The Tax Inspector

pumping out poison,’ she said. ‘Our noses told us that, like they tell you if a fish is bad or fresh. Who ever liked the smell of exhaust smoke?’

‘Benny.’

‘Do you know we put concrete over perfectly good soil when we made this car yard? There’s concrete underneath all the gravel in the car yard. Your grandfather liked concrete. He liked to hose it down. But there’s good soil under there, and that’s what upsets me. It’s like a smothered baby.’

‘Then let them have it,’ Vish said, ‘Let them take it …’

‘I’d rather blow it up,’ she said. ‘With her and Howie in it.’

‘No, no …’

‘I mean it.’

‘I meant the tax. If the Tax Department wants to fine us …’

‘I didn’t work all my life to let the Tax Department take everything I’d built up.’

The telephone began ringing in the kitchen.

‘You’ve got to,’ Vish said.

‘I don’t “got to” anything.’ His Granny did not seem to hear the telephone. She looked at him in a way she had never looked at him before, more in the way she looked at Cathy, but never at Vish. It produced an equivalent change in him, a toughening of his stance, a stubbornness in the muscles of his thick neck that made his grandmother (so used to thinking of his gentleness, of seeing him chant, light his incense, say his Krishnas, bless his prasadum) see his physical bulk, his great muscled forearm, his squashed nose and the big fists he was now clenching stubbornly upon her dining-table.

Someone began knocking on the door.

35

The first thing Maria noticed was that the Catchprice Motors books were not on Mrs Catchprice’s table where she had left them. There was an ashtray and a glass of some black liquid and when she sat down at the central dining chair on the long side and opened her briefcase she found the surface of the table unpleasantly sticky.

The Hare Krishna was called Fish. He plugged the telephone in beside the bride dolls’ cabinet and Maria began to create the correct emotional distance between herself and her client who now sat down on a yellow vinyl chair some three metres away and arranged her ashtray and cigarettes on its stuffed arm.

Maria looked across the room, frowning. If pregnancy had not prevented her, she would have chosen this as the day to wear her black suit.

She had not been aware there was a call on the line until Fish handed her the telephone and said, without any other preamble, ‘Your office.’ So just as she was steeling herself to threaten Mrs Catchprice, she heard Gia’s voice: ‘I just had a death threat.’

When Maria heard ‘death threat’ she thought it meant a threat of dismissal because of their activities last night.

‘What will they do?’

‘What do you think they’ll do? They’re watching my house.’

‘They’re watching your house?’

‘It was eight o’clock in the damn morning. In the morning. How could he find my name, by eight in the morning, let alone my number? How could he even know who I am?’

‘Who is “he”?’

‘Wally Fischer.’

Mrs Catchprice was holding her ashtray, a small replica of a Uniroyal tyre with a glass centre. She was craning her withered neck towards the conversation.

‘He called you on the telephone?’

‘Not him personally.’

‘Gia, darling, please, tell me what happened.’

‘The phone rang. I was still in bed. I picked it up. It was a man. He said: “This is Dial-a-Death, you insolent little slag.” He said, “Which day would you like to meet your death? Today? We could just burn your car today. Then you could wait while we decided which day you were going to meet your death.”’

‘They’re just scaring you,’ said Maria, but her throat was dry. She had read about Dial-a-Death in a tabloid paper.

‘You’re not listening, Maria. They were watching the house.’

‘They wouldn’t dare. For God’s sake, you’re a Tax Officer.’

‘He said, your slut friend has left. You are alone in the house. It was true: Janet had just left.’

‘Have you called the police?’

‘The police? Don’t be naive, Maria. You don’t ring the police about Wally Fischer. He pays the police. He lives up the road from the Rose Bay police station. I’ve got to ring Wally Fischer. I’ve got to apologize.’

‘Christ,’ Maria said. ‘I hate Sydney.’

‘Maria, I called you for help.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘I’ve got to go.’

The phone went dead. Maria closed her eyes.

‘Everything all right?’ said Mrs Catchprice.

‘No,’ said Maria. ‘It’s not.’

She sat for a moment trying to steady herself. She had failed her friend completely.

‘I need those books,’ she told Mrs Catchprice. ‘I need them here right now.’

‘I need them too,’ said Mrs Catchprice. ‘Are you all right?’

‘I’ll be a lot better when I have the books. Please,’ she said. ‘I want to wind up this job today.’

‘How nice,’ said Mrs Catchprice. ‘I’m so pleased. There are so many important things I need to ask you.’

Maria heard herself saying, ‘Mrs Catchprice, my best friend has just received a death threat.’

36

Jack Catchprice loved smart women, although to say he ‘loved’ them is to give the impression of hyperbole whereas it understates the matter. He had an obsession with smart women. He had a confusion of the senses, an imbalance in his judgement where smart women were concerned. Their intelligence aroused his sexual interest to a degree that his business associates, men admittedly, found comic as they watched him – slim, athletic, strikingly handsome, with a tanned, golfer’s face and just-in-control curly blond hair, good enough looking to be a film star – go trotting off to Darcy’s or Beppi’s with some clumpy, big-arsed, fat-ankled woman whom he had just met at some seminar and on whom he was lavishing an amusing amount of puppy-dog attention. If he had been a whale he would have beached himself.

And indeed his sexual radar was somehow confused and his private life was always in chaos as he flip- flopped between these two most obvious types – the bimbos whom he treated badly, and the mostly unattractive geniuses whom he seemed to select from the ranks of those who would despise him – academics, socialists, leaders of consumer action groups.

It never occurred to him that it might be his own mother who had implanted this passion in him. The parallel was there for him to see if he wished to – in the privacy of the Catchprice home there was never any doubt about who the smart one was meant to be: not Cacka, that was for sure, no matter how many ‘prospects’ he shepherded across the gravel, cooing all the time into their ears. It was Frieda who read books and had opinions. She was the one who was the church-goer, the charity organiser, and – for one brief period – Shire Councillor. These things had more weight – even Cacka gave them more weight – than selling cars to dairy farmers, and yet it would have been repugnant for Jack to imagine that the women he fell in love with were in any way like his mother. He imagined he felt no affection for her, and whether this was true or not, there were betrayals he could not forgive her for. She had been the smart one, the one who read the front page of the papers, but she had let Cacka poison her children while