Prophets and Loss (A Johnny Ravine Mystery)

by Martin Roth

Rohan drove me in a dented blue Mitsubishi Sigma down Cotham Road towards Fitzroy, then through a narrow alley just around the corner from the Spanish tapas bars of Smith Street. He parked outside a small white concrete block of apartments.

  I tried to imagine the scene inside. A bachelor pad full of mirrors engraved with nudes, purple lace curtains and a gaudy lounge that had been given over to a giant bar? Or antique shelves stuffed with books and papers, and pencil drawings on the walls of William Shakespeare and Jane Austen? Or a hovel strewn with empty beer cans, pizza cartons, unwashed dishes and dirty washing?

  The answer was none of the above. Rohan’s small ground-level apartment could have passed for any well-kept suburban home. A sports jacket emblazoned with a Hawthorn football club logo hung from a hook in the unfurnished entrance lobby. Open doors on either side led to a compact bedroom and to the living room. The whole place was rumpled and it was showing its age, but it also presented itself as clean, amiable and unthreatening. Remarkably like Rohan himself.

  He ushered me into the kitchen and sat me at a small brown table. A neat row of washed plates lay in a drying rack on a stainless steel bench. A bulky Kelvinator refrigerator was next to the table. Stuck with magnets onto the fridge door were two giant headlines cut from the newspaper: “Cabinet Ministers Quit in Funding Fraud Row,” read one. The other proclaimed: “Pedophile Priest Scandal Rocks Church.”

  Rohan saw me looking at them. “A couple of my greatest hits.” He pulled two Coopers pale ales from the refrigerator and handed me one. “I’m afraid I didn’t hear what you told me earlier about your drinking habits.”

  “Water’s fine for me,” I said.

  He pretended to search the fridge, then shrugged. “No designer water, I’m afraid. Going to have to be from the tap.” He poured me a glass, then opened his beer and took a swig. “What do you normally eat in East Timor?”

  “Snakes, grasshoppers, dogs. Stuff like that. When we can catch them.”

  He caught my smile. “Mate, I can’t oblige. Sorry. Hope you like my chili con carne. Quick and delicious. I call it my chick tucker.”

  “Chick tucker?”

  “Bring a chick back here for a spot of extracurricular activity and you want something to eat that tastes good but is quick to cook. So I always keep some mincemeat and grated cheese in the fridge. Trouble is, most of the chicks I manage to lure back here don’t have time to eat. Or do much else for that matter. Usually they have to get home to pay off the babysitter. Or they won’t eat anything that isn’t made out of preserved lemons and deep-fried tofu.”

  He opened the refrigerator again and pulled out a package. “Whew. This mincemeat’s been here since 2007. Hope you don’t mind.” He went to a cupboard and gathered cans of beans and tomatoes. “Just joking.”

  I walked into the living room. An old green sofa and a couple of armchairs were surrounded by bookshelves, filled with novels and books on sport, wine, travel and history. A CD collection featured large helpings of U2, Genesis, REM and ABBA, with some 1960s and 1970s pop anthologies. On one shelf I spotted a photo of a younger Rohan with two clean-cut little boys, all three grinning like chipmunks.

  I called out to him in the kitchen. “This photo on the shelf by the window. Your children?”

  “Yep. Cute, yeah?”

  I moved back into the kitchen and sat at the table again. Rohan was sizzling the meat with sliced onion and crushed garlic in a frying pan. “How old are they now?” I asked.

  “Fifteen and thirteen.”

  “See them a lot?”

  “Only when I travel to Perth?”

  “Your wife ran off to Perth?”

  “More or less. Didn’t run, actually. Got driven in a BMW by her boyfriend.”

  “You didn’t try and stop her?”

  “He was bigger than me.” He emptied the cans of beans and tomatoes into the pan and added chili powder, salt and pepper.

  “Come on, you don’t let your wife run off with another fellow.”

  Thoughts flashed through my mind of men in my unit who had suspected their wives were unfaithful, and who had abandoned their posts to resolve the problem, invariably with knives and guns.

  Rohan gave out a guffaw that sounded like a deep, girlish giggle. “I wasn’t much of a husband or father really. A job like mine. You work till all hours at night for the next morning’s paper, then you feel like a few drinks after work, and you don’t get home until 2:00 am. She was screwing around. I was screwing around. That’s life in this business.”

  “You make it all sound pretty inevitable.”

  “Yeah, I guess it was, really.” He tasted the mixture, then added more salt. “The upbringing I had, I think I was pretty much destined to turn out the way I am. You know, my father used to come home at five o’clock every night, open the evening paper and read it until dinner. Then after dinner he would read a novel and listen to records of classical music, until it was bedtime.”

  “No classical music in your CD collection, I notice.”

  “Exactly. My father didn’t bother with me and my sister.” He stirred the mixture in the pan with vigor. The smell was tantalizing.

  “I wouldn’t have minded a father who came home every night.”

  “I hear you. But I’ll tell you something Johnny, mate. You became a soldier when you were fourteen. You got an initiation. An initiation into the world. Into what it means to be a man. My father mightn’t have been a bad father. But he never taught me to be a man. Isn’t that what fathers are supposed to do?”

  I went to the tap and poured myself another glass of water. I thought about what Rohan had just said. “I’ll tell you when I became a man. It was nothing to do with being a freedom fighter. That just taught me about killing. It was that morning I woke up on the floor of a bar in Jakarta. That time I was telling you about. With dried blood and vomit everywhere. And a dead bargirl lying near me.”

  “You said it wasn’t you who killed her.”

  “I don’t think I killed her. I don’t know how she died. I don’t remember anything about that night. I just remember waking up, with a dreadful hangover. And they had an old-fashioned record player in the bar and it was playing Hey Big Spender. You know, by Shirley Bassey. Only it was a thirty-three-and-a-third LP and they were playing it at forty-five. And it was turned up at full volume. It was surreal. And slowly I realized - it wasn’t a sudden realization, because I had a belting headache…”

  “Which the music wasn’t helping…”

  “Which the music wasn’t helping. Slowly I realized that my life was an absolute mess. That I knew nothing except how to kill.”

  “You had your language skills.”

  “I spoke fluent English and Tetun and Bahasa and a fair bit of Portuguese. I could always find some kind of work. But I was a killer. That was my trade. It had become my character. It’s who and what I was. It defined me. If I thought about it I probably even enjoyed doing it.”

  “So you kept killing people even after you escaped from East Timor?”

  “No. At least I don’t think so. Unfortunately, I don’t even know everything I did when I was drinking. That’s how twisted I’d become. I was full of bitterness and hate. I wasn’t normal. My life was a mess. I’d get drunk each night and seek out bar girls and end up abusing them. Then passing out in a drunken stupor.”

  “You’re a good-looking guy, if you don’t mind my saying so. You probably wouldn’t have needed chick tucker.”

  “For some reason I always found myself chasing after bar girls. Anyway, waking up in that bar was a - kind of a…”

  “A wake-up call.”

  I smiled. I enjoyed Rohan’s unthreatening sense of humor. I imagined that with his ability to put people at ease he had to be a good journalist. “That’s right. I realized I couldn’t keep on like that. I had to change. And suddenly I got sentimental for my father. I decided to try to get to Australia and start a new life. And I also decided I wouldn’t touch alcohol or women again until I’d sorte
d out my life.”

  “How many minutes did that resolution last?”

  “Right up till now. I get tempted, but I’ve stuck it out. And I reckon it’s helped turn me into a man. At last I’ve gained some understanding of myself.”

  “Whew. Nice story. Glad to hear you grew up. Unlike me.”

  The meal was ready. Rohan divided it onto two plates and sprinkled grated cheese on top. He handed me a fork.

  I looked at the dish. Streaky tomato wedges, shreds of mincemeat, shiny red beans and melting cheese all combined to lend the appearance of an abstract painting. I had no idea something so tempting could be cooked so easily.

  “This is delicious,” I told him with sincerity after a quick taste. “I can’t believe you don’t have women lining up outside your front door.”

  “Usually I’m lining up outside their doors. I told you. I never grew up. I’m always wanting something new. Like a child. I became a womanizer. Even after I got married. I can hardly blame my wife if she was a - a manizer. I don’t think the sub-editors would let that one through.”

  “So it’s all about your upbringing?”

  Rohan was eating with gusto, clearly a fan of his own cooking. He seemed oblivious to the steam coating his glasses. He just grunted in answer to my question.

  “You don’t think there mightn’t be issues of personal responsibility involved?” I asked. “Making decisions and then taking responsibility for the consequences? That kind of thing?”

  “Oh yeah, I guess there has to be some of that,” he said casually. “Anyway, it seems I’m probably wrong about my upbringing being the cause of my behavior.”

  I speared a loose chunk of tomato with my fork. “So what’s the cause then?”

  He stopped eating for an instant and lifted his face to look at me. “Well, this is interesting, but now they’re saying my womanizing is all about my genes. It’s my genes that are telling me to get out and pro-create. Rape a girl if necessary. I don’t have any choice in the matter. Alpha male stuff and all that.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “And what about the girl? The one getting raped. Does she have any choice?”

  “That’s a good question. Because the funny thing is, it seems her genes are telling her to spread her favors around. I got a bit of a shock when I heard about that. The point is, apparently, that once she has a kid the real father won’t know if it’s him who’s the real father or another man, and so in a fit of dominant rage he won’t try to kill the little nipper, who might be a possible rival.”

  As far as I could work out, Rohan was serious. I could hardly believe what I was hearing. In Timor we looked up to Australia, not just as a military and economic ally, but as a source of modern and progressive ideas. We saw Australia as a beacon on the hill, sending out a piercing beam to illuminate and expose many of our antiquated social traditions. So how could such an intelligent person think like this? I wanted to ask Rohan if the invasion and occupation of my land were due to the Indonesian genetic structure, but he interrupted my thoughts.

  “Sure I can’t tempt you with a glass of red?” He leaned back and grabbed a glass and a half-empty bottle from the bench behind him. “Yarra Valley pinot noir. Life doesn’t get much better.”

  “No thanks. Water’s fine. You don’t know what a luxury it is to live in a country with such clean tap water.”

  “Didn’t your Aussie dad pass on some wine genes? Though I do confess that our wine wasn’t crash hot back in the 1960s.” He pulled the stopper from the wine bottle and poured himself half a glass. “Perhaps some footy genes. Which team do you barrack for?”

  “No team. I can’t say I really understand Australian Rules football.”

  “Excellent. I’ve something to teach you while I hammer away at your resistance to the fruit of the vine. Starting with Hawthorn. The mighty Hawks.” He sniffed his wine, and then took an ample swig. His eyes glazed in satisfaction and for a moment I wondered if he had entered some kind of stupor.

  I changed the subject. “What makes you think the Dili Tigers are involved in this whole affair?”

  He took a little while to answer. “Just talk that I hear. From several sources. Anyway, it seems you reckon they’re involved as well.”

  “Yeah. Because of the phone calls. One the night Grant died and the other yesterday, after I got a bullet through the window.”

  “And you think the phone calls were from Alberto?” He drank more wine.

  “I can’t be sure of that. It’s been several years since I saw him, and I can’t say for sure that it was his voice. Anyway, in Timor he never spoke to me in English. But his nickname for me was the Little Australian. And he was one of the leaders of the Dili Tigers. And then yesterday, when I got the bullet through the window, and the phone call. The guy shouted, ‘Beware the roar of the tiger’ at me in Bahasa. That was the slogan of the Dili Tigers.”

  He looked at his glass. “Man, this stuff is good. Bahasa – that’s the main Indonesian language, right?”

  “Yeah, Indonesia’s got lots of local languages, but Bahasa is the one that everyone had to learn. It’s the common language of the country. But in Timor we still speak Tetun to each other. That’s the language of our island. So if someone talks to us in Bahasa we can be pretty sure they’re not from Timor. Alberto was from Java.”

  “And when your mystery phone caller shouted out in Bahasa about the tiger’s roar, it sounded like your old enemy Alberto?”

  “Unfortunately it did.”

  Rohan went silent.

  I spoke: “Grant’s wife Melissa said to me a couple of days ago that the Dili Tigers were Grant’s worst nightmare.”

  “Well, they proved that for sure, didn’t they? They bumped him off. At least as far as we know.”

  “You still haven’t told me who your sources are.”

  He finished off his meal, then examined the frying pan for scraps. “I’ll make some coffee,” he said. “Unless you prefer Vietnamese tea from a thermos.” He didn’t wait for an answer, but resumed talking, while he took a packet of ground coffee from the refrigerator and spooned some into a percolator. “There’s this group. Tied up in stockbroking. Your mate Grant was involved. What were they called? Umm. Let’s see. The Spivs. Yes. That’s it. No, I tell a lie. It’s the Prophets. Heard of them?”

  “I’ve heard of them. I think they’re part of Grant’s old company. The Prophetic Edge, isn’t it called? My pastor said they had something to do with stock market software. But I never really understood it all.”

  Rohan poured water into the percolator and switched it on. “They’re a bunch of share traders. Day traders. They’re fairly notorious - used to be, anyway - but essentially harmless. They spend all day trading the market. They probably lose more than they make, but they’re really gung-ho and they enjoy the reputation of being cowboys. They think they’re all so hot-shot. Buy some shares in the morning then sell them two minutes later after they’ve gone up a zillion times.”

  “So what’s the connection with Grant’s murder and the Dili Tigers?”

  “My sources tell me that’s where the action is?”

  “Where? What kind of action?”

  “I’m hearing whispers that the Dili Tigers have links with the Prophets, or Prophetic Edge, or whatever they call themselves. That’s presumably how Grant was involved.” He reached up to a cupboard and took out two mugs. “Johnny, I’ll be frank. My investigations are reaching a bit of a dead end. There are things I can learn as a journalist, but there are some people who won’t have anything to do with a journo. On the other hand, they might talk to a private dick. Especially as you were a close friend of Grant’s. At the very least you might ask a few questions I’ve overlooked. I’ve been trying to talk to all the Prophets. What say I give you a couple of names and you can call them up? You might get more out of them than I’ve managed. For starters, I’d suggest you contact a highly approachable guy who goes by the name of Matt the Surfer.”