Shooting Star

4

When they had gone, I rang Orlovsky on the high-tech library telephone. It was a long time before he answered.

‘Frank,’ he said.

‘How did you know?’

‘No one else lets it ring for five minutes.’

I saw the survivors of C Troop irregularly but we never lost touch. We were like people who had come through a death camp, bearers of a guilt that knew no rationality and admitted of no untroubled sleep. In any year, I talked to all of them. Except Lucas, who disappeared at night from a prawn trawler lolling in its reflection on a Torres Strait sea, and the small and lethal Jacoby, who went to Burma to fight for the Karen rebels and never came back. They called from truckstops and brothels, from jails and pubs, from backpackers’ hostels and a rich woman’s beach house in Byron Bay. I went to see one in the feral, freezing high country, slept in a foul-smelling bark tepee beneath strips of rabbit flesh black from smoke. It wasn’t that we liked one another that much. It was that we were like children of the same abusive father: beyond his reach now and scattered, but always joined by our secret knowing.

‘Listen,’ I said, ‘I need help with a job. Tomorrow. You free?’

‘Free till next Thursday,’ he said. ‘Then I’m on the road.’

I didn’t know what Orlovsky did for a living now. ‘Legal drug distributor,’ he’d said when I once asked him. I took that to mean he was running tobacco and I didn’t want him to tell me any more. He would have told me because my being a cop did not inhibit him in any way. ‘Cops should have a moral sense,’ he said one day, back to me, fishing on the greasy bay. ‘It should be a calling. Even stupid people can have a calling. You should be able to respect cops. People like you, you’re only cops because otherwise they’d have to lock you away. They. We.’

I gave him the address. ‘Around eleven. There’s an entrance at the back to an underground garage. Tell the voicebox you’re Mr Calder’s associate.’

‘Mr Calder’s associate,’ he said. ‘That’s nice. It’s like a title.’

I felt someone’s presence. Noyce was at the door. He had less hair in front every time I looked.

‘Bring clothes,’ I said to Orlovsky. ‘Could be hours, could be a while. Clean clothes. Least dirty clothes.’

I put the receiver down and stood up. Tiredness was settling into my lower back, the feeling of grip, of compression.

‘I don’t need to stay now,’ I said. ‘I’ll come back in the morning.’

Noyce put his head to one side. ‘I think Pat’d be happier if you slept here,’ he said. ‘I’ve arranged clothes. Okay?’

‘I’ll pick up clothes and come back.’ I didn’t mind the idea of wearing expensive clothes. I minded the idea of wearing clothes I didn’t own.

‘Pat doesn’t show much,’ said Noyce, ‘but he’s shaken by this. He’d like to talk to you.’ His hands went to his tie, one at the knot, one below, made a minute adjustment, an unconscious gesture, reassuring himself, like touching a gun under your arm, feeling the cold comfort of the fit in your hand.

Pat Carson was where I’d left him, behind the huge desk, glass of whisky now beside his right hand. He seemed smaller, lower in his chair, his hair less galvanised, less electric.

‘Sit,’ he said.

I chose the chair directly across from him. Noyce was moving to sit at my left when Pat said, ‘Graham, go home. Eat and sleep like a normal person. Tomorrow, tomorrow is its own bloody day.’

I looked at Noyce. He wasn’t happy, spread his hands, long fingers for a stubby person.

‘Fine,’ he said. ‘In the morning. Early. Pat. Frank.’ He backed out reluctantly. At the door, eyes on Pat Carson, he said, ‘Any development…’

‘Yes, Graham. Thank you. Goodnight. Sleep well.’

Noyce closed the door behind him, a precise, solid click. ‘The more he’s paid, the more he worries,’ Pat said. He pointed at an open drinks cabinet against the wall to his right. ‘Help yourself.’

I went over and poured two fingers from a whisky decanter, water from a beaded silver jug, sat down again.

For a moment, Pat and I sat in silence in the comfortable room, calm yellow light around the table lamps, whisky glowing in the heavy crystal glasses. We looked at each other, the hirer and the hired.

‘Two hundred, not much money,’ Pat said. ‘For the trouble.’

‘No.’

‘Why, do you think?’

‘Could be they’re not too clever, don’t know what the market will bear. Could be that, could be they just want a quick and easy deal, off they go, spend it on drugs in a few weeks. Two hundred thousand, that’s four bundles, briefcase, sports bag, shopping bag, doesn’t weigh too much.’

Pat studied me. ‘What else?’

‘It’s just a trial to see how we behave.’

‘A trial.’ He picked up his glass, swilled the liquid. I could see the high-water mark it left. ‘A trial you can do with half a million, more.’

I had concerns about things other than the amount of money but I didn’t express them, tasted the whisky, just bathed the gums in the anonymous liquid from the decanter. Single malt. Fire in it, and peat smoke and tears. The Carsons probably owned the distillery, the spring, the heather, the whole freezing spray-blasted gull-screaming granite Scottish outcrop.

‘They don’t know what your pain threshold is,’ I said.

‘Pain threshold,’ he said. ‘That’s when we scream, is it?’

‘Yes. Two hundred thousand it’s not likely to be. If they ask for half a million, you might say, that’s too much, get the cops in.’

He thought about this, studying me, eyes just slits, took a sip of whisky, said musingly, ‘What is our pain threshold? A million? Two million? Ten million?’

‘I wish it were two hundred thousand,’ I said. ‘It’s not too late.’

Pat shook his head. ‘No. We give the bastards what they want and we hope. Get Anne back, then we look for them, Frank. To the ends of the bloody earth.’

But I couldn’t leave it. ‘Anne,’ I said. ‘She’s always lived here?’

‘Just about. Since Alice’s kidnappin. That’s when we bought up around us, bought four places, made the owners and the bloody real-estate jackals rich.’

‘And the whole family came to live here?’

‘Tom and his wife and Barry and Kathy and their two. Mark and Christine and the little ones, and Stephanie and her fuckin husband, don’t like to say the bastard’s name, Jonathan fuckin Chadwick.’

‘Mark’s got other children?’

‘Little ones. Michael and Vicky.’

‘And their mother’s not well?’

‘Their mother…’ Pat hesitated. ‘Had a breakdown. She’s in…a place, some kind of place.’

I said nothing, kept my eyes on him, didn’t nod. Sometimes it works.

Pat drank some whisky, took a red handkerchief out of the top pocket of his jacket, wiped his lips. ‘Drugs,’ he said. ‘No point in beatin around the fuckin bush. Lovely girl, Christine, but she’ll stick anythin in her body. Christ knows why, had everythin a woman could want. We sent her to Israel, Tom’s idea. Got this clinic there, they put em to sleep and they flush em out. Buy a decent house for what they charge. Waste of money, comes home, back on the bloody drugs in six weeks.’

‘And Mark’s in Europe?’

‘A lawyer, Mark,’ Pat said. ‘He was. Bright spark. First grandchild’s cleverest, the wife used to say. Some bloody Hungarian sayin. That’s what she was, Hungarian. Lots of sayins, the Hungarians. Sayin for every bloody occasion. Could’ve used Mark in the business. But, doesn’t help to push em. Come to it themselves, that’s the way. He didn’t. Didn’t do anythin anyone bloody wanted. Married at twenty, girl three years older, shotgun, still at the uni. That’s Anne, scraped in under the wire. Anyway, Christine’s from a decent family, couldn’t see what Carol was gettin hysterical about.’

‘Carol?’

He didn’t understand the question for an instant. ‘Carol?’

‘Who’s Carol?’

‘Oh. Forget who you’re talkin to. Carol. Mark’s mother. Tom’s wife. Carol Wright she was. Fancied themselves, the family, the father anyway. Stockbroker. There’s a bloody amazin job for you, all care and no responsibility, buyin, sellin, makin or losin, the bastards get a cut. I shoulda gone into that, snowball’s bloody chance I’d a had, boy left school at twelve.’

He sipped the malt, went far away.

‘So Tom married Carol Wright,’ I said. For the moment, he didn’t mind talking about the family.

Pat came back, hesitantly. ‘That’s it. Tom went to school with the brother, name escapes me. Mind you, the fella did a bit of escapin himself. Director of companies, that was his occupation. I ask you. Barry tells me the bugger’s livin in some banana republic where the warrants can’t get to him.’

‘And Barry’s wife?’

‘Married into the English aristocracy, Barry. Katherine, met her on a skiing holiday, that’s upper bloody crust for you. Some place in America. Don’t know what my old dad would’ve said. Know he’d a liked the bit where the bloody chinless prick of a father tapped me for six thousand quid to pay for his girl’s weddin. Then Louise, that’s my daughter, she goes and marries into the local silver-tails, the Western District mob. They play polo, know that?’

‘I’ve heard that.’

‘Horses got more brains than the jockeys. But Stephen’s not a bad bloke, good father. She’s happy.’

‘And Mark became a lawyer.’

‘Clever lad, got a job with these Collins Street lawyers. Tom put some business their way, that wasn’t a good idea. Bastards probably thought Mark was drivin the gravy train. Made him a partner.

Twenty-five years old, couldn’t run a chip shop.’

He fell silent, looked away. He was beginning to regret talking to me about the Carsons. I was just a bagman. ‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘Mark’s in Europe, some deal with the Poles, I don’t know. The deals change all the time. Poles, Russians, Chinese, Indonesians, bloody South Africans, white ones.’

‘Anne,’ I said. ‘She’s happy here?’

‘Difficult child.’

‘Difficult how?’

‘School problems. Other things. In a cage here, it’s not natural…’ He tailed off, looked at his glass, drained it, mind turning elsewhere. ‘Dennis?’ he said.

I shook my head. ‘I’d be surprised. Got slack, careless. Too long in the job without anything happening.’

‘I hope so. You can understand. Bloke doesn’t have little Alice on his mind like the rest of us.’

I wanted to know more about Alice, but there was a knock at the door.

‘Come in,’ said Pat.

It was a tall, slim woman in her thirties, late thirties, well cut dark hair on her shoulders.

I stood up.

‘Carmen’s mother,’ Pat said. ‘She manages the place, keeps it tickin over. Part of the family.’

‘Lauren Geary,’ said the woman. She was wearing a wine-red high-collared blouse and a long black skirt. Chin up, she had an air of competence, a person who managed things, commanded obedience. She put out a hand. ‘You’re Mr Calder. Graham told me.’

We shook hands.

‘I’m sorry to interrupt, Mr Carson,’ she said, ‘but Carmen’s told me something.’

Pat nodded.

‘She remembers seeing a man near the record store two or three times. There’s a tram stop but once he was still there when they came out.’

‘Yes?’

‘Well, trams go by every few minutes. It’s peak hour. So he couldn’t have been waiting for a tram.’

‘Can she describe him?’ I said. It was hard to keep in mind that I was only a bagman, not paid to do anything else.

Pat put up his hands. ‘Frank, this is not the time. Lauren, they want money, we’re givin the bastards money. Tomorrow, Frank will give em the money. Then when Anne’s safe we’ll find em, make sure they don’t do this again. The police can ask all the questions then.’

Lauren Geary looked at me, looked at Pat. He smiled at her. It wasn’t the smile of an elderly employer, not that kind of smile.

‘Fine,’ she said, nodding. ‘Afterwards. Yes, when we’ve got her back.’ She turned to me. ‘I’ve put you in the Garden House, Mr Calder. I’ll send over some clothes for you to try on.’

‘I’m going home for clothes,’ I said. ‘But thank you.’

When she’d gone, Pat, revived, held out his glass. I fetched the decanter and poured a fat finger. He drank, studying me. There was something he wanted to talk about. ‘Alice,’ he said, ‘never stopped botherin me. When she came back to us, the police questioned her. Over and over. Even hypnotised the little thing. Nothing. Very calm, she was, like a little grown-up, but she couldn’t tell em anythin. Never saw a face except for a few seconds at the start, in the garage. Where they kept her, the man wore somethin over his head, a mask.’

He sighed. ‘Then, when that was over, we had the psychiatrist. That was the advice we got. From America. A specialist in victims. A week here, talkin to her every day. Dr Wynn. I reckon that was our mistake. Maybe you should just leave people alone. Maybe she would have gotten over it if we just pretended it never happened. What do you think, Frank?’

What did I think? A man who had nightmares almost every night. ‘I think you probably did the best you could,’ I said.

The old eyes were on me, looking for something. ‘Man is born unto trouble,’ he said.

I said, ‘As the sparks fly upwards.’

Deep lines at the corners of Pat’s mouth. ‘Know your Job. Soldier. Policeman. Haven’t been a bloody priest too, have you?’

‘My mother,’ I said. ‘She had a lot of time for Job.’

‘This job,’ he said. ‘Just a good man to give em what they want. Don’t want any police stuff, any messin about with who and why. Clear to you, is it, Frank?’

I said yes, drove home, found the two new shirts, the emergency shirts, packed a small bag. It wasn’t hard to leave the cold, unlovely unit, drip hitting the kitchen sink like a finger tapping.