‘Who’s that?’
The voice.
‘Frank Calder. I work for the Carson family. Who’s that?’
Silence.
‘Put Tom Carson on.’
‘No,’ I said, ‘from now on you talk to me. And don’t start shouting, I don’t give a shit about shouting, I don’t give a shit about the Carson family either, I’m just someone paid to do this and shouting is a waste of time. You talk to me or you don’t talk.’
Silence.
The voice.
‘Okay, listen, this is what you do…’ ‘No,’ I said. ‘We don’t do anything until we know the girl is alive. Don’t like that, fuck off.’
Silence. I waited, then I said, ‘Send us a photograph, Express Post, same as your last letter. A Polaroid, any picture. We want to see the girl, see her properly. She’s got to be holding today’s newspaper, any paper, the front page. Today’s paper. Close up. And we want to see her pinkie, the little finger, see that it’s properly bandaged. You with me?’
Silence.
‘Then you ring at 11.30 a.m. tomorrow. We’re convinced she’s okay, you can tell me what to do and we’ll do it. No argument. To the letter. Failing that, fuck you and we’ll find you if it takes fifty years.’
Silence.
A click.
Dear God, what had I done? Condemned the girl to death?
Not if she was already dead.
Corin was looking at me from inside the vehicle, styrofoam cup under her lips, a faintly quizzical look. She had nice eyebrows, I registered for the first time.
I opened the door and got back in, felt the body warmth.
‘A client,’ I said. ‘How’s the coffee?’
I took the cap off mine, had a sip, a thrumming in my body, in my chest. A new feeling. A sign of weakness, thrumming.
‘Good coffee. You’ve got the kind of client I’d like.’
She’d watched me speaking.
‘What kind of client is that?’
‘Someone you can give orders to. Instead of the reverse.’
‘You lipread?’
‘I wish. You were doing all the talking.’
I drank more coffee, half the lukewarm cup. ‘I’ve got to go,’ I said, hesitated. ‘I’m hopeless at this kind of thing. Can I see you again? Is that possible?’
Corin had some coffee, touched her short hair.
‘That’s possible,’ she said. ‘That should be probable. From my point of view.’
‘I’ll call you tonight,’ I said. ‘Is calling you always okay?’
She gave me her slow smile, put a hand out and touched my sleeve, plucked something off it. ‘A leaf. You won’t get anyone else, if that’s what you mean.’
‘That’s what I mean,’ I said.
‘What about you? Are you safe to call?’
I got out a card with the mobile number. ‘I don’t know whether it’s safe to call me,’ I said. ‘But I’m on my own, if that’s what you mean.’
‘That’s what I mean,’ she said.
29
I rang Graham Noyce and told him about the call.
‘What if they don’t come through?’ he said.
‘Call the cops. It’s over then.’
‘I’ll tell the Carsons.’
Aware of the pointlessness of what I was doing, I drove to Altona, over the Westgate Bridge and along the freeway to Millers Road, down towards the bay past the carbon black factory and the refinery with its chimneys that flamed day and night.
The Altona Community Legal Centre didn’t spend any money on front. It was housed in an ugly yellow-brick building that still carried faint fancy signwriting saying it had once been the premises of the Modern Bakery.
A young woman with two children was sitting in the reception room, the children fighting for her attention like small but vicious animals attacking a much larger and wounded creature. Behind a counter bearing neat stacks of pamphlets on subjects such as rape counselling, domestic violence and the legal rights of teenagers, a woman in middle age, good-humoured face, was on the phone. She eyed me warily, ended her conversation.
‘Yes?’ she said.
I introduced myself, said I’d spoken to Sue Torvalds, the solicitor, earlier in the day about someone who had been a volunteer solicitor in the late 1980s.
She smiled. ‘Yes, Sue told me. I’m Ellen Khoury, I’m the only worker who was here then.’
‘Can you spare a few minutes?’
‘Sue’s not here. I can’t leave the phone really. We can talk here if you like.’
‘You had a volunteer solicitor around that time. Mark Carson.
I represent his family. They’re a bit worried about him and I’m trying to get some idea of the kind of person he is, the people he knew then, just scratching around really.’
She bit her lower lip. ‘You’re some kind of investigator?’
‘No. It’s a favour really. To the family.’
Ellen wasn’t happy about something. ‘That’s a long time ago,’ she said. ‘You should talk to Jeremy Fisher, he was…’ ‘I know. I’d like to talk to him but he’s a big-shot lawyer now.
You have to make an appointment three months ahead to see him.
Did you know Mark then?’
She nodded, didn’t want to look me in the eye. ‘Yes, there were only a few solicitors came in then. And now.’
‘I suppose it would have been unusual for someone from a big city firm to find the time to come out here at night.’
One of the predator children let out a piercing scream. I turned in time to see it strike its fellow-predator a full blow in the face, instant retaliation for some wrong. The victim stumbled, fell over backwards and hit its head on the brown nylon carpet, screamed too.
Without venom or force, the mother backhanded the striker, leaned forward and pulled the victim upright by the bib of his tiny overalls, dragged him into the moulded plastic chair next to her.
‘Don’t bloody go near each other,’ she said. She looked at us. ‘Kids, Christ, I’m up to here.’
I turned back to Ellen Khoury. ‘Mark would have been an unusual volunteer, would he?’
‘I suppose so. Most of those we get work for the labour firms or small firms around here.’
‘And he did a good job?’
‘Well, I was just the front-office worker, you’d have to ask Jeremy Fisher.’ She was drumming the fingers of her right hand on the desk, fast.
This looked like having even less point than I’d expected. With nothing to lose, I said, ‘And after the incident, he didn’t come anymore?’
Ellen stopped drumming, scratched her head at the hairline. She looked relieved. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Well, he could have. Jeremy told the police Mark was here until after she would have been picked up or whatever. So he was
