Prophets and Loss (A Johnny Ravine Mystery)

by Martin Roth

The cream-colored Datsun Bluebird - another gift from Grant - started on the third attempt. In moderate lunch-hour traffic I drove slowly past the Chinese takeaways on Station Street, then into the Maroondah Highway and towards South Melbourne, to La Rue.

  I swerved to avoid a postman in a bright yellow uniform who abruptly drove his motorcycle into my path, and then I banged my fist on the radio to get it working. As I drove down Cotham Road and past the St George public hospital I listened to the 3AW news.

  A house fire had injured an elderly lady in Footscray, a rottweiler had mauled a toddler in Kilsyth and researchers in Brisbane had announced the discovery of a new herbal diet preparation. Australians were among the healthiest people I had ever met, living in the safest environment imaginable. It was a mystery why they allowed their media to torture them ceaselessly about their security, when around the world so much real evil existed. It sometimes seemed that, for Australians, evil was represented by a jellyfish sting at the beach.

  I envied them.

  La Rue held court in a narrow street of office buildings, next to a small publishing house and right around the corner from the South Melbourne shopping center. I parked at the local supermarket and then walked back past a fruit shop and a Turkish café, pursued by the pungent, fruity fragrance of fresh Turkish bread. Then I paused outside the publisher’s and pretended to examine the row of business books in the display window. The street was empty.

  I looked at La Rue. It was a large, grey, ferro-concrete building pierced with a line of tiny oblong windows that somehow resembled gun emplacements. A tall wooden door with a giant ring-handle, like the entrance to an Italian cathedral, provided the only decorative touch. But little indicated the nature of the premises. The name La Rue was in black Times New Roman on a shiny bronze plaque. If it were not for the sign under the plaque, restricting admission to those aged over eighteen, you could easily enter expecting to find the Melbourne headquarters of some elite European corporation.

  I reflected on the brilliance of the local state government. It had concocted an amazing solution to the perpetual riddle of human sinfulness: abolish it. With brothels in the state legal, prostitutes were no longer fallen women. The Baptists and the Salvos were out of a job. Prostitution became another career option.

  And yet, somehow, it was not an option that school careers’ advisers placed before teenage girls, or one that parents cared to recommend to their daughters.

  I recalled one of the pastor’s sermons. “Take a bully who’s trying to ride roughshod over you. If you do the same to him he’ll start screaming blue murder about what’s right and wrong. He knows the difference. He’s got a conscience, that’s why. He may not display it in his actions, but in his heart he knows. God has given everyone a conscience. In their hearts, people know what’s right and what’s wrong.”

  I pushed at the door, half-expecting it to creak and groan. But despite its bulk it swung smoothly open. Inside was a tiny, carpeted lobby, with a couple of simple grey chairs and a reception desk enclosed in glass, just like in the cinema. A tanned, middle-aged lady with wavy blonde hair and a pointed chin sat behind the glass. As I entered she raised her eyebrows and flashed a smile.

  But before she could speak, a door beside the reception desk opened and a tall, skinny man emerged. He was wearing thick-lensed glasses, and he was staring straight at me. His light brown hair was flecked with grey, and his eyes looked like blue marbles. He was dressed in rumpled brown trousers and a dark, tartan sweater.

  “Johnny Ravine,” he said, putting an arm around my shoulder and pulling me towards him with considerable strength. “This is good timing. Mate, I want a word. Let’s step outside for a moment.”

  With one leg weaker than the other I found myself off-balance. I shifted my weight to my good leg and braced. I was now in a position to elbow him in the jaw if necessary, and then smash his head into the receptionist’s glass panel. I recalled the threatening phone call of two days earlier. But this guy was an Aussie. His deep voice was nothing like the phone caller’s.

  In any case, if I was going to have to hit him I could do it better outside than in the confined space of the lobby. I let him guide me back out through the doorway.

  On the footpath he pulled a card from his jacket pocket and handed it to me. “Rohan Gillbit from The Age,” he intoned. “At your service, m’lud. I’d reckon you’re here for the same purpose as me.”

  I looked at him carefully. He had the lean, pimply, emaciated look of someone who subsisted on a diet of sprouts and late-night television.

  “What purpose is that?”

  “Your compadré Grant. Not good. Church member and all that. Strangled in a whorehouse. This particular whorehouse to be precise. You must be pretty shocked.” His eyes were gleaming. He looked happy. I recalled Pastor Thomas’s words that he had learned of Grant’s death from an Age journalist.

  “How do you know who I am?”

  “I’m a journo. It’s my job. The police told me about you. Who did you reckon?”

  The police had been round the previous day. Homicide squad. Young guys who were very professional and weren’t out to make trouble. They asked lots of questions but didn’t query whether I was a legal immigrant.

  “You get on well with the police.”

  “Like I said, I’m a journo. You must be a bit shaken up by all this?”

  In East Timor we regarded all journalists as spies. They were spies for us or spies for the enemy. It was that simple. But here in Australia I wasn’t so sure. I’d had no experience with newspaper people. “What are you doing here?” I asked.

  “Same as you. Coming to see the scene of the crime. Meet the main witness.”

  “What did she have to tell you?”

  “Not a lot. Not a lot. Look, I know your time’s tight. She said she was giving you half an hour. The same as she gave me. Just a quickie. Give me your phone number and I reckon we need to have a chat.”

  I paused. There was no reason to withhold my phone number. But more than twenty years of guerrilla fighting had taught me not to give away the initiative. “I’ve got your card,” I said. “I’ll contact you.”

  He gave a breezy shrug. “Suit yourself. I reckon you might want to talk. Like, about Grant. Maybe about the Dili Tigers of Truth as well.”

  I froze. What was going on? How could an Australian journalist know about the Tigers? “What about them?” I demanded.

  But already Rohan was walking away. With his back to me he gave a cheery wave. Should I follow? No, he had given me his card. I needed to meet Briony. I walked back inside.