A plane crash in Indonesia, a factory explosion in Geelong, a six-car freeway pile-up, the shut-down of an electronics company.
The wide-eyed newsreader said:
…four hundred A-listers, many of them high-rolling gamblers from Asia, the United States and Europe, last night had a preview of the Orion, Australia’s newest casino and its most exclusive…
Men in evening dress, women in little black dresses getting out of cars, walking up a red carpet. Villani recognised a millionaire property developer, an actor whose career was dead, a famous footballer you could rent by the hour, two cocaine-addicted television personalities, a sallow man who owned racehorses and many jockeys.
A helicopter shot of the Prosilio building, then a spiky-haired young man on the forecourt said:
The boutique gambling venue is housed in this building, the newly commissioned Prosilio Tower, one of Australia’s most expensive residential addresses. It’s a world of total luxury for the millionaire residents, who live high above the city behind layers of the most advanced electronic and other security…
His phone.
‘Pope Barry is pleased,’ said Colby.
Villani said, ‘About what?’
‘Prosilio. The girl.’
‘Nothing to do with me. The absent media, who arranged that?’
‘I’d only be guessing.’
‘Yeah, right. This Prosilio prick, Elliot, Ulyatt, his company owns the building. Came on like we’re from the council about overhanging branches.’
‘And you said?’
‘Well I said fuck off.’
‘Well I can say he went somewhere. I can say that.’
‘I don’t like this stuff, boss.’
‘They don’t want bad news.’
‘The casino?’ said Villani.
‘The casino’s not it, son,’ said Colby. ‘Up there in the air there’s like a whole suburb of unsold million-buck apartments. All spruiked to be as safe as living next door to the Benalla copshop in 1952. You make all this money and you can buy anything and then some deranged psycho shithead invades your space and kills you. Fucks you and tortures you and kills you.’
‘I see the unappealing part of that.’
‘So you’ll also try to grasp the charm of a murder in the building.’
Anna Markham on the screen, cold, pinstriped jacket. He had looked at the dimple in her chin from close range, thought about inserting his tongue into the tiny cleft.
‘I’ll work on that, boss,’ he said.
‘Front and fucking centre. In the big game now. Not in Armed Robbery anymore. Not you, not me.’
…today’s poll shock, the threat of a nurses’ strike, the questions over the Calder Village project and next week’s demonstrations in the Goulburn Valley. With the election weeks away, Premier Yeats has a few things to be worried about…
She had the private-school voice, the expensive tones.
The anchorman said:
…political editor Anna Markham. Now to finance news. In a surprise development in the media world today, a new…
The phone. Mute.
‘Media on the line, boss. Mr Searle.’
‘Stevo, how you going?’ Hoarse cigarette voice.
‘Good. What?’
‘To business. Like that in a man. Listen, this Prosilio woman, got anything?’
‘No.’
‘Okay, so we keep it off the agenda till you have, no point in…’
‘If we don’t ID her before,’ said Villani, ‘I want her on all news tomorrow.’
‘My word,’ said Searle. ‘And obviously it’s not stressing the Prosilio angle, it’s a woman we want identified, that’s basically…’
‘Talk tomorrow,’ said Villani. ‘Calls waiting.’
‘Inspector.’
Villani sat for a long time, head back, eyes closed, thinking about the girl-woman who looked like Lizzie lying in a glass bath in a glass room high above the stained world.
Three levels of security, panic buttons, so many barriers, so insulated. And still the fear. He saw the girl’s skin, grey of the earliest dawn, he saw the shallow bowl between her hipbones and her pubic hair holding droplets like a desert plant.
The water would have been bobbed, flecked and scummed with substances released by her body. He was glad he hadn’t seen that.
Time to go, put an end to the day.
No one to have a drink with. He could not do that anymore, he was the boss.
Go home. No one there.
He rang Bob Villani’s number, saw the passage in his father’s house, the phone on the rickety table, heard the telephone’s urgent sound, saw the dog listening, head on one side. He did not wait for it to ring out.
Inspector. Head of Homicide.
He knew he was going to do it but he waited, drew it out, went to the cupboard and found the card in her spiky hand. He sat, pressed the numbers, a mobile.
‘Hello.’
‘Stephen Villani. If I’ve got the right number, I’m exploring the possibility of seeing someone again.’
‘Right number, explorer. When did you have in mind?’
‘Well, whenever.’
‘Like tonight?’
He could not believe his luck. ‘Like tonight, I would have that in mind, yes.’
‘I can change my plans,’ she said, the arrogant voice. ‘I can be where I live in…oh, about an hour.’
‘You want to change your plans?’
‘Let me think. Yes, I want to change my plans.’
‘Well, I can be there.’
‘Don’t eat. Be hungry.’
‘So that’s how hunger works,’ said Villani. ‘Give me the address.’
‘South Melbourne. Eighteen Minter Street. Exeter Place. Apartment twelve.’
He felt the blood in his veins, the little tightness in his chest, the way he felt in the ring before the bell, before the fight began.
‘SATISFACTORY,’ said Anna Markham.
‘Can I get a more precise mark?’ said Villani.
He was on his side, he kissed her cheekbone. Anna turned her head, found his mouth. It was a good kiss.
‘It’s binary at this stage,’ she said. ‘Satisfactory, unsatisfactory.’
‘Before I rang,’ he said. ‘Where were you going?’
‘To see a play.’
‘With?
‘A friend.’ ‘Male friend?’ ‘Possibly.’
‘There are ways to tell.’
‘I like uncertainty,’ Anna said. ‘Don’t you want to know what play?’
A test. Villani felt the great space between them. She had been to university, the apartment was full of books, paintings, classical music CDs fanned on a sideboard. He had no learning beyond school, he learned little there that he could remember, in high school he had been in a play, shotgunned by a spunky teacher, he saw her face. Ms Davis, she insisted on the Ms. All he knew about art and music came from Laurie dragging him out until she grew weary of it. He read the newspapers, Bob had instilled the habit in him, he watched movies late at night when he couldn’t sleep.
And trees, he knew a fair bit about trees. For a start, he knew the botanical names of about fifty oaks.
‘What play?’ he said.
‘The Tempest. Shakespeare.’
‘Never heard of it.’
He put his head back and after a while he said, ‘The cloud-capp’d towers, the gorgeous palaces, the solemn temples, the great globe itself, yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve…’
Fingertips dug into his upper arm.
‘And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, leave not a rack behind,’ Villani said.
‘Who are you?’
‘It’s the new force,’ he said. ‘We find Shakespeare relevant. Plus inspirational.’
She moved onto him, silk, her hair fell on him. ‘I had a feeling you might be the thinking woman’s investigator. Great screw too. If a little hasty.’
‘I’ll give you hasty.’
She was thin but muscled, she pretended to surrender, then she resisted him, he tried to pin her down, aroused.
He saw the girl in the back seat of the car, blurred lipstick. Fear flooded him.