I did as she’d done-extended the folder so that she had to lean forward from her chair to take it. She was the sort of woman you had to play those games with, otherwise, she’d have you in the back court all the time and you’d never make it to the net. The drink was just right for temperature, mix and punch and I sat back and enjoyed it while she read. I also enjoyed looking at her over the rim of the glass. Her skin glowed, her hair shone and her bones were well-covered. Whatever you’ve been up to, Stewart, I thought, you couldn’t have expected her to wait ten years.
She read rapidly, flicking back to confirm things or lodge them in her memory, names perhaps. She was through it in a few minutes and then spent nearly half that long studying the photograph. She tapped the pages back together and pinned the photo back where it had been.
‘Very professional,’ she said. ‘Let’s eat.’
We went through to a dining room with a teak table that looked something like the one Paul Keating bought for the Lodge. It was set for two places with a bottle of red wine standing by.
‘I thought you’d be a meat man,’ she said, ‘so I ordered in some stuff from the Balkan. You know it?’
‘I do. Great place. Haven’t been there for a while. Still going strong?’
‘Sure is. Wouldn’t mind a percentage.’ She picked up a waiter’s friend style corkscrew and handed it to me. ‘Open the wine while I bring in the food. Freshen your drink if you like.’
I did both things. I could hear sounds from the kitchen-microwaving, a fridge door, the rattle of plates. She came back with a stack of plates and a couple of steaming bowls on a tray, set them down and went back for more. After another trip we sat down to a spread of oysters in the shell, skewered meat with vegetables and rice, breadsticks and side dishes of spiced sausages and various sauces and dips I couldn’t name. The solid gins had relaxed me and the wine was smooth and fruity. We both dug in for a minute or two and then she looked across at me with a forkful held ready.
‘What’s wrong?’ she said.
‘I was thinking of Stewart.’
The fork clattered to the table and the food spilled. ‘Fuck you,’ she said.
‘Sorry.’
She had the fastest recovery time I’d ever seen. She had the spilt food scooped up and back on her plate, her lips wiped with a napkin and had taken a sip of wine before I could think of the next thing to say.
‘Just sometimes,’ she said, ‘I try to forget that my husband’s facing ten years in gaol and that I’ve got two kids to explain things to and a business to run and-’
‘Let’s start again,’ I said. ‘It was very nice of you to invite me and I’m enjoying it. Let’s talk about something else. Yachting. How long for a yacht to go from Noumea to Vila?’
She gave her throaty laugh. ‘You bastard, that’s not something else. You’re still working. Am I being rude?’
I knew she was manipulative, but was she that manipulative? Hard to say. ‘You’re doing fine, most women’d be climbing the walls. Most people.’
‘Caught yourself almost in time.’
‘Old habits. The food’s great.’ I reached over and poured her some more wine. We ate and drank for a few minutes, both things she did neatly and efficiently. She seemed to enjoy the wine without wanting to get it down as fast as possible, but it’s hard to tell with drinking. I knew a bloke who I’d have said drank about as much as me and ended up going to AA. I said if he did maybe I should but he told me he usually had half a bottle of scotch inside him before we got together and finished off the rest later.
She pushed her plate away and had a good sip. ‘Right. So where are we? Some kind of a policeman set Stewart up.’
‘If we can believe Fay and Montefiore.’
‘Mmm. Which one was she?’ I’d put the Salon de Fun leaflet in the folder.
‘She was the one on the end.’
‘Which end?’
‘That’s what I asked Montefiore.’
She smiled. ‘You sort of liked them, didn’t you? D’you believe them?’
‘I’ve met worse. Chancers, toughies. We’ll see if they turn up with some solid information. If they don’t, you’ve spent a fair bit of money for nothing.’
‘I think you handled it well. You baited the hook. Is there anything to be done while we wait?’
I drank some more wine, judging it to be about five notches in quality above the stuff I’m used to. ‘It’s difficult. If he is a policeman he could be federal or from any one of the eastern states. Very hard to find out if he’s an undercover type. I’ll have to talk more to Fay to get a line on that. If he isn’t…’
‘Is that worse or better?’
I broke a breadstick and poked it into one of the sauce bowls. ‘I’ll be honest with you, Mrs Master-’
‘Lorrie.’
‘Okay, Lorrie. I just don’t know. I haven’t come up against anything quite like this before. Rogue cops, yes. High level, complex international operations, no.’
‘Isn’t there some kind of internal affairs department in the police?’
‘Yes, but which state, and state or federal? Same problem.’
‘Let’s leave that aside for a moment. I’m interested in a sly suggestion you made-that Stewart might have agreed to cooperate with.. whoever, and got double-crossed.’
I shrugged. ‘It was just a thought. No, more like a feeling. I had a sense of him perhaps walking into a situation with his eyes open.’
‘How could that be?’
Something about her concentrated alertness made me want to fidget, to play with the breadstick, spin my wineglass. I kept my hands still. ‘What if Stewart was into something here that went badly wrong and the cops had him over a barrel? So he had to agree to a part in this sting or whatever it was, or they’d hit him with everything.’
She shook her head confidently. ‘No. That’s not possible. He’d broken off all his ties with the crims. He didn’t have any money but he wasn’t looking to get it in the old way. He was happy to lie low, think about things, get himself back in order. He was considering doing a university course. Psychology. Becoming some sort of counsellor-’
She broke off and stared at me. ‘Why are you looking like that?’
‘Did you know he’d put in an offer to buy the Atlas gym?’
14
"That bastard!’
She slammed her glass down so hard that the base and stem broke and red wine spilled out over the white tablecloth. Not content with that, she hammered her fist on the table and let out a stream of obscenities directed at men in general and Stewart Henry Master in particular. ‘He promised me,’ she snarled. ‘He fucking promised! No more scams. No more dodgy deals. Shit! That’s it. I’m finished. He’s had it. He can fucking rot in there as far as I’m concerned, the lying prick!’
Nothing to do except sit quietly and wait for the storm to pass. It didn’t. She reeled off a list of betrayals and deceptions Master had perpetrated and castigated herself for her forgiving ways.
‘No more. It’s finished.’ She glared at me and it was clear that I’d gone from helpful employee or something more to less than nothing. I heard a movement outside the room and a pretty young head poked around the door.
‘Mrs Master…?’
‘Go away, Britt. Go away!’
The head withdrew and Lorraine Master continued to rage, sweeping things from the table and almost spitting as she spoke. ‘Ten years. It should be twenty. The lying…’
That was enough. I took out my keys and rattled them in her face. ‘Stop it. It might not be as bad as you think.’
‘That’s all you know,’ she spat. ‘This is a typical piece of Stewie bullshit. He must’ve done some kind of deal to come out of this New Caledonia thing with money and it all went sour on him. Good. Fuck him!’.
She meant it. She was the clean-sweep queen and she was holding all the cards. I hadn’t expected the news about the gym buy to trigger this much reaction but I wasn’t completely surprised. Master was a conman; Lorraine was the kind of woman vulnerable to that kind of man. Neither of them could help themselves. It was time to think of number one.