‘This is in the hands of the police now, Frank. If you have any ideas, they should be told.’
I hesitated. ‘This is very important,’ I said. ‘I’ve been the police, I think I can do this better than the police.’
Silence and the music. ‘Frank, her mother says she’s taken Anne’s murder in a strange way. You can understand that. This is not a good time.’
‘Good time? It’s never going to be a good time. Ever. You don’t have walls high enough. Did the cops tell you about the call? An eye for an eye’s not a fair exchange?’
‘Yes. Mr Vella told me. We’ve put Jahn, Cullinan in charge of family security now, Frank. Should’ve from the beginning, just my father’s strange ideas.’
‘I’ll put this simply. I’m not on the payroll. I don’t want to be on the payroll.’
Another silence. A long silence, the music.
‘I’ll give you Alice’s number,’ Barry said. ‘It’s silent, so tell her who you are straight away or she’ll be alarmed. She’ll talk to you.
She liked you.’ A beat. ‘I can’t think why.’
‘Inexplicable,’ I said. ‘One more thing. Do you ski?’
‘Yes. Not much anymore. Why?’
‘Where?’
‘Hotham mostly. We’ve got a place up there, family place, a lodge. Why?’
‘Just a survey I’m doing about the habits of the rich.’
Laugh, a small laugh. ‘Frank, we’re going to have to put you on the payroll. To ensure your discretion.’
At Orlovsky’s house, we opened SeineNet and looked up the investigating officer in Cassie Guinane’s case. His name was Terence Sadler and a file note said he’d taken early retirement in 1990.
42
The phone in London rang and rang and rang and I knew with no possible logic to support me that it was summoning no one, ringing in a place where no one would answer it. I sat on the kitchen chair in Orlovsky’s computer room, he sat at his keyboard, our eyes locked, both of us listening to the ringing.
‘Alice isn’t home,’ he said.
When all was lost, when I was nodding at him, she answered.
‘Yes.’ Breathless voice.
‘Frank Calder, Alice, we talked the other night.’
Deep breath. ‘Frank. Oh, hello. I was getting in the car and heard the phone ringing.’
There was warmth in her voice and it warmed me. ‘I know I’m not a welcome sound,’ I said.
‘No, no, not at all, no.’ No hesitation. ‘After we talked the other morning, I felt better than I’ve felt, well, ever, really. Since, I mean. From the day the American man left, the psychiatrist, no one ever said anything again. Everyone looked at me in a way, as if there was something wrong with me, do you know what I mean? I’d catch them looking at me in a certain way…’
She tailed off.
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I think I know what you mean.’
‘It’s nicer to talk when I can see your face.’ She laughed.
‘I always felt they didn’t believe me when I told them…what happened. It’s stupid but the more they asked me questions, the more I felt they didn’t believe me. They asked me the same questions over and over.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘They were scared they’d missed something.’
‘I understand that, why they’d do that, they have to do that, but I was just a girl. And I was young for my age, I think. When people keep asking you the same questions, you think they want different answers. Your answer’s not good enough. You’re not telling the truth. Am I sounding stupid?’
‘Makes perfect sense to me.’
‘My father’s like that. There’s a wait after you say something. And the man with the beard and the soft voice, he scared me so much, I can’t tell you. I didn’t know what a psychiatrist was. It was like…it was the beard more than the voice. Lie down and relax, he said, that was the most awful thing he could say…’
This was another Alice, an Alice released from bondage.
She said, ‘Frank, it’s a terrible thing to say, when I heard about Anne, I had this thought, not really a thought, a feeling, well, a thought. I thought: now they’ll believe me, now they’ll believe me. Is that awful?’
‘That’s not awful at all, Alice,’ I said, ‘that’s got nothing to do with awful. People can only pretend to understand other people’s pain. And they can only do that for a while. Then it annoys them, they think: how bad can it have been? If you talk about it, they want you to shut up. If you don’t, they think you’re sulking.’
I looked up and met Orlovsky’s eyes, he looked away.
Alice laughed, a laugh of relief, tension dispelled. In the trade, if she was holding a gun on people I’d have taken that as a good sign.
‘Alice,’ I said. ‘I want to play something to you, I want you to listen to something. May be nothing, probably won’t mean anything to you, just a silly hunch. Can I do that?’
‘Of course.’ There was a firmness to her voice, an adult, grownup firmness.
I held out the telephone to Orlovsky’s machines, gave him the nod.
A hippety-hoppety tune, a childish tune, a few bars, repeated.
I put the receiver to my ear. ‘Hear that, Alice?’
The line was open. She was there, you know when someone is there.
Silence.
‘Alice?’
She made a sound, a tiny sound, a sound in her throat, and put the phone down.
After a while, I put my phone down. Orlovsky had his elbows on the table, chin on his hands, looking at me.
‘The authors, they’d have written that tune, would they?’ I said.
He nodded.
‘What’s the game called?’
‘Shooting Star.’
‘Nice name.’
‘Yes.’
‘Tomorrow,’ I said. ‘Early. I want to see them.’
‘See them? Are you mad? If all this means anything, they’re crazy kidnappers and murderers. For fuck’s sake, go to the cops, tell your mates what you know.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I want to see them. This happened on my watch.’
‘So did Afghanistan. You planning on going back there? Have another crack at them? Bring the boys back to life?’
I looked at him for a time, then I said, ‘We’ll need some ID.’
‘I’m going along, am I? That’s taken for granted?’
‘No,’ I said. I got up. ‘I’ll drop the pay envelope around.’
I was in the passage when he shouted, ‘What kind of ID, you bastard?’
It was 10.30 p.m. when I rang the Carson compound. The switchboard spoke to Stephanie Chadwick, put me through.
‘Hello, Frank,’ she said. ‘This is a nice surprise.’ She’d been drinking.
‘Stephanie,’ I said, ‘does the name Cassie Guinane, Cassandra Guinane, mean anything to you?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘No, I don’t know the name.’
‘She was in your class at school.’
‘Was she?’ She laughed, an uneasy sound. ‘Lots of unmemorable girls in my class. Why?’
‘I think her brothers may have kidnapped Anne. And Alice.’
I heard her draw breath. ‘Have you told the police?’
‘No. I don’t want to yet, not till I’m certain. Sure you don’t remember her? Tall, dark, pretty?’
‘No. Well, perhaps vaguely. The name.’
‘I’ll be in touch.’
‘Yes. Goodnight.’
Sleep was hard to come by, my nights with Corin seemed to be in the distant past. I thought about the Carsons, their laundered clothes, their Italian soaps and French butter, their Jamaican coffee beans freshly roasted each morning. I thought about Pat not acknowledging my presence and Stephanie’s lascivious kiss and pelvic thrust and Martie Harmon’s story of Mark salivating at the memory of seeing women abused. I thought about the security men patrolling the walled compound and the Carson child taken from them and put to death. And I wished I had never heard the name Carson.
I left my bed long before dawn, no rest in me, and ran down the snakeskin streets. See them. See the Guinanes. What was the point? The point was to see if my skin tightened, to see if I was in the presence of people who murdered a girl in a bath, of a man who pushed a dead girl through the streets in a wheelchair, pushed the wheelchair down an escalator.