Shooting Star by Peter Temple Page A

envelope except a Smartie box, a cheerful package, aglow with the colours of the sweet flat beans.
    But it didn’t contain chocolate pills. It contained something wrapped in aluminium foil.
    Two joints of a little finger, clean, odourless, fresh as chicken from the best butcher in Toorak.

LEANING FORWARD, elbows on the desk, chin in his hands, Pat Carson looked gaunt, shrunken, every minute of his age. He was breathing deeply but he seemed to sigh out more air than he took in.
    With me in the study were Noyce and Orlovsky and Stephanie Chadwick. Noyce was clasping and unclasping his hands, swallowing a lot.
    ‘I’ve told Tom and Barry,’ he said. ‘They called Tom out of a meeting with the institutions.’
    I looked at him. ‘Institutions?’
    ‘The big investors, super funds, that kind of thing. For the float. To sell the CarsonCorp float.’
    Orlovsky was in his trance again, unwavering gaze on Pat Carson’s courtyard garden.
    ‘It’s the police now,’ said Pat Carson. ‘You were right, Frank. Should’ve bloody listened. Pigheadedness’s done a lot for this family, startin from the top.’
    Noyce nodded rapidly. ‘I think that’s the course of action to follow, yes,’ he said. ‘We had no way of knowing this sort of thing would happen. And we let Alice’s kidnapping weigh too heavily on us.’ He looked at pale Stephanie, who was sitting near her grandfather. He coughed. ‘I’ll speak directly to the Chief Commissioner. Ensure they pull out all the stops.’
    I didn’t say anything. I was scared about what I had to say, ashamed that my instinct was to go far away, and so I was thinking about waking in the Garden House, showering in the huge slate-floored shower room, putting on the towelling dressing gown, thick and soft and smelling faintly of cinnamon. Thinking about the three newspapers on the table in the hall and how somehow the kitchen knew you were up and breakfast came under cover on a trolley pushed by a kitchen hand in white: today, fresh orange juice in a tall, cold glass beaker, cereals, creamy scrambled eggs and thick-sliced smoked ham with grilled tomato. The server made sourdough toast in the kitchen.
    ‘The butter’s from Normandy,’ he’d said. ‘It’s very good.’ He went away and came back with coffee in a stainless-steel vacuum flask.
    Orlovsky had come to the table wearing only his own towel, a sad threadbare thing, drank a glass of water and made himself a grilled tomato sandwich. ‘It starts with food,’ he said darkly.
    ‘And ends as food,’ I’d said, having no idea what he meant. ‘Live a little.’
    ‘Frank?’ Pat was eyeing me. ‘When Graham’s talked to this fella whoever he is, you deal with the cops on behalf of the family. Okay? No offence, Graham, Frank knows the set-up, knows how the buggers work.’
    ‘Fine,’ said Noyce, nodding vigorously, not happy, ‘that’s fine, that’s a good way to do it. Right, Frank? No time to lose either.’ He started to rise.
    ‘If that’s what you want to do,’ I said.
    Orlovsky came out of his state, turned his cropped head slowly. Noyce sat down.
    ‘That’s what we should do, not so?’ Pat Carson said. He was on to me, his chin was out of his hands, up, his head tilted, twenty years off his age.
    I tried to work out the best way to do this, to be truthful and to escape. I couldn’t. ‘It’s your decision,’ I said.
    Noyce said, ‘On Saturday evening, you said…’
    Time to say it.
    ‘And on Thursday and on Friday,’ I said. ‘Today’s Monday, Graham.’
    ‘Don’t understand,’ said Pat, eyes crinkled. ‘What’s all this? We shoulda done it, we didn’t, now we do it.’
    ‘It’s too late,’ I said.
    Orlovsky was studying me like some strange object in a gallery, a curious piece of sculpture perhaps, judgment held in check only by fear of not quite getting the point.
    Pat sat back, put his hands on the desk, spread the fingers on the silken mahogany, lowered his chin. I hadn’t done him