An Iron Rose (26 page)

‘Mr Bianchi? Helen Radomsky. Come in. We’ll have to go into the kitchen, everything else is being painted.’

We went down a wide passage and turned left into a kitchen, a big room with windows looking onto a walled garden.

‘Sit down,’ she said. I sat down at a scrubbed table. She leant against the counter under the windows.

‘I’m sorry about your husband,’ I said.

‘Thank you. The most senseless thing.’

I nodded. ‘Mrs Radomsky, Alan Perez may have explained. My brother left an audiotape with your husband and it’s gone, not in the safe.’

She nodded.

‘His secretary says she had the tape copied late one afternoon and dropped off two copies here. A courier was going to pick them up.’

‘I remember a courier coming one evening. About six thirty. That’s two or three weeks before Geoff…I didn’t see what Geoff gave him.’

I put my elbows on the table, palms together. ‘It’s most likely Geoff sent off both copies. But I’d like to ask you something, just to be certain.’

‘Yes?’

‘If Geoff didn’t give the courier both tapes, where would he have put the second one?’

She smiled. ‘Well, he’d have put it on the side table in the study to take to work, forgotten all about it, put a newspaper on top of it the next day. Six weeks later there would be a panic search and we’d find it under sixteen copies of the
Age
, three books and four old
Football Records.’

‘
Is it possible?’

She pulled a face. ‘I haven’t been into the study for more than ten seconds since the night. Actually, I haven’t been into it for more than ten seconds in years. And Geoff wouldn’t let the cleaning lady near it. He attacked the mess himself about twice a year.’

‘Could you bear to…’

‘Of course,’ she said. ‘Come.’

We went back down the passage. She opened the second door on the left, went in, pulled open heavy red curtains. It was not the study of a tidy person: books, newspapers, files on all surfaces, two bags of golf clubs leaning against the fireplace, a filing cabinet with the bottom drawer pulled out, two full wastepaper baskets, a team of old cricket bats meeting in a corner, empty wine bottles and several wine glasses and mugs on the mantelpiece.

The side table was to the left of the door, no centimetre of its surface visible under a haystack of printed material.

I looked at it. ‘So far the hypothesis holds,’ I said.

Helen Radomsky began clearing the table, dropping the material on the carpet. She got down to a final layer of newspapers.

‘Well,’ she said, ‘if it was put here…’ She lifted the stack.

A Game Boy, paperback entitled
The Mind of Golf,
gloves, set of keys, dictation machine, coins, ballpoints, two Lotto tickets, window envelopes, dark glasses, a small silver torch, a pocket diary, small dark-coloured plastic box.

Helen Radomsky picked up the box. It had a sticker on the side. She read: ‘DocSecure.’

I said, ‘Anything in it?’

She shook it. It rattled.

She opened it: one tape.

I said, ‘ “And when it seemed that destiny sought them slain/Came from the legion’s throat one joyous sigh/All eyes gazed up from that bloodstained plain/To see a white dove beneath a salamandrine sky.” ’

‘What’s that?’ she said.

‘Some poem,’ I said. ‘All I remember. It’s about salvation.’

I fought against it and then I did it: I rang Anne Karsh. If Leon answered, I’d say Francis wasn’t answering and we needed instructions about the pine trees at Harkness Park.

It rang and rang. I was about to give up when she said, ‘Hello. Anne Karsh.’ Short of breath.

I didn’t have much breath either. ‘Mac. If this is a bad idea, for any reason, say wrong number and put it down.’

She laughed. I knew the laugh. ‘It’s a good idea. It’s the kind of idea you desperately hope someone else will have because you’re too uncertain to have it yourself. And you’re walking around feeling like a schoolgirl with a crush. A thirty-four-year-old schoolgirl.’

‘I’m in the city,’ I said. ‘Business.’

I could hear her breathing.

‘Is that in the city staying over or in the city going back?’

‘In the city staying over. Not sure where yet.’

‘I can suggest somewhere,’ she said.

‘I’m open to suggestion.’

‘I still have my flat in East Melbourne. It could use an airing. We could meet there, cook something, eat out, order a pizza, not eat anything.’

‘I think eating’s important,’ I said. ‘Not so much what but the social act.’

‘So do I. I think social acts are very important. We’ll think about the social act when we’re there. Make a joint social act decision.’

‘You’re free this evening then?’

‘I’m free for the next two hours, then I’ve got a brief engagement, then I’m free again. Leon came back from Queensland last night, flew to Europe this afternoon. In hot pursuit of something. Possibly a small European country. Smaller than Belgium, bigger than Andorra.’

‘So we could meet quite soon?’

‘I think we should get off the phone now,’ she said, ‘and make our separate ways to East Melbourne at the maximum speed the law allows. Slightly over the maximum speed. When you get there, press the button for A. Lennox.’

‘Give me the address,’ I said. It was unusual for me to become aroused while talking on the telephone in a car parked outside a newsagency.

The address was a Victorian building, a huge house, three storeys, converted to apartments. I parked across the road, waited. Quiet street. It began to drizzle.

The black Mercedes took ten minutes to arrive, went down the driveway beside the house. I waited two minutes, got out.

I pressed the button next to the name A. Lennox. Anne Lennox. Her name before she took Karsh. There was a lift to the third floor. I walked up, glad to stretch after a day of driving, found the elegant door.

Before I rang, I unsnapped the shoulder-holster button under my right arm. The door opened instantly.

Anne was wearing a trenchcoat over jeans and a camel-coloured top, hair pulled back, dark-rimmed spectacles. I hadn’t seen her in glasses.

She brushed my lips with the fingertips of her right hand.

‘Suit,’ she said. ‘Sexy in a suit, Mr Faraday.’

Inside, door closed, we looked at each other.

‘Sexy in the glasses,’ I said.

‘Thank you. For driving.’ She took them off, put them in an inside pocket.

I touched her hair. ‘Wet,’ I said.

‘Everywhere. I was in the shower.’

‘Rang and rang. Almost gave up.’

‘Pays to wait the extra second.’

‘Pays like Tattslotto,’ I said.

She took off the trenchcoat, hung it on a hook behind the front door, adjusted the central heating dial on the wall.

She kicked off her shoes, unbuttoned her top at the throat and pulled it over her head.

‘Pays better than Tattslotto,’ she said.

She was naked underneath, nipples alert. She cupped her breasts for me. I bent to kiss them, feverish.

‘Didn’t have time to get dressed properly,’ she said.

‘Like you dressed improperly. Very much.’

Kissing, undressing, touching, we found our way down the passage and into a bedroom. I managed to get my jacket and the shoulder holster off together.

‘First in quick time, I think,’ Anne said, voice blurred. ‘Then in slow. Very slow.’

Later, lying naked, sated, in the warm room, Anne side on to me, head on my chest, my hand between her thighs, she said, ‘Leon tells me you have an unusual background for a blacksmith, Mr Faraday.’

I felt the sweat on my neck chilling. ‘What does Leon know about my background, Ms Karsh?’

She laughed. ‘When you turned down Leon’s job offer, you became an unobtainable object. And therefore an object of interest.’

‘A man with a duck on a string.’

‘Exactly.’ She bit my right nipple gently, worried it, put her fingertips in my pubic hair, scratched gently.

‘And so he made inquiries about me. Is that it?’

‘That’s it. He couldn’t bear not to know.’

‘What did he say about my background?’

‘Unusual. That’s all. Leon never reveals everything he knows. Not at once. He likes you to know he knows and to tell you what he knows when it suits him.’

‘And how does Leon find out what he knows?’

‘Oh, I think Leon could find out what toothpaste the Pope uses.’

‘Would you say,’ I said, ‘that Leon was a jealous man?’

‘No, not jealous. Envious. Of everything he doesn’t have.’

‘If he thought you were having an affair, would he want to know the details?’

‘Probably. Not out of jealousy. Just for the knowledge. Knowledge for its own sake.’ She moved her lips onto my ribs. ‘Talking of knowledge,’ she said, ‘carnal knowledge of you is nice. And not just for its own sake.’

She reached over and got her watch off the bedside table, looked at it with her head on my stomach. ‘Christ!’ She sat upright. ‘Have to postpone the learning for a while. I’m due to represent Leon at this charity thing…’

I lay on the bed and thought while she showered. She came back into the room, unselfconsciously naked, walked around, found clothes.

‘Suspender belt tonight, what do you think? Black or white?’

‘White. I like the virginal associations.’

She was wearing just the suspender belt and stockings, towelling her hair, breasts jiggling, when she said, ‘Leon’s got a man called Bobby who can find out anything. I think he called in Bobby to give the once-over when he decided he fancied me.’

I went cold everywhere now. ‘What’s Bobby’s full name?’

‘Never heard it. Leon calls him Bobby the Wonder Dog.’

I swung my legs off the bed, reached for my clothes.

‘Mac? What? What’s wrong?’ Alarm in her voice.

I said, ‘Anne, it’s complicated. Leon’s Bobby is likely to be a man called Bobby Hill. After I left you last night, two men sent by Bobby tried to kill me.’

‘Kill you? Kill you? Why?’

‘Goes back a long way,’ I said, putting on my shirt. I sat down to put on my shoes. ‘Sordid stuff. Couldn’t work out how they knew where I’d be last night. Now I think I know.’

Anne came around the bed, put her hands on my shoulders, kissed me on the lips. ‘I’m out of my depth here, Mac,’ she said. ‘Who are you?’

I kissed her back. ‘When it’s over,’ I said, ‘tell you the whole sad story. I have to get out of here. The best thing is for you to leave and then I’ll wait a while and go. Is there a back door?’

‘To the building? Yes.’

‘To this flat?’

‘To the fire escape. Yes.’ She sat down next to me, put her hand on my thigh. ‘Going to be all right, isn’t it?’

I kissed her again, soft, hard, hand on her silky neck. ‘Has to be. Haven’t got to the very slow part yet.’

I stood, found the shoulder holster in my jacket and put it on.

Anne looked at the revolver, looked at me, bit her lower lip. ‘Tell me I shouldn’t be regretting this,’ she said.

I touched her lips. ‘No regrets,’ I said. ‘I’m flying with the angels. Scout’s honour.’

While she was putting on lipstick, I said, ‘If I’m right, the flat is being watched. If you leave alone, they’ll wait for me to come out, jump me outside. If I don’t come out and there’s still a light on in the flat, they’ll think I’m planning to stay here overnight and they’ll come to get me later. So I’ll leave a light on when I go.’

She was ready. I took her face in my hands, kissed her. She kissed me back, took a hand and kissed it. ‘It isn’t just lust—you know that, don’t you?’

I nodded. ‘Yes. I know that. This thing, it’s almost over.’

I didn’t believe that. Not for one instant.

Anne went out the front door. In the kitchen, by the light from the passage, I found a dark dishcloth, tied it around my neck like a napkin to hide my white shirt. I went out the door, quietly closed on the latch, stood against the wall on the steel fire escape landing and looked down on the parking area.

It was dark, half moon hidden by cloud, the only light coming from a long open-fronted tenants’ garage at the back of the property. There were only a few lights on in the building, most people not home yet. In this area, they’d all be working fourteen hours a day to pay for the flat and the BMW and the holiday in Tuscany.

Music coming from one of the flats: Miles Davis.

Anne came into sight briefly, long legs, walking briskly towards her car. Moments later, she reversed out, bathing the yard in blood red light, drove around the corner of the building.

Bobby’s boys would not touch Anne, had no reason to. It was me Bobby wanted.

I unclipped the holster, drew the Colt. Time to go.

I took a step towards the stairs, hesitated, moved to the landing rail, back and right cheekbone against the wall, looked down at the landing below.