‘Bugger me, Bill,’ said Des, wide-eyed. ‘Like a bloody coolroom. Never seen anythin like it.’
On the way over, he’d lapsed into calling me Bill; there didn’t seem to be much point in correcting him. In the long run, what’s a generation? Besides, I rather liked it. No-one had ever called me by my father’s name.
The lift door opened onto a small version of the entrance hall, doors on either side. Number five was to the left. The brass buzzer was high on the door and when I went to push it I looked up into a pinhole security camera.
We waited, tried again, waited.
‘Let’s get in there,’ said Des.
Again, a smooth deadlock. The door opened silently to reveal a small empty entrance hall carpeted in dark grey. I looked for the alarm. It wasn’t on. I clicked the light switch beside the door. A spotlight came on over a framed black-and-white photograph of a young female ballet dancer erotically slumped in exhaustion. It was a restful way to enter a dwelling.
To the left of the front door was a small security monitor. Two closed doors led off the room.
‘Des, wait here.’
I opened the righthand door. It was a sitting room, carpeted in the same grey and with some good pieces of furniture: modern leather armchairs in the style of Jean-Michel Frank, small writing desk, probably French, elegant side tables. There were more dark-framed ballet photographs, a collection of treen objects on the mantelpiece, an antiqued gilt-framed mirror, table lamps everywhere. Everything about the room said ‘decorator’.
The rest of the apartment said the same thing. Gary’s bedroom was dark and masculine, the kitchen stark and surgical, the period-style bathroom missing only Winston Churchill smoking a cigar in the giant clawfooted tub. Panelled doors concealed a washing machine and dryer.
The place was clean, too, the feel of a serviced apartment. I came back into the sitting room. Des was standing in the doorway, nodding his head.
‘Bloody posh,’ he said. ‘S’pose this is where me sixty grand went.’
‘Des,’ I said, ‘I’m not mad about this kind of thing but as an anxious parent, would you like me to look around?’
‘Look,’ he said, no sign of parental concern visible.
Gary hadn’t been home for a while. The use-by date on a four-pack of yoghurt in the fridge put the time at a minimum of three weeks. A brass bowl in the kitchen was full of change and half a dozen or so crumpled shopping sales dockets and credit card receipts.
I went around the cupboards. One of them, at eye-height, contained another security system monitor. I switched it on. It came to life instantly, very smart technology, split screen showing the front doorstep downstairs, the empty entrance hall outside the apartment and the fire escape landing beyond the kitchen door. You could see the front door of the apartment across the hall. I switched off and opened more cupboards until I came to the liquor cache. The wine rack held three bottles of Coldstream Hills pinot noir, there was whisky, vodka and gin, and, in a small fridge, four bottles of Carlsberg.
Des followed me into the bedroom. The laundry basket held four dirty business shirts, two golf shirts, three pairs of casual trousers, underpants, all with Henry Buck’s labels. The built-in cupboard housed an array of expensive, conservative clothes.
‘Boy’s got taste,’ I said. ‘Taste and money.’
‘Know where he got the bloody money from,’ Des said. ‘Taste’s the mystery.’
I had a look in the medicine cabinet in the bathroom. Much is revealed in medicine cabinets. Gary’s told me only that he had indigestion and a sex life.
Next, the writing desk. Nothing. Just a pad and two pens. Where would his papers be? I looked in all the obvious places, then the less obvious. Nothing.
Des walked around after me, leaning on the aluminium stick. ‘Anythin about the money?’ he said.
‘Nothing.’
There was a phone-fax-answering machine on the desk. I picked up the handset and pressed the redial button.
Nothing. The last number dialled on this phone had been erased.
The answering machine light was blinking. I pressed Play.
Six or seven calls. Not a single message.
‘When you rang, did you leave messages?’ I asked Des.
He shook his head.
I went back to the kitchen and pocketed the shopping dockets and credit card receipts. On the way out, I had a look in the flat box on the wall under the security monitor. It held a video recorder. Gary could tape his callers. If he got around to putting in a tape.
The front door closed silently behind us. In the lift, I said, ‘I’d say he’s been away a fair while.’
Des shook his head in disgust. ‘Lyin low. Told ya.’
Inside the gate, I offered him the keys. ‘You might want to check Gary’s mailbox.’
‘You do it,’ he said. ‘Me fingers can’t do the fiddly things anymore.’
Box number five was empty.
Outside, Des said, ‘Reckon you could run me home?’
‘Easily. Anyone been asking about Gary?’
‘Ask me about Gary? Might as well ask a bloody sheep where the dog’s gone.’
Des lived in deepest Northcote, near the railway line. As we pulled in to the kerb, two young women, both in black, both with cropped bleached hair, comb number one, nose rings, both carrying plastic shopping bags, arrived at the gate next door. One was a full head taller than the other. Des gave them an enthusiastic wave. They waved back, smiling.
‘Lovely girls,’ he said. ‘Strong too. Mow me lawn. Push-mower. Never asked em. The small one, what’s her name, forget for the minute, one Satdee she knocks on the door, says she’s mowin for exercise, mow anything, free mowin, what about me lawn? I was in that. Thinkin of payin some bloke to do it if I could find the extra. Lots of girls live around here. Mostly girls, really. Bloody paradise for a young bloke.’
I had my doubts about that, but I didn’t mention them.
‘Got the phone on?’
‘Course.’
‘Give me the number. I’ll ask around, give you a call.’
Des studied me. ‘Dead spit of Bill,’ he said with a shake of the head. ‘Didn’t play any footy, did ya?’
‘Not much.’
‘Got photos of the old days. Laurie Diggins used to take em. Mad bugger. That day too, day yer mum read us the bit. Hold on. Give ya somethin.’
He got out. I passed him the briefcase. Watched him lurch up the path, struggle to get the key into his front door. Open. No. More struggle. Wait.
I should have gone with him, helped him.
Open. He’s in. He was gone no more than a minute, came out with a big black album in his hand. Paused at the gate, rested the album on it, leafed through. Found what he was looking for in seconds, put a finger in the place.
He came over to the car, leant down and looked at me. ‘Never took anythin out of this book before,’ he said. ‘The wife kept it up. Gave her all me old photos, ones me mum took, and she kept it up. The Brownie. Box Brownie. Took good photos.’
I said, ‘Des, don’t take anything out of the book. I’ll come around, you can show me the pictures.’
He pulled a photograph out of its corners, offered it to me.
‘The day,’ he said. ‘That’s the day.’
Back at the office, I sat at the tailor’s table and studied the small sepia picture for a long time. My mother at nineteen or twenty was striking, a face of planes and hollows, a wryness in the way she tilted her square chin. Something of her was in Claire, my daughter: the sharp cast of face, the emphatic nose, the quizzical eyes.
Women. For men, all I had on the Irish side was my father and his father in old smoke-stained photographs on a pub wall. It was all I wanted. My mother’s father, I first feared and then loathed. For the rest, women. My grandmother, my mother, my sister, my transient first wife, my daughter, my wife Isabel, missed every day.
Linda, loved, absent, presumably gone.
