White Dog (Jack Irish Thriller 4)

by Peter Temple

  So I could put my finger on the day, on the precise moment in the battered room in Pentridge, when the only part of my life in which I was unreservedly happy had its date for expiry set. But that was with hindsight. In the course of this business I’d had at least two signals that only a potato could miss. I hadn’t missed them. I’d ignored them.

  A prostitute who looked fifteen killed by a big man in a suite in the city’s most expensive hotel. Who was he? Who were the others? People who knew Mickey Franklin, who knew him well enough, trusted him enough, to call him in to take care of things.

  Did they send for Mickey? Was he the fixer? Did Mickey make the problem with the dead girl disappear? In December 1994, Mickey still worked for MassiBild. He was a fixer for MassiBild. He dealt with the contractors, a preparation for hell, said Steven Massiani.

  ‘From the eastern states, are you, Jack?’ said Nola.

  ‘Just the one,’ I said. ‘I’m from Melbourne.’

  The refreshment trolley was approaching.

  ‘What about a little drink?’ I said.

  She patted my arm. ‘Well, Jack, it’s naughty but I don’t mind half a glass of beer around this time of day.’

  It was raining on Melbourne, no wind, just water falling through air pollution. A dented bus from security parking collected me, a reckless youth with a bad mullet driving. ‘Col sends his regards,’ he said. ‘He says, let me get this right, he says to say you’re a person of interest to someone and you’re not due back till next week. Make sense?’

  I looked at the darkening world pinstriped with grey. ‘Tell him I said thanks,’ I said.

  After the awful tollway, the jammed streets, I parked where I could look across the open space and see the old boot factory, my place of residence.

  Early evening in the expensive inner city, a woman getting home, claiming a park, taking her briefcase out of the Volvo, the bag heavy with paper brought from the paperless office, bleeping the car, flashes of light, yellow.

  I sat. I wished I could smoke. I saw my new neighbour come home. After a while, her lights went on upstairs, the two street windows. The curtains closed and the building was dark again.

  A tired man sitting in his old Studebaker watching his own house, burdened with knowledge he’d sought and now didn’t want. My mobile rang. I’d only just remembered to switch it on.

  ‘Back from the state of sand, are we?’ Wootton.

  ‘I’m no stranger to sand,’ I said. ‘My life’s built on it.’

  ‘Detect a note of melancholy, old sausage? Bit liverish? Hit the organ with a couple of decent scotches. Cheers it up no end.’

  From the boyish yelps in the background, I gathered that he was at the Windsor, administering the liver tonic to himself.

  ‘Any luck with that stuff?’ I said.

  ‘My helpful concierge has prised open the lips of his counterpart at the establishment. Using a rolled-up three-figure note, I’ll ask you to remember.’

  ‘It’s indelible. What?’

  ‘Booked for that night by a company called Barras Holdings. The occupants aren’t recorded.’

  ‘Don’t people have to sign the register?’ I said.

  ‘Not in the case of corporate bookings.’

  ‘So the Bersaglieri Running Band could have stayed up there that night?’

  ‘In theory.’

  ‘And black-tie functions?’

  ‘Hold on, I’ve got it here.’

  I listened to the younger stockmarket advisors having a laugh, that would be about the shittiness of dealing with the gripes of people you’d put into shares you wouldn’t personally touch wearing a cast-iron condom.

  ‘As one might expect,’ said Wootton, ‘the place doesn’t record the dress required of guests. But my person suggests that black tie would be the Conrad Spratt Youth Foundation dinner in the Flinders Room and the Concrete Association dinner in the River Room.’

  The windows were fogged. I found the handle and wound. Steel cogs meshed. You felt that the Stud’s winders could raise and lower a drawbridge. Cold, damp air came in, carrying the seductive chemical smell of the city.

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘not those.’

  I was looking at the boot factory, not seeing anything.

  My scalp tightened.

  A lighter had flared in a window, someone lighting a cigarette.

  Someone was standing in the dark at one of my front windows. Waiting for me, for the Stud, to come into view.

  ‘Still there, sport?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘There were other small things on at the hotel that night but we won’t have a list for a while. I’ll bear the cost of this exercise as a mark of something or other.’

  ‘Mark of Cain would be about right,’ I said, eyes on my upstairs window. ‘Thanks, Cyril.’

  What to do? Someone waiting for me to come home, sitting, standing, walking around in my house, opening drawers, looking in cupboards, opening my fridge, taking a piss, pissing in my bathroom.

  Not pissing. I didn’t like that thought.

  By the dim streetlight, I found the latest number in my little book.

  ‘Home invasion,’ said Cam. ‘Taking up your personal space. You could send the jacks in. You’re a citizen. You’re entitled.’

  I could hear a piano in the room with him, slow, deliberate notes, repeated, then a quick passage, lovely, nothing I knew. ‘I’ve had it with this stuff,’ I said. ‘I live there.’

  ‘I remember that,’ he said.

  In his silence, the piano, talented hands. Why was it that he always seemed to have a musical person in his life?

  ‘Lighting up in the window is smart,’ said Cam. ‘He thought he was in a movie. This is presumably just a fuckhead sent to hurt you. We can kick his arse but maybe you need to think about kicking some heads. That way they don’t send anyone else.’

  Where to start kicking heads? Who sent the man to my office to bash me? The people who killed Mickey and Sarah, that was all I knew.

  Around the corner from the factory, a grey four-wheel-drive pulled into a space. Someone got out.

  ‘I think the shift’s changing,’ I said.

  At the corner, the person turned left, went directly to my front door.

  ‘Shift change or someone visiting me,’ I said.

  The door opened, someone came out, the newcomer went in, the door closed.

  ‘New shift,’ I said.

  The man walked around the corner. He was going to his replacement’s car … no, he walked past it, I lost sight of him, he had his own car, probably in the next street.

  ‘The new one’s parked just around the corner,’ I said.

  ‘Cheeky,’ said Cam. ‘That’s not acceptable. Got anything to mark it?’

  I opened the glovebox, rummaged around, found a roll of masking tape. I told Cam. He gave instructions.

  ‘Is this wise?’ I said.

  ‘Beats me,’ said Cam.

  I was back in the same parking place inside ten minutes, got out my little silver flask, watched, had a few sips, the lovely burn of neat single malt, a kind of smoking. An occasional car, the odd person crossing the park in the drizzle, men, young, in a hurry, late for the children’s bathtime at home perhaps. They would die regretting every chance missed to nuzzle a plump, powdered tummy.

  Fifteen minutes went by. The mobile rang.

  ‘Any minute,’ said Cam. ‘Probably best you don’t go home tonight. I can fix you up.’

  ‘I’ll be fine,’ I said. ‘But thanks.’

  A single light coming down the street where the vehicle was parked. It stopped. Near the car?

  ‘There’s a motorbike,’ I said.

  ‘Yeah. Tell me what happens.’

  Headlights came on, the bike was moving, the grey four-wheel-drive came out from the kerb behind it, followed it to the corner, the bike turned left, the vehicle followed.

  ‘They’re there,’ I said.

  The bike went beyond the boot factory. The big, shiny vehicle
stopped in front of it, on the wrong side of the road, on the park side. The driver opened the door, got out, in dark clothing, leaned back inside, doing something.

  I heard Cam say, speaking to someone else on another phone, ‘Mate, I’m from the council. You’re parked in a residents’ zone, so we want to ask you politely not to do it again. But there’s a small penalty this time. Look out the window.’

  Across the park, the man had left the driver’s door of the four-wheel-drive open, he was walking to the motorbike, not hurrying. He got there, got onto the pillion.

  A yellow light inside the four-wheel-drive, a puff of yellow. It turned orange, then red.

  The motorbike jumped away, turned right, mounted the kerb, violated a public park, travelled across country.

  ‘Any action there?’ said Cam.

  ‘The Toyota thing is burning,’ I said. ‘Outside my house.’ My front door opened, a man came out, stood, his hands raised in horror.

  ‘Good,’ said Cam. ‘Well, you might piss off now before the crowds arrive.’

  The four-wheel-drive was burning inside, sucking in air through the open driver’s door. There was a small explosion in the vehicle, a thump.

  ‘Sure you don’t need a bed?’ said Cam.

  ‘Sure,’ I said.

  The Stud started without demur and we left, my heartrate up but I was feeling better about the world. There is nothing like an act of meaningful violence to restore one’s belief in the possibility of some control over life.

  I went to the office. It seemed undisturbed, the Mickey Franklin document box was in the new hidey hole under the fridge. Outside, in the wet, I paused to listen to the music from McCoy’s atelier-seductorium. Vivaldi. In a perfect world, these hackneyed sounds would justify a Special Operations Group raid on the premises to save some barely nubile art student from the advances of the priapic carpet-clad poseur.

  To South Melbourne, to Vizionbanc, keeping an eye on the cars behind me. I gave the woman the file of photographs and Teresa Dilthey Milder’s e-mail address. She gave the pictures back to me in five minutes. Finally, to Carlton, to Linda’s apartment, a tired man, a man without a home.

  Linda’s apartment was a nice substitute for a home. It had no food but it had sofas and a flat-screen television and a turbo-charged heating system. And it had drink. I took a bottle of Carlsberg from the pantry shelf and half lay on the sofa in the sitting room, feeling the room warming, my blood movement slowing.

  What was the man waiting for me going to do when I walked in the door?

  Next time I’ll bring someone round, and, when I’m finished, he’ll fuck you, okay?

  I didn’t want to think about that. I was now in serious trouble. I had probably been in serious trouble for a while. Anyway, there wasn’t any going back. The problem was how to go forward.

  The man who parked next to me under the bare oaks and gave me Janene Ballich’s name, that person knew about the night at the River Plaza, knew that at some point Mickey was there.

  Was he saying that Mickey’s death was related to him being there?

  Who could know these things and want to tell me?

  Someone unhappy about Mickey’s death. Someone close to Mickey. Someone wanting the truth to come out but afraid to talk to the police. How could this person know about Janene Ballich? Told by Mickey? Why?

  I didn’t know anything. I didn’t even know how to back off now that I’d shown signs of fight by having the Toyota torched.

  I was too tired to go out in search of food, had a look around the kitchen, opened the fridge. Empty. Oh Lord, at the airport Linda had asked me to switch off the fridge and freezer. Just another thing left undone. I looked for the freezer. Where was it? Cleverly concealed in a cupboard.

  Paydirt. Thank God I hadn’t switched it off. It held a loaf of bread and a round tin-foil container labelled chicken and mushroom pie. So what if the pie’s use-by date was long passed? Frozen was frozen, frozen was like death, there was no use-by in frozen. We could eat woolly mammoths found in glaciers if we chose to. I took the pie to the stainless steel oven.

  Smeg is not a good name for a cooking appliance. The resonances of the word Smeg are not good. I opened a bottle of Spanish red, Marqués de Murrieta, 1994. Linda had never got over Spain, she’d been there with her rock star. People should get over Spain, move on.

  I took my glass back to the couch, got the television’s remote control to work. Nightcall with Barry Daly, an earnest-looking ABC man, strange hair, eyebrows in a chevron, his whole being oppressed by the news of the day. Barras Holdings. The name kept coming back. The hirers of the penthouse suite, what kind of company was that? I didn’t have to look up Simone Bendsten’s number, my index finger danced over the buttons.

  ‘We are indeed still active,’ said Simone. ‘A rush job for counsel assisting the building royal commission.’

  ‘When it comes to totting up the bill,’ I said, ‘do unto counsel what counsel will be doing to the taxpayer. Can you squeeze in a tiny inquiry?’

  ‘When did I say no to you, Jack?’

  ‘I cannot tell you how singular you are in that respect,’ I said. ‘Something called Barras Holdings.’

  A second or two of hearing distant voices, bantering, and music, a laugh, the sounds of a good place to work.

  ‘That’s B-A-R-R-A-S, is it?’ said Simone, something more in her voice than an inquiry about spelling.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Not doing any work for the commission, are you?’

  ‘No.’

  She coughed, small Melbourne winter coughs, brought on by cold and damp and melancholy.

  ‘Jack,’ she said, ‘I shouldn’t say this and it’s obviously pure coincidence but the commission is interested in Barras Holdings. It’s an investment company. On the public record, just in the last three years we can find nearly two hundred properties Barras bought, either off the plan or on completion. Apartments, houses, commercial properties. Barras usually sells them within months. For rather modest gains, as far as we can see.’

  ‘So counsel thinks Barras is dodgy?’

  ‘Our job here is research, if you take my meaning.’

  ‘I do. And who owns the company?’

  ‘Sole director is K. M. Etzdorf of an address in Monaco. He signs all company documents. The registered address is Marti Partners, Brisbane.’

  Monaco, home of Charles Robert Hartfield, late of Melbourne, and Tony Haig’s boating companion. Alexander Marti Partners, accountants to both Mickey Franklin and Haig.

  ‘One last thing,’ I said. ‘Does Barras deal with MassiBild and a company called Saint Charles?’

  I could hear Simone breathe out. ‘Very much so. Directly with Saint Charles. And with companies associated with MassiBild. It’s complicated, to put it mildly.’

  ‘Far too complicated for me,’ I said. ‘I hope my next call is of a social nature.’

  ‘Calls of any nature welcome,’ she said.

  I said goodbye and checked on the pie, poured some more of the Marqués, an exceptional drop. When I came back, Barry Daly, sad as ever, was speaking against a scene of men in suits entering a building: ‘… sitting in Melbourne today heard an allegation that former federal cabinet minister Michael Londregan used his influence to get planning approval for three sixteen-storey towers to be built in a twelve-storey zone in Melbourne’s CBD. The proposal had been rejected four times by various authorities.’

  There was a still of ex-senator Londregan, a tall man in a dark suit, florid, jowly, thinning curly hair. He was shaking hands with someone, it looked like a reception line.

  Bradley Davis, an accountant, a former employee of MassiBild, told the inquiry that he attended a meeting of MassiBild executives where the then head of the firm, Mr Vince Massiani, said the Concerto development would go ahead, the government would approve the extra four storeys the next day.

  Daly’s eyebrows spoke of his pain at having to relay such information. ‘Four storeys in three towers meant twelve extr
a storeys,’ he said. ‘Counsel assisting the royal commission, Kevin Carstairs QC, asked Mr Davis what the permission meant in financial terms. Mr Davis said upwards of $40 million.’

  There was a shot of the buildings. I knew them by sight, characterless and intrusive constructions, fortunately impermanent, they would be gone within fifty years. I also knew Kevin Carstairs from his golden youth, when he was an earnest Balwyn boy, couldn’t catch a joke in a laundry basket, so eager to answer questions in class that he squirmed in his seat, moved his bum like someone with a terrible itch.

  ‘What was the date of this meeting, Mr Davis?’

  ‘December 2, 1994.’

  ‘And the decision on the building was announced the next day? That would be December 3.’

  ‘That’s correct, December 3.’

  ‘Did Mr Massiani say how Michael Londregan influenced the government, Mr Davis?’

  ‘Well, he said the election was coming up and Londregan could do the government a favour.’

  ‘A favour. Did he say what kind of favour?’

  ‘No. I was surprised he said anything. Mr Massiani didn’t often often say anything that wasn’t strictly business. Practical stuff. Housekeeping.’

  ‘Your impression then was that Mr Londregan had secured this outcome for MassiBild?’

  ‘Oh yes, definitely. It had been chucked out so many times.’

  Pie time. I was in the kitchen taking it out when my mobile rang.

  ‘Jack? Sophie Longmore.’

  ‘Good evening.’ I felt awkward.

  ‘Jack, I know this doesn’t concern you anymore but something odd came by courier today.’

  ‘Odd how?’

  ‘It’s a bill and a card and keys from something called Galvin Security Storage in Tullamarine. The bill’s for six months’ advance payment on a storage unit. Whatever that is.’

  ‘Haven’t rented any storage?’

  ‘No, never. But the letter’s addressed to me. I had to sign for it. It says that to ensure maximum security the locks have just been changed.’