I said, ‘I don’t think she killed Mickey.’
‘Jack, Jack, it doesn’t matter who killed Mickey. We’ll never know, we don’t care, we had a client who may or may not have killed Mickey but we don’t have her anymore and so it’s over.’
I got up.
‘Not rushing you,’ he said. ‘Hang around here all day. Come back and work here, the offer always stands.’
I said, ‘Kind of you, it could become some sort of legal rehab centre, there’s probably a grant available. I’d like to tell you that I’m no more brain-damaged than I was before. Can I see Sarah’s file?’
Drew sighed, looked down. Then he picked up his phone. ‘Karen, give Jack the Longmore file, will you?’
‘Thank you,’ I said.
He opened his hands. ‘Ring me if you want to have a drink later.’
I collected the file and walked down the elegant street to the Lark, admired it as I came. I loved the car and it was nothing but trouble. A metaphor for something, the Lark.
The office was cold, air stale. I left the front door open, opened the back one, and a gale went through. When the air was changed, I closed the doors, put on the heater, made tea, sat down in the client’s chair with Sarah’s file. It didn’t take long to read. The prosecution case was that she’d had an affair with Mickey, been replaced by her sister, was known to have the weapon that killed him, was seen near his apartment building on the night of 16 March, at around the time of his murder. Prosecutions had proceeded on much less.
I read bits again, mulled. The gun part was bad. She’d admitted once having it. Being near the scene, that was terrible.
The witness was a woman called Donna Filipovic. Her statement said she’d heard about Mickey’s murder on the radio and contacted the police. She lived in an apartment block near Mickey’s. She’d noticed a woman about six months earlier when there was an argument about a parking space. The woman was about to reverse into it when another driver pulled in. The woman got out of her car and wouldn’t let the man open his door. He eventually reversed out and drove off.
Ms Filipovic told the police that on the previous night, just before midnight, she was walking her dog when she saw a woman come out of the side entrance of Mickey’s apartment block. The woman came towards her, walking quickly, passed her, and got into a car.
From a large number of photographs of different women shown to her by the police, she’d identified Sarah Longmore as the woman she’d seen before and saw the night before. She said that she was not in any way prompted by the police officers but had been left alone with the photographs.
A heatless lemon-yellow rectangle of sunlight had fallen across me. Dust motes moved in it, not in any hurry, presumably some of them skin and dandruff, tiny bits of me that had abandoned ship, floating about, carrying my DNA.
Nothing gained from reading the file except bad feelings. Did it matter if Sarah had killed Mickey?
I had no wish to pursue that line.
The witness on the night, near the time, that would have tested Drew, shown whether he was the equal of those in the bar’s murder squad, the criminal silks, men and women steeped in violence who could convince juries to give psychopaths the benefit of the doubt.
I drank the cold remains, flicked back through the pages, looked up at the piece of sky, torn clouds, ragged, all the shades of grey.
Something flickered in the mind.
The witness. Her name was Donna Filipovic.
I sat, uncrossed my legs, crossed them again. The name. I thought about talking to Popeye Costello. Probably snaffled fucking Donna now that I think of it.
I went to the table, found the number, I gave the receptionist my name.
‘Please hold on while I see if he’s available,’ she said, a concerned help-line voice. She was back in seconds. ‘If you’ll leave a number,’ she said.
I went back to the client’s chair and sat in the gathering gloom, sunlight gone, almost falling asleep, jerked awake by the phone.
‘Yes,’ said Popeye Costello.
‘When we were talking, you said a name,’ I said. ‘You said the name Donna.’
‘Yes?’
‘Is that also a Foreign Legion name?’
‘No, that’s the bitch’s name.’
‘And the surname?’
He hesitated.
In the west, the sky showing streaks of orange, an unhealthy colour, like the flames of a burning tip.
‘Filipovic,’ he said. ‘Donna Filipovic.’
Peter Temple
White Dog (Jack Irish Thriller 4)
The address the homicide squad had for Donna Filipovic was an apartment on the fifth floor of a building called Bolzano, about two blocks from Mickey Franklin’s dwelling. She wasn’t in the phone book.
Admission was by key or concierge, a man in a dark suit who came out of a door in the marble lobby, adjusting a striped tie.
‘May I be of assistance?’ he said through the intercom system, from inside the glass doors. He had the perfectly groomed grey hair and voice of an assistant from the men’s department of the long-gone George’s department store in Collins Street.
‘I’m a lawyer,’ I said. I took out my Law Institute card and held it to the glass. ‘I’m trying to get in touch with one of your tenants on behalf of a client.’
He raised his chin and his nostril crimped. ‘I’m afraid we admit no one without the tenant’s permission. May I have a name?’
‘Filipovic,’ I said, ‘Donna Filipovic.’
‘Could you spell the surname?’
I did. They didn’t require him to call people ‘Sir’ here, that would be a relief.
‘I’ll make inquiries,’ he said.
It was early afternoon, the street quiet by inner-city standards, the temperature falling. A door in the foyer opened and a woman with pink-purple hair came in carrying a shopping bag from David Jones. She went to the lifts. Only visitors would come through the front door of this building, the residents would park in the basement, come up the stairs to the foyer or take the lift.
Mr George’s came back. The shiny black tips of his shoes caught the downlights.
‘We have no one of that name,’ he said, a small, pleased smile.
I took out my notebook, found a page, any page, looked at it. ‘You certainly did in March,’ I said. ‘Have you lost your records?’
He put his head to one side, shrugged the tiniest shrug. There was uncertainty in him.
I said, ‘I don’t normally do this kind of thing myself but it’s important to a valued client. May I have your name?’
He licked a lip. ‘Ashton, Morris Ashton.’
‘Mr Ashton, I’m saying to you as a matter of fact, I repeat, as a matter of fact, that Ms Filipovic had an apartment in this building in March this year. If you don’t want to be helpful, I’ll get a court order today to see your register of owners and tenants.’
While I looked into his eyes, he considered this statement. No more than three or four seconds went by.
He pressed a button. The doors parted. ‘If you’d care to come to the office with me,’ he said.
I followed him. The office was neat, no security screens, two desks, a computer on each, a bank of filing cabinets, a copier.
‘May I copy your card?’ he said.
I took it out. He put it on the copier surface, closed the top, punched the button. The light moved.
‘Thank you,’ he said, opened the machine, gave me the card. ‘Please sit down, this won’t take a moment.’
