Shooting Star

41

Her name was Margaret Patton then and it was Margaret Spears now and it took me three hours to find her in an expensive house in expensive Albert Park. She was very reluctant to see me.

‘We’ve only just moved in,’ she said. She was fortyish, fair and pretty, flushed cheekbones, a doll’s face, a grownup doll wearing a dress with pleats in the front. ‘We got back from England three weeks ago.’

Her husband came down the passage, a tall man, sleek dark hair. ‘Hamish Spears,’ he said, putting out a hand. ‘It’s related to this awful Carson thing, is it?’

I shook his hand. ‘Frank Calder. Yes, it is. I’m sorry to be a nuisance.’

Margaret Spears said, ‘I don’t understand how Cassandra is connected…’

‘We don’t either,’ I said. ‘But we think there’s a possible connection. If I can have ten minutes.’

‘Of course you can,’ said Hamish Spears. ‘Come in. I’m an accountant. Abergeldie, Smith, Alberstam. We’ve done some work for CarsonCorp. Shopping-centre business. Nice people to do business with.’

Carson, the magic name, opener of doors, inspirer of greed and fear.

He led the way into a chintzy sitting room with a pale rose-coloured carpet and plump furniture. ‘Frank, I’ll leave you two alone,’ he said. ‘Maggie, give Frank a drink.’

She cocked her head. I shook mine.

‘Please sit down,’ she said. ‘It’s so long ago. What can I tell you now?’

‘I’ve read the transcript of your interview with the police in 1986,’ I said. ‘There wasn’t much you could tell them.’

‘No,’ she said. ‘Well, I didn’t really know her. It was just a notice-board thing. And we were both private people. To tell you the truth, we were unlikely house-sharers. She saw my notice on the board. My parents had bought the house and I needed a tenant. We weren’t friends or anything. I was a bit straitlaced, I suppose.’

‘And she wasn’t?’

‘Well. After she moved in, someone told me she’d had an affair with a lecturer when she was an undergraduate. In second year. That’s not very straitlaced, is it?’

‘No. Men came to the house?’

‘No. Only her father. He was a frightening type.’

‘In what way?’

Margaret shrugged. ‘Big and angry-looking. A beard. He always seemed to be angry with her. Never came in. She’d go out and they’d talk in the street or in his Land Rover. Dirty, covered in mud. She seemed frightened of him. Terrified, really.’

‘You didn’t tell the police that.’

‘Didn’t I? I suppose it didn’t seem important. They weren’t interested in her father. Boyfriends, anyone I’d seen her with at uni, that’s what they wanted to know about.’

She paused, scratched her hairline with perfect nails, moved her head quickly. She was uncomfortable.

I waited.

‘I really didn’t want to get involved,’ she said. ‘Frankly, the father scared me too.’

I waited, looking at her. She couldn’t hold my gaze, swallowed. There was something else she wanted to say.

‘I was a coward. Just a girl from the country. I didn’t want the police going to her father and saying that I said she was scared of him. Anyway, I was just reading that into her behaviour, I didn’t know that.’ She frowned. ‘I didn’t know her. If I’d known her…’

‘That’s perfectly understandable,’ I said, smiled at her, waited, wouldn’t be the one to speak.

She exhaled loudly. ‘Yes, well, about four years later, the strangest thing happened. The place next door had been standing half-renovated all the time I’d been in my house. This man who owned it, a Greek, a Greek person, he’d work on it for a weekend, then he wouldn’t be seen for six months. Anyway, one day he knocked on the door and said he’d found this book in the rubbish skip in his back yard and was it mine? You know, you get burgled and they find your stuff dumped all over the place?’

‘You’d been burgled?’

‘Often. Well, at least twice before then. It was a diary. And it had Cassandra Guinane written on the cover. I rang the Guinanes and her brother came around and fetched it. I suppose he’d have passed it on to the police if there was anything important in it.’

‘I’m sure he would have. You didn’t open it?’

‘Of course not.’

‘Of course not. So you never actually saw Cassie with anyone?’

‘No. Well, the closest was, that was months before, someone dropped her at the end of the street. It was a Sunday morning. I was going to get milk or something, the papers, and we met. She said she’d been to Mount Hotham, it was lovely in the summer, no one there.’

‘You didn’t see the person?’

‘No, just the car. A Mercedes.’

‘That’s not in your interview either.’

‘Isn’t it?’ She seemed genuinely surprised.

‘No. Probably just an oversight. You forgot about it.’

Frowning. ‘No. That’s what they were interested in. They asked lots of questions about things like that. I’d have told them that. I couldn’t not have told them that. I did tell them that.’

‘Well, I probably missed it, easy to do that. Thank you for seeing me. I won’t take up any more of your time.’

At the front door, she said, ‘This hasn’t been of any use, has it?’

‘It may have been.’

Hamish Spears appeared at the end of the passage. He shouted, ‘Frank, sure you won’t stay for a drink?’

As I was getting into the car, the phone rang: Orlovsky.

‘These boys,’ he said, the faintest note of satisfaction in his voice, ‘I’ve got the earliest game. Got a tune.’

With trepidation, I punched Barry Carson’s number. He answered immediately, crisply.

‘Frank Calder,’ I said.

‘Frank. You might have said goodbye.’

‘I saw your father. He didn’t want to talk to me and I didn’t think anyone else would either.’

‘Rubbish. The old man was distressed, nothing about you. You don’t bear any responsibility for what happened. Risked your life on the escalator. I appreciate that enormously. We all do. Have they told you about the photograph? I asked Graham to be sure you were told. He hasn’t got much to do now that the float’s postponed.’

Barry didn’t sound like a bereaved relative, didn’t sound like someone whose niece had been violated and slaughtered.

‘They told me,’ I said.

‘Good. There was nothing anyone could have done. Your advice was sound. Professional. We bear the blame for not taking it in the first place. See the papers today?’

‘No.’

‘Tom’s stood down as chief executive. He’s retiring, in fact. I’ve taken over.’

Perhaps a small dinner party to celebrate. Would he do that, the police out there looking for his niece’s killers? Probably. He was a Carson.

I said, ‘I’d like to talk to Alice again. Tonight.’

Silence. There was faint music behind him, voices in conversation, as if he’d left a dinner table, was talking in the next room.

‘This is in the hands of the police now, Frank. If you have any ideas, they should be told.’

I hesitated. ‘This is very important,’ I said. ‘I’ve been the police, I think I can do this better than the police.’

Silence and the music. ‘Frank, her mother says she’s taken Anne’s murder in a strange way. You can understand that. This is not a good time.’

‘Good time? It’s never going to be a good time. Ever. You don’t have walls high enough. Did the cops tell you about the call? An eye for an eye’s not a fair exchange?’

‘Yes. Mr Vella told me. We’ve put Jahn, Cullinan in charge of family security now, Frank. Should’ve from the beginning, just my father’s strange ideas.’

‘I’ll put this simply. I’m not on the payroll. I don’t want to be on the payroll.’

Another silence. A long silence, the music.

‘I’ll give you Alice’s number,’ Barry said. ‘It’s silent, so tell her who you are straight away or she’ll be alarmed. She’ll talk to you.

She liked you.’ A beat. ‘I can’t think why.’

‘Inexplicable,’ I said. ‘One more thing. Do you ski?’

‘Yes. Not much anymore. Why?’

‘Where?’

‘Hotham mostly. We’ve got a place up there, family place, a lodge. Why?’

‘Just a survey I’m doing about the habits of the rich.’

Laugh, a small laugh. ‘Frank, we’re going to have to put you on the payroll. To ensure your discretion.’

At Orlovsky’s house, we opened SeineNet and looked up the investigating officer in Cassie Guinane’s case. His name was Terence Sadler and a file note said he’d taken early retirement in 1990.