White Dog (19 page)

‘This is where?’ I said.

‘Over there in the west. It’s all sand and cowboys, all low grade, the ore’s all low grade, everythin’s a notch or two down from the rest of the world. Anyway, this Legion, nothin over 1600 metres, only win’s at 1400.’

‘Ready,’ said Cam.

‘These WA palookas, Jack,’ said Harry, waving his Havana, ‘these sandbiters, they give him a long holiday, then they put the little thing in a 2400. Why would you do that? First up and 800 extra? Only the good Lord knows. That or the pricks thought they were havin a laugh.’

The aromatic cigar smoke was inducing a terrible craving in me. The denial of the pleasure of a good cigar. I needed to rethink that.

‘Go,’ said Harry.

We saw Lost Legion miss the start by about five lengths – horses leapt and then there was daylight and then he appeared.

‘Now note, Jack, the jock reckons he’s blown it,’ said Harry. ‘He’s buggered, he decides to take the animal on a little walk.’

We watched Lost Legion ambling along, getting further behind, for the first 350-odd metres. By then the field of twelve was strung out, at least twenty lengths from first tail to last nose.

‘Now the best you would think the fella would do is just catch up, show the stewards he’s tryin,’ said Harry. ‘Trainer’s not goin to thank him for thrashin the horse from there. But no, not this turkey, he gets the blood rush. Watch.’

Just before the 2000-metre mark, Lost Legion’s jockey was galvanised, suddenly took to the stick, manic riding. The horse responded as if a brake had been released. By the time he ran out of legs, Lost Legion was in front, fifty metres from the post. He finished fifth, lathered.

‘Now when you put the clock on the last two thou,’ said Harry, ‘bloody thing could near enough’ve won the ’79 Australian Cup from Dulcify. Tell him what happened after, Cam.’

‘They give him a rest,’ said Cam. ‘Come back in the autumn, somethin in him’s gone. He runs fourths and fifths. Give him another rest. In the spring, first up, he runs seventh. Second was worse. Sack the jock. He runs tenth, big field. Try someone else on him: six of eight, hangin in all the way. They try blinkers, he beats one home. Off to the paddock again, comes back, two stone motherless lasts. Vets can’t find anythin. This’s the last outin of his career.’

On the big screen, horses going into the starting gate somewhere.

‘Bunbury,’ said Cam. ‘Where that little Hobby jumps off the horse, he’s so keen not to win.’

The light was flashing. The gates opened and the field went away in its bumping, jostling urgency.

Except for Lost Legion. He would not leave the gate, stood head down and still. His small rider urged him repeatedly, gave up, climbed off, climbed out of the cramped stall, walked away, his head down, whipping himself with his stick – not hard, reflectively.

‘After that, he starts to act up till they can’t come near him,’ said Cam. ‘Breaks a stablehand’s leg, kicks a float to bits, bites someone. They give up, get rid of him.’

Harry switched the lights on from the console on the arm of his chair. ‘Let’s bite somethin ourselves, have a drop of the dark fluid,’ he said.

We returned to the study. Harry sat behind the desk made for him by Charlie Taub. Cam and I sat in the green leather armchairs beneath the cliffs of racing books. Mrs Aldridge came in with coffee in a silver pot and a choice of small steaming raisin scones and chocolate-dipped meringues.

‘One each for you, Mr Strang,’ she said, brisk English voice, pouring coffee.

‘I keep tellin you, Mrs A., I’ve given away the ridin,’ said Harry. His powerful hands were on the desk, I thought I saw twitching.

When she was gone, he put four of each on his plate.

I took my coffee and a scone, yellow Normandy butter leaking from the line of division. Blue Mountain and homemade scones with Normandy butter, this was what the gods on Mount Olympus commanded their Mrs Aldridges to feed them at mid-morning.

Harry’s jaw was moving, eyes thin with taste appreciation. ‘Lorna, she reckons he’s nearly ready. Down for a barrier trial next week. After that, it’s when we want to go.’

‘Go?’ I said. ‘As in unknown horse found in Gippsland with sores and wearing rotten old rug wins comeback race? Or what?’

‘That is pretty much the question,’ said Harry. ‘Cam?’

‘Well,’ Cam said. He pointed at the last meringue.

‘Go for your life, son,’ said Harry. ‘Could save mine accordin to what passes for wisdom around here.’

I saw the dark object disappear into Cam, ingested. He was a neat eater, like a fish.

‘Have a try or two in the country,’ Cam said. ‘Stay away from the books and get a proper look, don’t push him. We could take a long-term view.’

Harry drank from the white china cup, looking over our heads, his eyes on his Charlie Taub bookshelves, on his books. He was in some of them, just a mention, the horses were what mattered, you didn’t try to breed jockeys.

‘Feel myself movin away from the long-term view these days,’ he said. ‘But I can hear sense. Jack?’

‘What about the other shareholders?’ I said. ‘Don’t they get a say?’

‘Got the proxies,’ said Harry. ‘More or less. Yes or no?’

I said, ‘What does saying yes entail?’

‘Go for a win first up. Bugger the long-term view.’

Rain smudges on the tall window behind Harry. We’d probably passed the day’s top temperature.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’ve had it with the long term. I’m a short-term man now.’

‘Go it is,’ said Harry. ‘Cam, tell Lorna we’re lookin for the right race. It’ll be soon.’

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.

‘Leave it, Jack,’ said Drew. ‘It’s finished.’

‘Money in my account, hospital paid. Leave it?’

He moved his chair, left, right, not far. ‘It probably is Longmore, pre-empting a damages claim.’