‘This horse?’ Terry said in disbelief. ‘Him not much good.
Win a bush maiden is all he do.’
‘May I?’ I said, taking the photo off the wall.
Terry shrugged, still mystified as to why I’d want to look at a photo of some rocking horse when he could be taking me through Fright’s glittering career. I placed the photo on the arm of the barber’s chair where we could see it better in the light. The photo was a shot of a horse called Think I Can passing the winning post in a race way back in 1966. It had an old Gothic-style italic font proudly describing the occasion. The horse’s breeding and the trainer were listed, as were the owners and the winning jockey.
‘Chas Bannon trained the horse for you?’
‘Yeah. It musta bin the second horse I ever had. Chas used to come in for a haircut and I got talking to him and next thing I ended up in a horse with him. Old Chas, he still drops by now and then. But he no have much hair these days. No getta cut as much as he used to.’
‘I know Chas. He’s a marvel; still training from a wheelchair. Tell me, who else was in it?’
Terry picked up the photo carefully and wiped it over with a hand towel from the basin. The writing was fading badly, but you could still make out the owners’ names: C Bannon, T Papadopoulis, C Whittle.
‘Chas kept a share himself. I had a quarter and Col Whittle and his wife had the other half.’
‘The jockey colours, whose were they?’
Terry scratched his head, thinking about it. ‘They not mine,’ he said, nodding back to the wall where the other photos were. ‘I never had my own colours. And when Fright come along, I always used your father’s. They must be Chas’ colours or belong to the Whittles.’
‘Were the Whittles friends of yours?’
Terry shook his head while studying the photo in his hands. ‘No. They were clients of Chas. He just put us together when the horse became available.’
‘Did you race any other horses with them?’
‘No, only this slowpoke. We got rid of it shortly after it won. Chas found a buyer up in Queensland and we sold it. It never won another race.’
‘Do they still race horses?’
‘The Whittles? I haven’t seen them for must be over thirty years. Maybe Chas know where they are.’
‘You mind if I borrow this photo, Terry? I’ll take good care of it, I promise.’
‘Sure, but hey, where you going? You don’t wanta I finish cutting your hair?’
I’d pulled the barber’s gown over my head and draped it on the back of the chair.
‘Might give it a miss today. Got a trainer I need to see.’
Chas Bannon’s stables were like a little oasis in the middle of a suburban desert. He had a house and a dozen stables out in the back of his yard down in a side street across from the track. There seemed to be stables in the back of every second house when I was a kid growing up at Caulfield. But then people realised they could build townhouses on their blocks and get a better return rather than renting out stables to battling trainers. Chas’ stables were one of the few remaining which hadn’t been bulldozed down. He’d bought the place back in the fifties and once you entered through his ivy-covered gate, it was like stepping into a neat little barnyard. A couple of chooks pecked about happily on a flowerbed to the side of the driveway. He had a goat tied to a fence outside the stables, a scruffy brown thing which was down on its knees chewing contentedly at a patch of grass it could just reach at the end of its tether. Chas always kept a goat at his stables. Swore they calmed down fractious horses. Sometimes he even let them share a box with a racehorse if he thought the horse was fretting too much. I reckon the goat always got the better deal. It ate half the straw bedding and most of the lucerne hay net which was meant for the thoroughbred.
Old Chas was sitting in his wheelchair on the porch, dozing in the sun. He was surrounded by a menagerie of cats and dogs sharing a kip on the couch next to him. Three of the dogs, little Jack Russell terriers, sprang to life when they heard me walking up. They jumped down protectively from the verandah and started yipping away at me and their barking woke up Chas.
He put a hand to his brow and squinted to see who it was. ‘Oh, it’s you, Punter.’
‘Hi Chas. Sorry to interrupt.’
‘You’re not stoppin’ me doin’ anything important. Come up and join me, I was just having my lunchtime nap.’
I stepped up onto the porch and sat down on one of the weathered cane chairs next to him.
‘You could be miles away in the country here, couldn’t you?’ I said. ‘Reminds me of a farmyard when you walk in and see all the animals.’
Chas smiled contentedly. ‘I know. I love it and so do the horses. Those idiots over there,’ he said, waving a dismissive hand at the racecourse, ‘would like nothing better than to sell me up and see me pensioned off with half a dozen boxes on the course. But I own this place and I’ll train here till they cart me out in a box. And that won’t be any time soon, touch wood. Now then, son,’ he said, eying Terry’s photograph which I had tucked under my arm, ‘what can I do for you?’
I showed Chas the photo and he put on his glasses to inspect it. A hint of a smile broke over the old man’s face as his mind trawled back through the years. ‘Think I Can. Gee, that’s going back awhiles. Where on earth did you dig this up from?’
‘I was at Terry’s, the barber, and saw it on his shop wall along with all his other racing photos.’
‘Ah, figures. Terry’d be the only person who’d bother keeping a photo of a horse so slow.’
‘I gathered it wasn’t much good from what he told me. He said you’d sold it to someone in Queensland and it never won another race.’
Chas nodded thoughtfully. ‘Yeah, I could probably have beaten it home in this thing,’ he said, slapping the side of his wheelchair.
‘The horse’s silks; I’m trying to find out who they were registered to. Were they yours or the owners’?’
‘Not mine, son. I’ve used the grey and yellow stripes ever since I started training fifty-seven years ago. They must have been Terry’s or the other owner.’
‘No, they weren’t Terry’s. So they must have belonged to Mr Whittle.’
‘Col Whittle,’ said Chas, nursing the photo on his lap. ‘Now there’s an owner I haven’t thought about for a long time.’
‘He still in the game?’
‘Lord, no. That was the last horse he ever owned. His interest waned after that and I heard he died in a car accident. Must be thirty years or so ago.’
‘Did you know him well?’
‘Not really. Let me think. My memory’s not what it used to be . . .’ Chas adjusted his glasses and peered at the photo, trying to remember. ‘Yeah, it was a long time ago but Col, he was a local builder if I remember correctly,’ he said, nodding with more certainty. ‘That’s right, it’s coming to me now. He was a good tradesman, always did a proper job. I got to know him when he put a new roof up over the stables for me. He was a keen racegoer and he ended up taking a share in a few horses I had over a couple of years. One of ’em won a couple of races, that’s what got him hooked. But Think I Can was his last horse with me.’
‘Would you know what happened to the colours?’
‘Jesus, son, I can’t even remember what won the last at Caulfield on Saturday, let alone what happened to a set of silks over forty years ago! I probably gave ’em back to Col when the horse was sold. But like I said, he’s long gone so they could be anywhere. Most likely buried in a tip by now. You can always get another set made up with the same colours if you want ’em so bad, you know.’
‘Tell me, was he married, have any family you knew about? I’m just wondering if they’ve been sitting in a garage somewhere hidden away all these years.’
Chas stroked his chin, let his eyes wander over to the row of stables opposite. A couple of horses had their heads over the top of their boxes and were munching contentedly away at their feed bins while looking at us. The goat had stretched out to the very end of its tether rope and could just reach a patch of weeds in the garden bed which it was chewing at.
‘Col had a wife, Lillian, but I heard she passed away a few years ago.’ He frowned, a thought occuring to him. ‘Funny couple they made, her and Col.’
‘Funny?’
‘Funny strange. Something not quite right. You’d hear rumours at the track about her having it off with jockeys while Col was out working.’
‘Was it true?’
Chas shrugged. ‘Dunno for sure. But where there’s smoke . . .’
‘Did you know where they lived?’
‘Col was a local, but I never went to his house.’
‘What about when you sent him a training bill, wouldn’t his address be in your records?’
‘Nah, I don’t keep any records going back more than a few years, let alone forty.’
A phone rang from inside the house and his wife called out to him. ‘Chas, it’s for you.’
‘All right, I’m comin’,’ he said. ‘I don’t think I can tell you much more about the owner or those colours, son.’
‘Of course,’ I said, standing up to go. ‘It was a long time ago.’
‘Would you mind doing something for me on the way out?’ He smiled at me. ‘Tie that goat a bit closer to that weed patch. He’s only done half the job.’
‘You’re a hard taskmaster, Chas. I’m glad I never strapped for you.’
He winked at me as he wheeled past in his wheelchair. ‘If a job’s worth doing, it’s worth doing properly.’
I dropped by Beering’s office on the way back from Chas’ stables. He was out at lunch, so I left the photo with his receptionist and asked if she’d get Beering to call me when he got back. Mention of lunch made me think of getting a bite to eat myself, so I drove over to the main shopping strip and bought some sushi rolls which I sat down in my van to eat. Beering rang me just as I ripped the plastic wrapper off.
‘Good timing, Jim, as always.’
‘My PA said you called and left a race photo for me.’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘We’ll, what’s the story?’
‘Something that might save you guys a bit of legwork. Those colours in that photo, they’re the same as the strapper killer wore the night he attacked Maxine.’
Beering went quiet for a moment, obviously taking in what I’d discovered. ‘You sure about that?’
‘I am now after seeing them in the photo. They’re a spitting image.’
‘Where did you get the photo?’
I told him how I’d come across it and also what I’d found out from my visit to Chas Bannon’s stables earlier.
‘You’ve been busy.’
‘Yep. So your friends in Homicide can wrap up their search for the missing colours,’ I said. ‘They belonged to Col Whittle, who died about thirty-odd years ago according to Chas.’
‘I’ll let Homicide know about it,’ said Beering. ‘They might want to ask Chas some more questions. But I gotta say that even though you’ve traced whose colours they were, it sounds a bit of a dead end with both the Whittles dead.’
‘It’s a lead, isn’t it?’
Beering sniffed down the phone. I’d heard that sniff before. It conveyed a cynical disinterest in pursuing something that he knew would be a timewaster.
‘What, stands to reason, doesn’t it?’ I said. ‘Find where the silks are and the last person holding them may be your killer.’
A patient sigh followed a second cynical sniff. ‘Punter, you’ve done a good job finding that old race photo, even if it was a fluke. But let me tell you something for nothin’. Those colours could be anywhere. You said Chas thought he’d probably sent ’em back to Whittle when he sold his horse years ago.’
‘Yeah.’
‘Okay, what if he didn’t? What if he left ’em at the dry-cleaners and they threw ’em out when they got sick of waiting around for someone to collect ’em?’
‘I don’t think he would have done that.’
‘All right, what if he did send ’em back. Let’s suppose Whittle puts ’em in the garbage, or took ’em down to a charity bin. Either way, someone else such as the real strapper killer – and let’s face it; we know it’s not Whittle or his equally deceased missus – could have got their hands on ’em and we wouldn’t have a clue.’
‘Maybe his wife kept them and passed them on to one of their kids or something.’
‘Did Chas know if they had any children or not?’
‘I dunno. He didn’t say.’
‘Well, let’s run with that one, then. Maybe the wife kept the silks in a box in his wardrobe. But when she died, the kids fought over who gets what and cleaned out all the junk before the house was sold. We’re back to my garbage theory again.’
I let off my own sigh of disappointment down the phone. ‘Jesus, do all investigations have to hit a brick wall?’
‘All I’m sayin’ is that even though you’ve found out who they belonged to, there’s lots of places those colours could be now after forty-odd years.’
‘Yeah, you’ve just about given me the complete list.’
‘Punter, I haven’t even started. They could have been taken home by the jockey who rode the horse in his last race. Maybe he gave ’em to his kids.’
‘So he’s got kids, has he?’
‘Okay, let’s say he hasn’t. They could have been left in the jockeys’ room and been sitting in lost property since 1966. A strapper might have left them sitting in a float. Yada yada, you want me to go on?’
‘I think I get the picture, Jim.’
‘You know what I reckon? Forget who might or might not have the colours. There’s too many variables. We’ve got Maxine’s likeness of the killer and someone will recognise him sooner or later.’
Beering’s take on things soured the rest of my day. I thought I’d done good. Found some missing pieces in the jigsaw. Particularly in finding out who the colours belonged to. Trouble was, I was thinking like a mug gambler who thinks he’s found the only chance in a race. Beering thought like a cop; his training taught him there were many possibilities. Even so, I felt a bit of an emotional let-down after all my hard work. My feelings didn’t improve when I called Maxine later in the afternoon. She’d only just got back from her corporate planning weekend at Yarra Glen with that legal mob. Now she was telling me they wanted to send her away for three days to Sydney.
‘Jesus, honey, you’ve only just got back. I never see you,’ I blurted out. Didn’t mean to, but there it was. That was the problem, wasn’t it? She was always away on a business trip or working crazy hours for a client.
‘I’m sorry, sweetie. But it’s more work from Freedales and it’s worth a stack. Rodney Ellis has gone out of his way to pass work on to me, so I can’t really knock it back, can I?’
‘You’ve just spent all weekend working for them and I haven’t seen you since Phar Lap won the Cup.’
‘Oh, don’t be silly, you’re exaggerating. I’ll be back on Thursday. I’ll see you then, I promise.’
Maxine cut the call short and rang off. Wisely, I thought. I’d have liked to tell her what she ought to do with Freedales and that toffy-sounding QC, Rodney Ellis. I ended up getting stuck into the form for the following day’s Sandown meeting. It wasn’t bad as far as a summer mid-week card went. Three of the eight races looked playable, including one of my father’s horses whom I’d been waiting to see step out. I was halfway through the program when the phone rang with Chas Bannon on the line.
‘G’day, son,’ he said. ‘I got to thinking about Col Whittle and that horse I trained for him after you left.’
‘The horse wouldn’t bear a lot of thinking about, Chas. Could do its form in about three seconds flat.’
‘True, he was no good. But something about Col buzzed about in my mind all afternoon and I couldn’t quite remember what it was. But then it came back to me, so I thought I’d give you a call before it slipped away again.’
I pushed my formguide to the side of my desk and sat to attention. ‘What is it about Whittle you remembered?’
‘It’s not really Whittle, it’s his son.’
‘He had a kid?’
‘Well, a stepson. His wife Lillian already had a young boy from a previous marriage. Meggsy, his name was. Least that’s all I remember him by.’
‘Ginger Meggs. Let me guess, on account of his red hair?’
‘Biggest mop you’ve ever seen. I didn’t think of him at first; was trying to remember about the horse and the colours. But here’s the funny thing. After Col died, I heard from his wife. Hadn’t heard from her in years; no reason she’d keep in touch with me, I s’pose. But then out of the blue, I got this call from Lillian in the early eighties. Seems the kid, who’d grown into a teenager by then, was at a bit of a loose end. Wasn’t doing well in school. Didn’t have any friends or hobbies and his mother was getting worried about him. He was only a small chap, so Lillian asked if I’d give him a go as an apprentice jockey.’
‘Did you take him on?’
‘I didn’t want to. Bloody kids are a pain in the arse as far as I’m concerned. But Lillian really pleaded with me, said she was desperate to find him something and thought if I could just give him a chance, he’d turn out all right. I wished I’d listened to my better judgement. But I was short of a strapper at the time and the kid wouldn’t cost me nearly as much in wages, so I gave him a start.’
‘How did he work out?’
‘When he first started he’d hardly say boo to me or anyone else. Like he had withdrawn into his own little shell. Green, of course, because he’d never touched a horse till he set foot in my yard. But he seemed to learn quick enough. Within a month he was mucking out stables and leading ’em around. I even put him up on a couple of quiet ’uns and let him walk exercise. He seemed to gain confidence every day he was there. But after about six months, he put on a growth spurt and shot up. Happens all the time with kids. One day an aspiring jock, the next they’re playing ruck for a league team. I let him stay on as a strapper, but I had to let him go a couple of months after.’
‘Why was that?’
Chas paused a moment as if reluctant to go on. ‘He was a bit of a sly bugger and I always had my suspicions; dogs cowering behind me when he walked into the yard or the cats running off whenever they saw him. I sprung him one day belting a young horse of mine with the handle of a pitchfork and fired him on the spot.’
I asked Chas a few more questions, but there wasn’t anything else he could tell me. No, he didn’t remember the kid’s proper name. And no, he had no idea where he might be now. When he hung up, I rang Beering. He wasn’t picking up, so I left a message on his answering service anyway telling him about Whittle having a stepson called Meggsy, who once worked for Chas.
The rest of the week passed by pretty quickly. On Tuesday I went to Sandown and had an all right day. I backed Dad’s horse at fours and it never looked like losing. I went to the Triangle in the evening and met up with the guys. We played snooker till around eleven and then I came home and went to bed. On Wednesday I seemed to spend half the day answering texts and playing catch-up with messages. I don’t know how I could miss so many calls; it was like everyone waited for me to go out of the house and then rang to catch me out.
Maxine had left a couple of texts for me. I don’t mind reading them, but I hate trying to respond to the damn things. I called Maxine but she wasn’t answering so I left a message on her phone and sure enough, an hour later another text came back from her saying she’d missed my call. Well, of course she had, that’s why she wasn’t there to take it in the first place. I’m sure Telstra’s making a fortune out of everyone who feels compelled to respond every time someone rings or texts.
Kate had left a message on my home answering machine. At least she used the phone in the way it was supposed to be used. She wanted to know if there were any new developments about the strapper killer. Beering had also rung and left yet another message, a one-sentence question which sounded less than enthusiastic. He said, ‘Does Meggsy have a real name and a current address?’
I could have predicted his response. Maybe he was right, and all this running around was just a waste of time. I called Billco later in the morning. I didn’t get him either, but at least I got hold of his son, who said he still wasn’t home from his art exhibition at Byron Bay. He said he’d let Billco know to call me. Another win for Telstra.
On Thursday I went to Ballarat races. I should have stayed home. I got a speeding ticket just as I came over the hill near the tourist castle. Bloody cops had a radar set up just over the dip. An oncoming car flashed its lights at me but it was too late, I’d been zapped. Wasn’t over by much, but no one likes starting the day a hundred and ten dollars in the red. I slipped further into deficit as the day wore on. My first horse got beaten in a photo by a sixteen-to-one outsider. I almost willed the jockey to protest, find some excuse that might turn around the result, but it was beaten fair and square and the judge wasn’t going to change his mind. I had some luck in the two-thousand-metre race when the favourite won at skinny odds. Then I gave it back in the last when my top two picks ran third and fourth respectively.
I consoled myself with a cup of coffee in the members’ café, thinking about how I couldn’t take a trick. Away from the track, things weren’t exactly humming along either. The search for the strapper killer seemed to have slowed somewhat since the flurry of activity last weekend. Maybe that was just my perception because things weren’t falling into place, but that was the story of my life at the moment. Even things with Maxine didn’t feel quite right. I’d hardly sighted her since last weekend, since she’d been staying at her old man’s penthouse. And it didn’t help that she was doing all that bloody work for the legal firm. She was either interstate or attending some damn conference they were putting on. Mental note to self: never engage Freedales for any legal work – they’re too busy running in-house seminars to represent you properly. On the drive home my spirits lifted when my mobile rang and Billco answered. He told me he’d had a successful showing in Byron Bay and managed to sell four paintings and take another two orders. Plus, he’d scored a surf, dawn and evening, every day he’d been there. He asked me what I’d been up to and when I told him why I’d rung, he agreed on the spot to my request.
On Friday night, much against Maxine’s wishes, I drove her down to Billco’s place on the peninsula. She’d got back the day before from interstate, but she was still tired from the trip and couldn’t see much point in what I was proposing.
‘Look,’ I said. ‘What have you got to lose? You want to catch this guy, right?’
‘Of course I do. I just don’t see how one of your surfy mates can improve on what the police have already done.’
‘Billco’s got other talents apart from surfing.’
When we got there, Maxine changed her tune almost immediately Billco greeted us and showed us down the hallway. It was covered in watercolours, small landscapes mainly, and it took Maxine a good five minutes or so to get past looking at those.
‘Punter never told me you were a real artist,’ she said to Billco. ‘I mean, these are fabulous.’
Billco grinned modestly. ‘There’s more inside. Come through and I’ll show you around.’
He led us into the large studio-cum-display room I knew from my previous visits. It had probably been the lounge at one time, but it looked like he’d knocked down a wall to make it big enough for his purposes. He had an easel set up in the corner with a half-finished watercolour on it. A variety of paintings and sketches hung on the walls. Maxine dived in straightaway and went into raptures.
‘Oh, that’s striking! Punter, have a look at this. And this seascape,’ she said, looking at the next one, ‘is this for sale? It’s absolutely stunning.’
After another ten minutes of oohing and aahing at his work, Billco just about had her eating out of his hand. We joined him in the kitchen while he made us some coffee, sitting at his island bench and looking at still more sketches and paintings which covered the walls.
‘Punter says he thinks it’s worth you having a crack at drawing the killer,’ she said. ‘Is it something you can do?’
‘Shouldn’t be too hard,’ said Billco nonchalantly, getting some milk from the fridge.
‘I’ve bought along the police sketch for you to see what they came up with,’ said Maxine.
‘Not necessary,’ said Billco, pouring us both a cup.
‘But you’ll want to see the image they’ve done, won’t you?’
‘No. I’d rather not,’ he said. ‘The way I work is to sketch it out in my mind from your description. If I see someone else’s interpretation, it might influence my perception of what this person looks like. Shall we get started?’
Billco led us out to another smaller studio at the back of his house. It had a small couch and a work table with chairs in the corner. We sat down at the table and Billco picked up his tools of trade and went to work. He had an A3 size artist’s pad of lightly textured paper which he opened up and flicked through, looking for a clean page. He was sitting opposite me, so all I could make out was the upside-down sketches of previous drawings he’d done. Maxine, who was next to him, made him stop turning the pages to look at a couple that she liked. She’d have walked out with a bundle of his work if they’d been for sale. Billco grabbed an ice-cream container full of pastels. He picked one out and fingered it. Its label said Rembrandt, and I fancy Billco had a slight resemblance to the Dutch master as he leant forward, deciding where to start.
‘Now, I know you’ve done all this before with the police artist, but I want you to try to describe this guy again.’
Maxine’s response was to reach for her handbag. ‘Let me just look at the police image again and I’ll remember better.’
‘No, don’t do that,’ said Billco. ‘Just close your eyes and think back to what you saw. Keep them closed, don’t look at me or what I’m drawing. I’ll ask you some questions along the way to help prompt you. You okay with that?’
Maxine had already shut her eyes and nodded. ‘Yep, let’s do it.’
Billco cradled the pad on the table with one hand and twirled the pastel around in his fingers with the other. ‘What’s the first thing you remember about this man?’
Maxine stayed silent for a few seconds, concentrating. ‘I woke up and he was there on my bed . . . with a hand over my mouth and a knife against my throat. I’ve never felt so sure I was going to die. It was just terrifying. I . . .’ Maxine raised a hand to her mouth and opened her eyes again. I reached across the table and laid a palm on her arm, gave her a comforting squeeze.
‘I know it must be hard for you to relive the moment,’ said Billco.
Maxine put her hand down by her side and closed her eyes again. ‘No, keep going. Keep asking me stuff,’ she said resolutely.
‘Okay. Was he Australian? Asian? From somewhere else, maybe?’
‘No, he looked local and sounded it too. It was dark when he woke me up, but then he switched the bedside lamp on and I could see him clearly.’
‘The size and shape of his head; was it big, small, in between?’
‘He was wearing that stupid jockey cap and silks, so I couldn’t really tell. The cap made it all the more frightening. Made his head look more oversized than maybe it really is. He wore it with the peak on its side,’ she said, putting the palm of her hand out in front of her forehead to demonstrate.
‘Could you see his hair under the cap?’
‘Not really; it must have been fairly short if the cap covered it.’
‘Tell me about his eyes. Think about it. Did they speak to you?’
Maxine went silent again and you could tell she was really concentrating hard.
Seconds ticked by. I glanced at Billco. He held a hand up to shoosh me.
‘Did they . . . speak to me?’ she said, sounding a little puzzled, her eyes still squeezed tightly shut.
‘Were they menacing, cruel? Cavalier? Tell me what they said to you.’
She put her elbows on the table and rested her head in her hands, her fingers covering her face. Her two pointer fingers squeezed her temple, seeming to will her mind to remember something, anything that would help.
‘Think of when you locked eyes for the first time. It’s usually the lasting impression,’ said Billco.
When she spoke again, it was like we were sharing that same chilling moment in the room with her and the killer.
‘He tied me up with my hands to the front. Then he made me write that message on my mirror with some lipstick. It’s hard writing like that . . . with two hands bound together. But what you just said, about locking eyes, I remember now. I’d written those horrible words he told me to write and I sort of kept staring at the writing once I’d done it, because I just knew then that it was all over for me. When I finally looked up from the writing, his face was leering at me from the mirror.’
Maxine dropped her hands to the table now, her eyes still closed, but a more certain and somewhat satisfied expression on her face.
‘Yeah, his eyes spoke to me all right, the prick. They said, I own you. Me; I have the power of life and death over you. And there’s absolutely nothing you can do about it. They were sorta fervent, you know, like one of those southern gospel preachers. Yet at the same time they had a . . .’ she trailed off again, searching for the right choice of words, ‘rage, an intensity behind them.’
Billco had started to sketch. ‘Go on,’ he said, ‘this is good, very good.’
‘They were mocking eyes, smug in the knowledge that I was completely at his mercy.’
I watched, fascinated, as Billco’s sketch came to life. He asked more questions as he drew, coaxing details out of Maxine that I hadn’t heard her describe before. Every so often he’d stop and use his fingers to soften edges, or knead his rubber to make a correction. He asked Maxine about the colours, but she deferred to me and Terry’s racing photo. We’d bought it along with the police image and I pulled it out of Maxine’s tote bag and placed it on the table for him to look at. He studied it for a moment before he went back to work again. He sketched on for a little longer and then put his pastels down. The whole thing took no more than twenty minutes.
‘You can open your eyes now,’ he said to Maxine. ‘Have a look and let me know what you think. It’ll probably need a few corrections once you see it.’
He passed the pad across to Maxine, who grabbed at it eagerly. She only looked at it for what seemed a second.
‘Oh my god, that is so like him.’
‘It is?’ said Billco, sounding somewhat relieved.
‘The eyes, you’ve caught the eyes perfectly. In the police shot, he’s sorta staring straight at you with lifeless, featureless eyes. But you’ve somehow brought them to life, given them soul.’
‘The police have good systems which usually give a good front-on view of the face. But I’ve drawn him from a bit of a side angle, the way you must have seen him from the reflection in the mirror. And of course I’ve probably interpreted what you’ve described a little differently from how a police artist may have.’
‘Can I show you the police image now that you’ve finished?’
‘Sure, be interesting to see the difference.’
Maxine pulled the police image out of her bag and laid it next to Billco’s sketch on the table. They both looked at the drawings, curiously noting the differences.
I walked around to their side of the table and joined them, the first time I’d seen the drawing right side up.
Maxine chattered away excitedly to Billco. ‘The nose could be a bit thinner. And maybe the chin, too. The police picture is probably a better likeness for that. I’m sorry, I should have described it better.’
‘No, it’s quite okay,’ said Billco. He’d picked up the pad again and was already making corrections to his sketch. ‘There’s some facial parts you remember better than others.’
He rubbed out some of his drawing in little circles here and there and then used his pastels to add some more lines in.
‘The nose thin enough now?’
‘That’s better, but his nostrils were more . . . flared.’
He made some changes, poked and moulded it with his fingers a bit more before he seemed happy with it. ‘Like that?’
‘Perfect.’
‘What about the eyes, you happy with them?’
‘Don’t change anything about the eyes!’ barked Maxine. It sounded like an order and brought a smile to Billco’s face. Finally, he put his pastels and his rubber back into the ice-cream container and put the drawing back alongside the police image.
‘Then I guess it’s done,’ he said.
‘What do you think, Punter?’ said Maxine. ‘Isn’t that far more realistic than the one the police did?’
I looked at the police image and saw what I’d already seen several times before; an unremarkable face who could be anybody. Then I looked at Billco’s drawing. As different as chalk and cheese. He’d captured it just as Maxine must have seen him in all his horror. The jockey’s cap provided a grotesque mask effect and he’d instilled a cruelness in the leering smile of his lips. But it was his eyes that caught my attention. Billco had captured a certain intensity, a life-like fervour that Maxine had described which had been missing from the police picture. They were creepy eyes that repulsed, yet compelled you to stare back at them.
‘Punter?’ Maxine nudged me. ‘What do you reckon?’
I didn’t answer, just stood staring at the drawing. I turned it away from me at more of an angle. Then I tried it again from the opposite side. The eyes stared back at me, following me around the room.
I think Billco sensed it even before I did, the artist in him coming to the fore.
‘You’ve seen him before, haven’t you?’ he said quietly.
‘Do you? Do you know this guy?’ said Maxine, gripping my arm.
‘Look at the eyes, Punter, concentrate on the eyes,’ said Billco. ‘Here, try this.’ He ripped a clean sheet of paper from his pad and then tore it in half. Then he placed one end above the eyebrows and the other just below the nostrils, blocking off the rest of the head and face. I locked eyes again with the strapper killer, this time without the jockey cap to distract me.
Something seemed to tug at the strings of a distant memory. A vague recollection of someone I thought I recognised. For just a second his face ghosted around in my mind, teasing me, mocking me in my attempt to try and identify it. I shut my eyes tightly, willing the face to show itself clearly. It lingered for an instant, so tantalisingly close. I had it in my mind’s eye. Knew I’d seen him somewhere before. Then the apparition seemed to laugh at me and fade into any one of ten thousand other faces I’d seen around the track over the years. I’d lost him.