by Peter Temple
Milan looked at Steve. Steve felt around in my jacket, found the photograph, showed it to Milan without looking at it.
‘Hey,’ said Milan, a broad smile, real pleasure. ‘The Pole. Marco Polo.’
Now Steve looked. ‘Good fucken riddance,’ he said. He was smiling too.
‘Overdose?’ said Milan. ‘What?’
‘Smack.’
Another boat came from nowhere, rocked us with its wake. ‘Arsehole.’ Milan shook his head. ‘So a needle?’
‘Yes.’
Milan puffed out his cheeks. ‘Needle’s a big fucken surprise to me,’ he said. ‘What’s the Feds’ interest?’
This was not progressing. ‘What kind of work did Marco do?’
Milan smiled at Steve. Steve smiled back. ‘What you reckon, Steve? What kinda work Marco do?’
‘I dunno, Milan.’
‘Marco’s all cock,’ said Milan. ‘Work it out.’
‘If someone wanted to kill him, why would that be?’
Much laughter. Milan held his empty glass out to Steve. ‘More,’ he said. ‘Whattabout you, Jack?’
I shook my head. ‘I’m not getting anything here,’ I said. ‘You want me to pass on messages, you won’t answer a simple question.’
Milan considered this, working his tongue over his teeth. Then he leant over. ‘Listen, Jack, the cunt’s just a big prick and a thief. Maybe he stole somethin, made people angry. He’s no fucken loss.’
He straightened up. ‘But don’t lookit me. You know how I’d a killed Marco? You know?’
I shook my head.
‘I bring him out here, I open him up a little, just for blood, tie him to a 200 kilo line. Then I throw him over and I tow the cunt around lookin for sharks. Tow him till all I got on the line is a bit of bone.’
Steve’s mobile shrilled. He said a few words, handed it to Milan.
Milan listened. ‘Tell him to fucken wait,’ he said. ‘I’m comin.’
He gave the phone back to Steve. ‘Home,’ he said.
The first you saw of Haven Waters was the clock tower. What need did these people have of the time?
21
Tired, the feeling of the whole body being tired, not the earned tiredness of exercise, of physical work, just tired in the bone marrow. I went down the dark passage to the kitchen without bothering to switch on a light. The clock on the microwave said 9.14. I’d been up for seventeen hours, four hours in aircraft seats, three hours driving.
And bubbles of sour pineapple juice kept rising. Milan was right. It built up acid, it would probably clean the bowel. Scouring, they called it in horses.
Milk. I needed milk, drank two glasses, not terribly old. Then I opened a bottle of red and sat on the couch in the sitting room waiting for the place to warm up. Food I had no need of — I never wanted to eat again.
The buzzing of the tired brain.
Marco Lucia. Milan had not spoken well of him. But what had the judge said?
…an attractive person. Intelligent, full of life. And a lot of sadness in him.
There would certainly have been a lot of sadness in Marco if Milan had had his way and towed him around the Queensland coastline as live shark bait. Bleeding bait.
Listen, Jack, this cunt’s just a big prick and a thief. Maybe he stole somethin, made people angry. He’s no fucken loss.
A big prick and a thief. Would the judge agree with this description? Yes, if I understood the term relationship properly.
Marco Lucia on the run from something in Queensland. He comes to Melbourne. Many people think Melbourne is a long way from Brisbane.
Marco takes on the identity of his school friend, Robbie Colburne.
How was it possible to do that?
Groaning, I got up and found my notes.
Robbie Colburne and Marco Lucia both left the country in April 1996.
School friends. They’d gone to Europe together. But only Marco came back. Was it the case that Robbie didn’t need his identity any longer? Because he was dead?
Marco could’ve been Robbie’s brother, Sandra Tollman had said. Both pale, with black, black hair.
I poured some more wine, put the video in the slot, sank into the couch with the remote in hand.
Marco going into the Cathexis building. The new Melbourne landmark. Hideous but the very edge of architecture.
The unknown man at a pavement table, dark, balding, a fleshy face seen from across a busy street, then a new camera angle, a second camera, unsteady. The man drinking the shortest of short blacks, newspaper in his hand, looking around, half-amused.
Worth trying to identify the man? No, too hard.
Early evening, Marco in right profile, side on, several parked cars between him and the camera. He is waiting to cross a street, a narrow street, vehicles flashing by. He takes a break in the traffic, walking diagonally, the confident walk.
Nothing there.
Marco in his dinner jacket in a car.
I sat in the half-dark thinking about the origin of the clips. State cops? Feds? I thought about Marco waiting to cross the street, wound back.
Marco waits to cross, waits, a gap, he walks, he’s in the middle of the street. Freeze the frame.
To Marco’s right, on the other side of the street, is a parked car. There is someone in the driver’s seat.
Was Marco walking towards the car?
I looked at the clip in slow motion. Definitely someone in the car, that was all. And the number plate was visible but unreadable.
Too tired to think any more. I needed Milo and my new book, bought at the airport and only just violated. It was called Love and Football. The warm, innocent liquid and a brief read of my book, that would be my reward for a long day in the field.
Tomorrow, I’d take the video in to get some enhancements.
22
In the cracking dawn, I shambled around Edinburgh Gardens and along the pavements of North Fitzroy, nothing on my mind but the signals coming from all regions of my body — distress calls, warnings, entreaties.
Home, I raided my shrinking store of new shirts, stockpiled in more prosperous times, and showered long and hard and hot, adjectives that could be applied to Marco Lucia if I’d got the drift of the exchange between Milan Filipovic and his whitefanged and complaisant colleague.
After a cup of tea and, at the kitchen table, a few more pages of my new book, a moving tale of innocent passions corrupted by corporatism, I departed for Meaker’s. There I breakfasted on fat-trimmed bacon and mushrooms on toast, lavish quantities supplied by an Enzio who appeared to have been irradiated. Twice he winked at me from the kitchen door, both times running a hand over his scalp. The message seemed to be that my reading of the widow had been correct: hair she had not been pining for.
At 9 a.m., I was at Vizionbanc in South Melbourne, just around the block from The Green Hill, showing the manager the images I required.
‘Eleven,’ she said. ‘We’re a bit slow today. A morning sickness problem.’
The problem of morning sickness I understood perfectly.
I used her phone to ring Mr Cripps, the postman who wouldn’t retire, and arranged for him to pick up the prints. This was done through Mrs Cripps, who could relay messages to the puttering Holden without using a mobile phone, a device her rotund husband once told me he abhorred. That was, in fact, the only thing he had ever told me. Telepathy was not ruled out.
On the way back, I passed the casino, even at this early hour vacuuming in hapless poker machine addicts. It was one thing to put your faith in your scientifically arrived at choice of beautiful creature, to be urged to realise its full potential by a small and muscular person. Hoping a flashing and programmed electronic device would give you money was another matter. Entirely.
At my professional chambers, I found that the fax machine had extruded paper: Jean Hale’s list of everyone associated with the Lucan’s Thunder plunge. Guilt assailed me: I had given the matter no thought.
And, on the answering machine,
Mrs Purbrick.
Jack, I’m experimenting with a new caterer and I need a man of taste. Give me a ring soon, darling.
Pause.
I’m in my beautiful library constantly. Devouring books. And Ros Cundall is green with envy.
Would it hurt to be Carla Purbrick’s taster? What could she tell me about Xavier Doyle, Robbie’s employer?
Drew was next.
Woodmeister, you’re listening to a man who’s had a mystical experience. I think I’m in love. In lust and in love. Ring and I’ll share this with you.
Not Rosa. Please, God, not Rosa.
I read Jean Hale’s list. Plumbers and electricians and painters and redundant teachers. It was even worse than I’d expected.
I rang her. The ring went on for a long time. A man answered, gruff. I asked for her. She was outside with horses.
‘What’s your name?’ he said.
‘I’m associated with Mr Strang.’
‘Right. Sorry, I’ll get her.’
Jean Hale came on.
‘Jean, Jack Irish. How’s Sandy Corning?’
‘Better. He’s going to be okay. We’re going to see him today.’
‘Good. Can you ask him to rule out people on the list? People he has complete confidence in?’
‘Yes. Sure.’
‘And fax it to me again?’
A hoot outside. Mr Cripps. I said goodbye, found a $20 note, went out and exchanged it for a stout envelope.
‘Exemplary service, as always,’ I said. He nodded, expressionless as a whale. The yellow Holden puttered away, its waxed surface dotted with fat beads of rain. Beading. You’d done the wax job properly when the result was beading.
Thinking about how little beading had occurred in my life, I returned to my chair and opened the envelope. The cassette and four prints, two enlargements of Robbie crossing the street, two of the man at the pavement table.
The registration number on the car Robbie was walking towards was now readable. And the person in the car was a woman, half her face visible, looking in Robbie’s direction over the top of dark glasses.
I studied the fleshy man in the other pictures. There was a reflection in glass behind him, that would be the cafe window, a reflection of writing on something, not a flat surface, the word asset.
Asset?
It didn’t matter. I strolled around to the Lebanese and rang Eric the Geek, Wootton’s attenuated computer ace, prince of hackers. There were redialling sounds and science-fiction lost-in-space noises before he answered.
‘Yeah.’ Not an interrogative inflection. This was about as expressive as Eric got but the single grunt conjured up his gloomy, damp-jumpered, patchily shaven presence.
‘It’s Jack. I need a name.’
I read out the registration number.
‘Minute. Number?’
I gave him the number. While waiting, I studied the notices on the board near the phone. House-minding, dog-walking, appliances for sale, a new homemade wanted poster with a photograph of a thin, dark-haired young man described as a heroin addict, missing dogs, cats, a budgie, probably now inside one of the missing cats. The phone rang.
‘Jack.’
Return of the cyber-Visigoth.
‘Exactly,’ I said.
He sniffed, coughed, a cough that needed attention. ‘Hang on,’ he said.
Keys tapping, silence, more taps, silence. A tap.
‘Company car. Syncred Nominees.’ He spelled it out.
‘Address 27/6 Kelling Street, Crows Nest, Sydney.’
I wrote it down, said thank you, and rang Simone Bendsten, an expert fisher of companies and the people in and around them.
‘How’s business?’
‘Good. Looking up. I owe you. Max’s given me a lot of due-diligence research and he’s passed me on to another firm.’
Max was a corporate lawyer I’d recommended her to. I told her what I needed.
‘Work of minutes, hold on, I’m at the machine.’
More listening to tapping. Outside, a police car pulled up and a cop got out and went out of view. He came back holding a scruffy, emaciated teenager by the arm, shoved him in the back seat. Was I witnessing your actual drug bust? A Mr Big removed from circulation?
‘Jack. Two directors. James Martin Toxteth, Colin Leigh Blackiston.’
‘Mean anything to you?’
‘No. I’ll look around. Ring you?’
I gave her the mobile number.
At the office, in the captain’s chair, in a patch of sunlight, I looked at the pictures again. Drowsy. Up too early. Too much exercise. The doomed dog had not fronted today. Scared? Somehow cognisant of my murderous instincts? Aware of my total lack of ruth?
People filming Marco or filming the fleshy man or filming the woman in the car?
They were filming Marco. He wasn’t the bit player, he was the star.
A fuck star.
Milan and Steve both showed real pleasure at the news of Marco’s death. Death of a fuck star.
A star.
An evil star.
And grapples with his evil star.
The sight of my grandfather, my mother’s father, came to me, the lean figure sitting in his buttoned chair, quoting Tennyson, every word a universe of meaning.
The old man was referring to my father’s evil star. In my childhood, no week went by when the old man did not find an opportunity to speak ill of the dead man. He made it clear that there was something in me of my father that he had a duty to exorcise. I was well into my teens before it dawned on me that the sum total of my father’s evils appeared to be beer, the odd punch-up, and fully paid-up membership of the working class and the Communist Party. The last two vices my grandfather found particularly heinous.
I’d had the old man in mind on my first visit to the Prince of Prussia, empty that autumn afternoon, light from the western windows lying on the scuffed floor, on the dented and cigarette-burnt bar, dust motes and my cigarette smoke hanging in the weak sunlight.
Morris had put down my beer that day, eyes fixed on me. ‘In mind of Bill Irish when I look at you,’ he said. ‘Funny.’
‘My father,’ I said.
Morris studied me for at least thirty seconds, then he said, head on one side, indignant, ‘Where the hell’ve you bin?’
The mobile jerked me out of my reverie. Simone Bendsten. ‘Jack. Those directors. James Martin Toxteth is a former merchant banker. Colin Leigh Blackiston was an investment fund manager. They’re in business together in a Sydney venture-capital company called Toxteth Blackiston Private Equity. That’s about it.’
No illumination there.
‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘Send me the bill.’
‘You’re in credit here. Buy me a glass of wine one day.’
‘That’ll be for pleasure. This is work, someone’s paying. I’ll use my credit another time.’
Back to drowsing. Should I be brave, ring Drew, find out the identity of the love object? It couldn’t be Rosa. He’d stood her up. But nobody stood Rosa up. She’d simply have driven around to his office, fronted up to him. Rich, spoilt people were like that. The phone.
‘Jack, the other day, you wanted a snap.’
Detective Sergeant Warren Bowman, he of the telegraphic eyebrows.
‘I’m grateful,’ I said.
‘Sorry I’ve been so long, mate. No luck, can’t be done. Cheers.’ Click.
After a while, I put the phone back in the cradle.
The two men in the new red Alfa. The one who gave me the video cassette was young, a mole beside his mouth, wearing a collarless black leather jacket.
Not the messengers of Warren Bowman.
I rested my forehead on the tailor’s table.
23
The rest of the day I spent on the half-dozen files I had open: a few letters of demand, a complaint about harassment by a landlord, a protest against an unjust parking fine. Then I did my hours and expenses for Cyril Wootton and faxed them to him.
Driving home i
n the early dusk, I put on the radio, caught the wheedling tones of a drive-time host called Barry Moran, a seminary flop who had joined the legion of other faith-challenged but inordinately sensitive people on radio. Barry was sensitive to the concerns of the young, the old, ordinary people, extraordinary people, the poor, the rich, the short, the tall, the middling, all religious beliefs, and the legitimate concerns of both sides in every dispute. He strove to be fair to everyone but had a tendency to be snappish with people who disagreed with his reasonable views. Unless they were powerful people, in which case his views quickly came to encompass theirs. He was saying:
… The Development Minister Tony DiAmato joins me now. Thanks for coming on the programme, Minister. Last week you washed your hands of the Cannon Ridge controversy because the previous government awarded the tender. It’s done, it’s history, you said. Now this is a tricky one, I know, Minister, but if the tender process was corrupted, don’t you have a duty to declare the tender void and hold an inquiry?
I thought about the library-warming, my attempts to make conversation with Mike Cundall. ‘Politics of business,’ he’d said. ‘WRG wants to build a whole fucking town on the Gippsland Lakes. Get the new government in some shit over Cannon, good chance they won’t get knocked back on that.’ Now the Minister cleared his throat.
Barry, we’re talking about allegations here. We’ve had a pretty good look at the documents and we can’t find any evidence of corruption.
Barry, ever the unctuous ex-seminarian, said: That’s a reasonable approach. Now Minister, I’d like to put a tricky one to you. WRG Resorts says a member of the tender evaluation panel was quote placed under duress unquote. Now I wouldn’t dream of saying the name but every media person in town has heard it. Do you know who the alleged person is?
The Minister sighed, tired at the end of the day.
No, I don’t. And Barry, I’m surprised at a person like you not recognising that WRG’s on a fishing expedition. They say they’ve got evidence. Where is it? They’ve yet to approach me with it.
Barry, nimble as ever: Of course, it might well be a fishing expedition, Minister, as you point out. We might take a call. It’s Steven from Doncaster.
