‘You look,’ said Igor. He was panting a little from the effort of the walk from the house. He pulled back a curtain of cloth and revealed several shelves of junk.
‘This,’ he said, almost ceremonially, ‘is all I have left of EE-arn.’
There, stacked loosely on the shelves, were billy cans and old flame-scarred kettles, a handful of small, hardened paint brushes, some rust-edged tins of house paint with the labels obscured by veils of drip, a couple of stone wine bottles wrapped in rotting wicker, candles down to the stub sitting in pitted kipper cans, some coils of rope, a single leather sandal that look like it was dated from the time of Christ, a few empty glass jars, a ball-headed hammer and a cardboard box full of old magazines, curled paperbacks and sheaves of yellowed paper.
I delicately touched one of the covers of the paperbacks. Ellery Queen.
‘Poor EE-arn,’ the old man said. His eyes were moist through the thick and enormous lenses of his spectacles.
Later, we sat together on two garden chairs beneath the canopy of a spectacular frangipani tree.
‘Igor,’ I said, ‘what do you remember of James Fenton Browne?’
He blew his nose and tucked the checked handkerchief into his trouser pocket.
‘I told you already,’ he said. ‘This man Browne, he want what all the other want. The pictures of EE-arn. I say I no have pictures. He say that’s okay, what you got of EE-arns? I say I got some stuff from the camp after he die. Just the pots and pans. He say, Igor, let me have a look. Maybe we buy for a museum.’
‘A museum?’
‘A museum of EE-am. He famous artist now. He have own museum. I say it all I got left of my good friend EE-am.’ He removed the handkerchief again, took off his glasses, and dabbed at his eyes. I knew Fairweather had not just been Igor’s good friend. He had perhaps been his last friend.
‘Did you show him?’
‘Yes, I show him. Just like I show you now. I say I don’t want to sell. EE-arn not for sale. He say just let me look through in private. He say he a big art dealer. He look at picture and can tell you how much money is worth picture. He say let me look in private. That he a big EE-arn friend too. I let him, in private. When I come back he looking through the papers in the box. He did what you did, touch the books. Then he say thank you and go away.’
‘Did he take anything with him?’
‘What there to take? Just junk. But special because it belong to my friend EE-arn.’
‘Did you ever take a close look at the papers in the box?’
‘Is just papers, you understand? This EE-arn, he a strange man. He like to write things down all the time. He write on anything he can find. He write on leaves and jam tins. He write on backs of envelopes and bus tickets. He write over the prescriptions he get from the doctor, for his sickness, you know?’
‘Did he keep a journal? A diary?’
Igor raised his hand and pointed at me with an index finger. A smile had appeared on his face. ‘He say — Igor, everything a diary. The whole world a diary. That I never forget.’
I was beginning to suspect that James Fenton Browne had found something more interesting than an old Ellery Queen novel in Igor’s dusty shed. I was beginning to feel I was in an Ellery Queen novel.
‘How did he seem, this Mr Browne, when he left you?’
‘How he seem? Very happy. He give Manya a kiss. He try to give me one too but I know his type, this Mr Browne. I was in Russian navy.’
‘Have you seen him since?’
‘I no see Mr Browne since then. Whoof, he vanish.’
Whoof, indeed. More like bang, bang. A little birdy had told me our kissy kissy art appraiser had gone bye bye with one bullet to the back of the head. The Moreton Bay crabs did the rest of the damage.
I didn’t want to tell Igor. I didn’t think he could handle, let alone comprehend, the dark machinery of the criminal world. That quite possibly a piece of forgotten paper, some jottings on an envelope, a few scrawled notes on a bus ticket that had sat innocuously in his back shed for three decades had spread their tentacles and led to the delicate Mr Browne’s brains rendered fish food in the bay. Russian navy or not, he was still an old man.
‘Last night, you mentioned lepers.’
‘Leopards?’
‘LEPERS.’
I could see Manya in the kitchen window. ‘WHAT?’ she shouted.
‘NOTHING.’ I said, waving to her.
‘Lepers,’ Igor said.
‘Yes.’
‘Mr Browne was looking for the pictures of the lepers.’
‘That’s right. That’s what you said.’
‘The man with the shovel, who I thought was you, he too I think looks for the pictures of the lepers.’
‘Igor, what did you mean by the lepers?’
‘They the ones at Peel Island.’
‘Peel Island?’
‘They had the lepers on that island. EE-arn, he was fascinated with the lepers. For EE-arn, he was like the leper. And those other lepers on the island, they were like the brothers and sisters of EE-arn. He say that. Igor, he say, the lepers is my family. They my only family, Igor, except you and Manya.’
When was this, Igor?’
‘Not long after he come here, you know. In fifties. He learn about the lepers. He build a raft from drums and wood on the beach. Manya give him sheet for the sail. I say, EE-arn, that raft, she won’t make out of the passage. He say, Igor, I sail to the lepers, my brothers and sisters. He go make pictures of them. He say God is with the lepers, and he want to go paint God. Ha! Poor EE-arn.’
I had never read of any paintings of the lepers of Peel Island by Ian Fairweather. I had never seen any. I had never come across any type of reference to them whatsoever. My cunning little mind told me that an unknown and unseen series of paintings of God and his children by Fairweather might be very valuable indeed.
‘He say, no use to stop me, EE-arn, I go,’ Igor said. He had dabbed his eyes with the handkerchief again. I didn’t know if he was laughing or crying. ‘Then he vanish, whoof, for two week, and when he come back I say, where you been, EE-arn, you find God? And he say even better, he find a girlfriend on Peel Island.’
‘A girlfriend?’
‘I say, good on you EE-arn, but I know it not true. I know EE-arn was like the Mr Browne. He the type I saw in the Russian navy. He never tell me. I just know, you know?’
‘I know.’
‘But I see her picture. He did picture of his girlfriend. Her name Rosemary. I seen it. Then he never talk about her again.’
It was getting hot under the frangipani tree. Igor stared silently into a mass of rotting white and yellow flowers.
I swallowed with a dry throat. My head throbbed.
It looked like I was heading to Peel Island in search of God.
~ * ~
10
‘YOU GOT A bit of mail.’
I returned to the van park at Main Beach with, I might say, a measure of relief. Verne the proprietor had displayed two substantial bundles of letters and packages on the front counter.