Death by the Book (15 page)

‘Oh, it’s cold now!’ She found her tights, socks and jumper and quickly dragged them on. She did not bother with her bra. ‘What’s the time?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Jack, giving a moment’s thought to his business empire: but some things
were
better than money. Sometimes. ‘Who cares?’

‘My daughter might, that’s all.’

Jack drank. As much as he wanted the afternoon to last, the world was already slipping in under the door like a draught. He stared at the perfect, neatly piled fake logs covering the gas flame of the heater, and drank some more.

Annabelle sat down on the edge of the chess table in front of him and lit a cigarette. Her cheeks were flushed. She smiled at him briefly, poured something warm from
her eyes into Jack’s own: but it only lasted a second or two. He reached out and put his hand on her leg, squeezed, remembered. She put her hand on his, without looking at him, squeezed back and then stood up. She turned her butt to the heater.

‘What time is she due?’ asked Jack.

‘Four.’

‘Her father dropping her off?’

‘Yes.’

Jack reached for the cigarette pack. They were back in the real world again and it was overrated. He slid out a smoke, dropped the pack and then reached for one of the huge chess pieces on the board in front of him: the white knight. It looked hand-carved, all strong edges and rough broad planes, and felt as heavy as a brick.

‘Do you think he’s having an affair with Celia?’

‘Probably. He can’t help himself.’

Outside the rain was heavier and the wind blew it against the window. Jack sat forward in his chair and lit his cigarette. He was starting to feel a little colder now, too.

‘Must be hard, sharing a daughter,’ he said, sympathetically. ‘Always seeing him.’

‘Ever been to hell?’

Jack wanted to ask her what she had seen in him in the first place. Dicks like Durst were so obvious. He was an affront to average intelligence. That Annabelle might actually have loved him once …

‘Jack, I —’

‘What?’

She covered her face with her hands. The cigarette burnt between her fingers. Jack stood up, took the cigarette and
put his arms around her. It was then that he noticed the typewriter in the opposite corner, sitting on a small table tucked into an alcove between a bookshelf and the door. It looked like a restored antique, glossy black and immaculate. He remembered the note Celia had shown him.

Annabelle put her hands on Jack’s chest. She pushed away from him. Her eyes were porcelain. ‘You don’t understand,’ she said. ‘He’s destroying my life. He won’t leave me alone, he rings me ten times a day. Two o’clock, three o’clock in the morning!’

‘Is he threatening you?’

She looked away. ‘No. Not directly.’

‘What does he want?’ Jack let her go.

She sat down in one of the sofa chairs and stared into the fake logs of the heater. ‘He says we have to get back together, because of Louisa. That if I don’t it’ll ruin her life and it’ll be my fault. And that he’ll take her away.’ She looked up at Jack. ‘But it’s just about the money. That’s all he really wants.’ Her eyes went through him, through the wall of the study, too, outside into the wind and rain. ‘It’s all anyone wants in this fucking family.’

‘Celia, too?’ Jack smoked, tapped the cigarette in an ashtray.

‘Of course, Celia! What do you think?’

Jack was thinking a lot of things. All at once. It was like keeping track of white paper blowing around in a snowstorm.

‘Who knows what she’s up to with Ian,’ said Annabelle, reaching for her Scotch.

For a moment Jack had to remember Ian was Durst. ‘Does he have any claim on your money?’

‘Not all of it. A lot is tied up in trusts through my father’s business. But it’s guaranteed he’ll contest the outcome of the divorce. And he’ll use Louisa against me, just like he’s already using her. I know he’ll drag all our shit out into the open, make me look like a terrible mother.’ Annabelle stared into her drink. ‘I don’t want to lose my daughter.’

Silence, except for the rain against the window and the faint hiss of the gas heater. Jack scanned the floor for his clothes, saw his crisp black shirt, now crumpled on the floor near the desk.

‘You said you were seeing Celia this afternoon?’ said Annabelle.

‘Yes.’

‘Can you … find out … what she’s up to with Ian?’

‘I can try.’

For a moment Annabelle stared at the chess pieces before her. She let out a breath through her nostrils, almost a huff. A sliver of light glinted in her eyes, then she blinked and the sparks died. Something else was on her mind, too.

‘Don’t believe anything Edward Kass tells you, either,’ she said.

There was probably more family love in a wasp’s nest than around these people. ‘When did the affair happen?’

A pause. ‘First time was in the sixties.’ Annabelle almost sounded relieved to say it. ‘Mum actually left Dad and went to live with Edward. I’m not sure of the details. I hadn’t been born. She came back, of course, but then it happened again later.’

‘About the time your father took Kass to court.’

‘Yes.’

‘That was a while ago now. Why all the sudden interest?’ Jack glanced at the typewriter in the corner.

‘I don’t know!’ said Annabelle, looking up at him with cool brown eyes. ‘I don’t know what’s going on. My father hardly ever speaks to me anymore.’

Hammond Kasprowicz had probably never been up for Father of the Year. ‘When was the last time you saw Kass?’

Annabelle sighed. ‘Probably on my eighteenth birthday. He gave me a poem. I still remember. It was called
In Demons Land
.’

‘Nice,’ said Jack. ‘Just what every eighteen-year-old girl would want.’

‘My father bought me a car.’

Jack was surprised it was not a pony. He went and picked up his shirt and returned to stand in front of the heater as he put it on.

‘Thank you, Jack.’ She stood up. ‘There’s nobody else I can talk to about all this.’ She put a hand on his chest. Then she held a finger to his lips. Jack bit it, lightly. She pressed herself against him, unbuttoning the one button he had managed to do up.

‘When can I see you again?’ she asked.

‘My wife’s out tonight. Tango lessons. Any time after seven is clear.’

She smiled. Slipped a hand down Jack’s back, slowly. Parted her lips and tilted her head and kissed him.

On the bus to Kings Cross, Jack searched through the Edward Kass books in his bag for the poem Kass had given Annabelle. He found it in
Entropy House
. The singed copy.

Page 19
.

IN DEMONS LAND

His forehead smeared with defeat,

His journey without reason, willed —

The young man turned at the bridge

And shouted his commands.

Her arms broke the day,

The highest steps too splendid

For the eyes. Ten centuries

Blown about — their weight

The sin of pride. Only God

Satisfied, among the dead,

The price of empty glory faded,

And then crawled on

In exile with a myrtle crown. The light

Observed brilliant in the same,

And three mirrors the whiteness of the moon —

Another sphere proceeds the truth

You seek. Mandatory, to slake

The great awe.

Suffer the world rejoiced.

I am obedient too late.

Jack closed the book and slipped it back into his bag. The ancient Egyptians said that when you died, the god
Ra weighed your heart against a feather, on a set of golden scales. If it were lighter, then heaven awaited. During their meeting, Edward Kass was going to have to hope for a feather the size of New Zealand.

The boss was behind the counter at Celia’s Crystal Palace, head down over the till, counting out the fifties. Her lips moved silently. There were more golden notes than Jack saw in a month. Maybe he should make the switch to designer costume jewellery.

‘Lucky I’m not wearing a balaclava.’

Celia looked up, surprised, and pushed the till shut. The faint sound of a bell echoed from it. A few fifties were still scrunched in her hand.

‘I didn’t hear you.’

‘The papers call me the Phantom.’

Celia smiled. ‘I’ll just put this away in the safe.’ She bent down below the counter. Jack heard a few digital-sounding beeps, a metallic creak, and then the hollow thud of the safe door banging shut.

‘Right. Shall we go?’

‘After you.’

She came out from behind the counter and went over to a large mirror: it opened to reveal a cupboard. She took out a grey woollen coat and worked her shoulders into it. Then she looked into the mirror and removed her sparkly earrings, fixed a black woollen beret on her head and teased her fringe a couple of times. ‘It’s just down the road. Only take a minute.’

Jack waited while she wrote something on a small piece
of paper and then taped it to the glass of the front door. She let Jack through and then followed him outside.

‘Boy, it’s cold today!’

‘Arctic,’ said Jack.

‘I love it. Winter’s my favourite season. And autumn as well. The cooler months.’

Jack believed her. Any excuse for more wool.

Celia moved to the edge of the road and pointed. ‘It’s just down there.’ They crossed Macleay Street and headed in the direction of Woolloomooloo. ‘We’re in St Neot Avenue.’

‘Wonder what he’s the saint of,’ said Jack.

‘Poets, probably.’

‘He must have suffered terribly.’

‘It’s only appropriate, then.’ Celia’s tone hardened. She quickened her pace.

Jack followed, half a step behind. ‘Is your father feeling better?’

‘He’s working, I suppose.’

‘No more packages in the mail?’

‘Maybe there’s one waiting now.’

‘Phone calls?’ Jack paused. ‘Visitors?’

‘Just you, Mr Susko.’

They walked on. Questions were crowding Jack’s frontal lobe. Questions about Durst, about Kasprowicz, about Celia, too. It made him frown. So did the guy who walked past wearing designer-ripped jeans, a bleached red T-shirt, scarf, sunglasses, thongs and a takeaway latte.

They turned into St Neot Avenue, following the long curve of an apartment block on the corner. Cars lined either side of the street, bumper to bumper all the way down. Lots of trees, too, and small front yards with manicured hedges
and lawns and potted plants. It looked like an expensive stretch of real estate. Every building was an apartment block, in a range of architectural styles. Across the road, Jack noticed a renovated art-deco number with a column-framed entrance and a couple of palm trees out front. It even had a name: Grantham. But that was not where Edward Kass lived.

Celia stopped in front of a plain, redbrick low-rise opposite. Its name was simply
Twenty-One
.

‘This is it,’ she said.

The path leading to the entrance was of pale blue-and-yellow-tinted stone. Hedges on either side added to the shadows thrown by a large frangipani tree that grew in a small patch of grass, half-naked and slightly obscene with its blunt, sausage-like branches. Jack shivered for a second as he went up the three front steps: under the entrance awning it was dark and the cold was palpable, as if he had walked into a butcher’s coolroom. He looked through the glass doors into the foyer, but inside it was dark too, and did not look much warmer. Dank was the word that came to mind.

Celia slid a key into the lock and pushed the door open. The place smelt like closed windows and cheap carpet cleaner. She pressed a switch on the wall: the lights came on in the stairwell with a lazy
clunk
. Jack looked around. Maroon carpet, wood-veneer walls and a bit of dull brass here and there. And a sulking pot plant that looked like it needed a holiday. They began to climb the stairs, under weak yellow light that would have made an athlete look sick. Not a sound but the odd creaking step, or the banister giving a little. Somehow, the place suited Jack’s idea of Kass: moody, mostly cranky and never happy with visitors. Then again,
the place was probably all he could afford after coming out the tight end of a family fortune.

The apartment was on the first floor. The front door was slightly open. Celia gave a puzzled look as she pushed it open.

‘Hello? Dad?’

Jack walked in behind her. The place was dark: green curtains on two windows were drawn, filtering a weak, four-o’clock light into the room. A lamp in the corner glowed dimly and the ceiling light drizzled down at about twenty-five watts. Two large, dark green lounge chairs with wide armrests and wood-grain edging kept each other company. The room was crowded with furniture and bookshelves and the walls were covered in pictures.

‘Dad?’

Jack looked around. Without thinking, he sniffed the air: something strong, sulphurous. Something wrong. Instinctively, he took a step backwards, as if any second he might have to make a run for it. The whole room seemed to grow darker, and smaller, seemed to shrink in around him like a child’s fairytale nightmare.

Celia slipped off her coat. ‘Is anybody here?’

There was a noise, like something being knocked over. Jack and Celia turned towards the doorway opposite. Ian Durst walked into the room. There was blood on his white shirt, patchy streaks where a hand had gripped or pulled or wiped itself. And he was holding a gun. The way his shoulder drooped down a little told Jack that it was not made out of plastic.

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