Black Tide by Peter Temple Read Free Book Online

gate,’ said Harry. ‘Tell the yokels to start dribblin it on at 12.40. Need to get five hundred on above twenty to be comfy.’
    He took a fat yellow envelope out of his jacket pocket and handed it to Cam. Over his shoulder, he said to me, ‘No personal bets today, Jack, see you don’t suffer for it. The missus saw a bloke with a camera in a car down the street from the front gate.’
    ‘What’s that mean?’
    Harry looked at Cam, shrugged. ‘Who knows? Could be there’s people think we’re pissin on their barbies, want the faces.’
    Burnbank Boy looked serene in the mounting yard and came out of gate three like a fire truck. Johnny Chernov got him on the rail, settled nicely, let two no-hopers go up and make the pace. No worries here, textbook stuff. But at the turn, he was suddenly in a crowd, five, six horses bunched. In the viewfinder of the Sakura Pro FS100, I thought I could see defeat on Johnny Chernov’s lips. I was right. Boxed to the end, we ran sixth out of eleven.
    We met back at the car. We always kept away from one another at the races.
    ‘Funny old game, racin,’ Harry said, taking off the old overcoat he wore to the races. ‘Coulda sworn we had that one down.’
    ‘Talking about pissing on barbies,’ Cam said, looking at Harry. ‘You happy with this hoop?’
    I had no idea what he meant.
    ‘Pendin,’ Harry said. ‘Pendin investigation. You drive.’
    We drove home in silence. No John Denver. No turf stories.

7
    Gary Connors’ apartment was off Toorak Road. There was a look about it that said it had once been an
    inoffensive three-storey block of units, probably built in the early ’50s. Now it was mad-Umbrian-fortress-meets-germ-warfare-laboratory, probably the victim of shaven-headed architects in black T-shirts calling themselves PostUrbana or DeConstructa. It was painted the colour of rust and had narrow gun-embrasures with metal shutters for windows and a huge stainless-steel front door with a brass porthole above it.
    ‘Funny lookin place,’ said Des.
    ‘A lot of funny people this side of the river,’ I said. ‘Rich and funny.’
    ‘That’d be right for bloody Gary.’
    We were looking through a narrow steel-barred gate set in a two-metre high roughcast wall. Beside it were six steel letterbox mouths. A parking area was visible to the left of the building. Only one bay was taken: by a white Audi.
    ‘Gary’s?’ I asked.
    Des shook his head. ‘Green, Gary’s.’
    I tried the gate. It opened. We went down a concrete path bisecting a plain of raked gravel, small white stones.
    Des stopped to poke the gravel with his walking stick. ‘Bit of grass’d be nice,’ he said. ‘This stuff’s for bloody cemeteries.’
    ‘Moved on from grass around here.’
    Beside the vault door were buzzers numbered one to six. They’d gone beyond names too, except for number one, which had Manager on a brass plate under it. Each buzzer had a speaker grille.
    Des took a full key ring out of his raincoat pocket and looked through the keys. ‘Number five,’ he said. I pressed the buzzer. No sound, but a yellow light came on beside the buzzer. I looked at the door. We were on camera. I pressed again. Again. Again. We looked at each other. Des offered me the keys.
    The deadlock was silk-smooth. The door opened silently to reveal a square hallway with grey slate on all six surfaces. There were doors on either side of the room and a lift door straight ahead, all stainless steel. We took the lift to the third floor. Stainless-steel-lined lift, silent.
    ‘Bugger me, Bill,’ said Des, wide-eyed. ‘Like a bloody coolroom. Never seen anythin like it.’
    On the way over, he’d lapsed into calling me Bill; there didn’t seem to be much point in correcting him. In the long run, what’s a generation? Besides, I rather liked it. No-one had ever called me by my father’s name.
    The lift door opened onto a small version of the entrance hall, doors on either side. Number five was to the left. The