Dead Point

31

Alan Bergh had also made five calls to a mobile registered to a Kirstin Deane, whose work address was a women’s clothing shop called Anouk in Greville Street, Prahran.

The narrow street was busy, a fashionable crowd on this side of the river, blonded women everywhere, tanned and tucked, fat sucked away and burnt off, eyeing themselves in shop windows, looking at younger specimens with hatred. I lucked on a park in Anouk’s block, slid the old Stud in between an Audi and a Mercedes four-wheel drive.

Anouk’s was not overstocked with merchandise. The window display was one dress, a mere twirl of fabric, barely enough to clothe six foot of lamp pole. Inside, two more garments were on display, a cloak-like creation of black velvet, and something that resembled a silk apron. Surely this could only be worn over clothing or in the privacy of the home? Against the left-hand wall, box shelves each held one item, shirts perhaps or cashmere sweaters.

A young woman was on the telephone, seated behind a minimalist counter, no more than three pieces of thick plexiglass on which stood several electronic devices. She was mostly leg, skeletal, high cheekbones, much forehead under much hair, and her eyes and eyebrows and mouth were works of art.

I waited. Her eyes were fixed on a mirror across the room and never moved in my direction. She was talking without pause in a flat, grating monotone, words seemingly joined and undecipherable. After a while, I got between her and the mirror, blocked her view of herself.

Then she looked at me. She said a few words to the phone and put it down.

‘Help you,’ she said, not a question.

‘I’m looking for Kirstin Deane.’

‘Yeah.’

She knew I wasn’t in the market for a silk apron or anything else she was selling. This was not going to be easy.

‘It’s about someone you know. Alan Bergh.’

Silence. She looked at the street.

‘Alan Bergh. You know him.’

Her head jerked back. ‘I don’t know him.’

‘He’s dead,’ I said. ‘Shot dead. In a carpark. Know that?’

Kirstin frowned, pulled her eyebrow creations together, a little untidiness of skin appearing between them, an imperfection on a face as tight as a kite in a high wind.

‘I’ve had it with you lot,’ she said.

‘He phoned you often,’ I said. ‘Your dead friend Alan.’

She took a deep breath, she still had lung capacity, her emaciated upper body expanded, she opened her mouth and breathed out like a steam train.

‘Not my fucking friend,’ she said, some life in the voice now. ‘I said I don’t know who the fuck Alan is. I’m the messenger girl. And I don’t wanna know any more of this cop shit, right? Right? I’m finished with Mick, wish I’d never seen the prick in my life and I’ll kill him if he ever-’

I held up my right hand. ‘Settle down.’

Kirstin’s eyes vanished, became slits. ‘Don’t you fucking tell me to settle down, I’ll-’

‘Taking messages can get you into deep trouble,’ I said, now a kite myself, out on the winds. ‘When someone says he doesn’t know about the messages, never got a message from you, you’re in trouble. Who’d you give the messages to, Kirstin?’

She closed her eyes, punched the plastic counter top repeatedly with both long-fingered fists, symbolically beating someone. ‘Tell Olsen I’ll kill him. He’s not landing me with his shit. You people, you call yourselves ethics squad or fucking whatever, you’re trying to cover something up for the cunt, aren’t you. Well, forget that, detective whatever the fuck you are. Whofuckingever. Piss off.’

I did, left without a murmur, like a poor person given too much money by a bank machine.

A name. Mick Olsen. A cop called Mick Olsen.

Alan Bergh left messages for Mick Olsen with the engaging Kirstin Deane, super-salesperson. Who thought I was from ethical standards or whatever name it now had, the old police internal affairs section, the dog investigating its own balls someone once said of it, unkindly.

I would have to ask Senior Sergeant Barry Tregear about Mick Olsen.