White Dog

8

Sarah Longmore lived on the top floor of a grand building in St Kilda, three storeys of redbrick Victorian, bay windows at each end, long balconies with cast-iron lacework, six chimneys in sight from where I stood at the ornate gate.

I pressed button number five, felt the camera on me and looked: it was behind a thin strip of plateglass set in stainless steel in the wall to the right of the gate.

The gate unlocked, two clicks, the kind you hear in prisons when you visit clients. I went down a wide chequerboard path bordered by box hedges. Beyond them were long and narrow lawns, ironing-board flat, edged with beds of lavender. In the centre of each lawn stood an old oak, still green. The broad front door had another board of five buttons.

I pressed.

‘Come in, Jack.’ Sarah Longmore’s voice, excellent quality, her real voice.

More prison clicks.

I pushed at the intimidating door, put my hand on the wood above the shining brass plate, reluctant to mark a surface polished by hand, not sealed with some toxic chemical. The door swung as if weightless. I went into the building’s hallway, fully six metres square with a tiled floor, an ornate pattern, vaguely Arabic. It was lit from above, natural light from landing windows and a skylight two floors up.

I went up four flights of stairs wide enough for women wearing hoops to pass. At the second floor’s tall window, I paused to get my breath. A gardener appeared below, a man in a uniform with an electric mower. Nothing so raucous as a Briggs amp; Stratton two-stroke was allowed to bother the inhabitants of this building.

There were two doors leading off, solid cedar six-paners. I moved aside a brass cover on the one nearest. It hid modern locks, two of them.

The door opened.

‘Jack.’ Sarah Longmore in dark grey trousers, a loose polo-neck top, soft-looking garments, no make-up that I could see. It was hard to believe that she was the dirty-faced metal-grinder in overalls.

I followed her down a short, wide passage into a sitting room full of light from three sets of french doors that opened onto a balcony. The furniture was old, expensive, and the back wall was crammed with pictures, dozens of them, almost butted against one another, every shape and size, frames fancy and plain. I recognised Williams, Blackman, Tucker, the Boyds, Olsen, Dobell, Perceval. It was an expensive way to cover a wall.

‘Nice collection,’ I said.

‘They belong to my father,’ she said. ‘He lets me live here. Reluctantly. Coffee?’

I said no. The morning coffee had been taken. She fetched a big shallow cup from another room. We sat in armchairs.

‘We were talking about the break-in,’ I said.

‘Yes. My car was being serviced, about a month ago. I went to the gym but when I got there I was feeling terrible. I had flu coming on. So I took a cab home and fell asleep on the sofa. It was early, before six. When I woke up, the place was in darkness. Then I heard voices.’

I looked at her neck, as perfect as that of the dancer Marietta di Rigardo in the painting. Marietta with bruise.

‘A man came in,’ she said. ‘I could see his shape in the doorway. I shouted. He vanished but I heard him bump into someone and say, “Fuck, get out”.’

‘Not a break-in?’

‘They came up the fire escape and in the kitchen door. Probably climbed the back wall from the lane. Otherwise you have to get through the street gate and the front door.’

‘The kitchen door was locked?’

‘Deadlocks and an alarm. Nothing damaged, the alarm didn’t go off.’

‘What time was it?’

‘Just before seven.’

‘When would you usually get back from the gym?’

‘Around eight. I eat somewhere afterwards. Anyway, I had a few moments of panic and I rang Mickey.’

‘You’d broken up with him, he was seeing your sister. Why him?’

‘There wasn’t any bad feeling. That’s why this is so fucking ridiculous. I often spoke to him. He was an interesting man. An arsehole and an interesting person and someone you could rely on. For some things. Is that incomprehensible?’

‘Not to me. You didn’t think of the police?’

‘There wasn’t anything taken, they hadn’t broken in. Can you imagine the look a woman gets from the cops when she calls them over and tells them that?’

‘I can. Go on.’

‘I rang Mickey and twenty minutes later Rick arrived with the gun.’

‘Rick?’

‘His driver.’

‘Did it surprise you that Mickey would send someone around with a pistol?’

Sarah shook her head. ‘No. Mickey is… he was the kind of person who had guns.’

I didn’t pursue the matter. ‘You were happy to take it?’

‘Not at all. I told Rick I didn’t want it but he had his instructions, he was embarrassed, I had to take the damn thing. I put it in the linen cupboard but it haunted me.’

‘When last did you see it?’

‘Every time I opened the linen cupboard. Well, not the gun, the box. It was in a box, like a chocolate box. I put it under the towels.’

‘Anything else?’

She rose, the graceful rise on muscled thighs, and went to a table behind a sofa, lit a cigarette with a slim metal lighter, looking at me.

‘Two Sundays ago, I came in, I’d been in the country, and I opened the bathroom cabinet and someone had moved things. Someone had been in the place.’

‘The home help? Moved the aspirin.’

Sarah smiled, the half-furtive smile. She shook her head. ‘It’s not silly. I have a thing about order. Not all of me, one side doesn’t care. But where I live I know when something’s moved. And there’s no home help.’

I wished that I knew when things had been moved. I wished that I knew where things should be so that I could know if they’d been moved.

‘You say you were at home on the night Mickey was killed?’

She gave me her headlights, trapped me in the highbeam. ‘I say that because I was. Nobody can prove otherwise.’

‘Ring anyone?’

‘Just Sophie. She was in one of her down moods, everything’s a total fuckup.’

‘Where was she?’

‘At home. In Richmond. It was early, sevenish.’

‘She wasn’t seeing Mickey that night?’

‘No. She was going to a party.’

‘You established that?’

She wasn’t happy. She touched the cup to her lips, put it down, drew on the cigarette. Its tip glowed steel-burning bright.

She waited and I waited. She knew what I meant but she didn’t want to answer. A stillness in her. Without looking, she ground the cigarette to death in an ashtray the size of a dinner plate.

‘I didn’t seek to establish that,’ she said. ‘She told me. It would have been very odd indeed if she hadn’t told me. Sophie tells you everything.’

I wished I’d accepted coffee. Something to do with my hands.

She put her cup to her lips, put it down, stood up. ‘Second chance. I can warm the coffee without ruining it. It’s filter.’

‘Please. Black.’

She left. I rose and paced the painting wall, slowly. Paintings are strange things. Some affect you directly, they connect with something in the brain, unprotected contact. But seeing paintings so different in kind and quality so close together had a disorienting effect, and standing back didn’t help. I was only halfway, at the first woman, a Grace Cossington Smith, when Sarah returned, no fear of spillage in her walk, my coffee in a heavy cafe cup. It was unharmed by reheating, dark and oily and Jamaican.

‘This isn’t meant to be an interrogation,’ I said. ‘I’m assuming you didn’t kill him. I’m asking the questions other people will ask.’

‘I understand that,’ she said. ‘Do you know what it’s like to feel guilty even when you aren’t? My father has the capacity to do that to me.’

I got on with it. ‘What was the state of Sophie’s relationship with Mickey?’

‘Not wonderful. She said he was manic one minute, everything coming good, then he’d go black and the next thing he was talking about suicide. Violent swings, you’d say. Sophie should know. Christ knows what it was like when their downers coincided.’

‘Did you know him to be like that?’

‘Not the suicide end of the pendulum. The highs, absolutely, that was Mickey. But I think things were going well in business when we… were together.’

‘And his wife. Do you know her?’

‘Wife isn’t the term that comes to mind, it wasn’t exactly a suburban marriage. But, yes. Corin Sleeman. She’s an architect, she commissioned a piece from me for a building.’

‘Something I could stop by and have a look at?’

Sarah lit a cigarette, eyes on me. ‘It may not astonish you to hear that the developer rejected it,’ she said.

‘Unequal to the challenge,’ I said. ‘Did she know about you and Mickey?’

‘When she commissioned the piece? I didn’t think so then, like a fool.’

‘So she wasn’t necessarily indifferent?’

Sarah tilted her head. ‘You’re knowledgeable in the areas of betrayal and revenge?’

‘An academic interest. Everything’s in books.’

She touched her lips with a finger, the nail unvarnished. ‘Yes,’ she said, a nod and a smile. We sat, cups in hand, the scent of coffee, gossamer smoke in the sunlight.

‘Who found him?’ I said.

‘Apparently he didn’t ring Rick to be picked up. His mobile was on and he wasn’t answering, so Rick rang security at the building and they went in.’

‘The weapon,’ I said. ‘Did you tell anyone you had it?’

‘No. Just Sophie.’

‘Which leaves Mickey and Rick and whoever they told.’

‘I suppose so. I can’t imagine Mickey telling the world.’

‘What do you know about Rick?’

She hung her head, closed her eyes in mock contrition. ‘I don’t even know his surname. He’s big, going bald, he’s polite.’

‘And now he’s an unemployed vegetarian, I presume.’

Sarah shrugged.

‘The cops. When did they arrive? I haven’t been told that.’

Only because I hadn’t asked.

‘Sunday morning,’ she said. ‘Just before nine. They asked me to come to the station. When we got there, they left me alone for about half an hour and then they came in with the gun. I told them about it and while I was doing that I realised I needed a lawyer.’

‘Many people don’t have that reaction.’

Sarah gave me the child’s direct look. ‘I’ve seen the movies, mate. It’s not just the guilty who need a lawyer.’

I nodded. ‘Sound attitude. Everyone needs a lawyer. And a couple in reserve.’

‘So I rang my father and Andrew came to the station. I thought I’d be leaving with him. The movies didn’t prepare me for a week in remand.’

‘Nothing in life would. What does Sophie do?’

‘As in, for a living?’

I nodded.

‘Nothing. Cursed with artistic leanings, the Longmores. I was trying to paint so she wanted to be a painter. She fucked a lot of artists but that didn’t help with the actual painting.’

She fetched another cigarette.

‘Pottery was next,’ she said, ‘but potters were too boring to fuck, plus she hated the feel of clay. Computer-generated crap, that went on for a while. Soph quite liked it but the men were worse than potters. Then she met Ernst, a photographer, a man who carried his telephoto lens in his underpants. That was my impression, anyway.’ She blew smoke. ‘She had a little falling out with Ernst and he took his long lens elsewhere. But she still takes photographs. Compulsively. Terrible photographs.’

We sat silent for a while.

‘Will she be a prosecution witness?’ I said.

‘Against me?’ She closed her eyes and shook her head. ‘No, for Christ’s sake, she knows I didn’t do it, couldn’t do it, wouldn’t have any fucking reason for doing it, how can I get this over…’

‘Having a key to Mickey’s place? How does that work?’

‘I had it, I never gave it back, he never asked, I forgot I had it. I told the police that. Now that may be fucking dumb but it’s not exactly the act of a guilty person. Telling the police about your key to the victim’s apartment.’

I didn’t comment. Guilty people had done stranger things. Time to go away and think of questions I should have asked. I finished the coffee.

At the door, she touched my arm. I turned. No direct childlike look now, her gaze averted, her shoulders lowered.

‘Jack,’ she said, ‘I’m not a great client, but thanks.’

I found myself awkward.

‘I’m trying to be tough,’ she said, still not looking at me. ‘Someone who can handle this kind of nightmare.’

Resist the urge to offer comfort. I had learned that the painful way. In my time, they didn’t give you that advice at law school. Or perhaps they did, and on that day I woke with a gully-trap mouth, rose to fall again, buried guilt in sleep, missed the tutorial.

‘I think you are that someone,’ I said. ‘In a word or two, what was Mickey’s charm?’

‘He was funny, clever. And a dangerous feel. I’d never met anyone like him. He sparked you.’

‘That’ll do,’ I said.