‘You wouldn’t care to umpire the game?’ I said.
Walking up Collins Street to a tramstop, a cab pulled in ahead of me to discharge a passenger. A business lunch, I thought. Transport to and from would be billable.
‘Smith Street, Collingwood,’ I said to the driver, whose hairs were arranged across his scalp like swimming lanes. He was writing something on a pad. ‘Know where that is?’ I said, gently.
‘Think I’m off the fuckin boat, mate?’
‘I assume nothing,’ I said.
‘Fuckin Smith Street,’ he said. ‘Talkin to an Abbotsford boy, mate. Born and bred.’
‘Good,’ I said. ‘So you’ll have a rough idea.’
The driver sulked until the Spring Street lights, when he said, ‘So. What’s your team?’
‘Saints,’ I said.
‘You poor cunt,’ he said, immensely cheered. ‘Still, Carlton on Satdee, even your girls got a chance. Poofs Carlton.’
‘Carlton,’ I said. ‘Possibly.’
I passed the leaden afternoon in paperwork, attending to legal matters, writing letters of inquiry and impotent threat, itemising bills for small services performed. In the dusk, the air cold and damp, I walked to the post office, a place now without a hint of gravitas, and consigned my missives to the steel bin, no doubt the only lawyer in the country who posted his own letters.
On the way back, I passed a woman retching dryly, and, in the alley, two boys grabbing and snarling, both pale and pinched, chapped lips and flaking skin, noses leaking.
It was after eight, I was home, behind the label of the Maglieri, deep in a melancholy reverie, not listening to Abdullah Ibrahim, once Dollar Brand, when the bell rang. I went down the narrow and dangerous staircase, more perilous now, and opened the door with caution.
A big man in dirty jeans and T-shirt, no hair to speak of, a beard or a painful shave coming on.
‘G’day, mate,’ he said.
‘Len,’ I said. We shook hands. I always expected to come away with splinters in my fingers.
‘Time again,’ he said. ‘Christ knows why you buggers need fires.’
Melbourne cold was a joke to Len. He was from beyond Avoca, Melbourne was like Bali to people from beyond Avoca.
The old Ford truck was backed in, wheels against the kerb, ready to unload the last two cubes of redgum, dry, split small. It came in autumn and in mid-winter, heavily discounted courtesy of a horse owner for whom Harry Strang had managed a sizeable coup.
I sat on the stairs and watched Len and his offsider, a silent ginger youth, unload and stack in the recess beneath me. We talked football. There was no point in trying to help. These were pros, you got in their way. When they were finished, Len said, ‘The boss says thirty bucks will be fine.’
Money paid, thanks said, hands shaken, I was halfway up the stairs when the phone began to ring. I made haste.
‘A shortness of breath?’ said Drew. ‘Is this a bad time? Or is awkward the word?’
‘Just getting wood,’ I said. ‘Downstairs.’
‘My instinct confirmed. I’ll be brief. The party’s father wants words, contacted me directly. From my position, that’s… what is the word?’
‘Awkward,’ I said.
‘Exactly. Ever the slotter of the black ball. I’d prefer to take instructions from the client. Perhaps my associate could call on him.’
‘In the billable universe, anything is possible,’ I said. ‘Is this part of my Cyril employment?’
‘It is. There’s no reason to speak of that to the client. Ten tomorrow at the Macedon estate?’
I thought of humming up the Calder Highway in the Alfa. Perhaps the day would be sunny. ‘Directions? Or will any forelock-tugging rustic in the vicinity be able to direct me?’
I went back to the kitchen. More wine needed. What to eat was also a question becoming urgent. Left over was a complete sausage and another biggish bit, just under half. Also a lot of mustard mash. How can you eat the same food two nights running? I tried a spoonful of the mash. How can you not?
I put the mash on to warm up, plus a bit of milk, sliced the cold sausage into thick coins and added them. Peas wouldn’t hurt. I microwaved the last of the tiny frozen peas with some butter, leant against the sink, rolling the Maglieri in the mouth. A balanced meal coming up, all major food groups represented: the dead animal group, the lumpish underground vegetable group, the things hiding in pods group, pungent seeds group, fat cows group. Preceded and accompanied by the fermented grapes group.
I ate while watching television and reading the Age. The eating was the best part. Bed and book. To hell with Istanbul and knowing too much, I attempted something else, bought on the title, Greek Kissing. It was about two English families holidaying together on the island of Leros. An Australian artist was introduced at the end of the first chapter. Soon after, I slipped back into my gloomy trance, sightless eyes on the ceiling, endless running of negative thoughts, just registering the sound of the city, a low wet thunder spiked with shriek and squeal and shot and slam.
11
Sir Colin Longmore came out of the rose garden, tall and gaunt, big-nosed, like General de Gaulle in stooped old age at Colombey-les-deux-Eglises. A dog, a spaniel, sagging like a sofa, followed.
‘Jack Irish,’ I said.
He walked across the terrace, pulling off a gardening glove finger by finger, and put out a hand.
‘Longmore,’ he said. ‘Good of you to come.’
‘My pleasure.’ I said. His hand felt more like that of a brickie than of the man who owned the brickworks, passed down the generations from Ronald Calway Longmore, mine-owner, grazier, land speculator, founder of Longmore Brick and Tile, whose products built a lot of nineteenth-century Melbourne.
‘Irish,’ he said. ‘Not a name you hear a lot. Had an Irish work here before the war.’
I felt a stiffening in the neck and shoulders, deliberately turned to look at the massive house with its turreted roofs, gables and battlements, mullioned windows, rusticated brickwork and stone quoins. ‘I imagine you had most of Melbourne work here at one time or another,’ I said.
He studied me, old bird eyes under sloping grey thatch, he’d taken my meaning. ‘I’ll show you,’ he said.
I followed him across the rose-brick terrace, down three steps and through an archway of entwined creepers. A gravel path at least a hundred and fifty metres long stretched out between close-planted poplars, yellow leaves hanging on. The eye went to the end, to a stone archway with two iron gates.
We walked side by side, crunching the gravel. His brogues needed polishing, they were cracked over the little toes.
‘I remember these poplars going in,’ he said. ‘We grew them in the tree nursery. We had that then. Associate. What’s that mean?’
It took a second to adjust. ‘I used to be Andrew Greer’s partner. Now we sometimes work together.’
Longmore didn’t respond, a raised eyebrow. I offered nothing.
‘What’s your role in this?’ he said.
‘To help prepare Sarah’s defence.’
‘Defence? Had the gun, she tells me.’
‘Gave it back, I understand.’
He sniffed. ‘Defence’ll need a QC. Team of QCs.’
‘Andrew impressed that upon her. She doesn’t want one.’
Behind us, the spaniel farted, a drawn-out emission.
‘Fire in your own time,’ said Longmore.
We walked.
‘Bad business,’ he said.
‘Yes.’
The poplars’ branches were woven. We were in a sky-roofed tunnel. Colin Longmore stopped. I stopped. He dipped into his jerkin pocket, came out with a stubby pipe, a short-stemmed piece of plumbing for burning tobacco outdoors, a decent hat brim would shelter it from the rain.
I couldn’t remember when last I’d seen anyone smoke a pipe.
Longmore found a lighter, a Dunhill, flared on the sides like a Chevrolet of the 1950s, an item from the golden age of smoking. The lighter flamed. He applied the flame to the bowl, sucking like a calf on a teat.