Chink nodded. To Den he said, ‘I’m puttin a goat in with it. Don’t let anythin happen to that goat.’
‘Don’t need no fuckin goat,’ said Den. ‘Got me own root.’ He laughed, the sound wild pigs make.
On the way back, in a Latrobe Valley coal town waiting in the drive-through lane to buy Harry’s snacks, I said, ‘Good day’s work. Rose early. Travelled for hours. Enjoyed hand-combat with the man they call Mr Talkative. Then I met Gippsland’s most wanted sperm donor and snapped up a gentle riding pony for Mrs Aldridge. Bargain price, too.’
‘Well,’ said Harry, leaning across Cam to study the menu, ‘the Lord could smile on us for savin the beast. Run two thousand faster than nature intended.’
‘No one mentioned speed,’ I said.
‘Outback Burger?’ said Harry. ‘New that. Whaddya reckon?’
‘Roadkills,’ said Cam. ‘Find flattened kangaroos, wombats, grind em up, add sixteen secret bush spices…’
‘Two Big Macs,’ said Harry. ‘Jack?’
I was thinking of home, of a quiet whisky and soda, followed by beef and pork sausages, cooked in the oven in red wine, accompanied by mustard mash and glazed carrots.
‘No thanks,’ I said. ‘I’m on a food diet.’
8
Sarah Longmore lived on the top floor of a grand building in St Kilda, three storeys of redbrick Victorian, bay windows at each end, long balconies with cast-iron lacework, six chimneys in sight from where I stood at the ornate gate.
I pressed button number five, felt the camera on me and looked: it was behind a thin strip of plateglass set in stainless steel in the wall to the right of the gate.
The gate unlocked, two clicks, the kind you hear in prisons when you visit clients. I went down a wide chequerboard path bordered by box hedges. Beyond them were long and narrow lawns, ironing-board flat, edged with beds of lavender. In the centre of each lawn stood an old oak, still green. The broad front door had another board of five buttons.
I pressed.
‘Come in, Jack.’ Sarah Longmore’s voice, excellent quality, her real voice.
More prison clicks.
I pushed at the intimidating door, put my hand on the wood above the shining brass plate, reluctant to mark a surface polished by hand, not sealed with some toxic chemical. The door swung as if weightless. I went into the building’s hallway, fully six metres square with a tiled floor, an ornate pattern, vaguely Arabic. It was lit from above, natural light from landing windows and a skylight two floors up.
I went up four flights of stairs wide enough for women wearing hoops to pass. At the second floor’s tall window, I paused to get my breath. A gardener appeared below, a man in a uniform with an electric mower. Nothing so raucous as a Briggs amp; Stratton two-stroke was allowed to bother the inhabitants of this building.
There were two doors leading off, solid cedar six-paners. I moved aside a brass cover on the one nearest. It hid modern locks, two of them.
The door opened.
‘Jack.’ Sarah Longmore in dark grey trousers, a loose polo-neck top, soft-looking garments, no make-up that I could see. It was hard to believe that she was the dirty-faced metal-grinder in overalls.
I followed her down a short, wide passage into a sitting room full of light from three sets of french doors that opened onto a balcony. The furniture was old, expensive, and the back wall was crammed with pictures, dozens of them, almost butted against one another, every shape and size, frames fancy and plain. I recognised Williams, Blackman, Tucker, the Boyds, Olsen, Dobell, Perceval. It was an expensive way to cover a wall.
‘Nice collection,’ I said.
‘They belong to my father,’ she said. ‘He lets me live here. Reluctantly. Coffee?’
I said no. The morning coffee had been taken. She fetched a big shallow cup from another room. We sat in armchairs.
‘We were talking about the break-in,’ I said.
‘Yes. My car was being serviced, about a month ago. I went to the gym but when I got there I was feeling terrible. I had flu coming on. So I took a cab home and fell asleep on the sofa. It was early, before six. When I woke up, the place was in darkness. Then I heard voices.’
I looked at her neck, as perfect as that of the dancer Marietta di Rigardo in the painting. Marietta with bruise.
‘A man came in,’ she said. ‘I could see his shape in the doorway. I shouted. He vanished but I heard him bump into someone and say, “Fuck, get out”.’
‘Not a break-in?’
‘They came up the fire escape and in the kitchen door. Probably climbed the back wall from the lane. Otherwise you have to get through the street gate and the front door.’
‘The kitchen door was locked?’
‘Deadlocks and an alarm. Nothing damaged, the alarm didn’t go off.’
‘What time was it?’
‘Just before seven.’
‘When would you usually get back from the gym?’
‘Around eight. I eat somewhere afterwards. Anyway, I had a few moments of panic and I rang Mickey.’
‘You’d broken up with him, he was seeing your sister. Why him?’
‘There wasn’t any bad feeling. That’s why this is so fucking ridiculous. I often spoke to him. He was an interesting man. An arsehole and an interesting person and someone you could rely on. For some things. Is that incomprehensible?’
‘Not to me. You didn’t think of the police?’
‘There wasn’t anything taken, they hadn’t broken in. Can you imagine the look a woman gets from the cops when she calls them over and tells them that?’
‘I can. Go on.’
‘I rang Mickey and twenty minutes later Rick arrived with the gun.’
‘Rick?’
‘His driver.’
‘Did it surprise you that Mickey would send someone around with a pistol?’
Sarah shook her head. ‘No. Mickey is… he was the kind of person who had guns.’
I didn’t pursue the matter. ‘You were happy to take it?’
‘Not at all. I told Rick I didn’t want it but he had his instructions, he was embarrassed, I had to take the damn thing. I put it in the linen cupboard but it haunted me.’
‘When last did you see it?’
‘Every time I opened the linen cupboard. Well, not the gun, the box. It was in a box, like a chocolate box. I put it under the towels.’
‘Anything else?’
She rose, the graceful rise on muscled thighs, and went to a table behind a sofa, lit a cigarette with a slim metal lighter, looking at me.
‘Two Sundays ago, I came in, I’d been in the country, and I opened the bathroom cabinet and someone had moved things. Someone had been in the place.’
‘The home help? Moved the aspirin.’
Sarah smiled, the half-furtive smile. She shook her head. ‘It’s not silly. I have a thing about order. Not all of me, one side doesn’t care. But where I live I know when something’s moved. And there’s no home help.’
I wished that I knew when things had been moved. I wished that I knew where things should be so that I
