Dead Point (12 page)

The door came open. Cam reached in with both hands and pulled Chaffee out, jerked him out, let him fall into the mud. Paving sand was stuck to the man’s blood, blood and sand all over his big chest, it was in his long hair, and he had a mask of yellow sand on his face, new black blood from his nose eroding it, creating thin furrows of blood.

‘Dyin,’ said Chaffee. ‘Help me.’

‘You’ll be fine,’ said Cam. ‘WA boy like you, Buggerup, the old home town, take more than a few rocks, bit of sand. What’s that word you called me? I forget. Want to say that again? That word?’

Chaffee put his head back, rolled his face away, into the mud, the white of an eye showing. ‘Mate,’ he said. ‘Sorry, mate.’

‘Well, that’s okay then,’ said Cam. ‘Sorry is such a good word. Pity more people don’t use it. Tell me some more about Artie.’

Chaffee groaned.

On the Hume, cruising, listening to Harry Connick again, I said, ‘A really good trip. A short bloke called Artie. Chaffee’s probably going to die back there and all we got was a short bloke called Artie.’

Cam was tapping his fingertips. ‘Only hit him twice, can’t die of that. Short Artie’s good too.’

‘How’s that?’

‘How many short Arties can there be? Short Arties with a Saint.’

The answering machine was speaking to a caller as I opened the door of my office. I took the two steps and picked up the phone.

‘Ignore those words. Jack Irish.’

‘Jack, Gus.’

Augustine, Charlie Taub’s granddaughter. Alarm, a stab.

‘Charlie?’

‘What?’

‘He’s alright?’

She read my anxiety, laughed her sexy laugh. My shoulders and my chest untightened.

‘Never better. He said to tell you he’s staying another week. He’s playing bowls every day, he’s playing in a tournament next week. He said, and I quote, “Tell Jack, hot’s good for one thing.”’

I sighed.

‘Means something, does it, the message?’

‘Yes. Exactly as I feared. Will you marry me? Take me to Canberra with you?’

Charlie’s granddaughter was a fighter for the oppressed workers and, said the gossip, being courted for a safe federal Labor seat. That or in due course Australia’s highest union office.

‘I’m not going to Canberra,’ she said. ‘You’ve been reading that idiot in the
Age
. Anyway, I don’t think harem life would suit you.’

‘The zenana. We’d sit around, the boys, playing cards, crocheting, waiting for you to come home and pick one of us.’

‘I may need to give this Canberra business more thought,’ she said. ‘Stay close to the phone.’

It was just after noon. Much of the day ahead, much already accomplished: a trip down the bright golden Hume, the witnessing of a man having his nose broken, his collarbone fractured, tonnes of rock dropped on his prized car, followed by a coating of paving sand, enough sand to provide the base for a nice barbecue area.

Moving on. I settled down at my aged Mac and attended to the affairs of my bustling legal practice, to wit, a letter to Stan’s father’s tenant, Andreas Krysis, asking him to desist from storing things in Morris’s garage, which was not part of his lease.

Hunger struck. I went around the corner and bought a salad pita, came back and ate while reading the sports section of the
Age
. The daily bulletin on all football clubs said that, notwithstanding the team’s atrocious performance against West Coast, the St Kilda club president was standing firm behind the coach. ‘He has our full confidence. We have always said that we are with him for the long haul.’

In football-speak, these sentiments translated as:
Full confidence
– most committee members want to sack the bastard.
The long haul
– until the next game. Saturday at Docklands Stadium was Waterloo for the coach.

I rang Drew. He was in court. I rang my sister.

‘So,’ Rosa said, ‘to what?’

‘To what what?’

‘Do I owe this honour?’

‘I’ve been away a bit. I went to see Claire.’

‘I know that. I talk to her every second day. You may recall that I’m her aunt.’

It was hard for me to grasp that people saw themselves as aunts or uncles. I had neither, had never felt a vacuum in my life.

‘Anyway,’ she said, ‘you’ve been back for over a week.’ An edge to her voice, not anger, not the usual exasperation. Worse. Knowingness.

‘Lunch,’ I said. ‘It’s been a while. Your choice of venue after the cruel things you said about mine last time.’

‘Lunch.’ She managed to roll the word around in her mouth, endow it with sinister meaning.

‘What about The Green Hill?’ I said. ‘Very fashionable, I’m told. They know me there at the highest levels, the boss shouted me a tankard of Leprechaun ale the other day, Leprechaun, some name like that, very ethnic.’

Silence.

‘Andrew Greer stood me up,’ she said finally.

The masticating on
lunch
now meant something.

A moment of calculation.

‘Drew? What, a legal matter?’

‘No. A
lunch
.’

‘I didn’t know you knew Drew. In a lunching sense.’

Sparring. A spar.

‘I don’t. I thought I was going to have the opportunity.’

‘To do what?’

‘Get to know him in a lunching sense.’

‘Well, he’s a busy man, things come up, that’s the law.’

‘Lawyers don’t work on Saturdays.’

‘The lawyers you know. Lawyers in name only. Accountants in drag. Tax avoidance, mergers and acquisitions. Drew is a criminal lawyer. They never stop, never sleep. Never eat, some of them.’

She knew. She could not know, but she knew. Some psychic vibration had reached her, bounced off a star, found her.

‘I don’t know what this is about,’ I said. ‘What time are we on? What time is it on your side of the river?’

Silence.

‘Well, I rang you, so whose prerogative is it to end the conversation? Tricky point of etiquette, not so?’

‘Sometimes I hate you,’ she said and put the phone down.

On the other hand, she could know if Drew had told her.

I sat back in my captain’s chair and my shoulders sagged.

Why had I been so stupid as to speak my mind to Drew? What did it matter if he became entangled with Rosa? What was one more clear-felled forest, one more toxic waste dump, one more nuclear test site in my immediate vicinity?

I sat in this mood of despond for a while and then, for want of something to do, I dialled Telstra inquiries. Since the privatised utility wanted to encourage people to use this free service, it took six minutes to get the number of Baine’s Newsagency in Walkley.

‘Baine’s,’ said Terry Baine.

‘Terry, Jack Irish, I talked to you—’

‘Mate, telepathy, mate, on the verge of ringin ya,’ he said. ‘Got the name of that girl, Sim come in this mornin.’

‘How’d the barra go?’

‘Yeah, well, big as great whites ya believe the bastard. Sandra Tollman, that’s the name.’ He spelled it. ‘Sim says she married a Forestry bloke. Says he heard that. Christ knows where he’d hear that.’

I said my thanks.

‘Got your number, mate. You’re on the record. Comin down for the vroom-vroom next year, look you up.’

Adult life was all desire and expectation. Until it was too late. I went home to change for Mrs Purbrick’s library-warming.

David, Mrs Purbrick’s personal assistant, opened the huge black front door. His smile seemed genuine.

‘Jack,’ he said, extending his beringed right hand, the hand with the green stones, ‘we’re delighted you could come.’ He dropped his voice. ‘I must say I found the muscle you brought with you last time rather intimidating.’

‘Just her manner of speech,’ I said. ‘She works with film people most of the time. I gather they only respond to a rough touch.’

He nodded, serious. ‘I’ve heard that too. They like the firm smack of something or other.’

‘The smack and the other, probably.’

David laughed. ‘This way. Everyone’s in the library telling madame how clever she is.’

We went through the gallery-like hall, through the open double doors into the wide passage, eight-paned skylights high above, parquetry and Persian rugs beneath our feet.

Music was coming from somewhere. Gershwin. We were close to the library door before the voices within became audible.

‘Please,’ said David, waving me in.

There were at least two dozen people in the room, more women than men, standing close together, laughter and teeth flashing. For a moment, I looked, wished Charlie were there to see his elegant bookcases filled with books, glowing in the lamplight, the people in the room made handsomer, better somehow, by being in the presence of his craftsmanship.

‘Jack, Jack. Darling, so distinguished.’

Mrs Purbrick, on heels so high her toes had to bend at near-right angles to touch the ground, in business gear again, a dark suit, jacket worn over an open-necked white shirt unbuttoned for a considerable distance, great mounds beneath, ceremonial mounds. And, in keeping with the after-work nature of the occasion, severe horn-rimmed glasses. She took me by the lapels and brushed me on both cheeks with her inflated lips, the kiss of balloons, turned to face the room.

‘Everyone, everyone, meet Jack Irish, who helped Mr Taub build this magnificent library.’

I cringed. There was a polite round of applause. Then I was taken around the room and introduced to people, youngish people, summer-in-Portsea, winter-in-Noosa, week-in-Aspen people. Over someone’s shoulder, I recognised the face of Xavier Doyle, the boyish charmer from The Green Hill. He smiled, threaded his way over, patted me on both arms, a form of embrace.

‘And here you’ve bin tellin me you’re a legal fella, Jack,’ he said. ‘Why didn’t ya just come right out and say you’re an honest workin man?’

‘Shyness,’ I said.

‘You know each other,’ said Mrs Purbrick, touching Doyle’s cheek. ‘How lovely. Two of my favourite men.’

Doyle shook his head at her. ‘Now, I won’t share you with him, Carla,’ he said. ‘That’s a warnin.’

To me, he said, ‘This lovely lady is one of my investors, my angels, a person of faith in The Green Hill and its future.’

‘A commodity required in abundant measure.’ A tall man in his early sixties, solid, with a full head of wavy grey hair, was at Doyle’s side, a head taller. He put out a hand to me. ‘Mike Cundall. Congratulations, beautiful piece of work.’

‘Thank you, on behalf of Charlie Taub,’ I said. ‘I’m the helper. Just here as the front man. Charlie’s in WA. Also he hasn’t worn a suit since his wedding.’

Cundall nodded. He had grey eyes, clever eyes, appraising, in a lined, stoic face. He’d been drinking for a while. ‘Carla tells me you’re also a lawyer,’ he said.

‘In a small way.’

‘My father was a lawyer who liked woodwork. He made garden things. Benches that fell over. He’d come home from Collins Street, out of his suit and into overalls, straight to the workshop and stay there until dinner.’ He looked around, moistened his lips. ‘Which he’d devote to shitting on me.’

A bow-tied waiter with a tray of champagne flutes appeared. We armed ourselves.

‘Well,’ said Cundall, ‘this is probably a good moment.’ He coughed and raised his glass above his head. People stopped talking.

‘Carla’s invited us around,’ he said, ‘to admire her new library. I must say I’m quite stunned by its elegance, stunned and jealous. And we have with us one of the builders of this thing of beauty, Jack Irish. I’d like to propose a toast: to Carla and her library, may it give her much pleasure.’

He raised his glass and everyone followed. A happy murmur.

‘Thank you, Mike darling, thank you,’ said Mrs Purbrick, waving her glass at the room, ‘and thank you all for coming, you busy people, my dear friends.’

Xavier Doyle moved off, winding his way towards two blonde women, tanned, golf and tennis tans. They broke off their conversation, turned to him, faces opening.

‘A mind like Paul Getty behind all that Irish boyo crap,’ said Mike Cundall. There was no admiration in his tone.

‘Nice place, The Green Hill,’ I said. ‘On the basis of one visit.’

Cundall was lighting a cigarette with a throwaway lighter. ‘Do you smoke?’ he asked. ‘Forget your manners, nobody smokes any more.’

I shook my head.

‘Yes. The Green Hill.’ He blew smoke out of his nostrils. ‘Money shredder, the Amazon dot com of pubs. Thousands of customers, own vineyard, Christ knows what else, sinks ever deeper into the red.’

‘You’re an investor?’

‘Don’t insult my intelligence. My wife’s thrown money at The Green Hill. Her own money too. Was her money, I should say. It belongs to the ages now.’

The waiter was back. He had a crystal ashtray on his salver.

‘I’ll put this here, sir,’ he said, drawing a thin-legged table closer to us and placing the ashtray. Then he offered more champagne.

‘Nice drop,’ I said.

‘Roederer, sir. The Kristal.’

We lightened his tray. Another bow-tied man arrived with a silver tray of hamburgers, on sticks, exquisite miniatures, each the size of a small stack of twenty-cent coins, to be eaten at a bite.

Cundall twisted his cigarette in the ashtray. ‘Smoked salmon’s not good enough any more,’ he said, ‘too common.’ He put one hamburger in his mouth, took a second. When he’d finished both, his mouth turned down. ‘Instant indigestion these days.’

‘How’s Cannon Ridge going?’ I said.

‘That’s my son,’ said Cundall. ‘My son and assorted rich boys. Sydney rich boys. The fucking dot com brigade. New economy.’ He put down most of the champagne in a swig, held up his glass like an Olympic torch. ‘Still, Cannon Ridge’s old economy. Real asset, real business, combines leisure and gambling. Boys got a fantastic bargain.’

The waiter arrived. Cundall finished his glass, took another. ‘Get me a whisky, will you?’ he said to the youth. ‘Something drinkable. With Evian. Just a bit.’ He looked at me. ‘Whisky, Jack?’

‘That would be nice.’

‘Decent shots,’ said Cundall, blinking.

‘Sir.’

‘Good lad.’

‘I see there’s some unhappiness about the handling of the tenders,’ I said.

‘Politics of business,’ said Cundall, slurring slightly. ‘WRG wants to build a whole fucking town on the Gippsland Lakes. Get the new government in some shit over Cannon, good chance they won’t get knocked back on that.’