Swifty Taylor and the Missing Child – Episode 5

 

Playing With Fire

 

I awoke to an ominous salt wind worrying my bedroom window. The previous evening, I had spoken to Mick Rogers. He had made a few demands. And rightly so, given that I was the piper and he was paying me handsomely so he could call the tune. I’d offered him a few breadcrumbs, but the truth was that progress was proving to be as slow as a Carlton rebuild. And while I was happy to take his cash, I was increasingly finding his demeanour to be distasteful and his overall attitude to be high-handed and superior. He was paying me a grand a day, but even with that largesse I was keen to see the door hit this case on the backside on its way out.

 

The knowledge that Thursday had finally dawned had me moving a fraction more briskly. But only a fraction. For I was headed back to ‘Lakeview’, and this time it wasn’t just for brunch with my mother. I suspected that the Harris woman would be there visiting her mother also. A picture of her formed in my mind, and I didn’t dislike what I was seeing. It was as if the photograph of Isabella Harris that Rogers proffered to me had hooks attached to it. And like the dumbest fish in Hobsons Bay, I had snatched at it and swallowed the line and sinker as well.

 

The ‘Lakeview’ receptionist sat at her desk, eyeing the clock like a washed-up boxer awaiting the final bell. When she clocked off at five, maybe a smile or a smidgeon of lightness clocked on. But somehow I doubted it. I signed in with the Houdini pen. “Your mother’s in the lounge,” she said. “Everybody is somewhere,” I replied. I didn’t blame her for not laughing.

 

I found my mother sitting by the window, desperately seeking some semblance of sunshine but coming up short. As luck would have it, she was sitting at a table indulging in a one-sided conversation with Ingrid Harris. Ingrid looked much younger than my mum, but less healthy just the same. I supposed that was just one of the indiscriminate effects of dementia. My mother saw me approaching. “You look terrible,” she said. She still had the ability to knock me down a peg or three. She turned up her nose slightly. “It must be all that Jameson.” That earned her half a smile from me. I pulled up a chair and sat beside them. Outside, the wind was surging and a few brave seagulls braced to set themselves for flights unknown. Like always, my mum and I talked about nothing. The weather. The doctors. The cost of living crisis. Anything but the heavier subjects, because we never could face up to lifting them.

 

 

 

 

And then she walked in. Tall, slender, wearing a charcoal dress that both concealed and accentuated her curves at the same time. She moved toward where we sat like a sax solo filling a quiet room. Every man in that lounge looked up at her, including those at death’s door. She stopped beside her mother’s chair and smiled at me with lips that would be more likely to start wars than sign peace treaties. She glanced around the room like she owned it and was planning on a major redecoration project. “Your mother speaks highly of you, Swifty” she said. I shot a look of disdain at my mum, as her chuckling rattled around her throat. But mum’s eyes held the wisdom of a person who had seen plenty of bad endings and was preparing to watch another.

 

 

 

 

“Isabella Harris,” she said, extending a slender and well-manicured hand toward me. Her perfume drifted toward me – I recognized it as jasmine with a hint of danger. She sat across from me and crossed her legs with a precision that would have made Russell Mark proud. Small talk was something in which I excelled, and the four of us engaged in it for half an hour or more. I was no closer to discovering any truths. Each time I attempted to steer the conversation toward the subject of children, she grabbed the wheel and we veered off in a different direction. Finally, I excused myself, bid farewell to my mother, and waited in the car park.

 

 

 

 

Isabella emerged from the building and began making her way back toward Williamstown. The chase was afoot. Her hips swayed with a rhythm that would hypnotise a sceptic into believing in a shaman. My urge was to move closer, so it took all my discipline to keep a distance of twenty or so metres between us. She glanced back just the once, enough to let me know that she knew I was there. And that she couldn’t have cared less. Then, she darted into a narrow lane off Ferguson St. My phone buzzed in my pocket. I looked at the screen: “Laura”. Damn it. Why wasn’t our timing ever in simpatico?

 

 

 

 

Somewhere in the bay, a ship’s mournful foghorn moaned like a man who had woken up beside the wrong person. I reached the laneway. In the distance she again caught sight of me, then paused to ensure that I took note of the gate through which she’d entered. Before she disappeared she presented me with a smile that was sly, knowing, and inescapable. A smile that Rogers was unable to resist and, I suspected, plenty of others besides. Like real charcoal, her dress hinted at the heat smouldering beneath. A touch paper had been lit. I turned up my collar and I stepped into the laneway. And, like plenty of fools before me, I walked toward the fire.