The way he put it really did make it seem like we knew a lot about this man. “So...” I said, groping my way forward. “We get class lists from Chelsea’s school and uni. We get the electoral roll for the area around the dumpster fire site? Then we try to find a name that is on both lists?”
“There you go! You’re not as thick as you look.” He tucked into his food with gusto, as if we’d solved the case and this was the celebration.
“Won’t the police have done that already?”
“Maybe. Maybe not.”
I remembered standing in the street a couple of hours earlier, looking at the spot where the dumpster had been and thinking we’d gone as far as we could. Had the police done that? Had Trevor Reid felt that same sense of hopelessness I’d felt? Or had his smart little sergeant told him there was still hope? At the very least, they’d have sent cops to knock on everyone’s door to ask if they’d seen anything. Perhaps someone had seen Mr. X leaving, dressed differently, with the dumpster burning at his back. But, if that were the case, why did they still want to interview me?
“I need a lawyer,” I said, one thought leading to another.
“Yeah, you do. Don’t worry, I know a bloke.”
“I don’t want someone dodgy. I’ll ask the company lawyer to recommend someone.”
He put down his spoon and waved a piece of folded naan bread at me. “You fucking little turd,” he said. “Is that what you think of me? That I’m dodgy? That everyone I know must be dodgy? What the fuck do you know?”
He looked really angry. It was quite menacing. And what did I know? That he’d been kicked out of the Navy, then the police, then couldn’t get on with his clients as a PI? For all I knew, he’d beaten his bosses and his customers to a pulp. Even with three careers, he looked old enough to have done substantial jail time in between.
“I – I’m sorry,” I said. “I wasn’t thinking. I just meant...”
“I know what you meant, fucker.” He looked like he wanted to shove that piece of naan bread in my face but, after a moment, he threw it on his plate, fell back in his chair and scowled at me in silence.
I didn’t know what to say, or where to look. I didn’t want to antagonise him by making eye contact. “The thing is,” I began. “I don’t really know you. And I don’t know why you’re helping me. Not that I’m not grateful. I am. Only it’s all just a bit...” Weird, was what I wanted to say. “I mean, I just met you in a pub two nights ago and here we are...” Jeez, was it only two nights?
His scowl became a grimace, then a look of exasperation. “All right. Fair enough. You don’t know me. So what have you done to find out about me?”
“What?”
“Have you looked for my Facebook page? Have you searched for newspaper articles about me? Have you even asked me any questions?”
“Well… I...”
“Here.” He pulled out his phone and poked at it for a moment. “Here’s the folder of notes I’ve got on you and Chelsea. Your backgrounds.” He showed me the screen. A popular notes app was open and the page had my name at the top. There was a list of folders down the side with titles like “Education”, “Employment”, “Family”, “Friends” and so on. He whisked it away before I saw much. “All right. You show me yours?”
“Well, I haven’t...”
“No, of course not. So, do a search now. See what you can find.” I started to complain. I wanted to make the point that it was an invasion of privacy. But he was getting stroppy, saying, “Go on. Go on.”
Reluctantly, I pulled out my phone. I opened Google and typed, “Ronnie Walker” into the search field. There were, of course, tens of thousands of results. The first page was dominated by a singer and an American football player. I glanced at the angry, set face opposite me and tried to refine the search. I added “private investigator” to his name and got ten times more hits rather than ten times fewer as I’d hoped. There were FBI agents, PI companies that happened to employ someone called Ronnie, or someone called Walker, something about UV blockers, all kinds of rubbish.
“Wouldn’t it be easier if you just told me?” I said, growing annoyed that he was making me waste my time on this.
“You think so?” He started poking at his phone again. “Maybe you’d like me to take you to the toilet too? Hold your cock so you don’t get piss on your feet? Here.”
He handed me his phone. This time it was open at a Facebook page. And there was Ronnie’s happily-smiling face, flanked by two curly-haired dogs that seemed to be smiling too. There were a couple of short posts visible under the banner. One was a very crude and offensive cartoon about our current Prime Minister. The other was an apology to everyone that he was going to be a bit busy for a few days and the hope that The Dogsbodies could get along without him for a while. I clicked on “About” and found a load of stuff about his volunteer activities with various charities and his great passion for a club called The Dogsbodies. I checked out the “Photos” section and there was Ronnie, mostly with other old blokes and women, grinning and drinking. There were quite a few pictures of dogs, too: dogs on their own, dogs with other dogs, dogs at shows, dogs with Ronnie…
I looked up at him. “What the hell?” It was as if his Facebook page was some kind of secret identity, deliberately hiding the crusty old bastard I knew, behind the façade of a fun-loving, sociable dog-fancier. “So, by day you’re mild-mannered Ronald Kent, wit and raconteur at the Jindalee Bowls Club, but by night you become Supersleuth, fighting for Truth, Freedom and the chance of a free curry?”
He grinned at me and held out his hand for the phone. I gave it back to him, reluctantly. I wanted to see more of his incredible double life. “That lawyer I know is...” He scrolled his photos for a second and showed me a white-haired guy whose face looked like it had been ploughed and harrowed. “...this bloke’s son. He’d look after you as a personal favour to me, if I asked him. He owes me.” That sounded more like the underworld crime figure I thought I was working with. He started poking at his phone again, then lifted to his ear. “Hang on.” His voice rose ten decibels. “Terry? Sorry to bother you at home mate. Ronnie Walker.” He laughed so loudly everyone in the place turned to look. “Yeah, well, next time you get to pick the strip club.” He laughed again, then his voice grew serious and, thankfully, a little quieter. “Mate, I need a favour. Friend of mine’s in trouble with the cops. They’re trying to pin a murder on him.” I sank down in my seat, feeling every eye on me. “Yeah, total load of bollocks but the heat’s on. Chelsea Campbell case. Trevor Reid’s the SIO. Yeah, that’s the one. Can he come see you tomorrow morning?” There was a pause while Terry talked. Ronnie used the time to roll his eyes and make a hand gesture to indicate his friend was talking too much. Eventually he said, “Excellent! Nine o’clock. I’ll make sure he’s there. Give my love to Olga.” There was another laugh and the call was over.
He looked at me meaningfully, then started tapping at his phone as he spoke. “I’ll text you the address. I’ve seen how useless you are at looking anything up. Don’t be late. Terry Marchant is the best criminal lawyer in Queensland, so be sure to act grateful that he rescheduled his whole day to fit you in.” He turned his attention back to his food and ate with relish. I watched him in silence.
I had a strange feeling of dissociation from my life. Outside forces were pushing me around like a ship in a storm. Chelsea had died and that monstrous catastrophe had cut me loose from everything that had anchored me to solid ground. Now I was drifting farther and farther from shore, helpless to reach any harbour. Not least among the forces acting on me was the police investigation, going on beyond my awareness but ready to stab out at me at any moment, and this crazy old geezer stuffing his face opposite me, organising my days, finding me lawyers, doing me favours...
I pushed my plate away. “I’m off.”
He didn’t seem surprised. “Nine o’clock tomorrow,” he said, sternly. “And then you can start making a list from the electoral rolls. OK?” I hadn’t a clue how t
o do that but I nodded. “I’ll go visit the schools and the uni and I’ll meet you again at your place at tea time. We’ll order in and compare notes, OK?”
“Sure,” I said. Why not? I’d just let him organise my life for the whole of the next day but what else was I going to do?
“And don’t forget to get the bill on your way out.”
It was a warm night and somewhere above the street-light haze was a clear sky. I thought I’d walk home but Brisbane is a city designed for cars, not people. After half an hour of trudging along ugly roads, still full of hissing, growling traffic, I called a cab and gave up. My unit was empty and silent when I stepped through the door. The whiteboard faced me like a challenge, like a rebuke. I put my head down and pushed past it to the bedroom.
Chapter Eight
I rolled over in bed, seeing it was light, and looked to see if Chelsea was still sleeping. Her side of the bed was empty and, for a moment, I wondered if she was up already. I listened for sounds from the kitchen.
And then I remembered.
I got out of bed quickly, struggling for breath as if I’d been hit in the chest. I went to the lounge room and began tidying up. Anything rather than lie still thinking about her. I knew from having done it so many times just how bad that could be. I showered and dressed, put the kettle on, reached into the freezer for some bread. Keeping frozen sliced bread was one of Chelsea’s “life hacks” as she called them – little tricks and techniques for coping with her busy, unpredictable lifestyle. I shut the freezer, picked up my phone and keys and left the unit. I needed more and bigger distractions, or this was going to be another Very Bad Day.
In the car park I stopped. What was I doing? Where was I going? It took a while to order my thoughts. My head was full of fluttering, restless birds on the verge of panicked flight. Electoral rolls. That was it. No, no, something else. The lawyer. Yes! I had to meet him. I consulted my phone and found Ronnie’s text. Some building I’d never heard of in the CBD. Nine o’clock. Three exclamation marks, the cheeky sod. But it was already 8:30 and, although I was only ten minutes away on a Sunday afternoon with no traffic, I would be late for sure trying to drive there on a Thursday morning in the rush hour, then finding a parking place and then finding the building. But I just might make it on my bike.
The bikes had been Chelsea’s idea too. It was beginning to be obvious to me that I had been something of a passenger in our relationship. Chelsea had definitely been the driver. We were supposed to use the bikes to get more exercise, to make us more grounded, and to help save the planet. In the end, Chelsea had barely ever touched hers, but I found it a convenient way to get around our great, sprawling city. During my PhD, I used to cycle in to the university a lot. A bike’s a great mode of transport when you don’t have tight schedules and you can ditch it and take a cab when it rains or the wind is high. Weaving through rush hour traffic on one, going as fast as you dare, with every driver likely to jump lanes right across your path at any moment, was too much like a game of Russian roulette: the kind of game where you know, if you play it long enough, you will definitely end up dead.
So I arrived panting, sweating like a pig, and shaken from several near misses, in a George Street low-rise, at five minutes past nine. I left my bike in the entrance, not really caring if someone nicked it, and took the lift up to the offices of Glebe Associates on the fifth floor. The best criminal lawyer in Brisbane seemed to work out of a suite of offices that must have been impressive in their pre-WW2 heyday but which gave me a strong desire to go find Ronnie and punch him in the nose. Dingy didn’t quite do it justice. The sour-faced old fossil behind the reception desk was probably one of the original fittings. She looked at my sweaty face with ill-disguised horror and said I should go straight in.
“Mr. Marchant has been waiting,” she added and I tried to look suitably contrite.
Terry Marchant’s room was brown, lined with brown books and sported a brown polished hardwood desk so heavy it must have taken half an old-growth forest to supply the timber. It made the lawyer, a balding, beaky man in a high-backed leather chair, seem small and out of place. Surely this office belonged to someone large and important. There was a phone on the desk but no computer. Marchant had a massive law book open in front of him and was making notes with a fountain pen on a pad of paper. It was a shockingly archaic scene.
He stood up to shake hands across the desk and asked me to sit.
“I’ve been talking to our mutual friend, Mr. Walker,” he began without introduction. “Sounds simple enough. The cops are trying to fit you up for a murder you did not commit. You have a strong motive but a cast iron alibi. They need to show that you conspired with a third party...” Here he gave a small, wry smile. “...Mr. X, as Mr. Walker calls him, or they have no case at all. By now they will have been through your finances and your phone records, your movements, your associates, and all the CCTV footage they can gather. Yet they have not arrested you. We can assume, therefore, that they have found nothing to tie you to Mr. X. Of course, the case against Mr. X is itself entirely circumstantial. The man in the restaurant may be as innocent as you are.”
“I don’t think—”
He held up a hand. It was a small, pallid hand. “My job is to prevent the police from exceeding their authority. I’m happy to do that pro bono, as a favour to Mr. Walker. If they manage to make a case against you and it goes to trial, I will need to consult Mr. Walker as to whether he wishes me to proceed. If he does not but you do, I will gladly continue to represent you but, at that point, I will start charging you at my usual rate. Do you understand?”
“Er, yes.”
“Good. I’ll have my assistant draw up a contract to that effect. I gather that the police wish to interview you. I will be present every time you meet the police from now on. Are you free to see them tomorrow morning, around ten, say?”
“Er, yes. I don’t work.”
He smiled. “How nice. So, if there’s nothing else...”
Again, I had that sense that my life was being controlled by others. “Don’t you want to … talk about it?”
“Absolutely no need. Thank you for coming in. I will see you at the Central Police Station at ten AM. Please try to arrive a little early and looking less like you sprinted all the way. We don’t want to antagonise them more than we absolutely have to.”
I felt that there must be more to say but in the face of his obvious desire for me to leave, I just said, “Right-o. See you there, then,” and stood up. He rose too and we shook hands again.
My bike was still there in the lobby when I got down to street level. I picked my helmet up from the floor and attached it to the pannier. I took the bike by the handlebars and wheeled it into the street. I’d barely walked fifty paces when I fell into the first café I came across, leaving the bike on the street. I queued for ages for a coffee and a croissant. The rest of the queue were smartly-dressed and very young; city workers – mostly public servants in that part of town – who each seemed to be buying for the whole office. I sat down on a hideously uncomfortable chromed steel chair and put my purchases on a matching table. The croissant was in a paper bag and the coffee in a paper cup with a plastic lid. It felt as if the café was doing the absolute minimum it could for my comfort and enjoyment and, although there was nothing unusual in that, it filled me with resentment. Not quite filled, I should say, because there was plenty to spare for Ronnie Walker, who was doing me a big favour I didn’t want, and clearly felt no compunction about discussing me and my business with his insufferable lawyer friend.
Who the hell did he think he was? Come to that, who the hell was he? Some guy I’d met in a pub. An entitled, old baby-boomer who felt at liberty to elbow his way into my life. And for what? Free drinks? To amuse himself in his retirement? To cling to the glory days when he was a real investigator? And what was that Facebook page all about? Anybody could tell by looking at Ronnie Walker that he was a thuggish, brutal man. He was built like a bouncer and his eyes would have be
en more at home watching you from an executioner’s hood than in all those smiling pictures with dogs and old biddies.
I sat for fifteen minutes staring at my minimalist breakfast in its minimalist packaging before I calmed down. By then, my coffee was too cool to enjoy and I went up for another.
“Queue’s gone,” I said to the barista, suddenly noticing the fact.
“Morning rush,” he said. “It’ll pick up again soon for smoko.”
He made a cute leaf pattern in the foam on my coffee and then obliterated it by putting a plastic lid on it. I took it back to my table and took the lid off. I sipped it even though it was too hot. I tore open the paper bag to create a makeshift plate for my croissant and pulled pieces off it to chew on.
OK, I told myself. The electoral rolls.
I googled it and had my usual “Why do I bother?” moment of regret. All the links at the top of the page were for ancestry tracing services. I followed the State Library link farther down the page but that only took me to old records. Somewhere on page two of the results, I found the Australian Electoral Commission. I read their pages on the Queensland electoral roll three times before I accepted the fact that what I wanted to do was impossible. Yes, I could go to the local AEC office and look at the rolls but it was a paper copy and I couldn’t write anything down, photocopy it, or take any pictures. Yes, there was an electronic version that was searchable but that was only available to candidates for political office and their parties. Why? I could only assume that, among the ranks of unscrupulous advertisers, property developers, and other evil-doers they were trying to keep away from this sensitive information, politicians were deemed less villainous for some reason.
I swigged back my coffee and went outside, my head full of impractical schemes to join a political party for the day – or to start one. My bike was still where I’d left it. Apparently, despite he endless cuts, public servants were still paid enough that they didn’t need to steal bicycles. The traffic had eased off a lot and I needed another shower, so I went home again.
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