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  She didn’t seem to expect an answer, never glanced sideways.

  “And his work colleagues?” Mick asked.

  “Yes, talk to them. They resented him.”

  “Who in particular, Mrs. Keppel?”

  Imogen swallowed. She now refused to look at Mick. “Rollo will know their names. My memory is not as good as it used to be.”

  Odd, Peter thought, not knowing Kantor’s colleagues.

  “Mrs. Keppel.” Mick’s persistent voice sounded like an accusation. “How did Kantor relate to Rollo?”

  “My husband adored his brother. He did so much for Rollo. If it hadn’t been for his mind, where would Rollo be today?”

  “Was Rollo resentful of Kantor’s brilliance?”

  “Never. Rollo is such a fine man. So considerate. His wife is a hussy.”

  Peter was stunned.

  Mick inclined his head. “Did Kantor know Bella Keppel well?”

  Imogen continued to stare at Peter. “No. We did not mix with her.”

  “Willy Keppel?” Mick asked.

  “Vermin. A drug addict. If you could have heard what he said to Kantor…”

  “Recently?”

  “No, no.” Imogen paused to sip tea through bloodless lips. “That was in Boston.”

  No wonder Bishop called her a dipstick, Peter thought, then regretted his callousness. Her husband was only a few days dead.

  “Find the beast who did this, Mr. Gentle,” Imogen spat. “Find him. And please ring me twice a day.”

  She rose abruptly. But Mick hadn’t finished. Smoothly, he stood and somehow blocked her exit.

  “Two requests, please, Mrs. Keppel,” he said. “And then we’ll get to work catching the perpetrator. Would you be able to ring Rollo and smooth the way for us to ask around in the company?”

  “Certainly.” Next to Mick, Imogen looked frail. The tortoiseshell cat arched against her. “When shall I tell him that you will visit?”

  “Straight away,” Mick said.

  Really, thought Peter. Who’s in charge here? But he smiled in admiration. Mick might look like the Terminator, but he sure could extract data.

  “And can we look over Kantor’s bedroom?” Mick asked.

  Peter saw Imogen wince and wondered how Mick dared presume the murder victim had his own bedroom.

  “Of course. It’s the first on the left upstairs.”

  Imogen moved stiffly toward the door. She paused.

  “And Mr. Gentle, please don’t bother Straw. She’s not well. She hasn’t spoken in years, and lives a solitary life stuck in this house. This must be a great shock to her. I don’t want her to revert.”

  She hurried out of the room. The cats had disappeared, but Peter could still smell them over the reek of flowers. Following Mick’s broad back, he stole a final glance at Straw. Resting unnaturally still in that pristine face, Straw’s eyes had turned toward the dappled light in the window. Peter resisted shaking his head.

  Jesus, he thought. How did Kantor put up with this?

  CHAPTER 5

  Tusk loved music. Real music. Rock music. Always had cherished it, always would. Hearing a new song on the car radio, he’d pull over and listen, searching for the song’s heart. Hoping for another “Boys Light Up” to share his life with.

  Although he didn’t have the mental capacity of Gentle, he possessed a deep memory. He remembered important events with a level of recall that could frighten. So when he met up again with the slouched nerd, naturally Tusk asked about music.

  They’d found a couple of spare seats in the Matthew Flinders, one of his favorite pubs of yesteryear. The swirling smells of hops and cigarette smoke beckoned his abandoned addictions.

  “Remember that song we’d sing together?” Tusk said. “‘Brass in Pocket’ by The Pretenders?”

  “Sure.” Gentle was in the middle of spouting his life story. A real middle-class tale of woe, though Tusk managed to feel sympathy for him. Being skewered could ravage a man.

  “You kept up with rock music?”

  “No, not really.” Gentle sipped his beer like a glass of wine. “I’m more into jazz now. Oh, and I like those Lloyd Webber things.”

  Tusk couldn’t stomach jazz or the sanitized rock pap of Andrew Lloyd Webber, but he hadn’t been surprised. Most people he knew from his youth had drifted away from the raw music they grew up on. Lesson: maturity dulls.

  Tusk recalled that moment as he headed for the stairs in the dead man’s plush house. Time check—12:22. A glimpse of a kitchen with gleaming steel appliances, naturally enough with a servant bustling around. A living area with low-slung leather furniture, another bloody cat sprawled asleep on the carpet. A song even then lodged in his mind, the calculated distortion of Silverchair’s “Anthem for the Year 2000.”

  At the foot of the carpeted stairs, Gentle grabbed his arm. “That was our client back there. You were pretty rough on her.”

  Down the other end of the hallway, the nutcase daughter stood watching them. Could she hear them?

  “Look, mate,” Tusk said, exercising patience. “She’s an alkie.”

  “An alcoholic? How do you know?”

  “Didn’t you see the spiders’ webs around her nose?”

  Tusk almost felt sorry for Gentle. A certified genius, but at sea in the real world. Truth was, the physical evidence of alcoholism had been muted. But one drunk, even an ex-drunk, can always spot another. Perhaps that was why Imogen had talked at Gentle the whole time.

  “Jesus, that’s good.” Gentle’s eyes were bright. “And what about the single bedroom?”

  Tusk headed up the stairs. “Bit of a gamble. But I bet those two hadn’t slept together for years.”

  He stopped at the curve of the stairs under a large studio photograph. A happy Toorak family: Kantor Keppel the patriarch, Imogen beaming from a two-scotch breakfast, Straw vacant in black.

  Here’s what you looked like alive, Tusk thought.

  He could see where Straw’s face came from. Kantor’s was smoothly oval, topped by gray hair swept back. Round-framed academic glasses, bright brown eyes exuding energy. Short, a stoop in his shoulders. Goatee beard. New tweed suit.

  He flashed on Kantor’s corpse in the morgue. Christ—another snapshot in his personal gallery of murder victims, lined up with all the other poor bastards. A beast, his widow had called the killer. Beast, I’m on your trail, Tusk promised, eyes on the photo. His skin prickled across the shoulders.

  “Looks like a nice guy,” Gentle said.

  “Don’t they all in Toorak.”

  Four rooms fanned off the landing at the top of the stairs, Tusk guessed three bedrooms and a guest room. Next to Kantor’s room the door was shut, Imogen drinking perhaps. A black-and-yellow cat slunk through Straw’s double doors at the end.

  Kantor had kept his bedroom in good nick. Cream walls, large windows looking out to a swimming pool behind a fence. Bouncy pile carpet. The stale dusty smell that always moved in when someone died. The autumn light cast the room in a pale gloom, so he switched on the lights, which must have cost a fortune: a central chandelier, recessed lights above the walls. Tusk moved around taking notes, thankful that Gentle had stopped in the center, rocking from one foot to the other.

  The bed looked new. Surprisingly, no books on the sideboards. A couple of prints on the wall, bland, as if chosen by an interior designer. A half-empty bookshelf, mostly old novels. Next to it a large photograph, an earlier version of the one in the stairway.

  “Wow, look at her,” Gentle said.

  Better days for sure. Straw looked luminous, her face firm and porcelain, the green eyes staring right at the camera. She wore a short yellow skirt that showcased slim legs. She took center stage, arms linked with her parents. Imogen’s cheeks were rosy and Kantor’s hair had only flecks of gray.

  “Straw sure was a good looker then,” Tusk mused. “Must have been ten years ago.”

  “She’s still good looking.”

  “You’re joking. Gone to ruin.�
��

  “Straw’s clothes,” Gentle said. “They remind me of something.”

  “Goth rock. From the ’70s, although it’s being revived now. You can tell from that garish lipstick, can’t recall the brand name. Remember The Mission? Sisters of Mercy?”

  “Who?”

  A lost cause, Tusk thought.

  An exercise bike faced a small television. When Tusk climbed on, the wheels turned with difficulty, nearly rusted up.

  Christ, working again feels fantastic, he thought. Body light, mind clear, senses alert. If only I could bottle it.

  “Big guy, come over here,” Gentle said.

  A medium-sized desk strewn with papers: household bills, bank statements, junk mail. Gentle was peering at a small faded photograph in a cardboard frame. Tucked behind a digital clock, as if to conceal it from casual eyes.

  Kantor and family at the seaside, foaming water and striped beach umbrellas behind them. Kantor beamed, a smile that traveled the years. His body thin and wiry, wet hair standing up. A different Imogen held his hand, a laughing young woman with curly auburn hair, milky skin, and glowing cheeks. A striking, moon-faced girl with long black hair and green eyes. Straw.

  “Who’s he?” Gentle said.

  Holding pride of place in the middle posed a boy, no more than six or seven years old, clutching a bucket. His brown body covered with sand. The Keppel oval face and flashing white teeth. Tusk eased the photo out of the holder. Scrawled on the back an annotation: “Portsea 1980.” He slipped it into his jacket pocket.

  “What are you doing? That’s theirs!” Gentle whispered, his lidded eyes shocked.

  “Evidence,” Tusk said. “Any mention in the case file of a son?”

  “Nope.”

  “Nothing much here, is there? His office will reveal more of the man.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Experience, Gentle, experience.” Ah, the pleasure of winding the guy up. “Let’s go and collar the hot-shot brother.”

  “I suggest I handle Rollo,” Gentle said as they left the room. “We’re in the same industry.”

  Tusk grunted. “Maybe. But you’d need to do a better job than you did with the missus.”

  He glanced back, hoping to catch annoyance, but it was all water off a duck’s back. Gentle was scratching his balls.

  Time check—12:55. Half a day gone, four and a half to go.

  “Who on earth is that boy?” Gentle said.

  CHAPTER 6

  When Peter was fifteen years old at Mont Albert Grammar School, he was undisputedly the most intelligent of the top tier. So he reacted badly when the new boy, a brute who never said anything, sat down next to him in History class a couple of weeks into the year.

  “Hey,” Peter said. “That seat’s taken.”

  The new boy had straw-colored hair, cheeks like a Russian ballet dancer, a wide chest, and meaty hands. “Hi, I’m Tusk.”

  Peter didn’t need to introduce himself.

  “Look, you don’t get my point,” he said. “Someone else sits there.”

  Mick leaned over, blue eyes mild as talcum powder. “You want me to fuckin’ thump you?”

  Peter was startled. Already the Baltic boy had ended up in three fights, winning them all.

  “All I want is to sit up front in this class,” Mick said. “I like History.”

  “I don’t.”

  “That’s bloody obvious.” A snort. “Why doesn’t a brain like you like History?”

  Peter heard the scuffle of shoes as the rest of the class scrambled in. “History is just facts. You don’t need to think.”

  Mick fell silent.

  So, Peter thought, the thug can be bloodied by words.

  They became friends. At school they rarely mixed except in History, but Peter invited Mick home to listen to his Blondie record; Mick brought along The Clash. Sometimes Peter would watch Mick’s ruthless grace at sporting events.

  Mick called Peter by his surname, as he did with everyone. In accordance with their adversarial rough humor, Peter hailed Mick as “Big Guy,” or less frequently, by his first name.

  Everything changed the following year. Mick found new friends and began warring with teachers. Soon he sat at the back in History classes. Like many school experiences, neither the unexpected flowering nor the fully expected withering of their brief friendship seemed out of the ordinary.

  ***

  Peter knew he could be easily distracted. He often slipped up in daft ways, like leaving his fly undone or losing his briefcase on a tram, and he remembered his father saying to him, in full seriousness, “Peter, if you can’t learn to put on two shoes from the same pair, how can you expect to get a job?” But the absentmindedness was part and parcel of his superior brain, and he regularly and deliberately slipped into a twilight of whirring thoughts.

  So when Straw appeared beside him, during his reverie about Mick, to lay a light hand on his shoulder, he jumped.

  “Jesus,” Peter said. He could see Mick’s ramrod back, already halfway down the stairs. “You frightened me.”

  Close up, he could see what Mick meant. The perfect pale skin of the earlier photo looked puffy in real life. He saw discolored pouches under Straw’s eyes, and pores in the skin around her mouth. Her eyes had lost their stillness and darted in all directions—all directions, he realized, except into his eyes. A sheen covered her brow.

  “Are you okay?” he asked. Alarm and pity commingled in his thoughts.

  “Smart,” Straw said.

  “Wha—” Peter gaped. She talked! At one level he reacted viscerally, at another his mind raised possibilities. What if she knew something about Kantor’s last days?

  “Hang on,” he said, and ran down the stairs to Mick standing in the hallway, arms folded.

  “Wait for me outside,” Peter hissed. “I think I’m onto something.”

  Without waiting for a response, he ran back up. As soon as he rounded the corner onto the landing, Straw grabbed him. The scent of strawberries, mixed with cigarette smoke and stale sweat, assailed his senses. Her eyes closed, she pulled his head down, and her lips seized his, sliding frantically, tongue stabbing.

  Gasping, he wrenched away. Holy shit, her mother was just behind the door.

  “No. Slow down.” His whisper seemed to fill the landing.

  Her breasts heaved, threatening to burst from her dress, and her hair shone with sweat. She opened her eyes and for the first time fixed those bruised, green marvels onto his. He gaped.

  Then something furry snaked around his legs. He kicked it away. A cat. No, two of them, slim black creatures entwining his legs. Another one, a plump white one, stared at him from the open door of Straw’s room, its eyes a mirror image of Straw’s. He felt sick.

  This was madness. Peter stumbled back against the wall.

  “Straw.” His lips smarted.

  “Magical Mister Mistoffelees,” she intoned in a soft high-pitched voice. Her arms hung slack.

  “What’s that?”

  “Smart.”

  Peter thought of a robot, if a robot could be programmed to sound like a schoolgirl.

  “Find Macavity?”

  Huh? Peter strained to make meaning of it all. He held up one hand to prevent her approaching, and with the other righted his suit. A lock of hair hung over his eyes and when he shoved it sideways, it stuck on his forehead.

  Then it dawned. “Are you the Gumbie cat?”

  T. S. Eliot, of course. She was quoting feline characters from Eliot’s poetry on cats, she was crazy about cats. Peter’s sister Julia had read Eliot to him when he was a tot, and he’d seen the musical. Mister Mistoffelees was the clever conjuring cat, Macavity the master criminal cat. He’d got it right, the Gumbie cat was the one who sat all day.

  “Are these the Jellicles?” he said, pointing with a trembling finger at the circling cats, and a faint smile crossed her face.

  “Smart.”

  “What can you tell me, Straw?”

  He had to recove
r from the near-disaster. Or had Imogen heard their gasps from behind the door, was she even now ringing Bishop to cancel the contract?

  “Uncle Rollo.” She picked up a black cat and held it purring across her arm flab. “Bad.”

  “What? That’s not what your mother says.”

  “Bad.” She lifted the cat to her face. Peter watched the green eyes fixed on him through cat fur. Nausea returned.

  “Who killed your daddy?” he asked, thrilled at his own audacity. Would she flip, as Imogen had said?

  She regarded him, stroking the cat.

  “Come. Tomorrow morning. Eight.” She jutted her lips at him in a warped parody of a harlot, and then turned. Peter heard her door click shut.

  The landing pulsed silently. The cats had disappeared; how did they do that?

  He breathed to steady himself, descended shakily. His footsteps echoed in the hallway. Nothing stirred.

  The front courtyard brooded in shadow. Mick stood by the fountain, his stillness a hundred questions.

  “Fuck me.” A smile appeared on Mick’s face like a desert sea after the big dry. “Who’d believe it, my mate from History class. How was it?”

  “What do you mean?” Peter’s cheeks flamed.

  “We never used that technique in Homicide.”

  “Cut it out. Nothing happened.”

  “You often smear lipstick over your face?” Mick inclined his nose. “And phew, you smell of it.”

  “Look, she came onto me, but nothing happened.”

  “Yeah, yeah.”

  “Look, believe it or not, nothing happened.”

  Through the red leaves of a Japanese maple outside the bay window, Peter saw the tortoiseshell cat propped motionless behind the glass. The Island seemed like a world removed—part sanctuary, part haunted house. He soaked in the scent of trodden autumn leaves as he walked alongside the pruned low hedge. Although miffed at Mick’s jibes, he couldn’t help feeling a tiny bit triumphant. Who’s a closet intellectual right now, he thought.

  “She asked me to come tomorrow,” Peter said.

  “I bet she did.”

  “No, she implied something about Rollo. I’m sure I’m onto something.”