Cooee (32 page)

‘Hello, Frank,' I say, opening the door. Then I hiccup. The hiccup wafts in the air between us before drifting, gently and featherlike, to the floor, where it rests. Frank's eyes — grave, even troubled — regard it there before he looks straight at me.

‘Hello, Isabel,' he says. ‘I hope it's not too late. I was driving by and saw your light on.'

‘No, not a bit,' I say, foggily, waving him in. I'm almost pleased to see him. It gets lonely, drinking on your own. I tell him this, and press a brandy on him, fortuitously refilling my own glass in the process. I'm a little surprised that he accepts, as I had a notion that cops are not meant to drink on duty, but I guess Frank's on top of what he's doing. Perhaps he's not on duty? It's all a bit fuzzy and I can't quite focus on anything as I know I should be doing.

We sit at the kitchen table and observe each other silently for a period. I know what he's thinking. He's thinking he's found me sozzled. He's thinking I'm cornered; he's thinking he can extract from me anything he likes. His eyes are bright with anticipation of my errors, my contradictions, my admissions.

Fat chance, Frank, I think. But I think it a bit blearily. My mind isn't crisp enough; I know this. It might not be equal to my stubborn determination to give nothing away. Silently I double my resolve and, with an immense effort, concentrate.

Well, sozzled I may be, and cornered, too; but I am buoyed by the competition of the situation (he's a very competitive person, Frank, but so am I) and by the knowledge that a ratlike cunning is budding deep within me. I can keep Frank out there on the perimeter, where he belongs. I can stop Frank from hopping the fence, stalking closer to me, closer to the truth. I have to stop Frank.

The thing is, he can see I'm a little under the weather. It's written all over his face, his excitement that he's finally caught me with my guard well down. And if I can keep one step ahead of him, if I can manage not to give anything away this time of all times, perhaps I'll convince him at last.

I smile at Frank. I try to make it a winning smile, and hope I don't look merely predatory. Or drunk.

‘So,' I say, trying to cross my legs and almost getting there. It's a good thing Frank can't see under the table, I think. Or perhaps he can?

Frank's equal to this ploy. ‘So,' he says, smiling.

There's a pause.

‘Don't you ever go home?' I try.

‘On my way.'

‘Doesn't your wife get cross with you when you're so late home?'

‘No wife.'

This is something I've often wondered about Frank. Somehow, to me he has always looked married, and I'm mildly surprised that he isn't. I'm sure he's not gay.

‘Can we talk about Max?' he says.

I'm even more surprised by this. Frank is usually rather more subtle in his approach: he'll stalk around for a while before he pounces. Furthermore, he's always referred to Max as Mr Knight, a careful formality I've occasionally found bizarre. It turns out Frank wants me to tell him about Max and me, about how we met, about what he was like.

‘I've never met him, remember,' he says. ‘I'd like to get a feel for the man.'

So I tell him. It's an expurgated version, certainly; but I answer all his questions (
yes, we met at my office: he wanted an architect to design his house; no, I didn't meet many of his friends; no, we didn't travel together much; yes, he did give me my dog
). And so on.

While I am steadily answering his cruel questions, managing what I think is a halfway decent impersonation of a woman who doesn't give much of a damn any more, Frank leans over and scratches Borrow's chin on the exact place he loves it. I am really irritated by this, and try not to show it.

All in all, it's my finest hour, I think. It is so hard, presenting these details of everything that has mattered most, dazzled brightest, in my life, without breaking down; but I do.

Once or twice, affected I suppose by the alcohol, I am almost tempted to say to hell with it all and tell Frank everything. I'm so sick of him persecuting me in his courteous, obstinate way; and he's a nice man; surely he'd understand. It'd be such a relief, to tell somebody all about it.

But I manage to retrieve myself from this idiocy. I remain polite, slightly distant, slightly puzzled by his interest, by the way it's all turned out. I don't think I give anything away at all.

When he leaves, after half an hour or so, I sit quietly and gaze into space. I haven't heard his car drive off, and he's tried this trick on me once before. And, sure enough, there he is, at the door again, having (he says) forgotten one small question, his eyes positively ablaze with pale fire at the possibility of catching me out somehow. But lo! I am calm, unflustered. I answer the inconsequential remaining question; he goes; I hear the car leave.

In fact the strain of it all has pretty much exhausted me. But it turns out to be worth it. Frank doesn't come again. He's given up. It takes me a long time to be sure of this, and even when I am practically sure I still continue to listen for that knock, the resolute knock that signifies Frank's return.

Sometimes I wake during the night, suddenly persuaded I have heard it, the knock that presages investigation, conviction, punishment. My heart thumps as I lie in bed, listening as if my life depended on it, which perhaps it does.

Sometimes I get up and pad barefoot out to the slanted window through which I can see the front porch. There's never anybody there. Gradually, slowly, I start to believe I might have satisfied Frank; he might not return. I can get on with my life.

Well, I can almost get on with my life. Before I can properly do so, there's something I have to sort out. I do some homework. I look up addresses. I fly to Perth and hire a car.

It's a fine sunny day, and the ritzier bits of Perth unfold before me, wide streets and bright gardens. I find the address I'm looking for, the only M. Ritter. Immediately I know I've hit paydirt. There's an old silver Audi in the drive.

The woman who opens the door isn't statuesque, but she is blonde. That ash-streaked, expensive blonde that goes so well with a lustrous golden tan, which she has. She's on the plump side, but she's pretty. She's in jeans and a T-shirt, but they're classy jeans and a designer T-shirt, and her thin, gold leather sandals are just gorgeous: I feel like asking her where she bought them. Her expression is unfriendly.

After a second or two I realise I am staring at her mutely, drinking in every detail of her appearance.

‘I'm sorry,' I say. ‘I'm really sorry. Please, can I talk to you. Just for a few minutes?'

I'm stupid, of course: such an important meeting, and I've rehearsed nothing, prepared nothing. It's not like me. I've been so consumed with it all, so consumed with the thought that I'll perhaps actually be meeting one of the wives, that I'm not ready: I haven't got my act together.

‘My name's Weaving. But that won't mean anything to you. I was married to Max Knight.'

Her eyes widen and harden. She starts to close the door.

‘Please. Please. I'm from Melbourne. I won't ever bother you again. I'm going home tomorrow. I came over here just to meet you. Please. I only want ten minutes. Then I'll go and you'll never see me again.'

‘What do you want to ask me?' Her voice is cold.

‘I only want to ask you some questions. Please. I lived with him for five years. There are things I don't understand. I thought if we talked we might both understand more about it, about him.'

She hesitates. Then she steps back, nods. ‘Ten minutes.'

We sit opposite each other in a remarkably pleasant room, all sun and chintzy wicker chairs and big extravagant pot plants and glass-topped tables. I don't like wicker furniture very much, and I don't like pot plants very much, but she's put it all together (at least I suppose it was she who put it together) so that it looks summery and airy and fresh.

‘My name's Isabel,' I say.

‘I'm Meryl.'

‘Thank you for seeing me.'

A long pause settles between us. We examine each other. I dare say it's an unusually frank appraisal between two women who have never before met each other, but we need it. I certainly do, anyway.

My initial impression is reinforced: this is a classy lady. She has that costly sheen of preservation about her that only really chic, really wealthy people get. She's chubby but it's fit chub, firm and gym-toned flesh. Her eyes are bright. She has terrific teeth.

‘How did you find me?' she asks.

‘A policeman.'

‘Cops are pigs,' she says, with a vigour that surprises me.

‘At least, he didn't tell me how to find you, but he told me Max had married in Perth when he was calling himself Martin Ritter. So I looked up Ritters in the phone book. There aren't many. It wasn't hard.'

‘He left you, too?' she asks, abruptly.

‘Yes.'

‘How long ago?'

‘Nearly a year.'

‘Did you know it was going to happen? Did he give you any warning?'

‘No,' I say, reflecting that this would have been a difficult thing for Max to have managed.

‘Me neither. One day he just went away. He left a letter. Did he leave you a letter?'

‘No.'

She raises her eyebrows. ‘Unusual. He usually leaves a letter.'

‘Usually?'

‘Well, he did with me, and apparently he did with my predecessors.'

‘Your predecessors?'

‘Didn't you know? He's a serial bigamist, dear.'

‘I knew there was one other wife.'

‘A whole trail of them, probably. I know of three.' She looks at me. ‘Four, now.'

‘Are the others in America?'

‘Yes. Well, two of them are. God knows how many others exist, or where they all are.'

More than two other wives
, I think.

‘Meryl,' I say, experimenting with her name. ‘How did he make his money?'

She smiles, thinly. ‘You don't know?'

I shake my head. I've got a pretty good idea, or at least I think I have, but I want to hear it from her.

‘Three ways, mainly. He imports prostitutes from Asian countries, and he launders money. But principally it's drugs.'

Tax evasion? Prostitution? Drugs? White slave traffic?
What an irony, I think. I must make sure Bea never finds out she was right after all.

‘Drugs?'

‘As I understand it, heroin. I believe he dabbles in boutique stuff, too, from time to time. But the basis is heroin — at least, it was then, and I assume it's the same now. That's where most of the money came from. Honestly, didn't you know?'

‘He told me he was a consultant of sorts.'

‘So he is. A consultant on whores and heroin. He has other interests, too, of course — legit ones, to give him a cover. I believe he does a nice line in hiring out heavy industrial machinery. But most of it's prostitution and drugs. You must have suspected something? Did he throw money around?'

‘Yes. But I didn't want to think about it. I didn't want to think anything was wrong.'

‘I was a bit like that, too,' she says. ‘Common sense was telling me something was wrong. Nobody has as much money as that: I knew that. But I didn't want to face up to it, either.'

I realise her eyes are on my ring.

‘That's a fabulous diamond,' she says. She holds up her hand and waves it at me. The diamond ring on her middle finger glitters. Its design is similar to mine.

‘Tell me,' she says. ‘Did he give you a Fred Williams?'

I can only nod.

‘I sold mine. I didn't like it. And I thought a painting might be repossessed. I wanted the hard cash. I advise you to sell yours, too.'

This is an even more surreal conversation than I expected it to be.

‘What did he say in his letter? If you don't mind my asking.'

She sighs. ‘He said he loved me, we'd had a great time, he was an adventurer at heart, sorry not to live up to what I'd have liked him to be, ta-ta. Classic stuff. The cops turned up about a week after he'd left. He always manages to keep one step ahead of them, apparently. They weren't very nice about it.'

I stare at her. I don't know what I expected, but it wasn't this. Probably it should have been, but it wasn't.

‘Look,' she says. ‘I know it's hard. Try to see the bright side. He's probably left you pretty well off?'

I nod.

‘Well, take my advice, get rid of stuff like paintings. I did; I converted practically everything into cash. Except the diamond ring and the car. I liked the car, and I kept it. It still runs okay, though it's really old now. But that's a precaution: you probably don't need to worry. Martin has excellent accountants. The cops made lots of threats, but they never actually took anything away. Martin never seems to leave a paper trail. Except when everything's kosher, of course, and then he leaves a really clear one. He enjoys that.'