Shooting Star

30

Mr Pat Carson would like to see me if it was convenient, said the security man in the underground carpark, taking the Audi keys from my hand.

It was convenient.

‘Frank, get a drink,’ Pat said, a glass on the desk at his right hand, his knuckles touching it.

I poured a finger of the peaty liquid, dusted it with water, sat down opposite the old man. There was something about the room, the panelling, the armchairs, the soft lights. At the end of a long and fruitless day, my lunch engagement excepted, it brought a little peace to the soul.

I had a sip. Pat had a sip.

‘Jesus,’ he said. ‘What’d a man do without a drop of the nerve tonic?’

I nodded. He’d had a good few drops. My gaze fell for the first time on a photograph on the wall behind Pat, a photograph lit by a brass picture lamp, of a big gathering, outdoors, everyone standing: Pat and a woman, dark eyes, grey hair pulled back, severe-looking; Tom and Barry with their wives; a woman about Barry’s age, probably their sister, Louise, smiling at a tall man who had his arms around three girls, one a teenager. Next to him was Christine, carrying a baby, that would be Anne. In front was a small boy, tennis racket in hand: Pat Junior. The dark-haired child with the serious face next to him was Alice, her ordeal still to come. On the left of the crowd, I identified Stephanie, long and lithe in a bikini, her hand on the shoulder of a handsome blond man, probably Dr Jonty. She wasn’t looking at the camera, she was looking at someone in bathers on the opposite fringe, someone who looked as if he had arrived late, got out of the pool just in time for the photograph. It was a young man who looked like Tom Carson with thirty years removed, softly muscular, with thick wet hair fallen across his forehead like a spray, dark and handsome and with a sardonic look. Mark Carson, I had no doubt.

‘Graham says you told the bastard to give us proof Anne’s alive,’ said Pat.

‘Yes.’

‘No risk there? Not normal people these. Could do anythin.’ His voice was hesitant, he had a look in his eyes that said: tell me good news. Not the Pat Carson of a few days before, but that Pat Carson had been sober.

‘Mr Carson,’ I said, ‘I think Anne’s dead.’

He looked into my eyes, sniffed twice, had a sip of whisky, didn’t put the glass down, touched it to his lips again, moistened them with whisky.

‘I thought, the finger,’ he said, ‘I thought that meant she was alive.’

‘It’s a feeling,’ I said. ‘I’ve spent a lot of time with people who want to hurt other people, to punish them.’

‘Punish? Who? Mark?’

‘Perhaps the family or Tom, perhaps Mark.’

Pat shook his head. ‘Don’t understand. Punish? For what?’

I said nothing, looked away, looked at the photograph behind him. This was what a dynasty looked like. The builders’ labourer who ended up owning the building. All the buildings. The boys, who transcended their unschooled father’s violent past, his lack of education, who went to private schools and ended up with handicaps of six or eight at Royal Melbourne, were members of a city club that would never have admitted their father, a club whose older members, close to death now, in the home straight, still muttered ‘bog Irish’ and sprayed spittle at the mention of names like Carson. The boys, who married the daughters of stockbrokers and minor English aristocracy. And the girl, who married into a family of Western District graziers, polo players with city homes in Toorak.

In the crowded photograph, people close together, the eye went first to Pat because he had space around him. His nearest and dearest did not press upon him. He remained at a small distance, his chin up, a rich and powerful self-made man surrounded by his handsome family, a man who had undoubtedly bought and paid for many members of clubs that would not admit him.

‘I don’t know for what,’ I said. ‘I just hope I’m wrong. But there wasn’t any other way. We have to have proof that Anne’s alive.’

‘You know what you’re doin,’ he said, resigned but not convinced. ‘What’s the proof?’

‘Photograph of Anne holding today’s newspaper.’

Pat nodded. ‘That’ll do.’

‘Stone, Boyle, Carides, do they do much of the company’s legal work?’

He coughed, coughed again, seemed to have trouble coping with the change of topic. ‘All of it far’s I know. Watterson’s used to be our lawyers. Got rich on us. Mark’s firm got a fair bit while he was there. Then Tom shifted all the business over to Stone’s. Big fight with Barry about that. Lawyers used to be Barry’s business, I left it to him, didn’t want anythin to do with em. Put your dog in a hole with the other fella’s dog, you don’t expect em both to come out in better shape than they went in. That’s lawyers.’

‘Why did Tom change firms?’

‘Dunno. I stayed out of it. Gettin too old to worry about stuff like that.’ He made a throwing-away gesture. ‘Pour me a bit there.’

I got up and poured, put the glass in his hand.

‘After Alice,’ I said, ‘the police put together a list of people who might have had a grudge against the family, the company.’

He nodded again, smiled, pushed his head forward. He was ancient and ageless and reptilian when he did that. ‘Like a phone book. Bloody hundreds of names. Still, that’s business, that’s life.’

‘People hating you enough to want to harm your children?’

The smile went away and he had a careful look at me, a long and judgmental look from under eyelids without lashes.

‘You sound like that Royal Commission lawyer, Frank,’ he said.

‘Know about that? The commission?’

‘Yes.’

‘He asked questions like that. Bit of a question, bit of a comment. He was a smartarse. Mr Ashley Tolliver, Queen’s fuckin Counsel. You answer the question, mainly pretty bloody stupid question, then the bastard asks it again, only he’s addin somethin from your answer, makes it all sound different.’

I felt his tone of voice on my face, like a coldroom door opening, old, dead, chilled air coming out, and I said, ‘I wasn’t making any comment. It was just a question.’

Pat Carson shook his head, nodded, shook his head. ‘Mr Ashley Tolliver, counsel of the fuckin Queen. Her fuckin Majesty. Two days of the sneerin bastard, never done a day’s work, talked like he knew the buildin business, wouldn’t know a concrete pour from a fuckin wet dream. Talked to me like I was some piece of shit, no respect, bit of dogshit on his shoe.’

He drank some whisky. A drop rolled down his chin, caught the light and glowed like a tear of gold. ‘Had a bad accident later, Mr Ashley Tolliver, Q fuckin C, two years later, a good time later. Just lost control of the car. Mercedes, mark you. Into the sea. Down there other side of Lorne, the cliff ’s steep, go off the edge…Never walked again, they say.’ He looked at me. ‘No respect. He had no respect.’

I finished my drink. ‘I’ll come over in the morning. Wait for the post.’

As I neared the library door, I heard Tom saying loudly, ‘…sources close to the company, that means a source inside the fucking company, now who the fuck could that be, I ask you?’

Barry’s voice, stiff: ‘You’re becoming paranoid, Tom, do you know that? They make this stuff up, they don’t need a source.’

‘Bullshit. It’s not the first time. Someone’s feeding this bastard. You know that, don’t you?’

I couldn’t linger. I very much wanted to.