White Dog

38

Tullamarine was no lovelier by night, high fences, ugly buildings, glaring security lights, oil rainbows lying in the pitted streets.

Galvin’s sign said the premises were guarded by twenty-four-hour video-monitored security. The swipe card got me through the boom gate, into a floodlit compound with a huge, low,

windowless single-storeyed building of cinderblocks. Roll-up garage doors A, B and C faced us. I went right, foolishly, had to drive around the building to get to door J.

I got out, cold, moist air, shivered in my shirt, and approached the door. An electronic keypad was under a light to the right. I put in the card, tapped in the PIN and the door rose, a low

clanking noise, dark inside except for the glow of a small console with a single fat button. The instruction said: PRESS FOR 20 MINUTES LIGHT. DOOR WILL CLOSE IN TWO MINUTES.

I pressed. Tube lights flickered, stabilised, showing a corridor, roll-up doors on both sides, big numbers spray-painted on them. I walked down the internal road under the white lights and, before I reached storage unit 164, the entry door behind me clanked down.

J 164 was on the right, halfway to the end. Another light button. A key unlocked the door, you had to raise it by hand.

A cinderblock box, a bit bigger than a single-car garage. In the middle stood a red Maserati, from the 1960s, I thought. Framed artworks leaning against the walls, perhaps a dozen, a few pieces of furniture at the back.

I looked at the works along the nearest wall. All the artists were dead except for one and he was a day-to-day proposition: blue-chip art, investment art. Was this Mickey’s small cashable stash, put here in Sophie’s name in case he went under because of Seaton Square and people wanted to seize his assets?

I walked to the back of the chamber. A glazed colonial bookcase, it would buy two Mercedes. A commode, Egyptian Revival, if genuine worth a bit. A small desk, Georgian.

I looked in the car, opened the glovebox: a manual and a logbook. The boot opened — empty. I checked the bookcase, the desk drawers.

Cabinetmakers of old often amused themselves with their work, Charlie taught me that, and I always groped fancy antique furniture, even in public places.

I removed the four top desk drawers and felt around above them, stuck my arm in and felt the back, looked in a few other places. I studied the commode, touched the ram’s broad head on the right, ran my fingers down its sides, feeling the smooth curled horns, finding the small buttons at their centres.

I pressed one. It didn’t yield. Neither did the other. I pressed them simultaneously and they went in. My pulse quickened. I pulled at the ram’s head.

It slid forward.

A secret drawer, narrow and deep. In it a notebook, long and slim, two videotapes. I flipped the notebook: names, dates, amounts, page upon page. I looked at the tapes. One had no label,

the other said COPY.

I pushed the ram’s head back and tried the one on the left. No luck. He didn’t repeat himself, your ancient craftsman.

I took the items and left the building, the enclosure, drove back along the tollway-avoidance route. It was busy, the city never seemed to quieten, people’s nightlife now began when it used to end. In Linda’s parking bay, I sat for a moment, feeling the tiredness of too much sitting.

Time to watch a video.

My door opened.

‘Get out, cunt.’

A body, an arm. A knife pointing at my throat, a wide blade, held on its side.

I dropped a video and the notebook between the seats, got out with the other tape.

He was standing back, squat and pale, football head, a leather jacket. ‘Walk,’ he said.

I walked out to the street.

‘Stop.’

A dark vehicle pulled forward, a stationwagon, the man’s hand gripped my belt, pulled me back into the knife. It pressed against me at a point beside my spine where a thrust would penetrate some vital organ quietly pulsing in the body’s inner dark.

‘Hands back or die, cunt.’

I obeyed, felt the handcuffs. The back door opened. He walked me across the pavement, into the car, powerful hands inside dragged me, pushed me down, down, between the seats, my face down, something thrown over me, a foot on my neck, the vehicle moving.

The chicken pie in the cool oven. It would be wasted.

I thought of that, how irrational is the mind.