‘An attractive person,’ said Drew, still not looking at me. ‘Intelligent to boot.’
‘If you like booting. Her predecessor’s IQ just topped her chest size. Considerable for a chest but only for a chest.’
‘Rosa, I’m talking about your sister.’ Drew met my eyes, looked uneasy. ‘We’re having lunch on Sunday.’
‘My sister. That’s an entirely different matter.’
Rosa was rich, spoilt beyond redemption. But it wasn’t the money that did it. It was being the focus of three adults’ lives. My maternal grandparents’ money had all gone to her and she used it to do nothing. Unless shopping, playing tennis, having brief affairs with unsuitable men and agonising over life constituted doing something.
I let Drew wait. Then I said, ‘She usually lunches with young men. Spunks. Studs. Studs in their ears, studs elsewhere.’
He still wasn’t too keen to hold my gaze, looked over my shoulder again. ‘More of a meeting of minds, this. No objection, is there?’
I studied him, shook my head. ‘Really, Drew, you can look at me when you raise matters like this.’
He looked at me. ‘Well?’
‘It’s your life.’
‘What’s that mean? Of course it’s my fucking life. Don’t you approve?’
‘Approval doesn’t come into it.’
‘So you don’t approve?’
‘Forget this approval stuff. You’re not asking for my permission, are you?’
‘Well, no. Yes, I suppose I am.’
‘Don’t. I don’t give permissions.’
A long silence. I thought he was going to get up and leave, let me pay for the explosive fish stew.
‘So,’ he said. ‘Not a good idea, you think.’
We fingered our glasses.
‘Fucking awful idea,’ I said. ‘From my point of view.’
Drew filled our glasses. ‘Exactly why is that?’
I’d never been called upon to do something like this. Since her mid-teens, Rosa had always had two photographs beside her bed: a photograph of Bill Irish, the father she never knew, and one of me, in tennis clothes, the older brother to whom she told everything, whether he wanted to hear it or not.
In short, I knew too much.
‘The risk is,’ I said, ‘the risk is that between the two of you you’ll end up creating some fucking vast, treeless, mined no-go area. For me.’
‘For you?’
‘For me. This is about me. You’re asking me.’
‘What about me?’
‘How can I say this? You’re a divorced prick looking for love and affection. Rosa, on the other hand, is only looking for romance. Do I have to say more?’
Drew considered this statement, looking at me. Then he said, ‘No, your honour.’ He emptied his glass. ‘Let’s get the other half.’
Over at the trade union table, an argument had broken out between a short-haired woman with thick-lensed glasses and a man with a wispy beard. ‘The question isn’t whether it’s a women’s issue,’ said the man, ‘it’s whether it’s a union issue.’
The woman looked at the ceiling and said through tight lips, ‘This is so fucking unbelievably eighties, it makes me want to puke.’
‘A lot to be said for the eighties,’ Drew said, signalling to a waiter. ‘Bernie Quinlan kicked 116 in ’83.’
‘That was ’84.’
‘No, he only kicked 105 in ’84.’
10
There was a moment of non-recognition, then the old woman said, ‘Mr Irish, yeah, wait on.’
I heard the boards complain as she went back down the passage. Through the crack in the door came a smell of cat pee, pine-scented disinfectant, paint and food cooked to disintegration.
The old planks signalled Mrs Nugent’s return. She opened the door, revealing that she was wearing a yellow plastic raincoat. ‘Paintin,’ she said. ‘The kitchen. Here.’ She offered me a suitcase. ‘Good clothes, mind you give em to the boy’s rellies.’
‘Have no fear,’ I said. ‘It was the landlord, was it?’
I’d left my card with Robbie Colburne’s neighbour and she’d been on the answering machine when I got back from The Green Hill.
‘Yeah. Come round yesterdee. Give me $20 to clean up the place. Take anythin I liked, give the rest to the Salvos, throw it away.’ She hesitated. ‘Money’s money.’ A further hesitation. ‘The towels and that, the kitchen stuff. Kept that.’
‘Right thing to do,’ I said. ‘Didn’t find anything with an address on it? Letter, anything?’
She shook her head. ‘Them others coulda taken anythin like that.’
‘Others? Police?’
‘Police? Yeah, spose. Who else? Young blokes.’
‘Not in uniform?’
Mrs Nugent looked at me with fowl eyes. ‘Been in uniform I wouldn’t have to bloody spose, would I? Haven’t gone that stupid.’
‘No. Sorry. They take anything away?’
‘Dunno.’
I got out my wallet. She held up a hand, palm outwards.
‘Don’t want no money. Just give the suitcase to the family. Tell em the neighbour says he was a nice young bloke. Had manners. Musta bin brought up right. Only saw him the coupla times in the beginnin, don’t know he actually lived here.’
‘I’ll tell them,’ I said. ‘Thank you, Mrs Nugent.’
‘And tell em I’m sorry.’
I was at the stairs, carrying the soft-sided black nylon suitcase, when the thought came to me. Mrs Nugent opened the door as if she’d been standing just inside it.
‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘His car. Is it still in the garage?’
‘Nah. Someone come and took it. Old Percy downstairs seen him.’
Percy wasn’t at home. I drove the short distance from Abbotsford to my office in Carrigan’s Lane. The greening brass plate said: John Irish, Barrister amp; Solicitor. As I put the suitcase on the old tailor’s worktable that served as my desk, the feeling of guilt that had been with me for a while stabbed me. I should not have taken it from Mrs Nugent. I did not represent Robbie’s family. I was just sniffing around for Cyril Wootton, and was being paid by someone who was probably not being entirely candid.
Take it back? And confess what? No. As for the client, who was I to worry? I was no stranger to economy in truth, economy and selectivity.
I opened the suitcase.
Robbie Colburne travelled light: leather toilet bag, two pairs of black trousers, a pair of chinos, three black tee-shirts, three white shirts, a black jacket, a tweed jacket, a black leather jacket, a nylon wind-breaker, an expensive-feeling woollen jumper, a pair of shiny black shoes, a pair of runners, old running shorts, a washed-out grey tee-shirt, black socks, underpants. And, on a wooden coathanger, a dinner suit, dress shirt, and black bow tie.
Nothing in the suitcase pockets. I looked at the shirts. Nice, superfine cotton by the feel, no labels. I picked up the black jacket, stroked it. It was light and soft — wool and cashmere, perhaps, no label. The tweed jacket was newish, beautifully cut. No label.
I opened the single-breasted dinner jacket. A product of Canali of Italy. A small label on the inside pocket said Charles Stuart. I knew Charles Stuart, they were men’s outfitters in William Street in the city, men’s outfitters to the big end of town. If you didn’t fit that demographic, crossing the threshold of Charles Stuart’s was a post-death experience: a buffed-up person wearing three grand’s worth of the shop’s stock examined you from top to toe, weighed up your clothing and footwear history, registered all your sartorial sins, made a judgment, came closer and said, lips like a cash-machine slot, ‘May I help you, sir?’
I examined the shoes: Italian. I unzipped the toilet bag. It held a silver razor in a slim stainless-steel case, a bottle of Neal’s Yard shaving oil, French deodorant, a toothbrush, French toothpaste, nail clippers, a Bakelite comb. I opened the shaving oil and sniffed. An expensive smell, clean. I inspected the toothpaste, squeezed some onto a fingertip, held it to my nose. Lavender.
Robbie Colburne might have been living in a one-bedroom flat in a low-rent block and working as a casual barman but his effects all shouted money and style.