Dead Point

10

There was a moment of non-recognition, then the old woman said, ‘Mr Irish, yeah, wait on.’

I heard the boards complain as she went back down the passage. Through the crack in the door came a smell of cat pee, pine-scented disinfectant, paint and food cooked to disintegration.

The old planks signalled Mrs Nugent’s return. She opened the door, revealing that she was wearing a yellow plastic raincoat. ‘Paintin,’ she said. ‘The kitchen. Here.’ She offered me a suitcase. ‘Good clothes, mind you give em to the boy’s rellies.’

‘Have no fear,’ I said. ‘It was the landlord, was it?’

I’d left my card with Robbie Colburne’s neighbour and she’d been on the answering machine when I got back from The Green Hill.

‘Yeah. Come round yesterdee. Give me $20 to clean up the place. Take anythin I liked, give the rest to the Salvos, throw it away.’ She hesitated. ‘Money’s money.’ A further hesitation. ‘The towels and that, the kitchen stuff. Kept that.’

‘Right thing to do,’ I said. ‘Didn’t find anything with an address on it? Letter, anything?’

She shook her head. ‘Them others coulda taken anythin like that.’

‘Others? Police?’

‘Police? Yeah, spose. Who else? Young blokes.’

‘Not in uniform?’

Mrs Nugent looked at me with fowl eyes. ‘Been in uniform I wouldn’t have to bloody spose, would I? Haven’t gone that stupid.’

‘No. Sorry. They take anything away?’

‘Dunno.’

I got out my wallet. She held up a hand, palm outwards.

‘Don’t want no money. Just give the suitcase to the family. Tell em the neighbour says he was a nice young bloke. Had manners. Musta bin brought up right. Only saw him the coupla times in the beginnin, don’t know he actually lived here.’

‘I’ll tell them,’ I said. ‘Thank you, Mrs Nugent.’

‘And tell em I’m sorry.’

I was at the stairs, carrying the soft-sided black nylon suitcase, when the thought came to me. Mrs Nugent opened the door as if she’d been standing just inside it.

‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘His car. Is it still in the garage?’

‘Nah. Someone come and took it. Old Percy downstairs seen him.’

Percy wasn’t at home. I drove the short distance from Abbotsford to my office in Carrigan’s Lane. The greening brass plate said: John Irish, Barrister amp; Solicitor. As I put the suitcase on the old tailor’s worktable that served as my desk, the feeling of guilt that had been with me for a while stabbed me. I should not have taken it from Mrs Nugent. I did not represent Robbie’s family. I was just sniffing around for Cyril Wootton, and was being paid by someone who was probably not being entirely candid.

Take it back? And confess what? No. As for the client, who was I to worry? I was no stranger to economy in truth, economy and selectivity.

I opened the suitcase.

Robbie Colburne travelled light: leather toilet bag, two pairs of black trousers, a pair of chinos, three black tee-shirts, three white shirts, a black jacket, a tweed jacket, a black leather jacket, a nylon wind-breaker, an expensive-feeling woollen jumper, a pair of shiny black shoes, a pair of runners, old running shorts, a washed-out grey tee-shirt, black socks, underpants. And, on a wooden coathanger, a dinner suit, dress shirt, and black bow tie.

Nothing in the suitcase pockets. I looked at the shirts. Nice, superfine cotton by the feel, no labels. I picked up the black jacket, stroked it. It was light and soft — wool and cashmere, perhaps, no label. The tweed jacket was newish, beautifully cut. No label.

I opened the single-breasted dinner jacket. A product of Canali of Italy. A small label on the inside pocket said Charles Stuart. I knew Charles Stuart, they were men’s outfitters in William Street in the city, men’s outfitters to the big end of town. If you didn’t fit that demographic, crossing the threshold of Charles Stuart’s was a post-death experience: a buffed-up person wearing three grand’s worth of the shop’s stock examined you from top to toe, weighed up your clothing and footwear history, registered all your sartorial sins, made a judgment, came closer and said, lips like a cash-machine slot, ‘May I help you, sir?’

I examined the shoes: Italian. I unzipped the toilet bag. It held a silver razor in a slim stainless-steel case, a bottle of Neal’s Yard shaving oil, French deodorant, a toothbrush, French toothpaste, nail clippers, a Bakelite comb. I opened the shaving oil and sniffed. An expensive smell, clean. I inspected the toothpaste, squeezed some onto a fingertip, held it to my nose. Lavender.

Robbie Colburne might have been living in a one-bedroom flat in a low-rent block and working as a casual barman but his effects all shouted money and style.

That observation didn’t advance things much. I repacked the suitcase, feeling the outside of pockets as I went. The dinner suit was last. I ran my hand over the jacket’s outside pockets, felt something at the left hip. I lifted the flap, tried to insert cautious fingers, couldn’t. It was a dummy pocket. Of course. What tailor would allow the line of a dinner jacket to be spoiled by something stuffed into a hip pocket?

Through the cloth, I felt the object again. Something the length of a pen cap, flat, no thicker than a stick of chewing gum. I opened the jacket and found the small inside pocket, a sturdy pocket designed to hold a single key, extracted the object. It was a plastic stick, dark-blue, a recessed button on one side, a hole in the front. I pressed the button. A red light glowed in the hole for a second or two. I did it again. The light went off even when the button remained depressed.

Today’s mystery object. Nothing to identify it, say what it was for.

I put the device in my wallet, zipped the suitcase, put it in the small back room, sat at my table and eyed the unopened mail. Once letters held promise. Now I couldn’t think of anyone who’d write an undemanding letter to me, pen your actual personal letter, fingers holding a writing instrument, hand touching paper. I thought about letters I’d read by fast-dying light, sniffed, imagined I’d caught a scent, held up, looked for a touch of sweat or the smear of a tear. Even, hoping against hope, the ghostly imprint of a kiss, just a touch of lips, leaving a mark.

Just a touch of lips. Lips left their mark, they all did, like branding irons, you felt them forever.

There was nothing left that I had to do or wanted to do. Midday Saturday. Once it had been the peak of the week. I went to the window and looked at the street. Rain on the tarmac, oilslick-shiny pools in the bluestone gutters. Across the way, outside the clothing factory, a man in a four-wheel drive had tried to shoot me one night.

The phone rang.

‘Jack Irish.’

A sigh. ‘Tried the boot factory, the furniture place, the mobile. Then I found this other number with Jack written next to it.’

Lyall. The dry, precise voice made the room seem brighter; no, the clouds must have thinned.

‘I don’t think we’ve ever conversed at my professional premises,’ I said. ‘Do you wish to consult me professionally?’

‘I’m in Santa Barbara,’ she said.

‘Santa Barbara. What kind of trouble have they got there?’

‘Understanding a sentence that doesn’t mention Steven Spielberg or money. The ones I’ve met, anyway. I’m staying with Bradley.’

Staying with Bradley was fine from my point of view. Bradley was a former housemate of Lyall’s, a film director. That wasn’t what made him fine from my point of view. What made him fine was that he was gay.

‘Extend my regards.’

‘Brad’s come out of the closet,’ she said, voice low, serious.

‘How many times can you do that?’

‘It turns out,’ she said, ‘he’s not gay.’

‘They’ve done tests?’

She laughed. I’d been taken with her laugh from the outset, but it wasn’t that laugh now. It was her laugh with something subtracted.

‘He says he’s never been gay, he’s not even bi. He’s been celibate for twelve years. I just assumed that because he didn’t want to screw me or any other woman he was gay.’

‘Not an unreasonable assumption,’ I said. I still remembered her exact words on that wintry night when we were still near-strangers.

I was in love with him for years. Never mentioned it. No point. He’s gay. Huge loss to womankind.

I felt the weight of realisation, of knowing, on my shoulders, a dead weight, a bag of lead sinkers. A silence ensued.

‘Jack.’

‘Yes.’ I could hear the soundless sound of her gathering courage.

‘I’m attached, no, I’m in love with both of you. It’s very difficult.’

‘Torn between two lovers, acting like a fool,’ I said. ‘The old song. Or is it feeling like a fool? I’ve got something on the stove.’ There are times when you will say anything.

‘Jack.’

‘Yes.’

‘Don’t dump me so quickly. This isn’t easy. I’ve agonised over this.’

I said, without thought, ‘Lyall, you’re in Santa Barbie Doll or wherever and you’re fucking Bradley, he’s first-up from a spell, and you’d like to tell me about that and how difficult it is for you. Consider me told.’

Silence. Not even a hum from the copper wire that lay down there in the deep Pacific blackness consorting with the bottom-crawling sea life.

‘Told,’ she said. Click.

I sat there for a while, thinking that I needed a drink, needing a drink. Then I talked to myself for a while, recited the mantra about the black tunnel, and went home. There were things to do. It was time to clear the decks, to confront places long avoided. I cleaned the apartment from beginning to end, a ferocious attack on dirt in which I dusted pelmets and picture rails and skirting boards, washed floors, vacuumed carpets, defrosted the freezer, scrubbed the refrigerator, the stovetop, the oven. Then I turned on my grocery cupboard, threw out ancient spices, old flour, rusted cans of food I couldn’t remember buying. Next, I laid into my clothes. Frayed shirts, unloved shirts, shapeless underwear, two old sweaters, lonely socks, a dark suit turning green, a jacket I’d never liked — they all went into a garbage bag and thence to the boot of the Stud. The Salvos could turn them into usable fibres. Then I stuffed two laundry bags with soiled clothes and sheets and table napkins and towels and delivered them into the cleansing hands of the Brunswick Street laundry. Next stop, King amp; Godfree in Lygon Street, where I bought exotic food and drink without regard for my penury.

At home, at the top of the stairs, a bag in each hand, the manic energy suddenly left me. I steeled myself for one final effort: pour cider over pork sausages in pot, put in oven. Halve tomatoes, quarter potatoes, put on tray, pour on olive oil, put in oven under sausages. Set oven on low. Open bottle of Carlsberg, lie on sofa, read the Age. Later on, I ate, drank a bottle of Cotes du Rhone grenache, watched the Saints get thrashed by West Coast, didn’t care, a lot, wanted the phone to ring so much that it felt like a bodily ache.

In bed, I resisted the urge to burrow beneath the pillows and breathe carbon dioxide. I read my book. There should be a set number of endings in each life. No-one should have more. Experts could decide how many and enshrine that in the Charter of Human Rights.

But it would be too late for me.