by Peter Temple
The wait was short. The door opened, neither fully nor fearlessly.
A woman, late twenties, tall, with short hair. Her face had filled out, but she still had the waif’s cheekbones.
‘You’re looking well, Janene,’ I said.
We went down a passage into a sunroom, north-facing, long and narrow, its floor tiled, cane furniture. French doors were open to a terrace, there were internal wooden shutters to close in summer against the West Australian sun.
I nodded at Teresa Milder, standing at a small bar.
‘How did you know?’ she said.
‘Just a guess,’ I said. ‘I’d like a talk with Janene.’
The women looked at each other.
‘I’ll be fine,’ said Janene.
Teresa looked at me.
‘She’s got nothing to fear from me,’ I said.
They went out together and I could hear the low sibilance of their speech.
Janene came back, elegant in her white T-shirt and khaki pants, the long legs I remembered from the photograph. She went to the bar and took a cigarette from a packet, didn’t offer, lit it with a kitchen match from an oversize box, that would be for the barbecue I could see outside, a brick structure, neat, the Milder brothers’ trademark no doubt, two brickie brothers made good in the west.
‘Well,’ she said, deep draw, violent expulsion of smoke. ‘Terry says you’re a lawyer. I’ve been waiting for some cunt with a gun or a knife. Sit down.’
I sat. She didn’t, she leant against the bar, standing between two stools.
‘What?’ she said. ‘Just tell me.’
‘I’ve got questions,’ I said. ‘But to begin, Wayne was on his way here when he was murdered. He’d sent you here, to his sister. Is that right?’
She looked away, drew on the cigarette. ‘What do you want?’
‘Since Wayne,’ I said, ‘other people have been murdered. One of them was a client of mine, a person I liked. I want to find out who killed these people.’
‘Fucking cops’ job,’ she said, moving her shoulders, restive in her skin.
‘It should be.’
A bird walked into view on the terrace, a rock parrot perhaps, olive and yellow and blue, pecking with its tiny beak. Another followed, soon there were many, all pecking. Fights broke out.
‘Your mum misses you,’ I said. ‘All these years.’
Janene looked at me, away, hugged herself, put her hands inside her short sleeves, massaged her arms, shivered in the warm day. ‘What do you want? What do you fucking want?’
‘Tell me what happened,’ I said. ‘How you come to be here. Tell me about Wayne and Mandy Randy.’
She drew on the cigarette, smoke plumed from her nostrils, she went to the door, disturbed the birds, drew again, threw the stub away, a graceful movement, like tossing a dart.
‘I’ll have to go out and get that,’ she said. ‘He can’t bear to see a fucking breadcrumb, hair in the shower, a bit of grass, weed, whatever, it comes through a crack, he kills it with this fucking spray.’
‘My plane’s at 4.30,’ I said.
‘Go,’ she said. ‘I’ve been scared so long, this doesn’t mean a shit. Go. Goodbye.’
‘Sorry to have bothered you,’ I said, getting up. ‘I’ll tell your mum you’re alive, living in a nice warm house near the beach. She’ll be happy. She could fly over and stay for a while, get the cold out of her bones.’
I left the room, walked towards the big front door. I could feel her behind me.
‘What can I tell you?’ she said.
‘Good luck, Janene,’ I said, not looking back. ‘I’m finished with dead pimps and whores and their clients. If I can find you, anyone can. And will.’
She made a soulful sound, a groan and a sigh.
‘Wait,’ she said. ‘Wait.’
I turned. She was showing me her palms.
‘Come and sit down,’ she said. ‘I’ll tell you.’
I followed her back to the sunroom. She sat. I sat opposite her.
‘I was working for Wayne, doing escort jobs,’ she said.
‘Let me be clear,’ I said. ‘You were a call-girl.’
‘If you like. But it was all upmarket, businessmen, professionals.’
‘And Katelyn worked for Wayne too?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Donna Filipovic?’
‘Yeah, Donna too. Anyway, on the night, Wayne had a call from someone and he picked up me and Katelyn, it was dress-up, little black dress, we went to the River Plaza. It was about midnight. This bloke, black tie, was waiting for us, took us through the foyer. Wayne came up, that was for show, they took us to the suite.’
Janene got up and lit another cigarette, came back with a saucer for an ashtray. ‘I’m not supposed to smoke,’ she said. ‘He’s turned into a health nut.’
I waited.
‘Well, there’s four people there, three blokes and a girl, a woman.’
‘Did you know them?’
‘No. Well, I thought I’d seen one bloke before, the big one. But no, I didn’t know them.’
‘What happened?’
‘We stood around the bar and had some champagne. The big bloke, he’s pretty much off his face. There’s music, he wants to dance. Not interested in me, just Katelyn. I danced with the nerdy guy. We did a couple of lines, Wayne brought the stuff.’
‘Wayne was there?’
‘No. He just took us, came up in the lift and went down. The other bloke too, the one who met us.’
‘And then?’
‘Well, it went on for a while, The big guy’s lifting Katelyn up like a doll, his hands can meet around her waist. Then he wants an act, y’know.’
‘Act?’
‘He wants an act. I said no, that’s not in the deal. I mean, if he wanted an act he should have ordered one. I didn’t do acts, wanted to do acts for fuckheads I’d’ve stayed at the club. Anyway, he gets really pissed off, red face, pulls out money, like hundreds, throws it on the floor. The spunky guy calmed him down. So the prick does some more C, he vacuums it up, and he takes Katelyn off. I thought, shit, girl, sooner you than me.’
‘What happened to you?’
She gave me a direct look. ‘You want to know this stuff?’
‘Yes.’
She shrugged. ‘The spunky guy went off somewhere and I’m dancing with the nerd and the woman comes up close behind me and she lifts up my dress, so I reckon it’s a threeway. That’s okay, not the end of the world, and we go to the other bedroom and she wants to know my name, she’s really friendly. Anyway, it turns out they both like to watch, so it’s first her and then it’s him. She’s like a movie director, when she’s watching, she gives orders – do this, do that.’
It was warm in the room, sunlight on the carpet, outside, the exotic birds feeding. Janene put a hand under her T-shirt and scratched her stomach while she drew on the cigarette. She didn’t mind talking about sexual matters.
‘Also she liked the stick,’ she said. ‘She’s on me, he’s giving it to her. Christ, she made a noise. Then there’s a knock on the door, I thought it was someone to say turn it down. He goes to the door and there’s a bit of whispering. Then he comes back and he tells me to get dressed in the bathroom. So I get my stuff and go in and when I come out, they’re gone and the fucking door’s locked.’
Janene got up and sent out another cigarette end. The birds thought it was food and rushed.
‘Christ,’ she said, ‘I’ll have to run the air-conditioning for an hour.’
She lit another cigarette, leaned against the bar. ‘I knock and I wait, knock again, after a while I’m a bit panicky and I give the door a fucking good hammering. I’m thinking about ringing reception, only it’s going to be a bit hard to explain. Anyway, the door opens and there’s this guy, he’s very calm, he says there’s been a bit of a problem, nothing to worry about, Wayne’s on his way to pick me up. I calmed down. It was a few minutes, the door opens and it’s Wayne. Let’s go, he says.’
&n
bsp; ‘What about Katelyn?’ I said.
‘That’s what I asked. He said there’s been an accident. Then he grabs me and we’re out of there, no one to be seen. He took me back to my place. I was really fucking shaken up, I can tell you. I wasn’t tough, I’d never been on the streets, just clubs and escort, upmarket escort, nothing ever happened to me. Then he says, you’ve got to go somewhere safe for a while, these people are dangerous. I said, fuck, the cops, that’s where I’m going. He says, listen to me girl, you talk to the cops, we will both have to go and live down a hole in the fucking desert for the rest of our lives. You can’t help Katelyn, you’ve got to help yourself, help me.’
There was a faint sheen of sweat on Janene’s face. She hadn’t thought about the night for a while, had presumably never spoken about it.
‘Then he says, we’re sitting in the car, he won’t look at me, he says, they want me to kill you. Give you a hot shot. That or they kill both of us. I knew he was telling the truth. I knew we were in bad trouble. I said, Jesus Christ, who are these people? He says, they’re rich people, they’re powerful people, we’re fucking bugs.’
She sighed, closed her eyes, shook her head. ‘I said, Wayne, did you tell them you’d kill me? He says, yes, so for fuck’s sake, just do what I tell you or I will. I went upstairs and threw some stuff in a bag. We went to an ATM, I took out what I could and I gave Wayne the card and the PIN. That’s the last time I was Janene Ballich.’
She got up, left the room, came back, slid open the glass door. The birds backed off but they knew what was coming. She threw a handful of seeds onto the paving, closed the door.
I watched the birds pecking, waited for her to sit down.
‘How did you get here?’ I said.
‘We drove to Adelaide. I got on a plane.’
‘In what name?’
‘Jean Quinlan. Wayne got a Queensland licence for me in that name. He sent it with the rest of my money.’
‘That night, the date?’
‘December the third, 1994.’
‘So you flew from Adelaide on December 4?’
‘That’s right, yeah. Tried to ring my mum from the airport, got some pissed dickhead.’
‘And at this end, what happened?’
‘I waited at the airport for Teresa.’
‘What did she know?’
‘Wayne said I was his fiancée and my family were nutters, my brother wanted to kill me.’
‘She knows the truth now?’
Janene nodded. ‘When they killed Wayne, I told her. I thought she’d tell me to piss off but I had to tell her. She’s a good person, she didn’t owe me a fucking thing, but she just gave me a hug. She’s my friend. Lots in common now, both married to arsehole Milders, except she’s got the kids and I’m the infertile bitch.’
‘And your husbands, they know?’
‘Jesus, no. No.’
‘How old were you then?’
‘Nineteen. And a half.’
‘Katelyn?’
A shrug. ‘Looked fifteen, I don’t know.’
‘Someone must have tried to find out what happened to her.’
‘She said all she had was a half-brother but she hadn’t seen him since she was little, ten, something like that. These foster people had her, they ran a roadhouse in the back of buggery, then the man left and another one came on the scene, he was on her like a rash. She was thirteen. The mum kicked her out. That’s all I know. She told me that once.’
Katelyn Feehan, looking fifteen, dead in a five-star hotel, next-of-kin someone she hadn’t seen since she was ten. I looked at the birds, the pickings were slimmer now, they were jostling like footballers, a lot of use of the body.
‘Being scared, it’s always there, every day,’ said Janene. ‘They killed Wayne, he was fucking right about them, they’ll kill me.’
‘You can only stop being scared,’ I said, ‘when they can’t touch you.’
‘Who?’ she said, her right hand sprang out, fingers spread, sharp gesture. ‘Fucking who?’
‘If it came to it,’ I said, ‘could you identify the people you saw that night?’
‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘The big one, I’d know him, I would definitely positively know him. And the nerd, probably. I don’t know, I’d have to see him.’
‘The spunk and the woman?’
‘Yeah, him. I’d know him. If she looked the same, I’d say yes. But if she’d changed her hair and stuff, well, maybe.’
‘The man who came to the bedroom door. Would you recognise him?’
‘Don’t know. Maybe.’
‘Janene,’ I said. ‘I’ll need your help. Will you look at some pictures?’
She raised both hands, automatic, ran middle fingers outwards along the tops of her eye sockets, under the unplucked brows. ‘Jesus,’ she said. ‘What kind of pictures?’
‘Just people in the street, ordinary pictures.’
‘Yeah, okay.’ She fetched another cigarette, sat down.
I opened the folder and took out the photographs of Mickey Franklin. ‘Just say if you recognise anyone and where you’ve seen them.’
I gave them all to her and I didn’t breathe.
She looked at the top one. ‘Fuck,’ she said, ‘that’s him. He’s the one came to the bedroom door, said Wayne was on his way.’ She looked at the others. ‘Yeah, that’s him. The others I don’t know.’
‘There’s a chance of settling this business once and for all,’ I said. ‘You wouldn’t have to be scared anymore.’
‘Well, that would be nice,’ she said, ‘but I’m not putting myself on the line. I mean, they think I’m dead, don’t they? They don’t know I’m alive.’
‘They may know you’re alive. They may have thought you’d be too scared ever to put your head up.’
‘They’d have fucking thought right,’ she said.
‘Things have changed. Now they may want to be sure.’
‘Jesus,’ she said. ‘It’s just me, it’s just my word against them.’
‘I don’t think they’ll see it like that,’ I said. ‘They won’t want your word heard at all.’ I got up. ‘You can be kept out of this, Janene. With luck. But I might need you to look at other pictures.’
‘Okay,’ she said, ‘but I’m not coming to Melbourne, right?’
‘Can you go to Perth?’
‘Yeah, I suppose.’
‘If I need to, I’ll send the pictures over the net to someone I can trust in Perth. You can look at them there.’
‘You can send them to Teresa at home, she can do that scanning stuff. She sends progress pictures of houses all over the place. I’ll give you the e-mail address.’
Janene went away and came back with a card.
We went to the door. ‘Goodbye,’ I said. ‘I’ll be in touch.’
We stood awkwardly. She puffed out her cheeks, nodded. Then, on impulse, she kissed my cheek. ‘I feel better,’ she said. ‘Like there’s some way this can end. I’m trusting you, Jack. You won’t let me down?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I won’t let you down.’
At the airport, I rang Wootton, told him what I wanted to know about the River Plaza. Then I flew home, sitting beside an elderly woman in the window seat who was going to see her grandson play football in an under-15 grand final in Dandenong.
‘Hate flying,’ she said as the take-off engine noise rose. ‘Be a dear and hold my hand, will you?’
I held out my right hand. She put her small palm on it, threaded her fingers through mine, closed her eyes. The noise increased, we were running, I could feel the tension in her fingers. I gave a little squeeze. We broke free of earth and rose into the blank white West Australian sky, lorded it over the thousands of brick bungalows, the shining solar collectors, banked over the small hills, turned in the direction of the world.
‘I think we’re up,’ I said. ‘Safe, for the moment.’
‘Thank you, dear,’ she said and let go of me. I missed her hand, I didn’t hold many hands, couldn’t remembe
r the last hand held.
I read the Australian. The lead story on page three was the building industry royal commission. Counsel assisting the commissioner put it to the MassiBild representative, Dennis Cambanis, that until recent times the company’s building sites were ‘dirty money laundries’.
‘I mean by that there was and may still be a widespread system of paying workers cash top-ups and the cash is dirty money. It comes out of the drug trade, it is discounted money.’
‘I’ve never heard of anything like that, your honour,’ said Mr Cambanis. ‘This is just rubbish. With respect, your honour, I think counsel has been watching too much television.’
‘Like a banana?’ said my sidekick. ‘I’ve got a spare. One’s plenty for me.’
‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘My name’s Jack.’
‘I’m Nola.’
We peeled our bananas. Nola put the peels into the banana bag. It was a good banana. I should eat bananas, a source of potassium, Isabel had always put a banana peel under her tomato seedlings.
‘Both the girls went east,’ Nola said, chewing thoughtfully. ‘Couldn’t wait. Don’t know why. Only place east I ever wanted to go was Tasmania. Saw this thing on the telly. All that water, so green. Like England. Mind you, never been to England either. My late hubby was English, he never wanted to go back. I used to say, when you retire, we’ll have a trip to England. Over my dead body, he always said. Would’ve had to have been, died a week after his retirement do, they gave him a clock. Came home, he’d had a few, he says, last bloody thing I need from now on’s a clock.’
I smiled and nodded. I didn’t want to be trusted with Janene’s life. I didn’t want to be trusted with anything heavier than a lease. Isabel died because my client Wayne Waylon Milovich thought I’d done a bad job when entrusted with his future. My life since then had been guided by the principle of taking care but not responsibility. But not over this business. I’d drifted away from my beacon, I’d lost sight of the flashing light. Now I was giving assurances.
My last session with Milovich was brief, I had four people to see and an appearance that morning. While maintaining his innocence, the creep now wanted to plead guilty. I told him the prosecution’s case was shaky, I thought I could take it apart, he had a good chance of walking. ‘Well, I’m in your fucken hands,’ he said. On our day in court, everything went wrong, we struck a mago in a bad mood, and Milovich got twice what a guilty plea and a bit of contrition would have earned.
