Death by the Book (22 page)

Lois padded in from the bedroom. Jack leaned across and switched on the lamp. A soft reddish light spread through the lounge room. His arm twitched. He remembered Durst.

‘Where’s hubby?’

‘Please, not now, Jack.’

The bottle of Tullamore Dew stood a third full on the coffee table. Jack poured himself a couple of fingers.

‘I’m here alone,’ said Annabelle. ‘I can’t sleep.’

‘Too much hot-shoe shuffle.’

‘What?’

‘You heard.’

‘
Jesus
, Jack.’ Annabelle’s voice tensed.

Jack slugged the whiskey. ‘What was Clifford Harris talking about? Are you really getting a divorce or just playing a nice round of family swindle?’

‘For God’s sake! I’ve already told you. What do I need to say to make you believe me?’

‘Try anything believable.’

‘Okay. How’s this? I’m glad you hit him. You loosened one of his teeth. He spent a lot of money on them.’

‘His or your father’s?’

‘Mine.’

‘I thought you didn’t have any.’

‘Not anymore.’

Jack turned his glass on the coffee table in small half-circles. ‘So what’s the deal? Who gets what in the society divorce of the year?’

‘Goodnight, Jack. You know where I am.’

She hung up the phone.

Jack finished his drink and sat back in the couch. Lois climbed onto his lap. He reached for the stereo remote, turned the sound down a couple of notches and pressed play: Sarah Vaughan, smooth and warm and perfect.

If love is good to me.

Jack listened, eyes closed. Lois purred.
If love is good to me
.

A late bus came by on Oxford Street before Jack could hail an available taxi. He caught it to Bondi Junction and then jumped into a cab to Double Bay. He got out on the corner of New South Head Road and Bay Street. He wanted to walk, get some air.

Dark ragged clouds swept over a bright moon. Cars and buildings looked glassy with cold. Under the streetlights, fallen wet leaves like beached fish.

Bay Street was deserted. Jack walked and looked in the windows: a real-estate agent’s, a couple of clothing stores and an antique shop with two huge terracotta pots shoulder
to shoulder. One would have filled Jack’s entire apartment. Then three shops in a row, all empty, with
For Lease
signs hung crookedly in their windows. Unopened mail strewn under the front doors. Jack noticed more of the same further on.
Closing Down Sale
,
50% Off Everything
,
Last Days
,
End of Lease Bargains
. Looked like the Bay had seen better days.

It began to spit. He made it to Cumberland Gardens just as the drops fattened into rain. Annabelle saw him through a window and the front door was open before he had a chance to knock.

‘Jack!’ She hugged him and then stepped back. ‘I’m so glad.’

‘I charge eighty bucks an hour. Seventy-five for cash.’ Jack smiled but he could see something was up. Her grip was tight on his hand.

‘What’s wrong?’ he said.

Her eyes were tired, her face pale. Her hair looked a little slept-in, loose and messy. She was dressed casually in a long, moss green, belted mohair cardigan, a pair of jeans and suede moccasins. Jack thought she had never looked more beautiful.

‘I have to show you something.’

‘What?’

‘I can’t believe it, Jack. I just can’t believe it.’

She closed the front door and led him down the hall, then left into another small corridor. They came to a pine door that had been sanded back but was yet to receive a coat of varnish. Annabelle opened it and flicked a light switch. Jack saw narrow stairs leading down below the house.

‘The cellar,’ said Annabelle.

She began to descend cautiously, side-saddle style, with one hand out against the wall. Jack followed, crouching a little beneath the low ceiling. He noticed the plaster walls had not been painted and the stairs were covered with footprints left in the plaster dust. Here and there, off-cuts of wiring and bits of timber and a few nails and screws. Jack wondered if the builder would ever be back to finish the renovation.

They reached the bottom. The air was cool and dull like paste, and smelt of dampness and wet dust. In the half-dark, Jack could see racks of wine running down either side of the rectangular room. The ceiling only cleared his head by a couple of inches. There must have been at least a thousand bottles of wine in there. And Jack doubted they were out of the bargain bin at the local liquor store.

Annabelle switched on another light. A bare globe with a metal cage around it jutted out from the middle of the ceiling. Jack thought of a torture room under a drug lord’s mansion.

‘Here,’ said Annabelle. She handed him a small key and pointed at some metal lockers that lined the rear wall. There were six of them. ‘Go and open one.’

‘What have you got for me? A body?’ As he said it, Jack realised that he was only half joking.

‘Just look.’

Jack went to the lockers. He could not help but glance at the wine bottles in their racks — the labels on one row said
Penfold’s Grange 1971
. Five hundred a pop, at least. Only quality hangovers for Hammond Kasprowicz.

He slipped the key into one of the middle lockers. It came open with a dull scrape of metal. Inside: books, boxes,
framed photographs. Shoved in and packed tight. Jack turned and looked at Annabelle.

‘Take out one of the books.’

Jack pulled out a slim volume:
The Cull
by Edward Kass. He leaned in and ran his eyes over the other spines. More copies of
The Cull,
plus some of
Entropy House
, and
Simply Even
. There were a lot of books. Enough to make Jack a little uncomfortable.

‘So he stored them here,’ he said. ‘So what?’

‘Look inside the boxes.’

He tugged at a shoebox, edged it out carefully and then lifted the lid. There were photographs in it. They had all been cut up into tiny pieces. It was like a box of confetti.

‘There’s more in the other lockers.’ Annabelle’s voice was hard, emotionless. ‘They used to be photos of my mother.’

Jack put the box down and pulled out one of the framed photographs. The glass was broken, only a few splinters remained around the edges of the frame. Mrs Kasprowicz’s face had been slashed and hacked, maybe with a pair of scissors. It was the same story with the other photos there. Those with Edward Kass in them had been given the same treatment.

‘I know my father hated them both,’ said Annabelle. ‘But this?’

Jack turned to her. She was standing with her arms loose by her sides.

‘There are burnt photos in other boxes. My mother had thousands of photos of herself. I remember going through them as a child. So many albums, envelopes stuffed with them. And he’s destroyed them all.’

‘He sure has.’

‘Why would he keep them?’

‘You’ll have to ask him.’

She stared vacantly for a moment. ‘You don’t think he had anything to do with Edward’s death?’

Jack thought of the cops. ‘Doesn’t matter what I think.’ He walked over and gave Annabelle the key. ‘How did you find this?’

‘After I spoke to you I went into his study, hoping I’d find something that would tell me where he might be. I don’t know, a receipt, a note, anything. In one of the bottom drawers of his desk I found a diary. The whole thing was blank, he hadn’t written a word in it anywhere. Businesses send them to him all the time, he usually throws them out or gives them to Louisa. I didn’t think there’d be anything there, but I flipped through it. The back cover slipped out of the leather sleeve of the jacket. The key was taped to it.’

Jack nodded. ‘And here we are.’ He thought of Edward Kass. He remembered the old man’s dead body, flopped like a life-sized puppet over the kitchen table, blood dripping slowly down to the floor, thick, dull splashes onto that soaked tartan slipper.

Annabelle’s moccasins scraped on the gritty concrete floor. ‘What are you thinking?’

‘Why would your old man just take off?’ The stuff in the lockers had been there a long time.

‘Maybe he panicked when he heard about Edward’s death.’

Jack looked around the cellar. Hammond Kasprowicz was not the panicking type. ‘Maybe.’

Annabelle put her hand on Jack’s arm. ‘Can you stay with me? I don’t want to be alone when the police come.’

The cops were the last people Jack wanted to see. ‘Sure.’ The cellar was starting to make him feel claustrophobic. It was the middle of the night. It had already been an intense day. He should have been home in bed. Annabelle Kasprowicz had still not answered his question. ‘I’ll stay, but first tell me what’s going on with Durst.’

‘Are you serious? I’m asking for your help, Jack. Can’t you drop it?’

‘No.’

Tears glazed Annabelle’s eyes. ‘Fuck!’

‘I want to help,’ said Jack. ‘But you have to tell me.’

‘I thought maybe you loved me.’

‘So what if I did?’ Jack raised his voice. ‘Why are you still screwing your ex-husband?’

‘Don’t.’

‘Answer me.’

‘I told you the story.’

‘You’re lying.’

‘Fuck off.’

‘No problem.’ Jack made for the stairs.

‘Wait!’ Annabelle grabbed him by the arm. ‘It’s not what you think.’

‘What is it then?’

She let go. Jack could see small red veins creeping into the corners of her eyes.

‘Ian signed a pre-nup when we married,’ she said, looking at Jack intently. ‘All he gets is fifty thousand if we divorce. He owes a lot more than that.’

‘So what? Sign the divorce papers and off you go.’

‘It’s not as simple as that.’

‘Why?’

‘Because if I do he’ll take me to court. And if it goes to court, he’ll ruin me.’ Annabelle walked over to one of the wine racks, reached out with a hand and held on. She thought about something for a while. Then she said: ‘I had an affair earlier in our marriage. He’s got some tapes, some videos. I can’t let them come out, Jack. Louisa would never speak to me again.’

‘Who was it?’ The question came out of Jack’s mouth of its own accord.

‘Nobody. It was nothing. But he was the father of Louisa’s best friend. He’s still with his wife. And his daughter is still Louisa’s best friend.’

‘So it’s not about the money.’

‘It is for Ian. And as far as my father’s concerned. He can’t understand why I won’t sign the divorce papers. He wants Ian gone. Of course, he doesn’t know about the tapes.’

‘How did Durst get them?’

‘Private investigator.’ Annabelle wiped away some tears. ‘Do you understand, Jack? Can you see?’

Above them a door slammed. Footsteps thudded down the hall. Annabelle looked at the ceiling and then rushed up the stairs. Jack took a deep breath. He looked over at the lockers for a moment and then followed, unhurried. The cops were going to love it. Hammond Kasprowicz was going to have a lot of explaining to do. So was Jack.

Annabelle met him at the top of the stairs. It was not her father who had arrived home.

‘It’s Louisa,’ she said. ‘You have to go.’

Jack nodded. ‘You going to call the cops?’

‘What choice have I got?’

‘None.’

‘Call me tomorrow.’ Annabelle kissed him on the cheek and walked off down the corridor. She disappeared into the house.

As he left, Jack made as little noise as possible. He closed the front door with the barest click of the lock, and slipped away into the night. How was it that he found himself sneaking through the shadows once again?

19

A
T 7.45 THE NEXT MORNING
, as Jack was about to head off to Susko Books, somebody knocked on his door. Something about the tone of the knock said:
Bad news
. Maybe he was just a little nervous. Hearing things that were not there. Maybe it was just a neighbour, over for a cup of sugar. He opened the door. Maybe not.

‘They really should have a security system on the entrance here. Anybody can just walk in off the street. Bums, thieves, rapists.’ Detective Geoff Peterson smiled. ‘Stand-over guys wearing brass knuckles.’

He stood in the half-dark of the hall, smug and vaguely threatening. The light from Jack’s apartment threw a shadow that sliced his tall sinewy body like a mayor’s sash.
But he looked too shabby for the position. His hands were in his pockets. There were bags under his eyes. His tie was undone and the silvery-grey suit looked slept in. The face was pinched; the eyes loaded. And here was Jack, at point-blank range.