White Dog

24

Breakfast at Enzio’s, just coffee and sourdough toast with Vegemite. When she brought the ingredients, Carmel said, ‘I should have mentioned before, the boy wonder’s gone.’

‘Better offer?’ I said.

‘Bruno decked him. The boy told the silent one to get away from the machine so that he could, I quote, make myself a fucking decent cup of coffee.’

‘An inflammatory speech.’

‘On the floor and out the door. Whingeing all the way. We had to ring Enzio. He’s doing the whole day now.’

When she brought the coffee, Carmel said, ‘He wants me to be the manager, sort of. He says he’s not having any more little pricks in his kitchen. What would your view be of that?’

‘I applaud the absence of little pricks everywhere.’

‘No, me and the manager thing.’

‘You’d be the public face of Enzio’s?’

She shrugged, the bird shoulders. ‘I’d be clean-shaven, that might be a plus. Perhaps my body language would be seen as less threatening. And no cigarette stub behind the ear.’

‘I like the smoking-ear look,’ I said, ‘but for what it’s worth I think you’d be an ornament to the position.’

‘Thank you. I’ll give it some thought.’

She was leaving when I said, ‘Ahem, we won’t be going down the skinny soy decaf latte and organic prunes poached in goat’s milk route, will we?’

Over her shoulder, Carmel said, ‘I’m too young to die violently.’

I had just started my coffee, when Sophie Longmore came in, a short camel jacket over jeans, carrying a bag like a slim briefcase. She looked around, I looked away but I could see her coming.

‘The man from across the road suggested you might be here,’ she said. ‘He came out while I was knocking at your door.’

That would be McCoy, ever eager to make the acquaintance of attractive women.

‘I’m just leaving,’ I said.

She sat down, bag on the other chair.

‘Why don’t you sit down,’ I said.

‘I’m sorry. Are you angry with us, Jack?’

I didn’t want to have this discussion. ‘I’m just finished with you,’ I said. ‘Also, I don’t like being asked whether I’m angry. It’s either unnecessary or it’s provocative.’

Head down. ‘I’m doing this badly.’

Carmel arrived.

Sophie said, ‘Could I have a short black?’

I drank half of my thimble. ‘Well, I have to be somewhere else. Goodbye.’

She put a hand on my elbow. ‘I came to say how sorry I am about everything. About what happened to you and about the other day. That’s all.’

I shrugged.

‘I wasn’t sure what you were saying and my father jumped to a conclusion,’ she said.

‘It didn’t take him long either.’

She moved her shoulders. ‘Jack, he’s nearly eighty, it’s his first instinct, he thinks the whole world’s trying to take his money away from him. Sometimes he’s right too.’

There was a silence. It occurred to me that it had been possible to misunderstand what I’d said.

‘I found that my hospital bill had been paid and some money paid into my bank,’ I said. ‘If it was your father, I wanted to give it back.’

‘That’s what I thought you were saying,’ she said. ‘He’ll want to apologise to you himself. I wanted to come after you but I was too ashamed by what he’d said.’

She had the Longmore frankness. There wasn’t any rage to maintain. ‘Forget it,’ I said. ‘I should have been unambiguous.’

Sophie’s coffee arrived.

‘She was the last person who’d have a gas accident,’ she said. ‘You do know that?’

‘I’m ignorant about gas accidents,’ I said. ‘They said it wasn’t unusual.’

Two homicide cops had taken a statement from me when it was deemed that I was out of danger. Then two fire people came, a severe-looking woman in her forties and a younger man with thick glasses. They had my statement to homicide. The woman had questions about the position of the gas cylinders, about what Sarah had done in the seconds before, what I’d smelled, the number of explosions.

When Drew came a few days later, he said, ‘They say they think the first explosion was in the store, an LPG cylinder. Apparently there was an old inspection pit and that went up too, full of gas. Plus other cylinders about the place. Not unusual, the woman says. Only the scale. Generally, it just destroys lone amateurs, your backyard self-taught welders and artists who like buggering around with steel and fire. Should happen to McCoy.’

Sophie Longmore shook her head. ‘She wasn’t a beginner, she’d done welding courses, she checked everything three times.’

She drank coffee, touched her lips with a paper napkin. Short nails. She bit her nails.

‘The inquest will tell us,’ I said. I didn’t say it with conviction.

‘I think people who can get an innocent person charged with murder can get an explosion past an inquest,’ she said.

Her eyes didn’t leave me, she had the look of someone leading up to something. Practising the law teaches you to recognise the expression. ‘That’s possible,’ I said. ‘We’ll have to wait.’

Sophie took her bag off the chair, opened it and took out an A4 envelope. ‘I think she was being watched,’ she said. ‘Why would she be watched?’

I wanted to be away, into the cold morning, a top of fourteen, said the radio, that would only be a few hours away, then the slide into the serious cold. Rain expected, showers in the city, gale-force winds for the bay and strong winds inland, ice, frost, snow for the alpine areas. A sheep alert for country Victoria. How did they respond to sheep alerts in the country? Wrestle the jumbucks into thermal longjohns?

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘People have been known to think they’re being watched when they’re not.’

Sophie looked at me without blinking for longer than necessary. ‘Not unusual,’ she said. ‘Is that the expression?’

I felt tired. So early in the day. Excusable perhaps on these short days. The circadian rhythms interrupted, a form of jetlag. ‘I have to go,’ I said. ‘Work.’

‘I took these pictures,’ she said, offering the envelope. ‘They’re actually very bad. The negs are in here too, it might be the printing.’

‘Pictures of what?’

‘Sarah was getting out of the car and said, that’s her again. I saw the woman and I took a few shots, she turned her back and walked away. She was talking to someone in a car.’

‘Why do you want to give me these pictures?’

Sophie didn’t look at me, eyes down, drank coffee, looked up, her father’s pale eyes, down again.

‘I don’t want her remembered this way,’ she said. ‘I worshipped her. She was everything to me.’

‘Are you asking me to do something?’

‘I wouldn’t dream of asking you to do anything yourself. You’ve gone through enough. I hoped you’d know someone who could… help.’

I looked out of the window. The wind was disturbing hairstyles, pushing open unbuttoned black overcoats.

Just say no.

‘What was Mickey’s relationship with Anthony Haig?’ I said without looking at her.

Sophie sighed. ‘He had money in Seaton Square. Most of the money, I think. When it stalled, he wanted to get out.’

‘I thought the money came from a finance company?’

‘The way Mickey talked,’ she said, ‘Haig and the company, well, they’re the same thing. He was ballistic about Haig.’

‘Haig’s got an employee called Bernard Paech.’

She nodded. ‘Bern, they call him Bern.’

‘He was also once a director of Mickey’s company. If Haig was calling in the money, how did that work?’

‘I don’t know. Mickey didn’t explain a lot, Jack.’

‘But you went to your father to bail him out?’

‘In love,’ she said. She finished her coffee. ‘But I’m not stupid. I wouldn’t have asked my father if I thought Mickey was a loser. Mickey’d made a lot of money out of development. And Seaton Square, well, it’s such an incredible opportunity.’

An incredible opportunity. An opportunity to change the character of part of the city. People like Mickey were social planners, they decided the future by deciding where they could make money. Was this the genius of capitalism? How did Venice get the way it was? What about Florence? Paris? Vienna?

‘I need to think about this,’ I said. ‘Give me a number.’

Sophie took her case off the chair, snapped it open and found a pad and a pen. She was writing when I said, ‘When did you decide that Sarah didn’t kill Mickey?’

She didn’t look up. ‘The idea never crossed my mind.’

The pictures in hand, I said goodbye, went into the windy street.