chapter eleven
The rain returns from nowhere. It seems punitive to Martin, slicing at him as he walks along Riley Street, as if it senses his vulnerability, with his light clothing and no umbrella. The sky was blue when Montifore dropped him at the police station to make his statement; it was merely overcast when he left. Yet it had come in, with all its force, the same as the night before, when he’d been halfway between the station and the apartment, too close for a cab or Uber. But he doesn’t care; the storm can do as it pleases. Its wrath seems appropriate. Max is dead, murdered, and now the numbness is passing Martin is feeling guilty. He doesn’t know why, he just does. Maybe if he’d called Max earlier, visited him as soon as he had arrived, he might have somehow averted his mentor’s death. Or maybe he would be dead with him. But that thought only elicits more guilt, and the rain’s cold needles feel all the more deserved.
The weather is still cutting in from the south as he arrives at his apartment. He swings the gate open, takes the three steps up into the portico. The tramp is back, sheltering in the alcove. He looks bad and smells worse.
‘Not bothering anyone,’ says the man defensively, staring Martin down, as if he doesn’t remember him.
‘Not bothering me,’ says Martin. ‘Stay here until it blows over.’
The man blinks, shakes his head, trying to rattle the world into coherence. ‘Martin? Is that you?’
‘Yeah. It’s me.’
‘Right. Thanks. Thanks so much.’
Through the street door, past Mrs Jones’s uncollected mail and up the stairs. Then Martin sees it: his door is closed but the lock has been smashed. He eases the door open; the apartment has been eviscerated. The lounge is a sea of detritus: books with the covers ripped off, pages strewn, floating amid the body parts of his sofa. In the bedroom, the bed has been gutted, the mattress hacked open, his wardrobe disembowelled, the chest of drawers mutilated. Not ransacked, not someone rifling through the drawers, but dismembered. He can’t believe it: stumbling through the abattoir of his life, astounded by the violence. This was no search; this was a massacre of the inanimate. Who could do such a thing? And why?
A rattling sound at the window brings him back to the present. Hail. He considers lifting the sash, letting the cleansing ice enter, but there is nothing considerate about the weather. Rather, it has returned to remind him of its contempt, as if the exterior might replicate the cyclone that has so wantonly demolished the interior. So he begins to search, not for what might be saved, for that seems entirely unlikely, but for what has been lost. He finds one of his passports, ripped in half: a valuable document, surely worth something on the black market, defaced for no better reason than the inconvenience it will cause him to renew it. In the kitchenette, food has been sprayed around the walls; the only thing left in the fridge is a shit, neatly presented on a plate. Martin removes it, places it in the now empty freezer. DNA, he thinks. Evidence. The possibility of retribution. He checks to make sure the fridge is still operating, relieved to find that it is. One small break, the best the day can offer: a turd in the freezer.
His laptop is missing. Of course it is. So too his television, a decade old and surely worthless by now. A shattered window gives him the clue: the TV, hurled through the pane, is lying broken in the brick-paved laneway. But not the laptop. His Mac is gone; the only thing that is truly missing. He offers the world a weak smile. There is nothing on the hard drive of any use to them. How could there be? He knows nothing. And yet they have it, and with it the photos of his son, of Mandy, of a life now so remote, the golden beach and the months of respite, Port Silver.
Downstairs, the vagrant is still there, mumbling to himself amid his thin and soiled belongings.
‘You see anyone go upstairs in the last few hours?’ Martin asks.
‘Cunts,’ says the old man.
‘That’s them,’ says Martin.
‘Threatened to knife me if I didn’t fuck off.’
‘And?’
‘And I fucked off.’
‘And came back once they’d gone.’
‘I was only gone an hour or two. The rain came in; I came back.’
‘Can you describe them?’
‘Why would I do that?’
‘Because they’re cunts.’
‘Aye, there is that.’ The man nods, appreciating the logic. ‘They gave me some shit. Some good shit. If I promised not to tell.’
‘And?’
‘Short bald arsehole, spider web tattoo on his neck. And a tall fucker. Three-piece suit. Smelt like a funeral parlour.’
‘Thanks,’ says Martin, voice calm but mind alive. Spitt and Livingstone: the men Mandy described. It has to be. ‘Here.’ He extracts a twenty-dollar note from his wallet, goes to give it to the old coot, but withholds it at the last. ‘Two conditions.’
‘No such thing as a free lunch,’ observes the coot.
‘One: don’t piss in here. It’s not a urinal.’
‘Mate, never. What do you take me for?’
‘Two: if the most glorious woman you’ve ever seen in your life turns up here, tell her to call Martin. And tell her: don’t go upstairs.’
‘They fucked you over?’
‘Well and truly.’
Walking down the hill, his feet wet, cold and growing numb, he rings Mandy, but she doesn’t respond. He wonders why not. He looks at the screen; he missed a call from her not fifteen minutes ago. Spitt and Livingstone: destroying his apartment. The men who had found Mandy imprisoned and left her there, while searching for Zelda Forshaw. Why trash his apartment, why steal his laptop? He remembers what Montifore told him: ‘If whoever did kill your editor searched his phone, they would see he’s been talking with you.’ Christ; maybe they think he knows what Max was working on. He
