Dead Point

34

In the morning, I was at the door, ready to hip-and-shoulder the day, when the phone rang.

‘I find you decent?’

Linda.

‘I find you jolly nice too,’ I said, ‘but I’d like to be seen as, well, more raffish than decent. Can you do that?’

‘Work needed on my interrogative inflection. No wonder I’m having so much trouble with interviews.’

We met at a place in Rathdowne Street north. Once, this end of Rathdowne Street boasted only the best pizzas in town and Frank and Maria’s coffee shop, the best-loved coffee shop in town. I hadn’t tried the pizzas in a while but Frank and Maria’s was gone and now there was an eating strip two blocks long.

‘Toast,’ said Linda after we’d ordered. ‘Toast is with breakfast. Toast is part of breakfast. Toast is not of itself breakfast. Are you in love?’

I’d forgotten how the morning suited her.

‘I didn’t want to say I’d had my breakfast.’

‘What was it?’

‘Porridge, scrambled eggs and a piece of steak. Sausage or two. Three, actually. Bit of bacon.’

‘Right,’ she said. ‘Mouldy muesli with curdling milk.’

‘Yes, I am in love,’ I said. ‘I feel you understand me.’

She gave me several bits of bacon and half a grilled Roma tomato. We were on the coffee when she said, ‘Jamie Toxteth. You were asking about him.’

It took a moment to summon up Jamie Toxteth. ‘The polo player.’

The unknown woman in the surveillance clip waiting for Robbie/Marco was in a car owned by a Jamie Toxteth company.

‘I was talking to someone in Sydney and I remembered your question.’ She drank coffee. ‘She said Susan Ayliss worked for Jamie and this Blackiston person before she became a media talent.’

Susan Ayliss had for a time been television’s favourite economics commentator, a Canberra academic who made Treasury notes sound like love letters. She had long blonde hair and a slightly pointy nose, and when she looked over her rimless glasses you wanted to be in her tutorial and you wanted to be the one who said something intelligent.

‘What became of the perfect creature?’

‘She’s an eco-consultant, she reinvented herself, did another degree. Became the squeakiest and cleanest consultant in the known universe, the flying darling of eco-consultancy. Whatever the fuck that is.’

‘Flying?’

‘She flies her own plane. Like Amelia Earwig. Sees the world from a great height. And won’t be interviewed because it could compromise her. The woman is beyond publicity. Beyond fucking belief, in fact.’

‘I forget why we’re talking about her.’

‘Before her career change, she had an affair with Jamie. More than an affair. She got divorced. Jamie left his wife, some even richer snorting-nostrilled horse-mounter no doubt. They lived together but in the end Jamie would not actually cut the painter.’

She’d lost me. I didn’t care much about the affairs of Sydney people. ‘Not since Van Gogh has a painter been properly cut,’ I said. ‘Why are you telling me this?’

Linda ignored the question, put marmalade on her last quarter of toast. ‘Apparently a poisonous breakup. Susan had become a partner in the firm, she was the one bringing in all the business, and she had to be bought out. My friend says Susie’s lawyer nailed Jamie.’

‘That’s interesting. I’m glad I know that. I’ve always felt there was something missing in my global picture.’

She smiled at me. ‘Including a new car every three years for a good while.’

She bit off a piece of toast. I watched her chewing. I’d always admired her eating. She was a very neat eater, no teeth showed, no crumb stuck or fell.

‘Susan Ayliss’s got long hair,’ I said.

‘So?’

‘The woman driving the car’s got short hair.’

‘When last did you see Ms Ayliss?’

‘Few years ago. Well, five or six, could be more. Ten.’

Linda put her head on one side and looked at me.

‘Okay,’ I said. ‘It’s early.’

‘She was on the Cannon Ridge tender panel,’ said Linda. ‘I can’t remember why you were interested in the car?’

‘It appears in a video. Probably by accident. Why was she on the panel?’

‘I’m told the last Premier got prickly feelings around her.’

‘If that was the only qualification, panel meetings would have been at the Melbourne Cricket Ground.’

‘She’s also Ms Integrity.’

‘Integrity plus the pricklies, now that’s an unbeatable combo. I’ve got to go. I work in the hours of daylight.’

She leaned forward. ‘I sense,’ she said, ‘that you’re withholding. You’ll tell me if you chance upon anything of broadcast quality?’

‘With what inducement?’

Under the tablecloth, a hand was on my thigh. ‘I have inducements to offer.’

‘I’m not sure I fully grasp what you mean,’ I said.

Her hand moved upwards. The long fingers came into play. I could feel my blood rushing downhill, upper body going pale.

‘Grasp?’ she said. ‘I could fully grasp you right here.’

I looked at her. Her face was impassive, head cocked as if listening to distant sounds. She wasn’t wearing lipstick.

‘This hasn’t happened to me in public for, ah, fifteen years,’ I said.

‘Is it like Kennedy’s death?’ she said. ‘A whole generation of people know exactly where they were when they heard about it?’ She was scratching me, an unbearably erotic feeling.

‘It was in a train just outside Birmingham in England. Snow on the ground. Getting dark. I was eating a British Rail sausage roll.’

‘Who was the grasper?’

‘Let’s see now. I think it was someone I knew…’

She removed her hand. ‘That’s probably the way I’ll survive in memory. Just another hand. Oh well, off you go.’

Deep in thought, I drove to Fitzroy.

Finding a phone number for Susan Ayliss wasn’t easy. I rang Simone Bendsten. She was back in five minutes.

‘Her company’s called Ecomenical. She gave a paper at a conference in Canberra last year. Here’s the number.’

I rang it. The brisk and pleasant reception person wanted my name and my company and the nature of my business. ‘Tell Dr Ayliss my business is Robbie,’ I said. ‘I’ll spell that for you. R-O-B-B-I-E.’