from Mrs Nugent. I did not represent Robbie’s family. I was just sniffing around for Cyril Wootton, and was being paid by someone who was probably not being entirely candid.
Take it back? And confess what? No. As for the client, who was I to worry? I was no stranger to economy in truth, economy and selectivity.
I opened the suitcase.
Robbie Colburne travelled light: leather toilet bag, two pairs of black trousers, a pair of chinos, three black tee-shirts, three white shirts, a black jacket, a tweed jacket, a black leather jacket, a nylon wind-breaker, an expensive-feeling woollen jumper, a pair of shiny black shoes, a pair of runners, old running shorts, a washed-out grey tee-shirt, black socks, underpants. And, on a wooden coathanger, a dinner suit, dress shirt, and black bow tie.
Nothing in the suitcase pockets. I looked at the shirts. Nice, superfine cotton by the feel, no labels. I picked up the black jacket, stroked it. It was light and soft — wool and cashmere, perhaps, no label. The tweed jacket was newish, beautifully cut. No label.
I opened the single-breasted dinner jacket. A product of Canali of Italy. A small label on the inside pocket said Charles Stuart. I knew Charles Stuart, they were men’s outfitters in William Street in the city, men’s outfitters to the big end of town. If you didn’t fit that demographic, crossing the threshold of Charles Stuart’s was a post- death experience: a buffed-up person wearing three grand’s worth of the shop’s stock examined you from top to toe, weighed up your clothing and footwear history, registered all your sartorial sins, made a judgment, came closer and said, lips like a cash-machine slot, ‘May I help you, sir?’
I examined the shoes: Italian. I unzipped the toilet bag. It held a silver razor in a slim stainless-steel case, a bottle of Neal’s Yard shaving oil, French deodorant, a toothbrush, French toothpaste, nail clippers, a Bakelite comb. I opened the shaving oil and sniffed. An expensive smell, clean. I inspected the toothpaste, squeezed some onto a fingertip, held it to my nose. Lavender.
Robbie Colburne might have been living in a one-bedroom flat in a low-rent block and working as a casual barman but his effects all shouted money and style.
That observation didn’t advance things much. I repacked the suitcase, feeling the outside of pockets as I went. The dinner suit was last. I ran my hand over the jacket’s outside pockets, felt something at the left hip. I lifted the flap, tried to insert cautious fingers, couldn’t. It was a dummy pocket. Of course. What tailor would allow the line of a dinner jacket to be spoiled by something stuffed into a hip pocket?
Through the cloth, I felt the object again. Something the length of a pen cap, flat, no thicker than a stick of chewing gum. I opened the jacket and found the small inside pocket, a sturdy pocket designed to hold a single key, extracted the object. It was a plastic stick, dark-blue, a recessed button on one side, a hole in the front. I pressed the button. A red light glowed in the hole for a second or two. I did it again. The light went off even when the button remained depressed.
Today’s mystery object. Nothing to identify it, say what it was for.
I put the device in my wallet, zipped the suitcase, put it in the small back room, sat at my table and eyed the unopened mail. Once letters held promise. Now I couldn’t think of anyone who’d write an undemanding letter to me, pen your actual personal letter, fingers holding a writing instrument, hand touching paper. I thought about letters I’d read by fast-dying light, sniffed, imagined I’d caught a scent, held up, looked for a touch of sweat or the smear of a tear. Even, hoping against hope, the ghostly imprint of a kiss, just a touch of lips, leaving a mark.
Just a touch of lips. Lips left their mark, they all did, like branding irons, you felt them forever.
There was nothing left that I had to do or wanted to do. Midday Saturday. Once it had been the peak of the week. I went to the window and looked at the street. Rain on the tarmac, oilslick-shiny pools in the bluestone gutters. Across the way, outside the clothing factory, a man in a four-wheel drive had tried to shoot me one night.
The phone rang.
‘Jack Irish.’
A sigh. ‘Tried the boot factory, the furniture place, the mobile. Then I found this other number with Jack written next to it.’
Lyall. The dry, precise voice made the room seem brighter; no, the clouds must have thinned.
