‘Horses got more brains than the jockeys. But Stephen’s not a bad bloke, good father. She’s happy.’
‘And Mark became a lawyer.’
‘Clever lad, got a job with these Collins Street lawyers. Tom put some business their way, that wasn’t a good idea. Bastards probably thought Mark was drivin the gravy train. Made him a partner.
Twenty-five years old, couldn’t run a chip shop.’
He fell silent, looked away. He was beginning to regret talking to me about the Carsons. I was just a bagman. ‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘Mark’s in Europe, some deal with the Poles, I don’t know. The deals change all the time. Poles, Russians, Chinese, Indonesians, bloody South Africans, white ones.’
‘Anne,’ I said. ‘She’s happy here?’
‘Difficult child.’
‘Difficult how?’
‘School problems. Other things. In a cage here, it’s not natural…’ He tailed off, looked at his glass, drained it, mind turning elsewhere. ‘Dennis?’ he said.
I shook my head. ‘I’d be surprised. Got slack, careless. Too long in the job without anything happening.’
‘I hope so. You can understand. Bloke doesn’t have little Alice on his mind like the rest of us.’
I wanted to know more about Alice, but there was a knock at the door.
‘Come in,’ said Pat.
It was a tall, slim woman in her thirties, late thirties, well cut dark hair on her shoulders.
I stood up.
‘Carmen’s mother,’ Pat said. ‘She manages the place, keeps it tickin over. Part of the family.’
‘Lauren Geary,’ said the woman. She was wearing a wine-red high-collared blouse and a long black skirt. Chin up, she had an air of competence, a person who managed things, commanded obedience. She put out a hand. ‘You’re Mr Calder. Graham told me.’
We shook hands.
‘I’m sorry to interrupt, Mr Carson,’ she said, ‘but Carmen’s told me something.’
Pat nodded.
‘She remembers seeing a man near the record store two or three times. There’s a tram stop but once he was still there when they came out.’
‘Yes?’
‘Well, trams go by every few minutes. It’s peak hour. So he couldn’t have been waiting for a tram.’
‘Can she describe him?’ I said. It was hard to keep in mind that I was only a bagman, not paid to do anything else.
Pat put up his hands. ‘Frank, this is not the time. Lauren, they want money, we’re givin the bastards money. Tomorrow, Frank will give em the money. Then when Anne’s safe we’ll find em, make sure they don’t do this again. The police can ask all the questions then.’
Lauren Geary looked at me, looked at Pat. He smiled at her. It wasn’t the smile of an elderly employer, not that kind of smile.
‘Fine,’ she said, nodding. ‘Afterwards. Yes, when we’ve got her back.’ She turned to me. ‘I’ve put you in the Garden House, Mr Calder. I’ll send over some clothes for you to try on.’
‘I’m going home for clothes,’ I said. ‘But thank you.’
When she’d gone, Pat, revived, held out his glass. I fetched the decanter and poured a fat finger. He drank, studying me. There was something he wanted to talk about. ‘Alice,’ he said, ‘never stopped botherin me. When she came back to us, the police questioned her. Over and over. Even hypnotised the little thing. Nothing. Very calm, she was, like a little grown-up, but she couldn’t tell em anythin. Never saw a face except for a few seconds at the start, in the garage. Where they kept her, the man wore somethin over his head, a mask.’
He sighed. ‘Then, when that was over, we had the psychiatrist. That was the advice we got. From America. A specialist in victims. A week here, talkin to her every day. Dr Wynn. I reckon that was our mistake. Maybe you should just leave people alone. Maybe she would have gotten over it if we just pretended it never happened. What do you think, Frank?’
What did I think? A man who had nightmares almost every night. ‘I think you probably did the best you could,’ I said.
The old eyes were on me, looking for something. ‘Man is born unto trouble,’ he said.
I said, ‘As the sparks fly upwards.’
Deep lines at the corners of Pat’s mouth. ‘Know your Job. Soldier. Policeman. Haven’t been a bloody priest too, have you?’
‘My mother,’ I said. ‘She had a lot of time for Job.’
‘This job,’ he said. ‘Just a good man to give em what they want. Don’t want any police stuff, any messin about with who and why. Clear to you, is it, Frank?’
I said yes, drove home, found the two new shirts, the emergency shirts, packed a small bag. It wasn’t hard to leave the cold, unlovely unit, drip hitting the kitchen sink like a finger tapping.
5
We sat in the library, four of us, me, Tom Carson reading a computer printout, Graham Noyce writing in a small leather-bound book, Orlovsky apparently asleep, hands in his lap, palms upward, right cupping left. Barry Carson was next door, talking to his father.
I was looking out of a window, watching the flow of life in the compound, when the call came. It was 12.35.
Tom dropped the printout into his open briefcase, let the phone ring twice, three times, four times, going through the routine with his fountain pen. Barry was in the doorway by the time Tom picked up the receiver.
‘Tom Carson.’
He listened, then he turned to Noyce, standing to his right, and said, ‘Mobile number.’
Noyce had a business card out in seconds. Tom read a number from it, slowly. Then he listened again and said, ‘Yes.’
Pause.
‘Yes. What about the release of Anne?’
He took the receiver away from his ear.
Noyce was at the table, pressed the button. The strange voice said:
Tom asking Noyce for a number, reading it off the card.
Tom saying,
Tom saying,
Disconnection.
Silence in the room. Tom got up from the writing table. He was in weekend clothes: lightweight tweed jacket, cream woollen shirt.
‘Well,’ he said, looking at me. ‘Over to you. Why the fuck the MCG?’
‘This is Melbourne,’ said Orlovsky, a finger moving in the collar of his shirt, loosening the slippery nylon
