Black Tide by Peter Temple Read Free Book Online Page A

brass buzzer was high on the door and when I went to push it I looked up into a pinhole security camera.
    We waited, tried again, waited.
    ‘Let’s get in there,’ said Des.
    Again, a smooth deadlock. The door opened silently to reveal a small empty entrance hall carpeted in dark grey. I looked for the alarm. It wasn’t on. I clicked the light switch beside the door. A spotlight came on over a framed black-and-white photograph of a young female ballet dancer erotically slumped in exhaustion. It was a restful way to enter a dwelling.
    To the left of the front door was a small security monitor. Two closed doors led off the room.
    ‘Des, wait here.’
    I opened the righthand door. It was a sitting room, carpeted in the same grey and with some good pieces of furniture: modern leather armchairs in the style of Jean-Michel Frank, small writing desk, probably French, elegant side tables. There were more dark-framed ballet photographs, a collection of treen objects on the mantelpiece, an antiqued gilt-framed mirror, table lamps everywhere. Everything about the room said ‘decorator’.
    The rest of the apartment said the same thing. Gary’s bedroom was dark and masculine, the kitchen stark and surgical, the period-style bathroom missing only Winston Churchill smoking a cigar in the giant clawfooted tub. Panelled doors concealed a washing machine and dryer.
    The place was clean, too, the feel of a serviced apartment. I came back into the sitting room. Des was standing in the doorway, nodding his head.
    ‘Bloody posh,’ he said. ‘S’pose this is where me sixty grand went.’
    ‘Des,’ I said, ‘I’m not mad about this kind of thing but as an anxious parent, would you like me to look around?’
    ‘Look,’ he said, no sign of parental concern visible.
    Gary hadn’t been home for a while. The use-by date on a four-pack of yoghurt in the fridge put the time at a minimum of three weeks. A brass bowl in the kitchen was full of change and half a dozen or so crumpled shopping sales dockets and credit card receipts.
    I went around the cupboards. One of them, at eye-height, contained another security system monitor. I switched it on. It came to life instantly, very smart technology, split screen showing the front doorstep downstairs, the empty entrance hall outside the apartment and the fire escape landing beyond the kitchen door. You could see the front door of the apartment across the hall. I switched off and opened more cupboards until I came to the liquor cache. The wine rack held three bottles of Coldstream Hills pinot noir, there was whisky, vodka and gin, and, in a small fridge, four bottles of Carlsberg.
    Des followed me into the bedroom. The laundry basket held four dirty business shirts, two golf shirts, three pairs of casual trousers, underpants, all with Henry Buck’s labels. The built-in cupboard housed an array of expensive, conservative clothes.
    ‘Boy’s got taste,’ I said. ‘Taste and money.’
    ‘Know where he got the bloody money from,’ Des said. ‘Taste’s the mystery.’
    I had a look in the medicine cabinet in the bathroom. Much is revealed in medicine cabinets. Gary’s told me only that he had indigestion and a sex life.
    Next, the writing desk. Nothing. Just a pad and two pens. Where would his papers be? I looked in all the obvious places, then the less obvious. Nothing.
    Des walked around after me, leaning on the aluminium stick. ‘Anythin about the money?’ he said.
    ‘Nothing.’
    There was a phone-fax-answering machine on the desk. I picked up the handset and pressed the redial button.
    Nothing. The last number dialled on this phone had been erased.
    The answering machine light was blinking. I pressed Play.
    Six or seven calls. Not a single message.
    ‘When you rang, did you leave messages?’ I asked Des.
    He shook his head.
    I went back to the kitchen and pocketed the shopping dockets and credit card receipts. On the way out, I had a look in the flat box on the wall under the