Without hesitation. ‘Yes. Pretty girl in a raincoat. A yellow raincoat, one of those plastic ones.’
A raincoat to cover her school uniform.
‘What did he look like, apart from the rings in his ear?’ I said.
‘Ears. Both of them, three or four little rings. Well, he was darkish. Mediterranean, I would say. If one’s allowed to these days.
Hair combed back.’
‘About what age, would you say?’
‘Oh, I’m hopeless at ages. They all look so young. Twenty-five perhaps.’
‘Long hair?’
She thought. ‘No, not long, not short, tidy hair, little sideburns.’
‘Moustache, beard?’
‘No. Has he done something?’
‘It’s possible.’
‘Well, he was a tradesman, I’m sure of that.’
‘What makes you sure?’
‘Overalls. He was wearing those overalls they wear a tee-shirt under. Winter and summer. Don’t seem to feel the cold, tradesmen, have you noticed that?’
‘It’s their training,’ said Orlovsky.
‘Also, I could see tools and things in the back.’
‘Tools?’ I said.
‘A sort of saw thing, a power thing. And a cabinet with drawers, a metal cabinet. Against the side.’
‘Anything else?’
She paused, moved her head in a birdlike way. ‘He must like boxing.’
‘Why’s that?’
‘He had two boxing gloves tattooed on his arm, high up, just peeking out of his sleeve. With a little key under them. And two tiny boxing gloves hanging from the mirror, you know the way some people hang things in their cars? Quite dangerous, I think. Distracting.’
I asked more questions but the well was dry. We said our thanks.
In his car, Orlovsky said, ‘Anne the poor little rich girl and Craig the crafty tradesman. Probably rooting while the brother or the cousin makes the phone calls.’
I shook my head. ‘I don’t think so. It’s too stupid. Carmen knows his name, Anne knows Whitton’s seen her getting out of a yellow fucktruck. Anyway, the bloke’s got a trade.’
‘There’s that,’ said Orlovsky, starting the car. ‘Something to fall back on.’
‘Boxing gloves.’
‘I like those fat pink dice.’
‘On his arm. Any decent coffee around here?’
‘What do you think these Brighton moneypuppies do on a Sunday morning? Sit in the park with a stubby?’
He was right. The sleek inhabitants of the bayside suburb were in the shopping area eyeing one another, drinking coffee, having breakfast, reading the Sunday Age through dark glasses, talking on their mobiles. We found a table on the pavement outside a place called Zacco, ordered coffee.
‘The verb to earn,’ said Orlovsky, looking around. ‘The very concept of earning.’
‘What?’ Since he didn’t bother with preambles, it was often hard to work out what Orlovsky was talking about.
‘Nothing that someone whose entirely non-productive life has been paid for out of the public purse would grasp.’
‘Earning? I grasp the concept with ease. They want it, you do it, they pay you, you’ve earned it.’
He closed his eyes and shook his head in a pitying and dismissive way. ‘Stick to killing people, Frank, that’s what you’re good at.’
A young woman wearing a long white apron such as might be worn on the Left Bank in Paris put our coffees on the table.
Orlovsky put twenty grains of sugar into his short black, stirred it with the stem of his spoon. ‘You don’t seem to be considering the possibility that this is the second grab by the same people,’ he said. ‘Can I be privy to your thoughts, master?’
I took a sip, burnt my tongue. ‘No point in considering it,’ I said. ‘Got any idea what the cops would’ve thrown at the Alice kidnapping? They’d have turned over every last person and dog with a possible grudge against the family. Down to the sacked Carson office boys and the miffed Carson hairdressers. That leaves people just doing it for the money. I’m taking the eccentric view that people like that don’t wait seven years and then have another go at the same family. They move on. World’s full of rich families.’
Orlovsky thought about this for a while, then he nodded in an unconvinced way and said in a musing tone, ‘A tradesman called Craig. How many would there be? Thousands, probably the name of choice for tradesmen.’
‘A boxer called Craig,’ I said. ‘How do you find a boxer called Craig?’
We drank coffee. Orlovsky took on his meditative look, gaze upwards, hands in his lap. There was a quality about the tranquil Orlovsky that made people look away lest he come out of it and catch them looking at him.
I looked away, studied our fellow members of sidewalk society. A table within earshot were behaving as if being filmed, assuming poses, bursting into fake laughter, talking with hands, touching hair and skin. A plump man in an advertising agency’s idea of yachting wear was in charge, conducting the ensemble.
A boxer called Craig. There would be a boxing association, a federation, some body that registered boxers. He might not be registered now. About twenty-five, Mrs Neill thought. Get all the Craigs for the past ten years. Would our Craig live on this side of the city? How far would a tradesman drive for a quickie in the back of his van? In the case of Anne Carson, going by the photograph, to the ends of the earth, probably.
‘Heraldic,’ Orlovsky said, still looking upward.
I paid no attention, had the last sip of black, the last tablespoon. ‘Give me that little telephone of yours,’ said Orlovsky. ‘And a pen.’
I gave them to him.
He pulled out a paper napkin from the dispenser, laid it flat, punched numbers. ‘Melbourne,’ he said, ‘Boxer, that’s B-O-X-E-R, business, yes. Boxer something. I don’t have an address.’
He waited. I waited.
I shook my head.
‘That would be it,’ he said. ‘Dandenong. Right.’ He listened, wrote numbers on the napkin, shut down the mobile, closed the flap, gave it back to me. ‘You see gloves, you think boxer, pugilist. A literal mind, best suited to mundane tasks like killing people.’
‘Tell me.’
‘The key,’ he said. ‘The heraldic key.’
12
We parked on the stained tarmac apron of a firm called Dollakeen Kitchens in the light industrial area of Dandenong, a part of Greater Melbourne that doesn’t get mentioned in the newspaper suggestions for ten fun places to go on a Sunday. Orlovsky chose Dollakeen because its front gate was open and telephone inquiries had no number for it.
I was reading the paper and Orlovsky was leaning against the driver’s door smoking one of his stolen Camels when the vehicle drove in the entrance and pulled up on his side, a few metres away.
The driver got out and walked around, came between the vehicles, a young man in a silky tracksuit, medium height, big shoulders and a bodybuilder’s neck. I got out and stretched, walked around and leaned against the driver’s door.
‘G’day,’ the man said. ‘My old man tell youse I need some ID before I open anythin? Like somethin with the business name on it, somethin like that.’
‘Sure,’ said Orlovsky, putting his right hand into his jacket. ‘And your name is…?’
‘Craig Boxer,’ said the man. ‘Boxer Locks.’
Orlovsky was close to him, side-on, getting closer. ‘Craig,’ he said, looking into his inside pocket. ‘Now what have we here. Wallet…ah.’
He brought his right hand out of his jacket, nothing in it, fingers half-closed, punched Craig Boxer under the nose with the heel of his hand. Boxer made a noise, a yelping sound, fell backwards against the yellow Ford van, rocking it. As he was bringing up his hands to the blood pouring from his nose, Orlovsky kicked his legs out from under him. Craig hit the tarmac hard, banging his head against the van. Blood went out from him in an arc.
In the van, I could see the little gloves hanging from the rearview mirror. They were swinging.
‘Fuck,’ said Craig, through his hands. He sounded like someone with a bad cold. A bad cold and a bad nosebleed.