His carer, a small Malaysian man called Robert, led me through the flat to a sitting room full of exquisite, heavy oak antique chairs and table nests. Tea was waiting, a tail of steam issuing from a small, gilt-edged pot. The walls were floor to ceiling with paintings and religious icons. It was all crucifixion, self-flagellation, murder, betrayal, blood and misery. It was the sort of apartment that might be enjoyed by a sadist monk from the Middle Ages, if indeed the sadist monk could get past the wonder of fresh tap water, electric toasters, television, and all the other glorious junk that gluts our modern world.
‘Wait, please,’ Robert said. He dramatically rolled his hand towards one of the chairs. His permanent smile was unnerving. He wore a tight-fitting satin vest, black waiter’s trousers and shoes so polished they seemed to contain their own source of light.
I sat, as Robert had requested, and looked out at the reach of Narrowneck and the ocean. A small red biplane eased past. I could see two container ships on the horizon. I noticed the tips of the pines at the back of my caravan park.
All this crazy summer life going on at ground level — kids on boogie boards being dumped in the surf, old men throwing their pensions into a poker machine, hoons blowing rubber in the Broadbeach car park — and here I was sitting in a silent room that could have belonged to the cellar of an Italian monastery.
When the Priest entered, I automatically stood. He was clearly mentally unhinged, and something about bona fide craziness — so tailored and complete and a world unto itself — commands a triggered respect in human beings. It is, partly, the ‘there but for the grace of God go I’ factor. I had encountered much of it in 21 Division in the Cross.
He towered over me, and I was six feet in my socks. He had long, thin grey hair that almost reached his shoulders and was parted with frightening exactitude down the middle of his scalp. His face sported a fanatically trimmed white beard. His black cassock was floor-length.
He sat in the chair opposite mine, and with a motion of his finger ordered Robert to pour the tea. Robert left and we faced each other for a few uncomfortable moments.
‘And you are?’ the Priest finally said.
‘Let’s just say I’m an old friend of the Dapper’s.’
His stare was cold and peculiar. He had long white fingers that were curled over two wood-carved balls at the end of the chair arms.
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Dapper Dan. Your flatmate. At least, that was one of the names he went by the last I knew him.’
‘I have absolutely no idea who you may be referring to.’ He had lowered his head a little and was now studying me as an entomologist might examine a mutated specimen of Sorghum Head moth.
‘You don’t know anyone by the name of Dapper Dan? A ... well, dapper gentleman?’
‘Is this some sort of practical joke?’
‘I’m afraid not.’
‘Then state your business.’
‘I’m just an old acquaintance. New to the area. Wanted to pay my respects. To my Fair Weather Friends. He left me a note.’
I had missed the moment, but at some point the effeminate Robert had turned from tea boy into a miniature parody of a menacing sidekick and bodyguard, the type you might expect to pop up in a bad James Bond film. But one acted by children, for children. A 003 and a half film.
‘Fair weather?’
‘Correct. Fair weather.’
‘Are you some sort of newspaper-crossword cryptologist?’ ‘I don’t even like chess.’
The Priest wriggled in his chair, put a forefinger to his lips, then issued a malevolent smile. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said quietly. ‘We don’t seem to be having the same conversation. I am a dealer and collector of fine arts. My particular passion is the work of sculptor Etienne Bobillet. I thought you were a client of my business partner, Mr Seelenleben, who handles more contemporary works and in particular Australian art — if that is not an oxymoron — and as he is on business interstate, I agreed to see you out of courtesy to him. This note you received about Fair Weather Friends. I can only assume it pertains to the work of the artist Ian Fairweather, of which Mr Seelenleben is a specialist. Does this make any sense to you?’
‘Not the foggiest.’
‘You are not seeking assistance in the purchase or sale of a Fairweather?’
‘Nope.’
‘Then we are wasting each other’s time.’
He stood again and for a moment I was reminded of my early psychology textbooks and Nietzsche’s famous paper on the ‘pale criminal’, the great disrupters of humanity, always running away from their darker selves.
Robert came to my side and made to lead me out of the dungeon.
‘Is there any way I could contact Mr Seelenleben?’
‘I’m afraid not,’ the Priest said.
‘Can I leave a message?’
‘No.’
As Robert steered me by the arm towards the door I noticed, on a small wooden hutch, a framed photograph of a woman and three children — one of those terribly formal 1960s pictures that fathers often had on their desks at work. The colours were all bleached-out pastels.
I stopped and picked up the frame and studied it.
‘Your children?’ I asked the Priest.
‘Yes.’
‘You come now,’ Robert protested.
‘Wife, too?’
‘Yes. In a former life.’
I saw a crucifix on the wall behind the happy mother and children. I believed, too, the picture was a portal in this apartment of death. A small window into a part of the Priest that he could not, despite everything, keep sealed. I took a punt on the cross and feeling the picture gave me.
‘You had holy orders?’
‘Anglican minister.’
‘Since retired,’ I said.
‘Since retired.’
I put the picture down. Robert was virtually pushing me towards the black door.
‘Gave up the Good Lord for art. There are lesser things to abandon Him for. ‘
I was poking and prodding the underbelly of the Priest. I wanted to break through to something, anything. ‘To leave your wife and children for as well, I suppose. Though my experience tells me that moral abandonment is usually enacted for another person, not a room full of objects. Nietzsche got it right, you know.’
It did the trick. He came to the open doorway and stood in the black frame.
‘You are a private detective?’ he asked.
I turned and stood facing him in the hallway.
‘I’m a private citizen.’
‘A first-year psychology student, then.’
‘Second year. Before that, I spent almost forty years chasing pale criminals.’
‘Mr Seelenleben will be back on Thursday, if you’d prefer to call in then.’
I pressed the button to the elevator.
‘Seelenleben,’ I said as I waited. ‘It was a word Freud used. It refers to the inner life of the child. Tell your boyfriend I’ll call Thursday.’