I held my breath.
‘She says Geoff asked her to get the tape copied, two copies. There was some urgency about it. The copying was done by DocSecure-they do confidential copying. She went into the city by taxi, the job was done, she came back and put the master tape in the safe.’
‘She had a key?’
‘No, there’s a slot. Anyway, she then dropped the copies off at Geoff’s house. It was after five. The arrangement was for a courier to pick up the package at Geoff’s to deliver to Darren Bianchi in Noosa. She assumed both copies were being sent.’
‘I’d like to talk to Mrs Radomsky.’
Perez sighed, hesitated, caught my look, dialled. ‘Helen, Alan, sorry to disturb you again. Look, it really would be a great help if Mr Bianchi could talk to you for a few minutes…I know, I know. It’ll put his mind at rest. I’d appreciate it…Great, fine, yes. Thanks, Helen.’
The Radomsky house was a minute away, a freestanding brick two-storey, lace ironwork in need of paint. But not for much longer: a panel van with Ivan De Groot, Painter written on the side was parked outside. I pushed a brass button on the front door. It was opened by a short blonde woman, chubby, in her early forties.
‘Mr Bianchi? Helen Radomsky. Come in. We’ll have to go into the kitchen, everything else is being painted.’
We went down a wide passage and turned left into a kitchen, a big room with windows looking onto a walled garden.
‘Sit down,’ she said. I sat down at a scrubbed table. She leant against the counter under the windows.
‘I’m sorry about your husband,’ I said.
‘Thank you. The most senseless thing.’
I nodded. ‘Mrs Radomsky, Alan Perez may have explained. My brother left an audiotape with your husband and it’s gone, not in the safe.’
She nodded.
‘His secretary says she had the tape copied late one afternoon and dropped off two copies here. A courier was going to pick them up.’
‘I remember a courier coming one evening. About six thirty. That’s two or three weeks before Geoff…I didn’t see what Geoff gave him.’
I put my elbows on the table, palms together. ‘It’s most likely Geoff sent off both copies. But I’d like to ask you something, just to be certain.’
‘Yes?’
‘If Geoff didn’t give the courier both tapes, where would he have put the second one?’
She smiled. ‘Well, he’d have put it on the side table in the study to take to work, forgotten all about it, put a newspaper on top of it the next day. Six weeks later there would be a panic search and we’d find it under sixteen copies of the
She pulled a face. ‘I haven’t been into the study for more than ten seconds since the night. Actually, I haven’t been into it for more than ten seconds in years. And Geoff wouldn’t let the cleaning lady near it. He attacked the mess himself about twice a year.’
‘Could you bear to…’
‘Of course,’ she said. ‘Come.’
We went back down the passage. She opened the second door on the left, went in, pulled open heavy red curtains. It was not the study of a tidy person: books, newspapers, files on all surfaces, two bags of golf clubs leaning against the fireplace, a filing cabinet with the bottom drawer pulled out, two full wastepaper baskets, a team of old cricket bats meeting in a corner, empty wine bottles and several wine glasses and mugs on the mantelpiece.
The side table was to the left of the door, no centimetre of its surface visible under a haystack of printed material.
I looked at it. ‘So far the hypothesis holds,’ I said.
Helen Radomsky began clearing the table, dropping the material on the carpet. She got down to a final layer of newspapers.
‘Well,’ she said, ‘if it was put here…’ She lifted the stack.
A Game Boy, paperback entitled
Helen Radomsky picked up the box. It had a sticker on the side. She read: ‘DocSecure.’
I said, ‘Anything in it?’
She shook it. It rattled.
She opened it: one tape.
I said, ‘ “And when it seemed that destiny sought them slain/Came from the legion’s throat one joyous sigh/All eyes gazed up from that bloodstained plain/To see a white dove beneath a salamandrine sky.” ’
‘What’s that?’ she said.
‘Some poem,’ I said. ‘All I remember. It’s about salvation.’
I fought against it and then I did it: I rang Anne Karsh. If Leon answered, I’d say Francis wasn’t answering and we needed instructions about the pine trees at Harkness Park.
It rang and rang. I was about to give up when she said, ‘Hello. Anne Karsh.’ Short of breath.
I didn’t have much breath either. ‘Mac. If this is a bad idea, for any reason, say wrong number and put it down.’
She laughed. I knew the laugh. ‘It’s a good idea. It’s the kind of idea you desperately hope someone else will have because you’re too uncertain to have it yourself. And you’re walking around feeling like a schoolgirl with a crush. A thirty-four-year-old schoolgirl.’
‘I’m in the city,’ I said. ‘Business.’
I could hear her breathing.
‘Is that in the city staying over or in the city going back?’
‘In the city staying over. Not sure where yet.’
‘I can suggest somewhere,’ she said.
‘I’m open to suggestion.’
‘I still have my flat in East Melbourne. It could use an airing. We could meet there, cook something, eat out, order a pizza, not eat anything.’
‘I think eating’s important,’ I said. ‘Not so much what but the social act.’
‘So do I. I think social acts are very important. We’ll think about the social act when we’re there. Make a joint social act decision.’
‘You’re free this evening then?’
‘I’m free for the next two hours, then I’ve got a brief engagement, then I’m free again. Leon came back from Queensland last night, flew to Europe this afternoon. In hot pursuit of something. Possibly a small European country. Smaller than Belgium, bigger than Andorra.’
‘So we could meet quite soon?’
‘I think we should get off the phone now,’ she said, ‘and make our separate ways to East Melbourne at the maximum speed the law allows. Slightly over the maximum speed. When you get there, press the button for A. Lennox.’
‘Give me the address,’ I said. It was unusual for me to become aroused while talking on the telephone in a car parked outside a newsagency.
The address was a Victorian building, a huge house, three storeys, converted to apartments. I parked across the road, waited. Quiet street. It began to drizzle.
The black Mercedes took ten minutes to arrive, went down the driveway beside the house. I waited two minutes, got out.
I pressed the button next to the name A. Lennox. Anne Lennox. Her name before she took Karsh. There was
