by Peter Temple
The woman at Vizionbanc in South Melbourne took the camera away and when she came back her tone was apologetic.
‘Only one image on it is retrievable,’ she said. ‘Sometimes everything isn’t completely wiped. A beach. Want to see?’
I followed her into a room lit by the glow from half-a-dozen monitors on one wall. She took me to the end one. It showed a beach, a featureless and windy beach by the look of it, sea to the left, low dunes to the right, scrubby vegetation. There were two sets of marks in the sand, possibly footprints. In the distance, at the right of the frame, on the dunes side, there was something solid, just a dark blob.
‘What’s that?’ I pointed.
‘Vehicle,’ she said. ‘Old Land Rover, Land Cruiser, something like that. The boxy shape.’
‘That’s good,’ I said. ‘That’s a gift.’
‘Trained at huge expense by the Defence Department,’ she said. ‘We pass the savings on to our clients.’
She went to a work station and fiddled at a console. The dark blob now filled the screen. It was a fuzzy image but it was a vehicle, not quite side-on to the camera, definitely a four-wheel drive, grey.
‘Land Cruiser,’ she said. ‘Short wheelbase.’
‘Is that the date the picture was taken? On the bottom.’
‘Yes.’
‘Can I use a phone? Can someone ring me back here?’
She nodded, took me to the reception area.
I rang Eric the Cybergoth, told him what I wanted. Then I looked at the street, the passers-by, at the rain falling on the Stud where it stood in the loading zone. No beading was taking place on its blue-grey skin. The parking persecutor, the grey ghost who left the message for me around the corner from The Green Hill, he would take better care of the Stud. Love it more. Cherish it. Wax it. It would bead for him. I had his number. I should sell it to him.
On the other hand, if he waited a short time, he could buy it much cheaper from my deceased estate.
The phone on the desk rang.
‘Jack?’
Eric the Lawless, master of the cybersteppes.
‘Yes.’
‘There’s one.’
‘What is it?’
‘Land Cruiser. ’82. Want the rego?’
‘Yes.’
43
I walked around the corner to a place I’d noticed called Cafe Bonbon, just two seated customers and a person getting a takeaway. I ordered a short black and a cold croissant from the coffee-maker, a saturnine youth in a chef’s white top.
There was a used copy of the Herald Sun on top of the unwanted newspaper dump. I took it to a seat, sat down carefully, the day so violently begun taking its toll on my back, my neck, on everything that supported my unworthy skull.
My eyes had been on the front-page headline for a while before the small active section of my brain registered the big words on the page.
DRUGS BUNGLE LINK TO KILLING
The opening paragraphs said:
Police sources last night linked the murder of a man at Melbourne Airport to the disappearance of cocaine worth more than $2 million in a bungled Federal Police operation.
The dead man, Alan Bergh, 47, of Toorak, is believed to have been involved in a ‘controlled importation’ of cocaine from South Africa that went badly wrong and allowed smugglers to get away with cocaine worth more than $2 million.
Victorian Police believe that the Federal Police operation was compromised from within. The Federal Police have declined to comment. Sources say the importation was financed by a Melbourne group looking for new drug sources. ‘There are well-known identities involved,’ a source said. ‘They’re trying to break away from their usual suppliers. The Federal Police had a golden chance to nail some dealers to the big end of town and they stuffed it up.’
The story went on to list other strange goings-on in the local drug squad. Bergh’s was the only name given. It was all speculation based on information from unnamed sources, but it had the unmistakable feel of a story planted by the cops and dressed up by a journalist.
I looked at the street for a while, something at the edge of thought, then I got up and asked if I could use the phone next to the coffee machine.
Cam answered at the second ring.
‘That pilot with the cap,’ I said. Harry and Cam used a pilot who wore a baseball cap backwards.
‘Yeah.’
‘I’ve got a name. I need to find out if it filed flight plans recently. Local airports.’
A silence lasting just long enough to express wonder.
‘What’s the name?’
I gave it to him.
‘Call you on what?’
‘Hold on.’
I found a $5 note, put it on the counter. ‘Can someone ring me here?’
‘Sure,’ said the coffee-maker pushing the money away. ‘Twenty-five cents goin out, comin in’s free. What’s your name?’
I told him, read the number to Cam and went back to my seat, drank my coffee and ate the croissant without tasting either.
I didn’t hear the phone but the coffee-maker shouted my name.
‘What’s that hissing noise?’ said Cam.
‘Snakes,’ I said. ‘I’m in the jungle.’
‘That’d be right. The name flew from Moorabbin this morning. Filed a flight plan for Sale. One passenger.’
‘Any other flights to Sale?’ Sale was near the sea. Beaches.
‘June 4 there’s one. With passenger.’
The picture of the beach was taken on June 5. There was something very wrong here, something I should have considered earlier. I paid my bill and left. As I rounded the corner, cold rain blew into my face and ran down my neck and under my collar.
At the office, a message on the answering machine. Barry Tregear didn’t identify himself: The query. ID was by the bloke we were talking about. The dangerous one.
I closed my eyes, let my head fall forward.
Mick Olsen had identified Robbie Colburne’s body. Mick Olsen, drug cop, the commissioner’s suppository, receiver of messages from Alan Bergh, now the late Alan Bergh.
This was even wronger than I’d thought.
I rang inquiries, asked for the Shire of Sale. One last stab. But not in complete darkness.
44
When I turned off the tarmac, the western sky was the unnatural pink of denture plates. In the east, the light above the lakes was dirty grey and going quickly. I crossed a cattle grid and drove up a dirt road that made its way around boulders and stands of yellow box.
At the top of the hill, I stopped. The road forked and the landscape revealed itself. To the left was a bay, its right shore a narrow heavily treed peninsula. To the right, the country was open, grazing country, fenced into paddocks, with a belt of trees along the lake shore. The road to the right twisted down a long way to what looked like a cluster of farm buildings surrounded by trees. The left fork went to the peninsula, entered the trees and was lost from sight.
Dead Point, the map called the peninsula.
I was tired, sore everywhere, filled with a feeling of futility, the feeling that I was moving because I was scared to stop. Sharks couldn’t stop; they moved or they died. I wasn’t a shark. I was an old goldfish in a pond the new owners were filling with rubble, a fish swimming around trying to find water that had oxygen in it. A shaking of the head, a moving of the shoulders, creaks heard in the joining places. Time to move.
I turned left, drove down to the peninsula, in the direction of what I took to be Dead Point. A few hundred metres before the tall trees began, a new fence and a gate between fat posts barred the way. Beyond the fence, hundreds of trees had been planted, gums, waist-high, planted not in lines but in clusters.
I opened the gate, went through, stopped to close it. Door open, leg out, I changed my mind, left the gate ajar, fuck the farming ethic, drove on, down into the trees.
A narrow road, twisting, etched into the land by wheels, dull water in pools, the old gums close and oppressive, blocki
ng the light.
There was a final bend and then a clearing, large, a quarter of a football field, two timber buildings directly ahead, a ramshackle two-storey structure on the right with a set of big doors, one open a metre. The other building, single storey, was weathered but in good condition. A vehicle was parked in front of it.
An old Land Cruiser.
I parked beside it and got out. Clean air. The sea wasn’t far away, its chip-salty taste in the nasal passages.
The keys were in the Land Cruiser. No crime out here in the clean air. I followed a worn route, walked down between the buildings, not so much a path as a rut, reached a portico, a new structure, sheltering a door in the single-storey building.
No bell. This wasn’t a bell building. No knocker either.
I gave the door a few hits with knuckles, winced in pain.
Nothing.
Used the left hand to do it again.
No sound from within.
Again.
No-one home.
I tried the door handle. The door opened.
A passage. Dark. Doorways ahead, three to the left, one to the right. Outdoor clothes hung on a peg rail beside the right-hand door.
I went in, opened the right-hand door.
It was a big room, warm, a combined sitting room and kitchen lined with timber, its age and its history showing in the adzed posts and beams and the oil stains deep in the now-polished floorboards. The eastern side had once had sliding doors and the upper tracks had been left when a wall of glass was installed. In the middle of the room, a fire glowed behind the glass door of a stove.
‘Anyone home?’ I said loudly.
No sound, then a log spluttered in the firebox.
I walked to the window past a kitchen table with turned legs and through a casual arrangement of old armchairs and a sofa covered with bright rugs. Beyond the sliding glass doors, a new deck and jetty ran to the lake, huge and still and empty, shining like metal in the gloaming.
Look in the other rooms?
At that moment, nothing on earth held less appeal. I went back to the passage, opened the first door.
A tidy room holding four bunks. Empty.
The second door on the left.
I felt my skin tighten, realised my mouth was dry.
For some reason, I knocked and waited. Turned the handle, pushed the door open.
No surprises. Another bedroom, a large bed, made, nothing lying around.
The third door. A bathroom, two toilet bags on the basin cabinet.
I went out the side door, turned left down the path between the buildings. At the end of the dwelling, I stopped and looked around. The two-storey building had been the boat workshop. Out of its yawning front entrance, wide-apart rusty steel trolley tracks ran down to the water’s edge and disappeared under water. Boats had been brought up to the tracks and a wheeled cradle run under the keels. Then they had been winched up the incline into the huge shed.
The shed was a half-dark, empty cavern. I went in, feeling the texture of the packed and oily dirt floor underfoot. Now the cradle stood at the end of its track, near the back doors, piled with 44-gallon drums. It was all that remained of the trade plied in this great space, the hard work of repairing boats.
I went back into the house, into the sitting room, looked out of the window.
A sailing boat was coming in to the jetty, sails furled, under power, two people in yellow rainslicks on board, one at the tiller, one leaning on the cabin.
I moved back from the window and watched the person at the tiller take the boat up to the landing at a near right angle, change direction sharply, cut the power, drift the vessel gently side-on to meet the jetty.
The other person stepped off the boat, went to the bow to begin tying up. A man. He was joined on the jetty by his companion, a woman, who secured the stern line, got back on board, closed the cabin, put a cover over the engine. The man waited for her, put out a hand. She took it. On the jetty, they embraced, kissed, I saw her teeth flash as she laughed. They walked towards the house, his right arm around her shoulders, her left arm around his waist.
I sat down in an armchair, the springs compressing unevenly beneath me.
Waited.
I heard them in the passage, laughing. They would be hanging up their yellow rainslicks.
She came into the room first, didn’t see me, ruffled her hair with both hands, an attractive sight.
‘Warmth, warmth,’ she said, turning back, ‘I don’t understand…’
He was in the doorway and he saw me and she saw it in his eyes.
I stood up.
‘Good evening,’ I said. ‘Susan. Marco.’
45
‘A drink,’ said Susan Ayliss. ‘We need a drink. Malt, that’s what we need. Double single malts.’ She went to the long kitchen counter, where bottles stood on a tray.
Marco walked over, tall, slim, colour on his cheekbones from the cold, wearing a polo-neck sweater. He looked a little older in the flesh.
‘You’ve been looking for me,’ he said, smiling, putting out his right hand.
I shook it. His handshake made no attempt to impress.
‘Not looking for you,’ I said. ‘It never occurred to me until yesterday that you might not be dead. I’ve been trying to find out who killed you and who had Colin Loder’s album.’
‘Drink,’ said Susan Ayliss. She had three glasses on a tray, a bottle in her hand. Marco took the bottle and half-filled the glasses.
I took a glass, put it to my lips, welcomed the smell of campfire clothes, the dark taste.
‘Let’s sit,’ said Susan. She put the tray on the coffee table, switched on two table lamps.
We sat, Susan and Marco on the sofa, not people at ease. I drank some more whisky.
‘I’d like to know a few things,’ I said.
‘I don’t have the album,’ said Marco. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Where is it?’
‘The person I took it for, he’s got it.’ He had a gravelly voice, a man with a cold.
I didn’t say anything. We sat in silence. A wind was coming up, gusting, rattling the iron roof. Marco put a hand on Susan’s knee, a gesture of comfort.
‘I don’t know what you know,’ said Marco. He tasted the whisky. ‘Xavier Doyle. At The Green Hill?’
I nodded.
‘Doyle’s got it. They’re in deep with this drug thing the judge’s hearing. You know…’
‘Yes.’
‘The guys who brought the stuff in, they were told they’d walk, some technicality I don’t understand. Anyway, the pictures, that’s insurance, concentrate the judge’s mind.’
‘Doyle and who are in deep?’
‘And Cundall. They’re both in financial shit. Cundall went to South Africa and met this importer. The guy brings it in by the container. So he came back and worked out this wonderful scheme with Doyle.’
‘The judge,’ I said. ‘You knew he had pictures?’
Marco blinked, twice. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Doyle knew.’ He drank some malt.
‘How would he know that?’
‘Knows everything, the X.’
‘X arranged for Loder to be in the Snug?’
Marco’s fingers went over his hair. He looked at Susan, a long look, his eyes came back to me.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I let him blow me. Closed my eyes and thought of England.’ He smiled, an open smile, careless of anyone’s opinions.
‘What brought you to Melbourne?’ I said. ‘The weather?’
Marco didn’t hesitate. ‘Weather’s okay. I like it, very noir. Actually, I came to make a fuckflick with Susan.’ He looked at her and smiled, a slow smile. ‘Worst gig of my life.’
Susan took his sleeve, punched his arm.
She was in love.
‘Who hired you?’
‘A bloke called Naismith. In Sydney. And I wouldn’t call it hire. I didn’t have any choice. People were trying to kill me.’
‘Where does Alan Bergh come in?�
��
‘He got on to Naismith, asked him for someone.’
‘Who hired Bergh?’
‘Doyle. Well, Sam Cundall through Doyle.’
I looked at Susan. She was tense, didn’t want to meet my eyes. I said, ‘Susan, Cannon Ridge. Can we go over that again?’
She looked into her glass, sniffed it, a delicate indrawing of nostrils, drank. ‘I lied to you,’ she said in a quiet voice. ‘I passed on WRG’s tender to Anaxan. I’m not brave. The thought of the video getting out terrified me.’
Between them, Susan and Gavin Legge had convinced me that WRG were the naughty ones. Legge was going to pay a heavy price for his part.
‘I don’t understand quite how you got from blackmail to this state of affairs,’ I said.
Susan put out a hand and touched Marco’s hair. He took her hand, kissed her fingers. Victim and blackmailer, now as one.
‘Marco came around to apologise,’ she said. ‘He does that rather well.’
‘I fell in love,’ said Marco. ‘I didn’t expect that to happen.’
‘Didn’t stop the blackmail though.’
He shook his head. ‘No, it didn’t. I couldn’t stop that, Jack. We’re all victims some of the time.’
‘The dead person? The person with your wallet in your car? He’d be a real victim.’
‘He was dead already,’ said Marco. ‘A druggie. They found him dead. Overdosed in an alley.’
‘They? This is Mick Olsen we’re talking about?’
Marco blinked. ‘Yeah, someone in the cops found him for Mick. One of his mates.’
I thought about the homemade notice in the Lebanese shop, the face of a missing young man. It wasn’t hard to find a body in the city. I drank some whisky, remembered I hadn’t eaten since the croissant with nothing. When was that? What day?
‘Why did Olsen do this?’ I said.
‘Didn’t want anyone looking for Robbie. Robbie does Susan and the judge, then the book’s closed on Robbie.’ He laughed, cut it short, pained face.
‘Someone tried to kill me this morning,’ I said.
