fourth Mrs Harry Strang. She gave Harry about thirty years’ start and he conceded two hands in height but there was an electricity between them.
Harry was waiting in the study. The room was the idea of a study that is stored up in heaven. It had a full wall of mahogany bookshelves, probably five metres high and ten metres wide, opposite the windows. The upper shelves were reached by four teak and brass ladders that moved on rails. On the shelves was what seemed to be every book ever written on horse racing. The other walls displayed a collection of racing paintings and prints. Between the windows hung a set of photographs in walnut frames of Harry Strang winning English and French races in the late 1940s and early 1950s: the English and Irish Derbies, the King Edward VII Stakes, the Queen Alexandra Stakes, the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe, the Grand Prix de Deauville, the Prix de Diane, the Grand Prix de Saint Cloud.
Harry could ride at about the same weight now as when he was in the photographs. He was tall by jockey standards and looked taller because of his shoulders-back, chin-up carriage. He had a full head of short hair, dark with some unscented oil, a small-featured face barely lined. Today he was wearing a Donegal tweed suit, dark- green silk tie on a creamy shirt, russet brogues. I could never help staring at his feet. You can’t buy handmade brogues to fit ten-year-olds in the shops, so Lobb’s in London made Harry’s shoes: $400 a shoe.
‘Jack, Cam,’ he said. ‘Sit.’
Harry liked to get on with it.
We sat down in leather club armchairs. Harry went behind the desk, a classic piece in the style of Eugene Harvill made by Charlie Taub. Almost everything in the apartment was made or restored by Charlie.
Harry put his hands on the desk. They were the hands of someone half his age and twice his size: square- tipped, tanned, strong-looking. There was nothing wrong with his eyes, either.
‘Crook arm, Jack?’ he said.
I hadn’t been aware of touching it. ‘Just a strain,’ I said.
Harry cocked his head. ‘Give it the balsam three times a day. Now. Business. A bloke I’ve done some transactin with across the years, he reckons he’s got somethin for us.’
The years spent in Europe had done nothing to take small-town Victoria out of Harry’s voice.
There was a knock at the door and ancient Mrs Aldridge, Harry’s housekeeper for thirty-odd years, came in, followed by Lyn Strang carrying a tray of coffee things. At the table, Mrs Aldridge took command, shooing Lyn out of the room. When we had each been served a cup of hell-dark brew from the silver pot, plus a chocolate biscuit, business resumed.
‘This fella’s name is Tie. Rex Tie,’ Harry said. ‘Trains a few cattle out in the bush.’
Cam said, ‘Time Urgent.’
‘That’s the one,’ Harry said.
‘You do that Time Urgent thing?’ Cam asked.
‘What’s past is past,’ Harry said. ‘I want to have a little look, see if Rex Tie’s brain’s still workin. We’ll have to get on the Drizas, motor out to the bush next week. Suit, Jack?’
I nodded.
‘Good. Cam, let’s step over and look at the movin pictures.’
We went across the passage into Harry’s wood-panelled cinema and sank into the plush armchair seats. Cam plugged in the video cassette I’d given him, pressed some buttons on a remote control, and moist Pakenham appeared on the wraparound screen. Harry had been at Pakenham. I’d seen him up near the back of the stand, on his own as always, grey felt hat, undistinguished raincoat, eyes stuck to the X15 binoculars. You never went near Harry on a racetrack, that was the rule. You didn’t talk to Cam either if you saw him. My job had been to video New Ninevah’s run with about twenty thousand dollars’ worth of small video camera. For this and a bit of legal work, I got paid a retainer.
‘Take the start in slow, Cam,’ said Harry.
We watched in silence.
‘Again,’ Harry said. And so it went on. It took nearly ten minutes to watch a race that was over in 1 minute 24.20 seconds. When Cam put the lights on, Harry looked at me and said, ‘Did he or didn’t he?’
I shrugged. ‘Looked like he was trying to to me. Didn’t miss the start this time.’
‘No,’ Harry said. ‘No, he came out fightin. Cam?’
‘Clean, I’d say,’ Cam said. He was putting a label on the video cassette. ‘Reckon he just don’t like the wet.’
Harry got out of his chair. ‘Course we could be pissin on the wrong campfire again.’ He walked over and looked out the window, hands in his jacket pockets. ‘Doubt it though.’ He sighed. ‘Well, that’s it for today, gentlemen. Ballarat on Wednesday. Freeze our arses off as usual. Come round nine for a bit of sustenance. Suit? Jack, Cam’ll drop you back. Then he’s got some computin to do. That and clean the gutterin and prune the roses.’
‘After that I’m going to put on my burglar suit and give the dogs savaging practice,’ said Cam.
‘I forgot,’ Harry said. ‘They’re getting rusty.
4
Cam dropped me at my office, which is down the lane from Taub’s Cabinetmaking. The sign outside said ‘John Irish, Barrister & Solicitor’ but I didn’t do much that resembled law from the place. Apart from the odd lease or conveyance for Harry Strang, most of my income came from collecting serious debts or finding witnesses. It was something I’d drifted into doing when I stopped being a criminal lawyer.
The office was just one large room on the street, with a small room and a toilet behind it. It had once housed a tailor, and I used the large table he’d left behind as my desk. The man at the corner shop told me the tailor used to sit cross-legged on the table to do his handstitching. I sat down and switched on my Mac, got out my notebook and started work on the statement I’d got from the witness in Sydney.
When I’d finished, I got a salad sandwich from the corner shop and ate it at my table. Then I drove around to the offices of Andrew Greer—my old offices—at the city end of Drummond Street, Carlton. You could walk to the magistrate’s courts from there, that was why we’d bought the old terrace house and spent months fixing it up ourselves.
Andrew’s filthy old Saab was outside.
There was no sign of his secretary. I was walking down the passage when he appeared at his door.
‘Nice bit of cloth,’ I said. Drew was wearing a navy-blue suit.
He looked down at himself. ‘Bought it with the tip Mrs De Lillo gave me,’ he said. ‘From Buck’s. Nine hundred dollars.’ He pointed at a lapel. ‘There’s a puke stain here you can barely see.’
‘Nearly invisible,’ I said. ‘From about a hundred metres in bad light. I got Mrs Brierley.’
‘You beauty. What does she say?’
‘She puts your bloke about five metres from the deceased at the vital moment. She says she knows him by sight. Used to buy fish and chips at the shop.’
A smile grew on the long face. He shook his head. ‘Lord,’ he said, ‘thou art merciful, even unto him who hath sinned. Let’s have a drink on this.’
‘It’s 3 p.m., Andrew.’
‘Pre-dinner drink. We in the law eat early.’
‘Her boyfriend hit me with a baseball bat.’
‘What? Didn’t break anything? No?’
I shook my head.
‘Good, good. Your suffering won’t be in vain. I’ll get you something for pain and suffering. This bloke’s loaded. Dudded plenty of insurance companies.’
I followed him down the passage into the kitchen at the back of the building. We sat at the formica-topped table. Drew opened two bottles of Coghills Creek lager. I had a sip, put the bottle down and put my hands in my pockets. Reformed binge drinkers know how things start.
‘What’s this about Helen?’
Andy drank about a third of his bottle, held it up to the light and gave a little laugh. ‘Gone, mate. Gone to live in Eltham with a painter. Left me with the kids.’
‘House?’
