the Volvo, the bag heavy with paper brought from the paperless office, bleeping the car, flashes of light, yellow.
I sat. I wished I could smoke. I saw my new neighbour come home. After a while, her lights went on upstairs, the two street windows. The curtains closed and the building was dark again.
A tired man sitting in his old Studebaker watching his own house, burdened with knowledge he’d sought and now didn’t want. My mobile rang. I’d only just remembered to switch it on.
‘Back from the state of sand, are we?’ Wootton.
‘I’m no stranger to sand,’ I said. ‘My life’s built on it.’
‘Detect a note of melancholy, old sausage? Bit liverish? Hit the organ with a couple of decent scotches. Cheers it up no end.’
From the boyish yelps in the background, I gathered that he was at the Windsor, administering the liver tonic to himself.
‘Any luck with that stuff?’ I said.
‘My helpful concierge has prised open the lips of his counterpart at the establishment. Using a rolled-up three-figure note, I’ll ask you to remember.’
‘It’s indelible. What?’
‘Booked for that night by a company called Barras Holdings. The occupants aren’t recorded.’
‘Don’t people have to sign the register?’ I said.
‘Not in the case of corporate bookings.’
‘So the Bersaglieri Running Band could have stayed up there that night?’
‘In theory.’
‘And black-tie functions?’
‘Hold on, I’ve got it here.’
I listened to the younger stockmarket advisors having a laugh, that would be about the shittiness of dealing with the gripes of people you’d put into shares you wouldn’t personally touch wearing a cast-iron condom.
‘As one might expect,’ said Wootton, ‘the place doesn’t record the dress required of guests. But my person suggests that black tie would be the Conrad Spratt Youth Foundation dinner in the Flinders Room and the Concrete Association dinner in the River Room.’
The windows were fogged. I found the handle and wound. Steel cogs meshed. You felt that the Stud’s winders could raise and lower a drawbridge. Cold, damp air came in, carrying the seductive chemical smell of the city.
‘No,’ I said, ‘not those.’
I was looking at the boot factory, not seeing anything.
My scalp tightened.
A lighter had flared in a window, someone lighting a cigarette.
Someone was standing in the dark at one of my front windows. Waiting for me, for the Stud, to come into view.
‘Still there, sport?’
‘Yes.’
‘There were other small things on at the hotel that night but we won’t have a list for a while. I’ll bear the cost of this exercise as a mark of something or other.’
‘Mark of Cain would be about right,’ I said, eyes on my upstairs window. ‘Thanks, Cyril.’
What to do? Someone waiting for me to come home, sitting, standing, walking around in my house, opening drawers, looking in cupboards, opening my fridge, taking a piss, pissing in my bathroom.
Not pissing. I didn’t like that thought.
By the dim streetlight, I found the latest number in my little book.
‘Home invasion,’ said Cam. ‘Taking up your personal space. You could send the jacks in. You’re a citizen. You’re entitled.’
I could hear a piano in the room with him, slow, deliberate notes, repeated, then a quick passage, lovely, nothing I knew. ‘I’ve had it with this stuff,’ I said. ‘I live there.’
‘I remember that,’ he said.
In his silence, the piano, talented hands. Why was it that he always seemed to have a musical person in his life?
‘Lighting up in the window is smart,’ said Cam. ‘He thought he was in a movie. This is presumably just a fuckhead sent to hurt you. We can kick his arse but maybe you need to think about kicking some heads. That way they don’t send anyone else.’
Where to start kicking heads? Who sent the man to my office to bash me? The people who killed Mickey and Sarah, that was all I knew.
Around the corner from the factory, a grey four-wheel-drive pulled into a space. Someone got out.
‘I think the shift’s changing,’ I said.
At the corner, the person turned left, went directly to my front door.
‘Shift change or someone visiting me,’ I said.
The door opened, someone came out, the newcomer went in, the door closed.
‘New shift,’ I said.
The man walked around the corner. He was going to his replacement’s car… no, he walked past it, I lost sight of him, he had his own car, probably in the next street.
‘The new one’s parked just around the corner,’ I said.
‘Cheeky,’ said Cam. ‘That’s not acceptable. Got anything to mark it?’
I opened the glovebox, rummaged around, found a roll of masking tape. I told Cam. He gave instructions.
‘Is this wise?’ I said.
‘Beats me,’ said Cam.
I was back in the same parking place inside ten minutes, got out my little silver flask, watched, had a few sips, the lovely burn of neat single malt, a kind of smoking. An occasional car, the odd person crossing the park in the drizzle, men, young, in a hurry, late for the children’s bathtime at home perhaps. They would die regretting every chance missed to nuzzle a plump, powdered tummy.
Fifteen minutes went by. The mobile rang.
‘Any minute,’ said Cam. ‘Probably best you don’t go home tonight. I can fix you up.’
‘I’ll be fine,’ I said. ‘But thanks.’
A single light coming down the street where the vehicle was parked. It stopped. Near the car?
‘There’s a motorbike,’ I said.
‘Yeah. Tell me what happens.’
Headlights came on, the bike was moving, the grey four-wheel-drive came out from the kerb behind it, followed it to the corner, the bike turned left, the vehicle followed.
‘They’re there,’ I said.
The bike went beyond the boot factory. The big, shiny vehicle stopped in front of it, on the wrong side of the road, on the park side. The driver opened the door, got out, in dark clothing, leaned back inside, doing something.
I heard Cam say, speaking to someone else on another phone, ‘Mate, I’m from the council. You’re parked in a residents’ zone, so we want to ask you politely not to do it again. But there’s a small penalty this time. Look out the window.’
Across the park, the man had left the driver’s door of the four-wheel-drive open, he was walking to the motorbike, not hurrying. He got there, got onto the pillion.
A yellow light inside the four-wheel-drive, a puff of yellow. It turned orange, then red.
The motorbike jumped away, turned right, mounted the kerb, violated a public park, travelled across country.
‘Any action there?’ said Cam.
‘The Toyota thing is burning,’ I said. ‘Outside my house.’ My front door opened, a man came out, stood, his hands raised in horror.
