Dead Point

35

I was early and had no trouble finding parking near the Albert Park Yachting amp; Angling Club. A cold day, the palms shaking in the wind.

She was early too. A new VW Passat, a trim and potent-looking machine in a Wehrmacht shade of grey, nosed into a space. A woman got out, dark glasses, headscarf. I watched her walk towards the pier, hands in the high pockets of her trench coat.

I sat for a while. Two hardy skateboarders came by, followed by a group of four fit-looking runners, women. I got out and went for a short walk along the esplanade, came back and went out on the pier.

She was looking my way, kept her eyes on me as I approached.

‘Mr Irish?’

‘Yes.’

‘What do you want?’ she asked.

‘I’d like to ask you about Robbie.’

She made an impatient head movement, the kind of dismissive oh-fuck-off-you-idiot gesture that features in Learn Body Language For Success videos.

‘Spit it out,’ she said. ‘It’s cold here.’

‘Your choice of venue.’

‘I say again, Mr Irish, what do you want?’

‘You knew Robbie Colburne?’

‘What do you want?’

‘You know he’s dead?’

‘What do you want?’

‘You picked him up in your car one evening.’

An exasperated expulsion of air. ‘What is this? Can I ask again, for the last time, what do you want?’

‘Nothing. Robbie stole something from someone. The owner’s disappointed, saddened.’

She fiddled with the scarf, some loss of composure evident.

‘What makes you think I picked him up?’

Spots of rain on the pier, felt on my face.

‘Someone saw you. That’s not important.’

‘Who are you?’

‘I’m a lawyer acting for the victim.’

She sighed. ‘I feel like an absolute prick,’ she said. ‘No, let me rephrase that before the actress and the bishop are invoked.’

‘I could say that never occurred to me.’

She smiled and looked around, took off the dark glasses and the scarf. Her eyes were grey. Susan Ayliss, once the thinking person’s academic pin-up, now wore her hair short at the sides and longer on top and she had lines around her mouth and eyes but she could have stepped straight back into that role.

‘Christ, I hate scarves,’ she said. ‘I was once taken at gunpoint to a polo match, and there were all these ghastly nasal women wearing headscarves, like some cult.’

‘I blame the Queen,’ I said.

‘Damn right,’ said Susan Ayliss. ‘Well, what do you want to know?’

I couldn’t read anything in her eyes. She was here because I’d said Robbie’s name. Dead Robbie who was Marco, who was not an easy person to understand.

‘I hoped you could tell me something about Robbie.’

She turned, put her hands on the railing, no rings, clasped them. ‘I know almost nothing about him.’

I leaned on the railing, looked at the view: dishwater sea, seething. In the distance, specks of gulls floated around the Tasmania ferry at Station Pier. ‘Robbie Colburne isn’t his real name. You know that, of course.’

‘No.’ Quick.

I kept my eyes away, looked at the ribbed beach.

Two people had appeared on it, a short and a tall, walking close together, heads down like beachcombers. Not quite Gauguin country, Kerferd Road, unless you treasured used Chinese condoms and spent syringes.

‘There’s only one Robert Colburne on record, but it isn’t the dead man.’

‘I’m sorry, I-’

‘The person in question lifted the identity of Robert Colburne.’

I looked at her. She had a wary expression, as if I had more surprises in store. ‘So, who is the person?’

‘Marco Lucia is his name.’

Silence, our eyes locked. She looked away. I kept looking.

‘Ms Ayliss,’ I said, ‘Robbie was a blackmailer or he worked for blackmailers. Did you know that?’

Horn player’s lines around her mouth, an intake of air. ‘Yes.’

‘You’re right, it is cold out here. My car or yours?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘I’m happier here.’

‘Will you tell me how you know he’s a blackmailer?’

‘I had an affair with him,’ she said. ‘No, that’s nonsense. I had sex with him. On several occasions.’

‘And?’

She moved her mouth, another sigh, deeper. ‘There was a video.’

It was getting colder, the sky changing colour like a quick-developing bruise.

‘Made with your consent?’

‘Consent? Well, I didn’t object. Not strenuously anyway. Coming after some bottles of Dom.’ Pause. ‘Are you shocked?’

I looked at her. The wind and the cold had tightened her skin, put colour in her cheeks. She looked a good ten years younger.

‘No,’ I said. ‘Shock went by some time ago. Passed in the night. So you made a video.’

She didn’t answer quickly. ‘It seemed like harmless fun at the time. Do you know that I was on the Cannon Ridge tender panel?’

‘Yes. How did you meet Robbie?’

She raised her hands, long fingers, I hadn’t noticed. ‘Don’t laugh. At the supermarket. I go to the same one almost every night. I’m always late at the office, never anything in the fridge at home. He bumped into me one night. Then I saw him again a day or two later and we said hello and he said something funny. I saw him again another night, we had a few words and he invited me for a drink.’

‘It didn’t strike you as more than coincidence?’

‘No. You go to the same place, you see the same people. And Robbie’s got…Robbie had a casual way. Quick and funny, nothing threatening about him. He was also very good looking and he didn’t seem to be aware of it.’ She looked at me, looked away. ‘And I was lonely, Mr Irish. I work all day and then I go home to nothing.’

It hadn’t occurred to me that people like Susan Ayliss also knew about loneliness.

‘Did he tell you he worked part-time at The Green Hill?’

‘Yes. He said he was trying to write a novel, took any job going.’

Silence. I watched the pair inspecting the beach. From time to time, the smaller one would stoop to look at something. Look but not touch. Sensible.

Susan Ayliss put her hands to her ears, rubbed them gently. Her nose wasn’t quite as pointy as I remembered. ‘Anyway,’ she said, ‘we ended up at my place and had sex. I hadn’t actually had sex like that before. The men of my acquaintance had not prepared me for the experience.’

My thoughts went to Milan Filipovic. I’d asked him what kind of work Marco did.

Marco’s all cock. Work it out.

‘How was the video made?’

She looked at me, startled. ‘By Robbie. Christ, it wasn’t a film set.’

‘On the first night?’

‘Certainly not. I was sober. The third time. He had a tiny camera, a digital thing, you could watch it on a monitor. That’s about all there was in this huge apartment. That and the bed.’

In some circumstances, people tell you more than they need to.

‘You watched it on a monitor?’

‘Yes. Are you enjoying this?’

‘And this was where?’

‘At a friend’s place.’

‘Your friend’s apartment?’

‘No, a friend of his.’

I thought about the surveillance video, the shot of Robbie going into a building.

‘Cathexis,’ I said.

She was looking away and she jerked her head at me. ‘I don’t know. I wasn’t paying attention at that stage.’

‘Who’s the friend?’

‘No idea.’

‘And the blackmail came when?’

Susan tilted her head, smiled a smile with no life in it. ‘A man came to my office. He said he had a business proposition. I knew what was coming and I told him to get out. He said wait and he dialled a number on his mobile, said someone wanted to talk to me. It was Robbie. He said he was watching the video.’ She was looking down at the rail, shaking her head. ‘Shit,’ she said. ‘Talking about it makes me feel sick.’

‘I can understand that. What else did Robbie say?’

‘Nothing. I didn’t give him a chance. I gave the man the phone back and I said they could give the film to every television station and newspaper in the country, I did not give a damn.’

‘That was brave.’

‘Brave?’

‘You were taking a big risk.’

She shrugged. ‘They just picked the wrong person. A film of Susan Ayliss having sex? I don’t have family to worry about. All I’ve got is my professional reputation. Show it. It might improve my social life.’

She was a brave person.

‘When the man talked about a business proposition,’ I said, ‘what did you assume?’

‘The Cannon Ridge tender. I wasn’t doing anything else worth blackmailing me for.’

‘Did the man say which side sent him?’

‘No.’

‘What did you think?’

‘WRG.’

‘Why?’

‘He asked me if I’d had an offer from Anaxan.’

‘Did you tell the panel?’

‘No. I’m only stupid once. I hadn’t been blackmailed, Cannon Ridge hadn’t actually been mentioned.’

‘Splitting hairs though.’

Susan Ayliss gave me a look that said something I didn’t quite understand. ‘Mr Irish, in my life, I’ve worked very hard for everything. I grew up in foster homes. Fought off men since I was ten, put myself through university cleaning toilets. I can’t be blackmailed. But I wasn’t going to cut my own throat.’

I found my picture of Alan Bergh. ‘Is this the man?’

No hesitation. ‘Yes. Who is he?’

‘Alan Bergh. The late.’

She sighed and looked away.

‘Robbie had a relationship with a man,’ I said. ‘Does that surprise you?’

‘Well,’ she said, ‘he said he took any work that was going.’

‘There’s an album of photographs missing.’

‘I think we’re talking about sex again, not a relationship.’

‘Yes. We think the album was passed on to someone. Any idea who that might be?’

A shake of her head. ‘No, no idea, not the vaguest.’

‘Robbie didn’t mention anyone.’

‘No. He didn’t talk about himself. One of the things I found attractive.’

Rain again, big spots freckling the pier, cold on the face.

‘Thanks for talking to me,’ I said. ‘Did his death surprise you?’

She looked away, at the sea. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It made me sad. I was hoping I’d have the chance to kill him myself for making me feel so defiled and so worthless.’

I watched her go, the wind pulling at her trench coat, lifting the shoulder flaps found so useful on the Somme those many years ago, now threatening to levitate Susan Ayliss. She turned her head and looked back, came back.

‘I’ve told you everything I can, Jack,’ she said. ‘Will you promise me it’ll remain confidential?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Susan.’

I liked her even more than I had when she’d been a media star.