The Big Run-Off (Holden Burke #1)

One

It was about three o'clock on a Thursday, a couple of hours after a mid-morning sunshower had broke and wet the naked late-spring heat that was trying to pass itself off as daylight. I drove through the stuffiness of afternoon humidity hanging around the air of the Roselake Hills district until I found the wrought-iron gates of the Ramsey estate, a quiet hilltop palace boxed in by tall-trimmed hedges and with strings of those little faux-marble nouveau balusters that scream of some kind of forgotten Australian Renaissance. 

The wide lawn of the house was still moist with the remnants of the morning's rain, and the sun had bled out just enough to streak itself through them and lustre the light a gentle golden colour. I parked the beat-up old features of my two-door Mazda under that light just so as to make a cute kind of an image for anyone who might be walking by. 

Nobody was, though. It was the kind of affluent neighbourhood for people who'd spent enough money on their own houses so as not to waste their time looking at anybody else's. There were no cars on the street; they were all locked behind thick gates, and, from what I could see, mine was the only one in sight that didn't have all its original parts. 

I went up the steps and knocked with one hand at the tall front door while tightening my tie with the other. A little silver-haired wisp of a housekeeper answered and I told her I was there to see the man of the house. She seemed like the exact size and depth of a pen and ink drawing. 

'Do you have business with Mr Ramsey?' she asked me in a voice as dark as a churchbell. 

I said I did. 

'He's expecting you?' 

'He asked me to come by around three for business. He didn't say anything about a test I'd have to pass at his front door.' 

She narrowed the sharp slits of her brows. 'What is this relating to?' 

'He'll know what.' 

'I don't know what.' 

'Why don't you check with him? I'll wait down here.' 

She looked at me with an ugly silence, and finally said that she would, in fact, check my appointment with Mr Ramsey. 'And who is it I say is asking?' 

'Mr Burke.' 

'No first name?' 

'You watch the AFL?' 

'No. Sports give me a headache.' 

'Me too. Never mind then. He knows who I am.' 

She started to shut the door, but I stopped it and took a step deeper inside. 'You mind if I wait inside?' I asked. 'I don't want to make tracks on your pretty lawn, even with my good pair of shoes on.' 

She said nothing, but stepped back enough to allow me inside. I thanked her. 

'Please do not disturb any other members of the household,' she told me, as she went to the staircase. 'That means don't talk to anyone.' 

I gave her a silent two-fingered salute. She went upstairs and left me alone to look at all the expensive empty space of the house's entryway. There was more marble, more shine, more everything. More money splayed out as far as I could pass my eyes around; across the floors, up the stairs, down the walls. There was a perverseness I began to feel just standing there, like a shadow on the Mona Lisa being cast by a tourist. I never even put on my cheap brown suit and thin woolen tie unless I felt as if a client was important enough to demand it of me. 

I had supposed that definition applied to the head of Ramsey LTD, and now, looking at how broad the staircase to his upper floor was and how much real estate it afforded, I supposed I'd been right.