He took the pipe out of his mouth and spat sideways, not successfully. He wiped a sleeve with the side of a hand. ‘It didn’t come to that. Things you can do.’
Twenty metres on, he said, ‘I married late, y’know. Well beyond forty when we had Sophie.’ Pause. ‘Seems young enough from here, though. Got any yourself?’
‘A daughter.’
‘Rather had a boy?’
I was unprepared. ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I don’t feel I’ve had anything. I didn’t bring her up. Her mother left me when she was tiny.’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I didn’t feel I’d had anything till their mother died. Always too busy. And she took care of everything. When I had to deal with them they were almost grown up. Then I wished they were boys.’
He blinked rapidly, seemed to be trying to expel something from his eyes. ‘Never was any good with girls,’ he said, ‘I suppose that’s why I married so late.’
‘Do your daughters depend on you for money?’
‘They didn’t for a while after their mother died. She had her own money and she left it to them. They spent it at speed, of course, both of them. Profligate is the term.’
We walked in silence, just the chewing sound of our feet on the gravel, the scrabbling noise of the dog behind us. Near the house, I said, ‘I’m told you’re on the list of creditors for the Seaton Square project.’
He didn’t reply, his eyes on the gravel. After a while, I tried again.
‘I heard you,’ he said. ‘The backers were calling in six mill. He was battling with objections, the usual mess. I said no but Sophie pestered me.’
‘How long ago was that?’
Longmore raised his eyebrows. ‘Three or four months, I suppose.’
We walked up the steps to the terrace. On the level, he stopped, gave me a quick look. ‘You’ve seen those metal things she makes?’
I nodded.
‘Clue to her mind there, don’t you think?’ he said. ‘To what’s wrong with her.’
‘Apart from the desirability of a QC, is there something else you’d like me to convey to Andrew Greer?’
He was patting the dog. ‘Get her to plead guilty to manslaughter. She’s not a murderer, she’s not well. She doesn’t remember these episodes. To this day she denies what she did to Gary Webber.’
The wind was moving the ivy on the facade, the red and yellow leaves trembling, the wall seemed to be alive.
‘I’ll pass that on,’ I said. ‘My understanding is that she won’t. I’d like to talk to Sophie. It’s important.’
‘I’ll tell her. She’s gone off somewhere.’
‘Thank you for showing me the building,’ I said.
Longmore nodded. ‘Anything to tell me, Greer’s got the number. No, you’ve got it, you rang. Or come out, I’m always here, pretty much. Redundant now.’
‘The stonemason,’ I said. ‘J. I. Irish. That’s my grandfather.’
As I said it, I felt that I should not have completed the circuit to join us across the years.
‘Yes,’ he said, not looking at me, no expression in his voice, ‘I knew that when I saw you.’
‘Well, goodbye,’ I said. We shook hands.
I was walking away when he said, ‘What school’d you go to, Jack?’
I turned, reluctant. ‘Melbourne Grammar,’ I said, resenting having to say it.
He was looking at the bowl of his pipe, raised his arm and wrist-flicked. A yellow stream of tobacco juice caught the light as it laid a stripe in front of the prone spaniel’s nose.
‘Happy there?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I don’t blame the school for that.’
‘Loathed it, myself,’ said Longmore. ‘Still, funny old world. Not as random as it seems, eh?’
I nodded, carried on down the path and I felt his eyes on me even after I’d turned the corner.
12
Steven Massiani was thin, ascetic-looking, premature lines bracketing his mouth, seated behind an almost bare desktop in a corner office on the sixteenth floor of the old Isaacs Building. He was on the telephone and he waved me to sit with a hand that would be of little use on a MassiBild building site.
It was a big room, big windows on two walls, panelled in wood painted a warm mustard colour. On the back wall were photographs of sod-turnings, deep pits, concrete pours, groups of men in hardhats celebrating tree-raisings on tower buildings. The right-hand wall held family photographs: weddings, a degree ceremony, parties, many photographs of a big, dark man with two boys, toddlers in some pictures, getting bigger. I could identify Steven Massiani, the smaller of the boys, always a serious face. His brother, David, was plump to begin with, a big open face. In the later pictures, he was his father’s height, the same jaw, the same eyes, the same stance.
Massiani said goodbye and put down the phone. ‘Mr Irish.’
We shook. ‘Thank you for seeing me,’ I said.
He opened his hands, made a small movement of his head, gestures that said: it costs me nothing to see you.
‘I like your office,’ I said.
‘It was my father’s,’ said Massiani. ‘I haven’t changed anything.’ He had a soft voice, a priest’s voice, a voice for the confessional. ‘It’ll always be his office, I’m afraid.’
‘I thought you’d be in one of the towers,’ I said. ‘High up.’
He shook his head. ‘This is the first building Dad owned. Bought in 1959. People always expected him to knock it down but he loved this building. All he did was fix it up and put in a new lift, that was just before he died. He liked fast lifts. It’s much too fast for the height.’
‘He didn’t change the name,’ I said. ‘Call it the Massiani Building.’
‘It’s the Isaacs Building while we own it. My dad said people who changed the names of buildings would also desecrate tombstones.’
‘Is there a Massiani Building?’
He smiled. ‘He didn’t like memorials. You wanted to talk about Mickey. We had very little to do with him after he left us.’
‘I’m just scratching around,’ I said. ‘Our problem is that Andrew Greer’s client didn’t kill Mickey, so we are forced to ask who did.’
‘Of course, that’s your job. He worked for the company for five or six years, we gave him opportunities. Then he left to follow his own course. My father encouraged him in that. Mickey wasn’t a corporate person. Do you know what I mean?’
‘I think I do.’
‘Yes. We invested in his early projects as a sign of support for him. He had no standing in the financial community.’
Massiani steepled his hands, pale fingers, small nails, nibbled at.
‘You have no investment in Seaton Square?’
‘No. We’ve learned our lesson in the suburbs.’
‘It seems to have been a disastrous exercise.’
He unsteepled, steepled again. ‘Scaled down, less ambitious, it may still be viable. Mickey was always shooting for the moon.’
‘Always?’
‘Well, he was an ambitious person.’
‘May I ask you a hypothetical question?’
A shake of the head. ‘About Mickey’s death, I’m not the person to ask, Mr Irish.’
‘It’s not about what you know,’ I said. ‘Before this, if someone suggested that Mickey was in danger, would you have guessed personal or business reasons?’
‘An impossible question,’ he said.
Behind his head, a helicopter appeared, a long way away, coming from the northwest, moving like a black insect crawling on dirty water. The windows were double-glazed, no sound reached us.
‘I understand he was a close friend of your brother,’ I said.
‘Close?’ A small frown. ‘I don’t know about close. They went to the races, the beach house, a drink after work, that kind of thing. It was before David was married.’ He scratched a cheek. ‘A long time ago.’
The small telephone on the desk buzzed. ‘Excuse me,’ he said. He picked it up. ‘Yes.’
He swivelled his chair. I looked at him in profile, a neat face.
‘Bruce,’ he said. ‘Thanks for calling. Yes. Sometime soon, can you do that? Monday would be excellent, fine. Yes, it is that matter. And there’s another small thing. Good. Yes. Wait to hear from you. Thank you, Bruce, I appreciate this.’