Shooting Star by Peter Temple Page A

them: Pat Carson junior, Alice’s brother. A few weeks after I’d ended the little hostage drama in the underwear store, Graham Noyce invited me for a drink at a small and horrendously smart hotel called The Hotel Off Collins. The Carson family owned it, he told me. They wanted to show their gratitude for the handling of the lingerie incident. He put an envelope on the table. I said thanks but life had taught me that whatever joy the contents of envelopes brought, accepting them was a step on the way to sadness.
    He didn’t press it, put the envelope away, gave me his card. Then, when I was out of the force and desperate, I sent him my card. This claimed that I was a Mediator and Negotiator. About a month later, he gave me a job to do for Barry Carson. Barry’s nineteen-year-old boy, Pat Junior, was getting some life experience from a thirty-four-year-old table dancer called Sam Stark, formerly Janelle Hopper. Sam was professing undying love for the young Carson, and he was lavishing gifts on her and talking about marriage when he turned twenty-one and got his trust money from his maternal grandfather. I had a word with Sam and found her to be sincere in her love for Pat. At least until we got to fifty thousand dollars and a one-way ticket to Brisbane, business class.
    At that point, before my eyes, her love for the youth withered. Noyce rang the next day to say thanks, Sam Stark had broken off with Pat Junior, booked a flight to Brisbane.
    Had Sam told Pat that she’d been bought off ? How would he take that? He was a wild young man by Noyce’s account. Dropped out of university. In with bad company. Casino lizards, Noyce said. Pat had already sold the car his mother gave him when he left school to pay off gambling debts. Would he be part of the kidnapping of his cousin’s child? Angry, in debt, in the company of fast people. Someone might have suggested it, made a joke of it.
    I rang Graham Noyce’s mobile. ‘It’s Frank,’ I said. ‘Anything happening?’
    ‘Nothing. How’d you go with Christine?’
    ‘An unwell person.’
    ‘Yes, a variety of problems, including, would you believe it, narcissism.’
    ‘Anything with a narc in it I’d believe.’
    ‘So not a useful trip?’
    ‘No. What’s Pat Junior doing these days?’
    There was a short silence. I could see his worried face, more hairs jumping scalp. ‘That’s not a, a casual question, is it?’ he said.
    ‘No.’
    ‘He’s a worry for Barry. And for Katherine. They got his grandmother, she’s in her eighties, to change the terms of the trust. I told you about the trust, did I?’
    ‘You did.’
    ‘Pat won’t be getting his three-quarter million till he turns thirty now. His mother told him on the phone from England. I understand he went berserk, grabbed some antique glass thing, smashed a mirror dating from Napoleon’s day. Security had to be called in.’
    ‘Who says money can’t buy happiness?’ I said. ‘Like the Kennedys.’
    ‘I won’t say I haven’t dreamt of a man in a window with a rifle.’ A pause. ‘Pat…you don’t think…’
    ‘What do you know about Pat’s reaction to Alice’s kidnapping? And his mother taking her to England?’
    In my mind, I could see the shrug. ‘Only what Barry’s said. He thinks Pat’s got some kind of emotion-deficit disorder. Doesn’t seem to have any attachment to Barry or Katherine or Alice. Anyone, for that matter. Well, perhaps that whore you bought off. He took that badly.’
    ‘How did he find out?’
    ‘Wouldn’t have to be Einstein. Eternal love one minute, the next she’s gone. Plus…’ ‘Plus?’
    ‘He knows what the family money can do. We had to solve a pregnancy matter when he was sixteen. Quite expensive, it turned out to be. The girl’s father saw an opportunity to get a unit in Byron Bay.’
    ‘Pat’s been told about Anne?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘Where would he be at this time of day?’
    ‘Wherever he is, he’ll be asleep, building up his reserves for another