It was midday, too early to go search out bums on skid row. They stand out better at night when the moonlight is shining on the port bottles and their throats are dry and a dollar will buy you everything they know. It was time to deal with the daylight people. I did a mental check on how much money I owed Cy Sackville my lawyer, decided it was a flea bite to him and put through a call.
We exchanged pleasantries and I told him I was on a case which should net me a few bucks. He congratulated me.
‘I need some information, Cy.’
‘The meter is ticking.’
‘Don’t be like that. You scratch my back and I scratch yours.’
‘When do I get scratched?’
‘Sometime. Have you ever heard of a man named Henry Brain, promising barrister in the forties, went on the skids?’
‘The forties! Are you kidding, who’s still alive from the forties?’
Cy was and is a boy wonder. He refused a chair of law at age twenty-five — no challenge. He despises everyone over thirty-five. It used to be everyone over thirty.
‘Could you ask around? There must be some old buffer who’d remember him. He married Judge Chatterton’s daughter.’
‘It so happens I’m going to a professional dinner tonight. There could be some octogenarian around who’d remember him.’
‘Thanks. Do you know who handles the late Judge’s estate, legal affairs and so on?’
‘Yeah, we’ve transacted — Booth and Booth. What’s your interest?’
‘The widow is my client, confidential enquiry.’
He coughed. ‘Of course.’
‘Thing is, I’d like to know who she’s going to leave the loot to. Any chance of finding out?’
‘That’s a tall order, confidential matter, very, very…’
‘Quite,’ I said, ‘but…?’
‘Possible. Young Booth’ll be at the dinner. He might get pissed and we could discuss the earthly rewards of judges. I’ll try.’
I thanked him, asked him to find out all he could about the Chattertons and said I’d call again soon.
‘Cross all cheques,’ he said.
I headed north to have a chat with Bettina. She went by the name of Selby, now having married one Richard Selby, company director. I stopped in the dry belt, where restaurants are many and pubs are few, and bought beer and sandwiches for lunch. It was hot in the car so I wound all the windows down and sat there eating, drinking and thinking.
A full frontal attack on Mrs Selby was out of the question. ‘Mrs Selby, did you have a child in 1948? And if so where is it?’ She’d throw me out or call the cops. I didn’t expect to get the unassailable truth which she alone knew but she’d be worth a look. If she turned out to be a sober, steady woman of straight eye and piercing honesty I’d have to drop the odds on finding baby. If, on the other hand… I screwed up the wrapping and took it and the beer cans to the bin. They’re hell on litterers in this part of the world.
The Selbys lived in one of the northern arcadias that developed over the last fifteen years. None of the houses would have sold for under a hundred and twenty thousand dollars but it was remarkable what different things that sort of money could get you. The place was a map of the building fads of the sixties and seventies — quintuple-fronted brick veneers, long ranch houses with flat roofs; grey brick and tinted glass creations hung off steep slopes like downhill skiers ready to let go. There were Spanish arches and Asian pagodas, even a tasteful townhouse or two among native trees.
Chez Selby was one of the worst — a monstrosity in liver-coloured brick with a purplish tiled roof. The whole thing reminded me of a slab of old meat. It was up to scratch in the neighbourhood though, with a half acre of lawn and shrubs. From the street I could see the glint of a pool out back. I pulled up outside another heavy mortgage down the street. I looked at my clothes and decided that I was a journalist. She’d never believe I was from Booth and Booth.
The street was quiet the way such streets are in the early afternoon; the kids are at school, the old man’s at work, the wife is playing golf or gardening. The butt of a Honda Accord stuck out of one of the two car ports — Mrs S wasn’t on the links. I had my jacket on and I was hot. Up the path past the shrubs to the front door. It was a heavy number with a security screen. The bell was in the navel of a foot-high plaster bas-relief mermaid attached to the bricks. Chinese opera gongs sounded inside the house.
She wasn’t the golfing or gardening type, more the bar and bed type. She opened the door, dropped a hip and eyed me off. She was a tall, heavy woman, a redhead with fine dark eyes courtesy of her mother. There the resemblance ended; Bettina Brain Selby nee Chatterton was a chip off the old block. Her colour was high and her shoulders were broad. She carried her bulk as the Judge had done, as if heavy people were still in style.
I looked at her for just a fraction too long. ‘Mrs Selby?’
‘Yes.’ The voice was furry with liquor, sleep, sex? Maybe all three. She might have a lover there. Awkward.
I gave her a grin. ‘I’m Peter Kennedy, I’m a journalist doing a feature piece on your late father, Sir Clive Chatterton?’ I let my voice go up enquiringly the way the smart young people seem to do these days. I’d shaved close that morning, my shirt was clean, I might make it. She swivelled her hips and made a space in the doorway.
‘Come on in, Peter.’
I went past her into a hall with deep shag pile carpet in off-white and oyster walls. It felt like stepping into a bowl of yoghurt. Mrs Selby slid along a wall and opened a door and we went into a big room full of large leather structures to sit in and polished black surfaces to put things on. She picked up a glass and rattled the ice cubes.
‘Drink?’
‘Not now thanks, perhaps after a few questions?’
She looked bored, sat down and waved me into a chair.
‘ ‘Kay. Up to you.’ She sighed and a lot of big bosom under cream silk went up and down and some Bacardi fumes drifted gently across towards me.
‘You should ask my mother about all this shit,’ she slurred. ‘She’s the one who keeps the shrine, not me.’
‘That could be an interesting angle. Was Sir Clive a harsh parent? He had a reputation for severity on the bench.’
‘I can believe it.’ She sipped. ‘Christ yes, he was tough on me. Course, I’m the same with my kids so I can’t talk. He used his belt on me plenty of times. Can’t print any of this, you know.’
‘Why?’
‘Can’t afford to offend the old girl. She’s got the money. We never seem to have enough.’
‘What’s your husband’s business, Mrs Selby?’
‘Bettina. He makes weight lifting stuff, gym equipment, all that. He does all right but we eat it up. School’s bloody expensive and holidays… Christ, I live for those holidays. Ever been to Singapore, Peter?’
I said I had.
‘Smart man. Great isn’t it? We have a ball.’
‘It’s marvellous,’ I said primly. ‘You were saying something about not offending your mother?’ I had the pen and pad out again.
‘Ah, was I? Well we don’t get along. She knows I’d belt that bloody mausoleum down and sell the land for units. But there’s the kids to consider. I try to keep on the good side of her but there’s that Reid bitch, she’s got her eye on the land. Christ, what a miserable place to grow up in. Look, I’m rambling, you don’t want to hear any of this crap you can’t use. Have a drink.’
‘All right, yes.’
‘Bacardi okay?’
‘Fine.’
Her own glass was lowish, not what you’d call empty but getting that way. Lots of drinkers don’t like to see their glasses one-third full, it looks like two-thirds empty. She was in that league and keen enough to haul all that weight to its feet and take it out to where the booze lived. She drifted out, moving like someone who knows how to move; it was part theatrical, part sheer confidence. It made her hard to assess — like a car that looks and goes all right but is a bit too old and exotic for comfort.
She came back with her own glass full and nice big one for me. The rum had been introduced to some tonic but not too closely. On top of my lunch it made the beginnings of a formidably alcoholic afternoon. I took a pull and she knocked back a good slug. I took out tobacco and cocked my head inquiringly. She pushed an ashtray in the shape of a temple at me — a touch of Singapore.
‘One vice I don’t have,’ she giggled. ‘I knew a writer once who rolled his own. He lived in Balmain. You live in Balmain?’
‘No, Glebe.’
She rolled her glass between her palms. I was sweating despite the air conditioning and started to ease out of my jacket.
‘You don’t mind?’
‘Hell no, it’s hot, take if off, take off your pants.’
I grinned. ‘Business,’ I said firmly, ‘business.’
She lay back in her chair. ‘You’re going to be dull,’ she said petulantly. ‘You didn’t look dull. Everyone’s dull except me.’ She downed half of her drink to prove it. I didn’t want her to turn nasty so I put some away too.
‘We haven’t talked at all yet,’ I said. ‘Back to the judge…’
‘No, not yet — bottoms up. Next drink we’ll really talk. C’mon drink up.’
She tipped her head back and drank the stuff like lemonade. I finished mine in two swallows and she picked up the glasses and ambled off again. I tried to remember why I was there as the liquor rose in my blood and started to fuddle me. I got up — keep moving, that’s the rule, sit and you’re gone — and slid open the doors dividing the drinking room from the next. It turned out to be the eating room; there was a big teak table with six pricey-looking chairs around it and a bowl of flowers in the middle. A couple of nasty prints hung on the pastel walls and a framed photograph stood on a sideboard. I weaved across and picked it up. It showed the lady I was drinking with, a man and two children. Bettina looked a few years younger and a few pounds lighter. I studied the man; he was a heavy character with a round face and receding hair which he wore longish with thick dark sideburns. He was packed into an executive suit with the trimmings and had his arm around Bettina and the girls. But he was smiling as if the camera was on him alone. With him the photographer had failed to achieve the family feel. He was the type to make every post a personal winner. The girls looked to be about ten and twelve, they were round and red like their dad — their mother was right, they’d need the money.
She wandered in and handed me the glass. Her own was full but if she was the drinker I thought she was she’d have sneaked one out by the ice cubes. She stood beside me, close.
‘That’s us,’ she said.
‘Nice family.’ I put the picture down.
She stayed where she was and I was pinned in a corner. In her high-heeled sandals she wasn’t much shorter than me. She tossed back her hair and put her hand on my arm.
‘You know Richard and I have an arrangement when we go to Singapore. Want to know what it is?’
‘Sure.’
I sipped rum and looked at her eyes. The lids were drooping and the pupils were dilated. She was well on the way to her afternoon nap. She had just one thing in mind now and there was no point in pretending to be a journalist or a gentleman. I took hold of her arm to steady her. It was a nice, firm arm. She leaned into me.
‘We give each other two free nights, no questions asked. Understand?’
‘I think so.’
‘I’m a passionate woman.’ She pressed her breasts against me and set her glass down to have both hands free.
‘I can see that,’ I said. ‘No wonder you enjoy your holiday. When’s it due?’
She stopped trying to undo my shirt. She grabbed the drink to help her ponder the question.
‘Must be soon,’ she said slowly. She drank some more and spilled a little down the front of her dress. She wiped at it and the contact with her own body seemed to excite her. I edged back a bit.
She came after me. ‘What’s the matter? Don’t you want me?’
I didn’t. I’ve got nothing against women older than me. I’d just finished a relationship with a woman almost as old as Bettina and it had been good, for a while. But this lady was skidding and disintegrating and I didn’t want to be part of the wreck. As well as that, I’d have to see her again as the inquiry developed and a boozy bedding now was no way to start. I tried to deter her by passivity but she came on reaching for my head. I noticed that she had long fingernails, almost colourless. She was in close with her hand on the back of my neck when I heard a noise, like something falling to the floor.
The man in the photograph was in the room, a briefcase was on the floor and he was moving towards me with his fists clenched as I pulled free of his wife. She clung and he got one punch in, a hard swing which I took on the shoulder moving away. He was taller and wider than he looked in the picture, but musclebound. He was slow and I ducked his next swing and slammed him in the ribs. A one-punch fighter who didn’t seem to know what to do after that, he lowered his head and blundered forward and I clipped him hard on the ear and let him fall over my foot. He went down heavily and lost his wind. He started to get up and I put my foot on his chest and thumped him down. I was lucky he wasn’t a Famechon. I was in no condition to handle anything fancy.
Bettina had stood stock still, breathing heavily. I’d kept a side eye on her in case she decided to take part but she seemed frozen. Selby levered himself up from the floor, I guessed that the flab on him was old weight-lifting muscle. He’d still be dangerous if he could use the weight. I tensed myself but he swung around and belted Bettina across the face. She doubled over and just made it to a chair. She sat and started to giggle. Selby jabbed a finger at me.
‘Get out,’ he gasped, ‘before I call the police.’
I collected my jacket and tobacco and moved towards the door. He rubbed at his ear; I picked up his briefcase and flicked it at him, hard. It took him in the chest and he staggered back. Cheap stuff.
Bettina giggled again and let her head drop; the hair hung across her face like a curtain of blood.