her in every day. Fighting off the pricks for personals. That went down big with the other girls, I can tell you.’
‘Personals?’
He said, ‘Sorry, Jack, didn’t know you’d been in the seminary. In the booths you get a close-up. See the business, bit of touch, depends on the girl.’
He looked at the photograph again, whistled, shook his head. ‘The cunt. Pinched her off me. Probably snaffled fucking Donna now that I think of it.’
I took back the picture. ‘Cash in hand,’ I said. ‘So you’d have no details?’
A pitying look. ‘Mate. Like the French Foreign Legion here.’
A buzzer.
Costello leant down to a speaker box. ‘What?’
‘A Mr Brown,’ said the voice of the tuckshop lady.
‘Send him,’ said Costello. He stood up, offered me his right hand. ‘Business,’ he said. ‘Nice to meet you, Jack.’
I stood up. ‘Thanks for talking to me,’ I said. ‘I appreciate it.’
‘Thank Cam, just don’t quote me,’ he said, smiling. ‘To anyone.’
I thought that it would be bad to meet him when he had a reason not to smile at you. ‘Take that for granted,’ I said. ‘How do you think I could get in touch with Wayne?’
Costello blinked twice, shook his head. ‘Well, there’s that shit where you all put your hands on the glass. What’s it called?’
‘A seance.’ How had I missed the signals? The tenses?
‘Two in the head in a motel up there near the SA border,’ he said. ‘Some nothing shithole. Early ’95, February, I think. No one charged to the moment, far as I hear.’
Last port of call, he was seeing me to the door. ‘Any idea?’ I said.
‘Mate, stuff like that I’ve got no ideas. That’s the reason I’m still here.’
In the street, the storm was over, clouds blown away, the light neon blue and dying. I walked up King Street against the ebbing tide of sombre-suited workers, people waiting at home for the lucky ones, people to kiss at the front door, small ones to pick up and hug, smell the clean and innocent skin and hair of the newly bathed and be for an instant clean and innocent too.
No chance of that for me.
18
At length, I came to Carrigan’s Lane and parked across from the office, beside the clothing factory. It had a soul once — the women and girls who worked in it and came out on smoko and at lunch to stand on the pavement, lean against the brick wall, suck on cigarettes. There was always giggling, they laughed a lot and did quick mocking pieces of theatre that were obviously imitations of people in authority. They sang snatches of pop songs, sometimes short solos, often operatic. The young women gave the older ones cheek, lots of cheek, in return they got gestures of disdain, hand and head and whole upper body eloquent, and joking threats of violence. Sometimes there would be real aggression between the younger ones, some grudge taking fire, but older peacemakers stepped in, quick to pour scorn on both parties.
In the first years across the street, in the tailor’s shop, I could stand at the window and watch all that. I was watching on the last day. They came out with their final paypackets, stood around, young, old, no laughing, no singing. They touched, there was hugging, quick kisses, they told each other it wasn’t goodbye. Some came out of the door and could not bear it, walked, just a hand raised and a ciao.
These thoughts were in my mind when someone knocked on the car window next to my head.
I started, heart jumping, looked up, bade the window come down.
‘Where’d you get this car?’ said Kelvin McCoy. ‘Property of some poor bastard gone to jail because of your incompetence?’
‘Good afternoon,’ I said. ‘I’m not averse to being paid in kind. You once offered me one of your creations. A steam-rollered bunny pasted on a field of used condoms. I recall it vividly. In nightmares.’
‘Big mistake, knocking that back, Jack,’ he said. ‘Typical misjudgment. Fifty-eight grand at auction last year.’
I motioned for him to move away from the door and got out, got a full view of the man. McCoy’s postbox-like upper body was draped in layers of textiles, four or five of them, including what appeared to be a sleeping bag and an old fishing net.
‘Any pleasure at profiting from the sale of the disgusting object,’ I said, ‘would have been offset by the disgrace of being known to own it.’
McCoy looked me up and down in a theatrical way. ‘In the suits a lot these days. I’d stick to the carpentry, mate. Never were can’t make a comeback.’
‘Speaking of style,’ I said, sniffing, ‘is that Trawlerman’s Armpit aftershave? If not, I suggest you check the net you’re wearing for overlooked catch. Fish dead for a month or so, possibly longer.’
We thrust, no parrying, and parted. I was at my door, when McCoy shouted, ‘I’m having a party Friday night. Don’t come.’
I went inside and, in the back room, the nominal kitchen, made a pot with loose tea bought from a terrifyingly correct shop in Brunswick Street. The bleached-looking owners wore loose garments that were probably made from pulped Age Culture sections.
I waited for a decent time, and, from a height, filled the lovely china cup given to me by Isabel. I had brought it here from my old office, a relic of the time when I was a respectable person. If the roof fell in now, if some disaster pulverised the place, chips of this cup would quite wrongly tell an archaeologist that on this site there was once civilised life.
Precious vessel in hand, I went to the front window, sipped, looked at the wet tarmac, the shining cobbles, at the two lines of swooping writing on the wall above the front door of McCoy’s atelier.
Guy de Paris
Garments of Distinction
The lettering was so faded that you had to know what it said to read it. In the last light, I thought about what to make of Janene Ballich and the ripples from her. The man who’d parked beside me was saying that she was connected with Mickey Franklin in a way that mattered.
A hooker and her ambitious pimp — she was missing so long she had to be dead, he was dead. And Katelyn Feehan aka Mandy Randy? Where was she? Like Janene, she was recruited from the Officers’ Club by Wayne Dilthey to join his catering corps ministering to the needs of the rich.
The rich. Mickey Franklin and the rich, Mickey and the Massianis, Mickey and Anthony Kendall Haig and Charles Hartfield and Bernard Paech.
Did Sophie Longmore, Mickey’s last screw, know anything about these people? Not likely. They went back too far and Mickey wouldn’t have talked about them. Where was Sophie? Gone somewhere. I’d probably been told, hadn’t paid attention.
I went to the table and rang Sarah Longmore’s mobile.
‘Yes,’ she said, more command than greeting.
‘Jack Irish.’
‘The journos have got this number,’ she said. ‘It’s supposed to be silent, I’ve had two slimes, they start out trying to ingratiate…’
‘Where are you?’ I said.
‘At work. At what I choose to call work. I’m about to leave.’
‘I’d like to have some of your time.’
‘You can have all my time if you’re prepared to be hounded by fucking tabloid scumbags and television thugs. They followed me into the police station today when I went to sign the bail book. The cops had to kick them out.’
