‘You had a volunteer solicitor around that time. Mark Carson.
I represent his family. They’re a bit worried about him and I’m trying to get some idea of the kind of person he is, the people he knew then, just scratching around really.’
She bit her lower lip. ‘You’re some kind of investigator?’
‘No. It’s a favour really. To the family.’
Ellen wasn’t happy about something. ‘That’s a long time ago,’ she said. ‘You should talk to Jeremy Fisher, he was…’ ‘I know. I’d like to talk to him but he’s a big-shot lawyer now.
You have to make an appointment three months ahead to see him.
Did you know Mark then?’
She nodded, didn’t want to look me in the eye. ‘Yes, there were only a few solicitors came in then. And now.’
‘I suppose it would have been unusual for someone from a big city firm to find the time to come out here at night.’
One of the predator children let out a piercing scream. I turned in time to see it strike its fellow-predator a full blow in the face, instant retaliation for some wrong. The victim stumbled, fell over backwards and hit its head on the brown nylon carpet, screamed too.
Without venom or force, the mother backhanded the striker, leaned forward and pulled the victim upright by the bib of his tiny overalls, dragged him into the moulded plastic chair next to her.
‘Don’t bloody go near each other,’ she said. She looked at us. ‘Kids, Christ, I’m up to here.’
I turned back to Ellen Khoury. ‘Mark would have been an unusual volunteer, would he?’
‘I suppose so. Most of those we get work for the labour firms or small firms around here.’
‘And he did a good job?’
‘Well, I was just the front-office worker, you’d have to ask Jeremy Fisher.’ She was drumming the fingers of her right hand on the desk, fast.
This looked like having even less point than I’d expected. With nothing to lose, I said, ‘And after the incident, he didn’t come anymore?’
Ellen stopped drumming, scratched her head at the hairline. She looked relieved. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Well, he could have. Jeremy told the police Mark was here until after she would have been picked up or whatever. So he was in the clear.’
‘Yes. In the clear. The police came here when…’
‘The next day. They didn’t know she’d been here until they talked to a friend of hers early in the morning.’ She was talking easily now. ‘I was here and they came in and gave me the name and I couldn’t find the book. Never found the book, it vanished. So we couldn’t help them. Anyway, they showed her picture to Moira Rickard, she was the vol on the desk that night, and she remembered her, remembered she’d seen Mark. Last client of the night. She was still with him when Moira went home. We never did that again, go before the last client’s gone.’
I nodded. ‘And Jeremy was here?’
‘Yes.’ Ellen’s face was expressionless. ‘He resigned a few months later, went to some big firm.’
‘I can’t remember the woman’s name,’ I said. ‘I’ve gone blank.’
‘Anthea Wyllie. She was a nurse at the hospital. You still hear people around here talking about it. They say her parents blame us. That’s a bit rough.’
‘Certainly is,’ I said. ‘Well, thanks for talking to me, Ellen. I’ll have to make an appointment to see Jeremy.’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Jeremy’s the one to talk to.’
Back over the bridge, sun behind me like a poisonous fireball heading for earth, to the left Docklands, ahead the shining towers of the city.
Anthea Wyllie. A missing woman, a woman missing after seeing Mark Carson, never seen again. What sort of curse lay on this family, rich beyond greed, cradled in luxury, that their children were stolen from them, that those they touched they marked with crosses of ash?
30
Mr Pat Carson would like to see me if it was convenient, said the security man in the underground carpark, taking the Audi keys from my hand.
It was convenient.
‘Frank, get a drink,’ Pat said, a glass on the desk at his right hand, his knuckles touching it.
I poured a finger of the peaty liquid, dusted it with water, sat down opposite the old man. There was something about the room, the panelling, the armchairs, the soft lights. At the end of a long and fruitless day, my lunch engagement excepted, it brought a little peace to the soul.
I had a sip. Pat had a sip.
‘Jesus,’ he said. ‘What’d a man do without a drop of the nerve tonic?’
I nodded. He’d had a good few drops. My gaze fell for the first time on a photograph on the wall behind Pat, a photograph lit by a brass picture lamp, of a big gathering, outdoors, everyone standing: Pat and a woman, dark eyes, grey hair pulled back, severe-looking; Tom and Barry with their wives; a woman about Barry’s age, probably their sister, Louise, smiling at a tall man who had his arms around three girls, one a teenager. Next to him was Christine, carrying a baby, that would be Anne. In front was a small boy, tennis racket in hand: Pat Junior. The dark-haired child with the serious face next to him was Alice, her ordeal still to come. On the left of the crowd, I identified Stephanie, long and lithe in a bikini, her hand on the shoulder of a handsome blond man, probably Dr Jonty. She wasn’t looking at the camera, she was looking at someone in bathers on the opposite fringe, someone who looked as if he had arrived late, got out of the pool just in time for the photograph. It was a young man who looked like Tom Carson with thirty years removed, softly muscular, with thick wet hair fallen across his forehead like a spray, dark and handsome and with a sardonic look. Mark Carson, I had no doubt.
‘Graham says you told the bastard to give us proof Anne’s alive,’ said Pat.
‘Yes.’
‘No risk there? Not normal people these. Could do anythin.’ His voice was hesitant, he had a look in his eyes that said: tell me good news. Not the Pat Carson of a few days before, but that Pat Carson had been sober.
‘Mr Carson,’ I said, ‘I think Anne’s dead.’
He looked into my eyes, sniffed twice, had a sip of whisky, didn’t put the glass down, touched it to his lips again, moistened them with whisky.
‘I thought, the finger,’ he said, ‘I thought that meant she was alive.’
‘It’s a feeling,’ I said. ‘I’ve spent a lot of time with people who want to hurt other people, to punish them.’
‘Punish? Who? Mark?’
‘Perhaps the family or Tom, perhaps Mark.’
Pat shook his head. ‘Don’t understand. Punish? For what?’
I said nothing, looked away, looked at the photograph behind him. This was what a dynasty looked like. The builders’ labourer who ended up owning the building. All the buildings. The boys, who transcended their unschooled father’s violent past, his lack of education, who went to private schools and ended up with handicaps of six or eight at Royal Melbourne, were members of a city club that would never have admitted their father, a club whose older members, close to death now, in the home straight, still muttered ‘bog Irish’ and sprayed spittle at the mention of names like Carson. The boys, who married the daughters of stockbrokers and minor English aristocracy. And the girl, who married into a family of Western District graziers, polo players with city homes in Toorak.
In the crowded photograph, people close together, the eye went first to Pat because he had space around him. His nearest and dearest did not press upon him. He remained at a small distance, his chin up, a rich and powerful self-made man surrounded by his handsome family, a man who had undoubtedly bought and paid for many members of clubs that would not admit him.
‘I don’t know for what,’ I said. ‘I just hope I’m wrong. But there wasn’t any other way. We have to have proof that Anne’s alive.’
‘You know what you’re doin,’ he said, resigned but not convinced. ‘What’s the proof?’
‘Photograph of Anne holding today’s newspaper.’
Pat nodded. ‘That’ll do.’