Prophets and Loss (A Johnny Ravine Mystery)

by Martin Roth

  Chapter Seven

  It was one of those deceptive Melbourne mornings, with the sky so blue and the temperature so pleasantly warm, that all your senses swear to you it is summer, not winter, that is on the way.

  I walked down Station Street. The road resembled a battlefield. I had come to learn that this was a typical Saturday. Convoys of Nissan Pathfinders and Toyota Landcruisers - like Israeli tanks manoeuvring into position before an assault on the Sinai - were filled with parents and kids navigating their way to Saturday morning sports. Some football supporters were leaving early for the big games that afternoon. I waited at a set of traffic lights and watched as a blue Camry raced past, adorned with little black and red Essendon Bombers football club flags.

  I yawned. I hadn’t slept well the previous night. Getting a bullet through my kitchen window had unnerved me. Yes, the pastor was clearly right. I was going soft. In East Timor I would have shrugged off a combined rocket and grenade attack.

  I crossed the road and walked past a house adorned with brilliant yellow rose bushes. The next favored wattle trees. Box Hill represented some kind of demarcation line in Melbourne’s east.

  After Grant gave me the ancient Datsun Bluebird I set about exploring the city. Driving through the older inner suburbs, like Kew and Camberwell, I was confronted with oaks, elms, rose bushes and tall English hedges. Then traveling further out to newer suburbs, like Eltham and Warrandyte, I found the dominant features were gums, eucalyptus and wattle. But Box Hill could not make up its mind. It had a touch of everything.

  Rohan Gillbit of The Age had expressed himself eager to meet me, and he was already seated at a front table of Pho Dzung when I arrived. The varied weekend supplements of his newspaper were piled in front of him. Instead of the nerdy garb of our previous encounter he was wearing creased jeans and a blue denim shirt that came close to making him look fashionably dressed.

  “How good to see you again,” he boomed, standing to shake my hand. “Yes, very good. Very good. Mind you, I thought you’d be wanting to call me.” His deep voice sounded like a broadcasting announcer’s. I felt as if I were being greeted by a radio. “What did you think of the knock shop the other day? La Rue? Nice, congenial place.”

  The Pho Dzung was a Vietnamese café that opened for breakfast, lunch and dinner, and served anything you wanted provided it was noodles. I sometimes found myself here when I got tired of Dumpling King, which wasn’t often, or in the mornings, when Dumpling King was yet to open.

  I glanced around. The breakfast crowd had finished, and it was still too early for lunch. An Asian family - mum, dad, grandma and two young kids - sat at one table in the center, but otherwise we were the sole customers.

  “Let’s sit at the back,” I said. “It’s safer.”

  Rohan looked hard at me. “Safe? You don’t think Melbourne’s safe? Safest place in the world. That and the most livable.” He laughed at what was apparently some kind of private joke he had just made, then he gathered up his newspaper supplements and followed me to a table by the back counter. “How can there be crime when the government just keeps making it legal? Brothels. Casinos. Drug injecting rooms. It’s all becoming okay.”

  I sat down. “I didn’t know you had a conscience.”

  “A conscience? Don’t insult me like that. I’m a journo.” He chuckled again at his own humor.

  I had a clear view of the whole premises, and could also see through the window out onto the street. The café had about twenty tables, with rows of black, high-backed chairs lined neatly at each. Behind us was a counter, with a cash register and equipment for making crushed ice. A Philips television was suspended from the ceiling. All the place needed was a ceiling fan and a few stray dogs running around and it could have been in the center of Dili.

  “You didn’t look this edgy when we met a few days ago,” said Rohan.

  I paused. “I didn’t tell you this when I phoned last night, but I got shot at yesterday afternoon.”

  “Shot at? Shot at? My goodness. That’s no good at all. How on earth did that happen?” He was trying to sound as casual as if he were asking me how I’d missed winning first prize at the Melbourne Show raspberry pie baking event, but the excitement in his voice still filtered through.

  “It was probably the Dili Tigers. The Tigers of Truth.”

  Rohan paused. He was struggling again at being impassive, but could not manage. “The Dili Tigers? They tried to shoot you?”

  “Yesterday. A bullet through the window. Right after Grant’s funeral. And then a phone call. Telling me not to get mixed up in Grant’s death.”

  “Wise advice. Wise advice.” He was in casual mode again. “But I trust you’re not going to heed it.”

  The waitress, a bored teenage Vietnamese refugee girl with a pockmarked face, and wearing a baggy black dress and sandals, walked to us with a pencil and notepad. “You order now?”

  “Actually, we’d quite like to see a couple of menus,” said Rohan. The girl looked annoyed. She pointed to the side wall. The menu was written there in large letters.

  Rohan squinted through his thick-lensed glasses. “Beef tendon noodle,” he read aloud. “Braised beef noodle. Rare beef noodle.” He turned back to me. “A cornucopia of choice, this place. Look, Johnny lad, I’m as multi-cultural as the next man - and since you’re the next man, that’s being pretty multi-cultural - but they wouldn’t happen to do scrambled eggs or something of that ilk?”

  “Try the noodles,” I urged.

  “Don’t seem to have much choice really, do I?”

  The waitress returned with a small thermos flask of tea and a couple of hard plastic cups. We placed orders for braised beef noodles.

  I looked at Rohan “You mentioned the Dili Tigers yourself. Outside La Rue.”

  “You know all about the Dili Tigers?” he asked me.

  “Of course I do. They were the enemy.” I poured two cups of light brown tea and passed one across the table.

  He sucked in some breath and then looked at me for a short while before he spoke again. “That’s for sure. They were probably the worst of the Indonesian militia groups, and that’s saying something. They were a specialist death squad. Connected to the Indonesian army and probably financed by top politicians over there. I’m sure I’m not telling you anything new. It’s my understanding that they went around trying to murder all the leaders of the Timor independence movement. Of which I am starting to believe you might have been one.”

  “I was leader of a small group of freedom fighters.”

  “Interesting. There can’t be many of you still alive. But you won. Your country’s got its freedom. I guess now it’s payback time from all your old enemies.”

  “Maybe. But why now, years later? Anyway, there’s some kind of connection with Grant. That’s what the guy said the first time he phoned.”

  Rohan raised his eyebrows. “More than one threatening call?”

  “The first came right after Grant died. Warning me not to get involved in whatever it was that Grant was doing. But Grant was no freedom fighter. Yet still he got murdered. I’ve been in Australia for a year. They’d have had a go at me before now if it was just payback for all the years of fighting.”

  Our orders arrived, and we tucked in, Rohan demonstrating his multi-culturalism with a virtuoso display of chopstick skills. “Working for a morning paper sure plays havoc with your diet,” he said. “This is either breakfast or supper, I’m not sure which. Whatever, it’s not too bad. Just needs a bit of an accompaniment. Something fruity. A Barossa Valley shiraz would sure hit the spot.”

  “Shiraz? Is that a wine?”

  “Johnny, how long did you say you’ve been in Australia?”

  “A year.”

  “I’m going to have to extend your education. You can’t live here without becoming a wine connoisseur.”

  “I don’t drink.”

  A look of profound disappointment flashed across Rohan’s face. “I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that. Le
t’s move on. What was Grant doing? And why are you so keen to pursue the matter? Especially if it’s getting you into strife with your old enemies.”

  I chewed slowly on some noodles. “Grant had a shady past,” I said at last. “But then he became a very strong Christian. He seemed to be a changed man. Really. A new creation, like the Bible says. Then the next thing we know he’s killed in a brothel. And The Age is out to publish a big story. My pastor asked me to find out what happened.”

  Rohan laughed. “The power of the press. Even incorruptible men of the cloth are terrified. If only they knew.” He lowered his head and looked thoughtful, as if wondering whether he might not have been better off with the beef tendon noodle. Then he spoke again. “I’ll tell you what, Johnny my boy. I’ve got a deal for you. You show me yours, and I’ll show you mine.”

  “Eh?”

  “Listen, mate, I won’t go so far as to say that we need each other. But we can help each other a fair bit. I’ll tell you what I’ve learned so far. And it’s a fair bit. Then it’s your turn. You tell me your story.”

  I thought about it. What he said was true. We could help each other. And in any case, I didn’t have a lot of other leads. I had to trust him. Maybe I could even dissuade him from running his story. I nodded my head. “Sounds sensible.”

  “Where to begin?” He sipped at his tea, pursing his lips and inhaling, as if it were a glass of premium champagne. “What seems to be happening is this. Our government, the Aussie government, is worried about the possibility of some kind of terrorism in this country. Worried big-time. They believe we’re a target. For all kinds of reasons. And now it seems the nightmare might become reality.”

  “You mean…?”

  “There’s some evidence – and what I’m telling you is from a pretty good source - and it’s absolutely confidential, by the way – there’s evidence that a terrorist cell have been able to smuggle themselves into Australia and are planning something big. Most likely in Melbourne.”

  “A terrorist cell. What sort of cell?”

  “What sort? A nasty sort. Mate, they’re terrorists. It seems there are cells forming in different countries – whether they’re connected or independent, who knows – but they’re out to cause havoc in the West. Blow up things. Kill people. All part of that glorious multinational corporation Global Jihad Incorporated.”

  I had a feeling I knew what was coming.

  “Well, guess what? At least one of these cells seems to have set up shop in Indonesia. Formed out of disaffected militia who were involved in the fight to stop your East Timorese mob becoming independent. They hate Australia because Australia took your side.”

  “The militia?”

  “Yep. As you know, the Indonesian military were bad enough, but for the really nasty work they often called in these militia groups that they had helped establish all around East Timor.”

  “That’s exactly right.”

  “And your old sparring partners the Dili Tigers, or the Dili Tigers of Truth as they so arrogantly and fallaciously call themselves, were probably the worst. Tortures, disappearances, whatever. They were the experts. How am I going so far?”

  “Pretty good. Absolutely right again.”

  “Well, there are signs – signs, not proof – that some of the lads decided to keep the party going. So they formed themselves into a terror cell. And who do they hate most in the whole world? Australia. Mate, they want revenge.”

  “So now they’re in Australia? Melbourne?”

  “Yes, it would seem so. A group of them. No one knows exactly who or how many. And most certainly no one knows what.”

  “But planning something?”

  “Urban terrorism against Australian targets, most likely. It’s possible they’ve infiltrated the Timorese refugee groups. And it seems an accomplice in all this is - or was - your reborn Christian compadré Grant.”

  “Grant? No. He was my best friend.”

  “That’s about the extent of my knowledge right now. But I’d say you and your pastor have a lot more to be worried about than one of your flock being knocked off in a bonk shop.” He smiled. “Hey, I’ve got my headline right there.”

  “The police must be onto this?”

  He waited while the departing Asian family paid their bill at the cash register behind us. “Sure. They’re going crazy right now trying to track these men down. But they don’t have much to go on. Unless my sources are hiding something, they don’t know much more than what I’ve just told you.”

  “And that’s all you know?”

  “About that. That members of the Dili Tigers death squad are in Melbourne. Probably smuggled into Australia by Grant. Possibly infiltrated into the refugee groups. Probably planning some kind of urban terrorism.”

  “That’s a lot of possiblies and probablies. Have any definitelies?”

  “Not really. That’s why I wanted to talk to you. But I have one more big possibly.” He stopped talking in order to concentrate on a recalcitrant chunk of beef that was eluding his chopsticks. At last he gave up chasing it around the bowl and picked it up with his fingers. “One big possibly. Possibly Grant wasn’t just an accomplice. It’s possible he was organizing the whole thing. Grant Stonelea. El Capitano. The big godfather. But he had some kind of falling out and got bumped off for his troubles.”

  “No!” I almost shouted out the word. “That’s not possible.”

  Rohan shrugged his shoulders. “Anyway, the point is, it seems there are killers on the loose, and it looks like you’re now in their sights. As might I be, once I write up my story.”

  “When will that be?”

  “Unlikely for a while. It’s all hush-hush right now. Anyway, you can’t publish an article that’s nothing but probablies. I need a lot of definitelies. That’s why I wanted to talk to you. I need your story.”

  I breathed deeply. I knew I had little choice but to trust him. After all, who else might help me? “Okay. It’s my turn. Do you want to hear a story of love and murder and torture and revenge?” I didn’t wait for an answer. “Well, here goes.”