Bad Debts

She wriggled her skirt up higher. She wasn’t wearing panties. My eyes were level with her dense pubic bush. She put her hands on her hips and pushed her pelvis at me

‘I always wear a suspender belt,’ she said, ‘when I want someone to fuck me senseless on the floor in front of a fire.’

She started unbuttoning her blouse. I reached out and put my hands around her waist. She stopped unbuttoning and pulled her skirt up over her hips.

‘Now you’ve seen mine, Irish,’ she said. ‘Take off your pants and show me yours.’

32

How can you make love when people are trying to kill you? You can. Does perfect love drive out fear? For a while. I reflected on these matters afterwards as I lay naked, sweat beginning to chill, in front of the fire.

Linda came in wearing blue jeans and a denim shirt. ‘This girl’s got everything,’ she said. ‘Maybe I should start painting.’

I got up. I have always felt silly naked the minute the other person puts something on. I kissed her and went off to shower.

I was under the spray in the room-sized shower when Linda said from the door, ‘Get a move on. I’ve found the champagne.’

The ex-lover’s clothes did fit me. I borrowed a corduroy shirt. I was passing through the kitchen when Linda said from the computer room, ‘Your glass’s on the fireplace. I’m just trying the name P. K. Vane on the Age news database.’

It was Krug, vintage, utterly delicious, the tiniest prickles on the tongue. I felt my whole body relax.

We were going to get out of this. For the first time, I felt that.

Linda came out of the kitchen.

‘There is a God,’ I said. ‘Where’s your glass?’

She said, ‘Paul Karl Vane didn’t die of natural causes. He was shot dead in the driveway of his home in Beaumaris. Shot six times, four shots from close range, three of them in the head.’

Linda went to bed at 10 p.m., subdued. Finding out about Paul Vane had taken the gloss off linking Charis Corp to the Yarrabank buy-up. I sat in front of the fire, drinking a small amount of malt whisky. My bombing was the second item on the 10.30 Channel 9 news. The helicopter looked right down into my sitting room through the hole in the roof. I looked away.

The newsreader, a woman with the teeth of a much larger person, said, ‘Police are tonight looking for the owner of the flat, Jack Irish, a Fitzroy lawyer. He is described as in his forties, tall, heavily built, with dark hair. He may be with another man, Cameron Delray, of no fixed address. Delray is in his thirties, tall, slim, dark hair and sallow skin. The men may be accompanied by a dark-haired woman, also tall, wearing a dark outfit. Police say the men were involved in a shooting incident earlier today and are believed to be armed. They should not be approached. Please ring the number that follows if you think you have seen these people.’

Jesus.

I felt the panic rising again. I got up and added some whisky to my glass. Now I had to get hold of Drew or we were going to meet the fate of Danny McKillop in the Trafalgar carpark.

First, my sister. She picked it up instantly. ‘My God, Jack,’ she said, ‘what on—’

I spoke quickly. ‘Rosa, listen. I’m okay. I want you to ring Claire and tell her I spoke to you and I’m fine. It’s all a misunderstanding. Don’t worry about the television. I’ve got to keep down for a bit but it’s going to he okay. I’ll ring you.’

‘Does that mean our lunch is off?’

‘Not necessarily. I’ll be in touch. Love.’

I put the phone down. Lunch. I shook my head in wonder. Drew. I was putting out my hand to dial when the phone rang.

I picked it up. ‘Yes,’ I said, tentatively.

‘Jack.’ It was Cam. ‘Listen, mate,’ he said conversationally, ‘time to go. There’s blokes coming up for you. With guns. Go into the studio. There’s a ladder in there, extension ladder, against the left-hand wall. You’ll see a square hole in the roof in the left-hand corner, like an inspection hatch. You with me?’

‘Yes,’ I said. The phone was trembling in my hand.

‘Get up there. You can slide the cover open, get on the roof. Pull the ladder up. First thing, go round that lift housing building up there and bolt the steel door to the stairs. Okay?’

‘Okay.’

‘There’s no other way up there. It’ll give you a bit of time. Get moving now. They’re on their way up.’

The line went dead.

‘What is it?’ Linda was in the doorway, pillow marks on one side of her face. She’d fallen asleep fully dressed.

I tried to imitate Cam’s calm. ‘Put your shoes on. Get the disks. Quickly. We’ve got to get out of here. Come to the studio.’

The ladder was aluminium, lightweight. I had it up against the wall beneath the hatch in the roof when Linda came in, wide-eyed, carrying a laptop and her bag.

‘I’ll go first,’ I said. ‘Get the hatch open.’

It was at least six metres to the roof. The ladder flexed alarmingly, not made for my weight.

I was halfway up when the banging started at the front door.

‘Jack Irish,’ a voice shouted. ‘Police. We know you’re home, Jack. Open the door. No-one gets hurt.’

I put one hand up and found a handle on the hatch cover. I tugged it. It didn’t move. The hatch cover wouldn’t open.

Something hard hit the front door. They were trying to break in.

The ladder was flexing alarmingly. I braced myself and got both hands to the handle.

I tugged. It wouldn’t budge.

There was a louder impact from the front door.

I tried again. I moved the handle from side to side, desperately. It shifted.

I tried again. Backwards, forwards. It moved. I’d been forcing it in the wrong direction. I pushed the handle away from me and the hatch slid open. I grabbed the edge of the hole and pulled myself up the last steps and out on to the roof.

By the time I’d turned back to the hole, Linda was half-way up the ladder. When she was near enough, I leant down and took her bag and the laptop. Then I pulled her up.

The ladder came up easily. We stood panting on the concrete roof in the dark, cold night air.

‘Close it,’ Linda said, pointing at the hatch. As I bent down to slide the door over, there were four sharp sounds from below. Gunshots. They were trying to shoot open the lock on the front door.

I slid the hatch closed and stood up.

What was I supposed to do now?

The roof door to the internal stairs.

I looked around. About ten metres away I could make out a large, square structure. The lift housing.

‘Wait here,’ I said and ran. The roof was slippery, some kind of moss growing on the concrete. At the corner of the housing, I fell, sliding across the rough surface. I got up, sharp pain in the left knee. The door was a few metres away, open. I got to it, closed it and felt for the bolt.

There wasn’t a bolt. The door couldn’t be locked.

I opened it slowly, stuck my head in and listened.

Silence. The men weren’t at the front door any more. They were in the flat. There was nowhere to hide there. They would very quickly know we had got out.

I closed the door again and looked at it, felt it. Nothing on the surface of the door.

My fingers touched something on the door frame to my left. I felt to the right of the door. The same. Steel brackets.

The door was meant to be barred, not bolted.

Where was the bar? I felt around frantically, seeing better now, eyes getting used to the dark. No bar.

I looked around the roof. Away to my left, there was something moving.

I squinted, trying to see better.

Washing. Someone had hung a line of washing on the roof. Hung the line between what? I limped over. Two lengths of one-inch pipe with welded crossbars held up the washing line.

I went over to one, put both hands around it and pulled with all my force. It came out so easily that I fell over backwards, pipe clutched to my chest. Scrambling to my feet, I wrenched off the washing line and ran for the door, pipe at the port arms.

I was a few metres from the door when someone in the stairwell shouted something. I could only catch the word ‘stairs’.

I got to the door. I could hear footsteps thudding metres away.

The door wouldn’t close fully.

I stood back and kicked the door so hard I felt the impact in my wrists and at the top of my skull.

The door closed.

I stepped back, winded.

Something hit the door like a sledgehammer. It swung open and a man—short, bald—came through, left shoulder first, right arm coming around with a long-barrelled revolver held shoulder-high.

He was so close I could smell his breath: alcohol and garlic.

I brought the steel pipe I was holding around with all the force I had. It only had to travel about half a metre before it made contact with the side of the man’s head.

He went over sideways, hitting the doorframe with his right shoulder and falling back into the stairwell.

I dropped the pipe, slammed the door shut again and rammed the pipe though the brackets.

When I turned, Linda was behind me.

‘Jesus Christ,’ she said. ‘Come on. Cam’s on the roof next door.’

For a moment, I was too winded to move. Then I staggered after her. When we got to the parapet wall to the left of the roof hatch, I saw Cam.

He was on the roof of the building across the lane, sitting on the parapet wall, smoking a cigarette. Next to him on the wall were Linda’s laptop and bag. She must have thrown them to him.

‘G’day,’ he said. ‘Shove that ladder over.’

I looked over the edge of our wall. Six floors below, light was reflected off wet cobblestones. I looked over at Cam. His building was about four or five metres higher than ours. The gap between us was about the same.

I went over and got the ladder. It seemed terribly flimsy. I got it upright and leaned it over until Cam could catch the top rung. He pulled it up until he could hold the sides standing up.

‘Ladies first,’ he said.

I looked at Linda. She smiled, a tight little smile. ‘We used to do this at Girl Guides,’ she said. ‘Piece of cake.’

She scrambled across in seconds.

My turn. My knee was aching. I’d grazed my hip. I was having trouble breathing. I felt a hundred years old.

‘I was happier doing conveyancing,’ I said to no-one in particular.

Then I went across that inadequate bridge like a big monkey.

33

Cam had a ute this time, a battered Ford with a lashed-down tarpaulin over the tray. It was parked in a narrow blind lane off Little Bourke Street.

‘What’s the next stop?’ he asked.

We were all leaning on parts of the ute, trying to control our breathing.

‘Shoreham,’ said Linda and caught her breath. ‘On the Mornington Peninsula. I know a place there. It’ll be empty.’

Cam straightened up. ‘Country air,’ he said. ‘Let’s go.’ He started loosening the tray cover. When he had the back open, he looked at me and said, ‘They’re looking for two blokes, mate. Hop in.’

‘In the back?’

‘There’s a mattress. And pillows. Lots of air gets in. You can have a kip.’

I climbed in and lay down. Cam lashed the cover down. It was pitch-black under the cover, dark and claustrophobic and smelling of engine oil. I had to fight the urge to try and break out.

We were reversing over cobblestones. The springs transmitted every bump. I found a pillow, dragged it under my head, closed my eyes and tried to think about sharpening the blade of a number 7 plane. I was trying to learn how to grind a hollow angle and then hone the blade on that angle with a circular motion the way the Japanese did. I was thinking about how to improve my honing action when I fell asleep.

I woke with a start, no idea where I was, tried to sit up, bounced off the taut nylon tray cover, fell back in fright.

Cam’s voice said, ‘Nice place. They’d have something to drink here, would they?’

I knew where I was. How had I managed to fall asleep? I lay still and listened to my heartbeat while Cam loosened the cover.

‘Breathing?’ he said. ‘Relaxed?’

Inside ten minutes we were drinking whisky in front of a fire in the stone hearth of what seemed to be an enormous mudbrick and timber house. I went outside and stood on the terrace. There was a vineyard running away from the house.

I went back inside. Cam was on his haunches, fiddling with the fire.

‘Were they cops?’ I asked. I felt wide-awake. I’d slept for more than two hours.

‘Moved like cops,’ said Cam. ‘Very efficient. I gather you decked one.’

‘Tony Baker he calls himself,’ I said. ‘Came to the pub to scare me off. Made out he was a fed of some kind.’

‘If he’s a dead fed,’ Cam said, ‘we have other problems.’ He stood up and yawned. ‘That’s enough Monday now. I’ll find a bed.’

I looked at Linda. She was asleep, head fallen onto the arm of the sofa, hair fallen over her face. In the end, perfect exhaustion drives out fear.

‘I’ll just sit here,’ I said. ‘Reflect on how I got everybody into this shit.’

‘That’s the past,’ Cam said. ‘Think about the future. How to get everybody out of this shit.’

After a while, I got up and found a blanket to put over Linda. She didn’t wake up when I swung her legs onto the sofa and arranged a pillow under her head.

I kissed her on the cheek, got some whisky, put some more wood on the fire. The future. But we weren’t finished with the past yet. What had Paul Vane seen on the night Anne Jeppeson died? What was the evidence he knew about? And what was the evidence Father Gorman had told Ronnie to bring to Melbourne and where was it?

Time passed. I fed the fire, listened to the night sounds. It was after three before I felt tired enough to find a bed. Sleep eventually came.

Sunlight on my face woke me. It was after 9 a.m. My knee was stiff and sore and the skin around my hip was tender. I felt dirty. Looking for a shower, I went into the kitchen. Cam was sitting at the table, eating toast and jam, clean, hair slicked back.

He pointed with his thumb over his shoulder. I went that way. Linda was sitting at a big desk, looking at her laptop screen. She looked clean too.

‘Does that thing work anywhere?’ I said.

She looked up and smiled. ‘I’ve written the whole fucking thing. All of it. The whole Yarrabank saga. And I’m plugged in to the world again. Through my trusty modem.’

I said, ‘Modem’s not a word you can love.’

She tapped the computer screen. ‘There’s a P. K.Vane in Breamlea,’ she said. ‘Must have moved from Beaumaris. We can take the car ferry.’

There wasn’t a single thing to lose.

‘I’ll have a shower,’ I said. ‘See if you can find the departure times.’

The woman was tall and thin and her labrador was old and fat. She was wearing a big yellow sou’wester that ended at her knees. Her legs were bare and she was barefoot.

There was no-one else on the beach. Just Linda and I and the woman and the dog and the gulls. We saw her a long way off, walking on the hard wet sand, hands in pockets, head down, getting her feet wet when the tiny waves ran in. The dog walked up on the dry sand, stiff-legged, stopping every few yards for a hopeful inspection of something delivered by the tide.

When she was about a hundred metres away, I got up and went towards her. The labrador came out to meet me, friendly but watchful. I stopped and offered him my hand. He came over, nosed it, allowed me to rub his head.

When she was close enough to hear me, I said, ‘Mrs Vane?’

She nodded. She had strong bones in her face, big streaks of grey in her hair, skin seen too much sun.

‘Are you the widow of Paul Karl Vane of the Victoria Police?’

She nodded again, still walking.

‘Mrs Vane, I’d like to talk to you about your husband and the deaths of Anne Jeppeson and Danny McKillop.’

She kept looking at me and didn’t say anything until she was close, three or four metres away. The dog went to her.

She leant down and rubbed its head, eyes still on me. Her eyes were startlingly blue.

‘I was hoping someone would come,’ she said. ‘I don’t think I’ve had one happy day since they killed that girl.’

She put out a hand and I took it. We walked up the beach.

34

The shack was up in the hills behind Apollo Bay. We got lost once, retraced our route, found where we’d gone wrong. Cam was driving, the three of us crammed onto the bench seat, Linda in the middle.

On the way from Breamlea, keeping to the back roads, Cam said, ‘How come she doesn’t know what it is?’

‘Paul Vane never told her,’ I said. ‘He woke her up on the night Anne was killed and told her he’d seen it happen. He was electric, sat drinking all night. The next day, when the television had the news of Danny’s arrest, he told her Danny hadn’t done it, that it was murder, that he knew who’d done it but couldn’t tell anyone.’

‘So she kept quiet too,’ said Cam.

I moved my cramped arm from behind Linda’s head. ‘She says it haunted her. When she read about Danny’s sentence, she was sick. Paul became morose, drank more, used to say he’d done the wrong thing but it was too late. Eventually he took early retirement. Then he got sick, bowel cancer. He kept telling her he was going to give her the evidence, that he was going to get a lot of money to provide for her after he was gone, that she should tell Danny that he was innocent and give him the evidence.’

‘Money?’ asked Cam. ‘Did he get it?’

I shook my head. ‘No. She thinks he tried to blackmail someone over Danny’s death and that’s why he was murdered. He told her where the evidence was the morning of the day he was shot.’

‘And then she rang Danny?’

‘Later. After Paul’s murder, the house was broken into and searched from top to bottom. Then Paul’s boat caught fire at its moorings at Sandringham and blew up. She says she was too scared to fetch the evidence. And then she was watching television and saw the news that Danny’d been shot. After that, there didn’t seem to be any point.’

‘That must be it up ahead,’ Linda said. She’d fallen asleep a few times on the trip, head lolling on to my shoulder.

The shack was old, just a big room and a lean-to, probably a timber-getter’s humble home. It was made of timber slabs, weathered to a light grey, but still solid. The whole place was leaning slightly, held up by a huge brick chimney.

We got out, stretching stiff limbs. The air was cold and moist. Far away, we could hear a vehicle changing gear on a hill, then silence. The birds were quiet at this time of day.

The front door was padlocked, no more than a gesture considering the condition of the door and its frame. I opened the lock with the key Judith Vane had given me.

Inside it was dark, almost no light coming through the dirty panes of the two small windows. To my right was the fireplace, a huge red brick structure, the front blackened almost to the roof by thousands of fires.

You couldn’t light a fire in it now. The opening, about the size of two fridges side by side, had been closed in with fibreboard. Some kind of wooden frame had been built in the opening and the fibreboard nailed to it. This work was recent compared to the age of the shack.

‘It’s in there,’ I said, pointing at the chimney.

‘There’s a crowbar in the ute,’ Cam said. He went out to fetch it.

Linda and I looked at each other.

‘So, Jack Irish,’ she said. ‘This is it.’

I nodded.

Cam was in the doorway, a weary little smile on his face. He didn’t have the crowbar.

‘No crowbar?’ I said.

He took a step into the room.

There was a man behind him holding a pump-action shotgun. It was Tony Baker, with a big plaster on the side of his face where I’d hit him with the steel pipe.

‘Move along, coon,’ he said.

Cam came into the room. Baker came in too, a safe distance behind Cam. He’d done this kind of thing before.

Another man, in an expensive camelhair overcoat, came into the doorway. He was tall, somewhere beyond fifty, that was the only safe guess: full head of close-cropped silver hair, narrow tanned face with a strong jaw and deep lines down from a nose that had seen contact. He had a young man’s full, slightly contemptuous mouth. In one hand, he held a short-barrelled .38. In the other, he had the crowbar.

‘Jack Irish,’ he said. ‘I’m Martin Scullin. You’re a fucking pain in the arse.’ His voice was as flat and his diction as slow as Barry Tregear’s. Country boys both, grown old in the city. Or maybe it was the standard issue voice in the old Consorting Squad.

‘I’ve heard a lot about you,’ I said. To my surprise, my voice sounded normal.

‘Where’s the stuff?’ Scullin said. He didn’t sound particularly interested.

‘I don’t know. We’re just looking.’

Scullin looked at Tony Baker, no expression on his face.

Baker clubbed Cam across the jaw with the shotgun barrel. Cam went down like a suit slipping off a clothes hanger. He fell to his knees, tried to stand up.

Baker stepped over and hit him in the face with the barrel again. Twice.

Blood spurted out of Cam’s nose, turning his shirt black.

Baker turned his bull-terrier head and looked at me. Even in that light, I could see the gold fleck in his eye.

‘I’m going to kill this coon,’ he said. ‘Then I’m going to kill that bitch.’

He kicked Cam in the ribs, a short, stabbing movement, full of power. Cam shook his head like a swimmer trying to clear water from his ears.

Baker kicked him again, harder. Cam put his hands on the floor, got into a sitting position, looked up, eyes closed. His mouth was wide open, a cave streaming blood.

Baker hit him under the jaw with an upward movement of the shotgun butt. Cam fell over sideways.

Baker stepped back, readying himself to kick.

‘Leave him,’ I said. ‘It’s in the chimney.’

Baker looked at Scullin.

Scullin said to me, ‘Get it.’

Baker pointed the shotgun at me. Scullin passed me the crowbar.

I looked at Linda. She was kneeling next to Cam, holding his head, blood all over her arms.

The fireplace cover came off easily, nails squeaking. In the fireplace was an old stove, a Dover, filthy with soot, stovepipe rusted.

‘Get up there,’ Scullin said.

There wasn’t room for me and the stovepipe. I took it in both hands and worked it loose. It came off and fell behind the stove with a crash. I got on the stove awkwardly, kneeling, bent over, and looked up the chimney. Soot fell on my face. Dark. I couldn’t see anything.

‘Get up there,’ Scullin said again.

I pressed my hands against the chimney sides, got on one leg, then the other. I was in the chimney from below my waist up.

I put my hands up and began to feel around.

Nothing. Just flaking soot. I reached higher. A ledge. The chimney had a jink.

My fingertips touched something. Smooth. Cold. I felt sideways, found an edge.

A box. A metal box. Felt up. A projection. The lid. Ran my fingers left and right.

‘What the fuck you doing up there?’ Scullin said. ‘Is it there or what?’

There was something on top of the box.

‘It’s here,’ I said. ‘It’s here.’

I bent my knees slowly, got the right one on the stove, turned my body to the left, arms above my head.

‘Get a fucking move on,’ Scullin said.

I ducked down, came out of the chimney, soot falling like a curtain, bringing my right arm down and around my body.

‘Here,’ Scullin said, ‘give it to me.’

He was just a metre away.

I shot him in the chest, high, right under the collarbone. He went over backwards.

Baker was looking at me, a little smile on his face.

I shot him in the stomach. He frowned and looked down at himself.

I got off the stove and shot Scullin again, in the chest.

Baker was bringing up his shotgun, slowly. He was looking at the floor.

‘Steady on, Jack,’ he said thickly, like a very drunk man.

I shot him again, in the chest. The impact knocked him up against the wall. Then he fell over sideways.

‘Stop now,’ Cam said. ‘I think they understand.’

35

We were going through Royal Park, Linda driving Scullin’s dove-grey Audi, Cam in the back, strapped up and stitched and plastered by the doctor in Geelong. I came out of my reverie. No-one had said anything for eighty kilometres.

Something flat, that’s all. Ronnie’s friend Charles’s words. Ronnie had brought something small and flat to Melbourne.

‘Ronnie’s evidence,’ I said.

Linda glanced at me. ‘What?’

‘I know where Ronnie’s evidence is,’ I said.

I gave her directions.

Mrs Bishop took a long time to open her door.

‘Mr Irish,’ she said. ‘How nice to see you.’ She inspected me. ‘Have you been in mud?’

‘Doing a dirty job,’ I said. ‘Should have changed. Can I come in if I don’t touch anything?’

We went down the passage and into the sitting room. I looked around. On a bookshelf between the french doors was a small stereo outfit, no bigger than a stack of three Concise Oxfords. On top was the CD player.

The CDs, a modest collection, perhaps twenty, were on the shelf above in a plastic tray.

‘Mrs Bishop,’ I said. ‘I wanted to come around and say how sorry I am about Ronnie. But I had to go away.’

She nodded, looked away, sniffed. ‘Both my men,’ she said. ‘Both gone.’

I wanted to pat her but my hand was too dirty. I waited a while, then I said, ‘You told me Ronnie put a new CD with your others.’

She cheered up. ‘That’s right. It’s Mantovani’s greatest hits.’

‘Have you played it?’ I said, and I held my breath.

She put out a hand and found a cleanish place to touch my arm. ‘I haven’t been able to bring myself to,’ she said. ‘It’s the last thing Ronnie gave me.’

‘Do you think we could put it on for a little listen? It might help me.’

Her look said that she thought all was not well with my thinking processes, but she switched the player on, found the CD in the tray and, holding it like a circle of spiderweb, put it in the drawer.

She pressed Play. The drawer slid in.

We waited.

The silken strings of Mantovani filled the room.

I expelled my breath loudly.

‘Thank you, Mrs Bishop,’ I said. ‘I don’t think it’s going to help me after all.’

Her eyes were closed and she was moving her head with the music.

I got into the car and slammed the door. ‘I don’t know where Ronnie’s evidence is,’ I said. ‘Shit.’

Cam started the motor. ‘Let’s think about a drink,’ he said.

Doug always said Ronnie would make a good spy.

‘Hang on,’ I said. ‘One more try.’

This time, Mrs Bishop opened her door in seconds.

‘Sorry to be a nuisance,’ I said.

‘Not at all, Mr Irish.’

‘Did you live in this house when Ronnie was a boy?’

She smiled. ‘Oh yes. We’ve always had this house. It was Doug’s mother’s. Doug grew up here, too. I wanted to sell it when we went to Queensland, but Doug wouldn’t have a bar of it. He was a very wise person, wasn’t he.’

‘Very. Mrs Bishop, did Ronnie have any special place in the house? A secret place?’

‘Secret? Well, just the roof cubby. But that wasn’t a secret.’

‘The roof cubby?’

‘Yes. It’s a little hidey-hole in the roof. Doug’s father made it for him when he was a boy.’

‘Ronnie didn’t by any chance go up there?’

She frowned. ‘To the roof cubby? Why would he do that?’

‘He didn’t?’

‘Well, I don’t know. I wasn’t here all the time, but—’

‘Could I have a look at it?’

She didn’t reply for a moment. Her eyes said she was now reasonably certain that I was deranged. Then she said, ‘Are you any good at climbing trees, Mr Irish?’

The entrance to the roof cubby was the ventilation louvre in the back gable of the house. It was about six metres from the ground, brushed by the thick, bare branches of an ancient walnut.

I considered calling for Cam. But pride is a terrible thing.

‘You wouldn’t have a ladder?’ I said.

Mrs Bishop shook her head. ‘That’s how you get up there. The tree.’

I took hold of the lowest branch of the tree. There was moss on it. I groaned.

It took five minutes to get up there. I almost fell out of the tree twice and a branch poked me in the groin before I got close enough to the small door to put out a hand and push it. It resisted. I put out a foot and pushed.

The door opened with a squeak, swinging inwards and pulling in a short length of nylon rope attached to a ringbolt in the bottom of the door. I puzzled over this for a moment before I realised that this was how you closed the door from the outside: you pulled the rope.

I clambered across from my branch, got my head and shoulders and one arm in and pulled myself across.

The floor of the hideaway was below the level of the doorway. I lowered myself tentatively into the gloom. About a metre down, my feet touched the floor. For a while I couldn’t see anything, then gradually I made out the corners of the room. Light came from the door, now a window, from gaps between the bargeboards and the roof. It was a little box, perhaps three metres square, with a pitched ceiling, boarded off from the rest of the ceiling of the house. The floor was covered with flower-patterned linoleum.

It was empty.

Not even cobwebs.

Nowhere to hide anything.

There was no sign that anyone had ever used the room, had ever had a secret life up here.

I groaned again. Going down would be even harder than coming up.

I squeezed my upper body through the entrance, reached out and got a grip on a branch above my head. I pulled myself up to it, getting a knee on the sill, then standing up. As I did so, the jagged end of a short dead branch almost took out my left eye.

I pulled my head back.

The tip of the branch was just inches away. It was bone white, except for odd grey marks, almost like fingerprints, on the underside.

I wanted to put a bandaid on the scratch on his cheek but he didn’t want me to.

That’s what Mrs Bishop had said when we first talked about Ronnie’s disappearance.

Ronnie had been here.

Standing just where I was standing. A scratch on his cheek bleeding.

Ronnie had scratched his cheek on the branch. He had put his left hand to his cheek and it had come away with blood on it. In anger, he had grabbed the branch and tried to break it.

But it wouldn’t break. And he left his blood on it, dark marks now weathered to grey.

‘Are you all right, Mr Irish?’

Mrs Bishop was looking up at me, eyes wide.

‘I’m fine,’ I said. ‘I’ll be down in a minute.’

I scrambled back through the small door.

Somewhere in here. Somewhere in this empty room was Ronnie’s evidence.

I went around the walls carefully, feeling for a loose board, a door to a hiding place. It took about five minutes.

Nothing.

The floor. Perhaps there was a gap between the floor and the ceiling below. I knelt down and tried to lift the nearest corner of the linoleum.

It wouldn’t come up. It was held down by tacks, one every few centimetres.

I went all round the lino edge under the doorway, trying to lift it with my nails. It was tacked down tight. Along the right-hand wall, it was the same.

In the right-hand corner, a small piece came up.

I tugged at it.

It was just one broken tack. The rest held.

Along the back wall, all hope gone, feeling the regular line of tackheads.

The tacks stopped.

I ran my fingertips into the corner, perhaps thirty centimetres away.

No tacks.

I ran them down the left-hand wall.

No tacks for the first thirty centimetres.

I felt in the dark corner. The lino curled back slightly. I pulled at it. A triangular piece peeled back stiffly. I felt beneath it with my right hand.

There was a small trapdoor, perhaps twenty centimetres by fifteen.

I pulled it up with my nails. It came away easily.

I put my hand into the cavity.

There was a box, a long narrow box, shallow, lidded.

I got my hand under it and took it out of the cavity. It was a nice box, pearwood perhaps, the kind that used to hold the accessories for sewing machines.

I got up and went to the entrance, to the light.

The lid had a small catch.

I opened it.

Cam’s girlfriend’s flat was the way we’d left it, apart from the battered front door. My malt whisky was still standing next to the telephone in the kitchen.

Cam was in the Barcelona chair, holding himself upright, drinking Cascade out of the bottle again. I was on the sofa, drinking nothing, nervous. Linda was at Channel 7.

‘They’ll run it you reckon?’ asked Cam.

‘Depends what’s on Vane’s film.’

We sat in silence in the gloom. After a while, I got up and drank some water. Cam finished his beer, got up painfully to get another one out of the fridge. When he came back, he said, ‘That shooting today. Made me think of my German.’

‘Your German?’

‘Last bloke who shot at me. Before…when was it? Yesterday.’ He lit a Gitane. ‘Gary Hoffmeister. We were shooting roos out to buggery, out there in the Grey Range. I only met him the day before we went. Off his head. Had a whole trunk of guns. Rifles, handguns, shotguns. Never stopped shooting, shoot anything, trees, stones, anything. He was full of Nazi shit, too. Kept asking me about my name, how come I was this colour. I just said, I’m a tanned Australian, mate. I thought, you’ll keep. Wait till we’re out of here.’

Cam drank some beer.

‘Last night out,’ he said, ‘Gary was off his face, talking about Anglo-Saxon purity, Hitler was right, the coming Indonesian invasion. I went to take a piss round the back of the cooltruck. Came round the corner, .38 slug hits the truck next to my head. Into reverse, got to the cab to get my rifle, he fires about five shots, trying to hit me right through the driver’s door.’

He appeared to lose interest in the story.

‘What happened?’ I said.

‘Got the iron, off into the scrub. Took about half an hour to get a clear shot at the bastard. He was trying to stalk me like Rambo. I put him in with the roos, took him to the cops in Charleville. He was nice and cold. They knew fucking Gary there, handshakes all round, good bloody riddance.’

‘They charge you?’

‘Had to. Court found I acted in self-defence. Had to come back from WA. Took a little trip back to the scene while I was there. Near there, anyway.’

‘What for?’

Cam smiled his rare smile. ‘Dig up the ten grand Gary had in his gun crate. And that Ruger. No point in giving that kind of stuff to the cops. Spoils ’em.’

The phone rang. It was 6.25 p.m.

I went into the kitchen and picked it up.

‘Put on the TV,’ Linda said. ‘Seven at six-thirty.’

I went back to the sitting room and switched on the set.

‘Something’s on,’ I said. ‘Six-thirty.’

The ads went on forever. We sat in silence.

The current affairs show began with its montage of news footage: bombs, riots, politicians talking.

Then the serious young woman came on, dark top, little scarf, air of barely controlled excitement.

‘Tonight,’ she said, ‘this program deals with allegations about the involvement of a Cabinet Minister, public servants, a clergyman, trade union leaders and others in an under-age sex ring. It also alleges police involvement in the death in 1984 of a social justice activist, and massive corruption surrounding Charis Corporation’s six hundred million dollar Yarra Cove development.’

She paused.

‘These are serious and dramatic allegations. And we believe they are fully substantiated.’

Another pause.

‘First,’ she said, ‘we show you, exclusively, shocking photographs taken by a Special Branch detective on the night in 1984 when social justice activist Anne Jeppeson met her death.’

First, we saw some old footage of Anne Jeppeson leading a Save Hoagland march and answering questions at a news conference. A male voice-over gave a quick history of the Hoagland closure.

Then the woman said, ‘On the night of 18 June 1984, Anne Jeppeson was leaving her terrace house in Ardenne Street, Richmond, at 11.40 p.m. Unbeknown to her a Special Branch officer, Paul Karl Vane, was watching her house from a vehicle parked across the street. He had a camera and began taking pictures as she left the house.’

I held my breath.

The first photograph came on, startlingly clear. It showed Anne Jeppeson, in a leather jacket and jeans, coming out of the front door of a terrace house. Her head was turned back, as if she was speaking to someone. It must have been Manuel Carvalho.

The next picture showed Anne stepping off the kerb. She was looking to her right, not alarmed.

The next one showed her almost in the middle of the road, still looking right. Now her mouth was open, her right hand was coming up, the whites of her eyes showing.

Then the camera turned its attention to where she was looking. The picture showed a car, a Kingswood, two figures in the front seat, faces just white blurs.

There was another shot, the car closer, the faces clearer.

In the next picture, Anne Jeppeson was lifted off the ground, top half of her body on the bonnet of the Kingswood, the lower half in the air.

Now you could see the faces of the driver and the passenger clearly.

The driver was Garth Bruce, Minister for Police. Younger but unmistakably Garth Bruce.

The passenger was Martin Scullin, now lying dead on the floor in the shack in the Otways.

‘We have every reason to believe,’ the presenter said, ‘that the driver of the vehicle seen colliding with Anne Jeppeson is Garth Bruce, now Minister for Police, and that the passenger is Martin Scullin, then a Drug Squad detective and now owner of a security company, AdvanceGuard Security, the company started by Garth Bruce after leaving the Victoria police.’

Cam made a sound of triumph that could have been heard by low-flying aircraft.

Then they got on to Ronnie Bishop’s videos, the ones I had found in the nice sewing machine box under the floor of the roof cubbyhouse. They did their fuzzy pixels to prevent us seeing exactly what was happening but it very clearly involved sexual acts with young people of both sexes who couldn’t be said to be willing partners.

They did show us the faces of the adults.

Lance Pitman, Minister for Planning, was there.

Father Rafael Gorman was there.

So was a man the presenter identified as the late Malcolm Bleek, once the highest ranking public servant in the Planning Department.

Then there were two leaders of the trade union movement, a prominent financial entrepreneur now living abroad, and other men the presenter didn’t identify. Someone would recognise them. Wives. Children. Colleagues.

There were a lot of close-ups. Ronnie had made sure everyone was identifiable.

‘These shocking films,’ the presenter said, ‘are believed to have been taken by Ronald Bishop, an employee of the Safe Hands Foundation, an organisation founded by Father Rafael Gorman to help homeless young people. It is likely that the films were used to blackmail Mr Lance Pitman and others seen in them. It appears likely that Bishop kept a copy of the films, perhaps as some form of insurance.’

Then Linda came on, poised and professional, and told the full story of Yarrabank and Hoagland. Names, dates, everything. How Anne Jeppeson came close to torpedoing the whole thing and was murdered for it. How Detective-Sergeant Scullin probably provided the helpless Danny McKillop to take the rap and how Father Gorman probably provided Ronnie Bishop to seal Danny’s fate.

The whole thing took half an hour. Much of the detail was conjecture, but it made a powerful case. When it was over, Cam got up, flexed his shoulders gingerly, and said, ‘Shocking. Could undermine faith in grown-up people. There’s some Krug around here. What about you?’

I looked at him and said, ‘Give me a beer mug full to start.’

36

There is ice in the wind at Caulfield on a Saturday in late autumn. Long-legged Cynthia the head Commissioner and Cyril Wootton were both dressed for it: tweedy, scarves.

At 2.50 p.m., I was looking at Nancy Farmer, Tony Ericson, and Dakota Dreaming, aka Slim, in the mounting yard. Nancy was fidgety, patting the horse, tugging at her silks, pushing strands of hair into her cap. Tony was worse. He had the air of a man waiting for the jury to come back. But the horse was calm enough for the three of them. He looked at the ground mostly, like someone who knows about waiting.

Tony’s children were at the rail, popeyed with excitement. The girl had been neglecting her grooming. Dakota didn’t look as lustrous as when I’d last seen him. It was worth trying, but it wasn’t going to fool anyone. The horse was right: rippling, tight behind the saddle, poverty lines on the rump.

The man next to me was looking at Dakota too.

‘Nothin wrong with that bugger you can see,’ he said, pointing at the horse with his rolled up copy of the Herald Sun. ‘Shockin history though.’

‘Shocking,’ I said. Ron Pevsner in the Age thought so too. He assessed Dakota’s price at 50-1. That was about tops for Ron. His colleague Bart Grantley rated the horse at two out of ten. No-one knew what a horse had to do to get a rating of one. Die in its previous race, perhaps. The form comment was: ‘Comeback race. Lightly raced but injury prone and seems fully tested. Hard to have.’ All the other form guides said much the same. The Wizard assessed his odds at 100-1 and said: ‘Must improve.’ It would be hard to argue with this daring judgment.

I’d driven Harry to the track. Cam was in Sydney, handling the plunge on the interstate ring at Randwick.

Harry was in a philosophical mood. ‘Jack,’ he said, ‘pullin off a coup’s a bit of a miracle, y’know. I’ve had a coup horse run last. Stone motherless last. Goodbye seventy grand.’ He smiled. ‘There’s a number of worries. The horse, the weight, the jockey, the barrier draw, the track. Any one can sink you. And then there’s another tiny matter. Today, thirteen other bloody cattle. Some of ’em even trying to win.’

Before we parted, he said, ‘Lunch money in your pocket?’

I nodded.

He said, ‘Jack, somethin extra I want you to do. Occurred to me.’

At 2.45 p.m., I went over to where Wootton was reading his race book. He looked every inch the bank manager at his leisure.

‘Well, Cyril,’ I said, ‘I’ve been thinking about another one of your commissioners. Eddie Dollery. I hope your Cynthia doesn’t have a taste for rooting men wearing uniforms and crotchless underwear.’

I gave him the small white card. He took it with the lack of enthusiasm of a man being offered a business card by an encyclopedia salesman.

He turned it over and read: ‘Six nine.’ He looked at me for confirmation.

I nodded. ‘Six nine.’

Then I gave him Harry’s last-minute instruction. Cyril didn’t blink, put his race book into a side pocket of his jacket and walked off. Cynthia was talking to a tall man with the hair of the young Elvis Presley and the face of peatbog man. She saw Wootton coming, cocked her head and said something.

Wootton walked straight up to her, gave her the card, said two words.

Cynthia said two words back, looked at Elvis Peatbog, walked off briskly.

Dakota Dreaming opened at 50-1. The favourite, Shining Officer, was at 4-1. The second favourite, Steel Beach, was 6-1.

I approached a bookmaker called Mark Whitecross, a large man, sour, a reputation for staying well ahead of the punters. Harry saw Mark as a challenge.

‘I’ll have $12,000 to $2000 on number four,’ I said.

Number four was Steel Beach.

Whitecross looked at me without interest. It went into the computer.

When I had the ticket, I said, ‘I’ll have another twelve to two on number four.’

This time, Whitecross pushed out his cheek with his tongue.

I put the ticket in my top pocket and said, ‘Twenty-four thousand to four thousand. Please.’

No interest. I got it. Then I said, ‘Same again.’

Whitecross’s offsider said something in his ear. He leaned forward to look across at another bookie. I looked too. Cyril Wootton was there. The bookie had just shortened Steel Beach to 2-1.

‘It’s 12 to 6 now,’ said Whitecross.

Between us, Cyril and I pulled Steel Beach down to 9-4 before we stopped.

We also pushed Dakota out to 100-1, which was when Cynthia, Elvis Peatbog and the others went into action.

The 100s dropped to 66s. They shrank to 33s. Then the word came through from Randwick. Cam had struck. The price went to 20s, 14s, 7s. When Dakota and Nancy Farmer set out for the starting gate, the price was 9-4 and nobody was taking very much.

Wootton drifted over. ‘Mission accomplished,’ he said, your World War II RAF squadron leader back from holding off Jerry above the fields of Devon.

‘Part one,’ I said. ‘Part one.’

‘Tremendous interest in this race,’ the race caller boomed. ‘A big plunge on number ten, Dakota Dreaming. Very big plunge. Interstate too. Hammered in from 100-1 to 9-4. Not often you see that. Lots of excitement. A three-State plunge. Someone must think they know more than the form shows. If this horse gets up, there’ll be a lot of bookies stopping off at the teller machines on the way home to get some Sunday collection money. Surprise of the century some would say. Longer than that. Lazarus gets gold in the marathon. This horse hasn’t seen the track for two years and didn’t exactly go out in a blaze of glory then. Money too for Steel Beach in the early stages and it tightened for a while. Then the Dakota Dreaming avalanche hit the books.’

He went on like this until they were ready to go.

The interval between the time the light on the starting gate began flashing and the instant the horses lunged needed a calendar to measure.

Nancy Farmer missed the start. Badly. They were all on the way before Dakota Dreaming. That wasn’t in the plan.

Dakota was coming out of barrier 10, which was not good news at Caulfield. Harry’s instructions to Nancy were to get across onto the rails as quickly as possible.

‘You don’t need a Rhodes Scholar to tell you that,’ he’d said to Nancy the night before, after we’d watched videos of all the main contenders racing. And a few Caulfield Cups for good measure. ‘There’s a heap of good horses never won from a wide gate at Caulfield.’

We’d watched videos of two of Steel Beach’s races. ‘Not much class,’ Harry said, ‘but he’s the danger. One-pace stayer. Genuine stayer. If he gets the drop on you, out in front, settin the pace, in his stride, I don’t know if you can catch him. Even five kilos to the better. Might be too big an ask for this fella Dakota. Too big for this Shining Officer, that’s for sure.’

Six hundred metres from the start, Nancy found a gap and got onto the fence. Just in time. The long curve began after the first chute and to be trapped wide then meant covering many more metres than the rails horses.

The caller said, ‘At the eighteen hundred, Steel Beach’s drawing away from Sir Haliberd, who’s weakening, Shining Officer’s coming up on the rails.’ He rattled off a string of names before he got to Dakota Dreaming.

She was fourth or fifth last. This wasn’t good.

I got my glasses on the field and picked out Nancy’s black, white and green hoops. She had several horses outside her and a slowing one in front. I could see her looking around. Desperately.

At the 1200, the caller said, ‘I don’t know what the rest can do here. Bit of a procession. Steel Beach’s looking good, Sir Haliberd’s gone, Shining Officer’s hanging on, third is Celeste’s Bazaar, followed by Fear or Favour. Gap to Fashion Victim. Well back is the plunge horse, Dakota Dreaming. Deep sighs of relief from the books at this stage, I suggest.’

I had my glasses on Nancy. She was at least fifty metres behind Steel Beach, in a pocket and looking for a way out. A bad mistake had been made, I thought. I loved the Sisley drawings. Isabel had loved them. I’d hoped to give them to Claire one day. Now I’d lost them and $25,000.

I lowered the glasses and looked around. Harry was two rows back, a dozen metres along, anonymous-looking as usual. He had his glasses up.

The caller said, ‘Signs of life from the plunge horse here. Farmer’s taken her out wide at the turn. Don’t know about that. And it could be too late now. It’s eight hundred to go.’

Nancy had come off the rails, gone between two horses and moved Dakota wide, out towards the middle of the track. It was an act of desperation.

There were six horses between her and Steel Beach, strung out. The leader was fully extended, comfortable, ready to run all day. His jockey turned for a look. Nothing to alarm him.

Nancy was on Dakota’s neck. They went up to horses number seven and six in what seemed like a dozen strides.

Then it was five’s turn to be swept away. Next was Shining Officer. He appeared to lose heart, running out of pedigree, carrying five kilograms more weight than Dakota.

It was Celeste’s Bazaar’s turn. The horses ran stride for stride.

‘Two-fifty to go,’ shouted the caller. ‘Celeste’s Bazaar’s gone. It’s Steel Beach and Dakota Dreaming. Unbelievable. Come from near-last to challenge. They’re at the two hundred. What a race. The plunge horse. Bookie’s nightmare. Sayre looks back. Taken the whip to Steel Beach. Hundred to go. Can he hold?’

Nancy and Dakota. She seemed to be whispering in his laid-back right ear, all her weight on the horse’s neck. Gradually, the gap closed.

They were at Steel Beach’s rump.

Not enough track left for Dakota to win.

Nancy, only hands and heels, every fibre of her body urging Dakota to win.

The horse responded.

Dakota’s stride seemed to lengthen by half a metre. They surged, seemed to drag Steel Beach back.

Level.

Metres to go.

Dakota stretched his neck and put his head in front.

‘Dakota,’ shouted the caller, ‘Dakota! It’s Dakota Dreaming! Steel Beach second, Celeste’s Bazaar a miserable third. What a finish! What a disaster for the bookies!’

Nancy was standing in the stirrups, up above the horse. She raised her whip in triumph. That would cost her a fine. But she didn’t care. She’d come from ten goals down at three-quarter time. Life would never be the same again.

We were home.

I looked for Harry. He was unscrewing the top of the little flask of Glenmorangie. He took a swig. I caught his eye. He gave me a nod.

Down below, I could see Tony Ericson and Rex Tie dancing together. The boy, Tom, had his sister on his shoulders.

‘Dakota,’ said Linda from behind me. ‘That’s the word you said in your sleep.’

I turned. She was in her leather jacket, windblown, full of life. ‘Don’t tell Harry Strang I talk in my sleep,’ I said. ‘Get here in time?’

‘Only just. But I didn’t know what I was looking for.’

‘As long as you found me,’ I said. ‘That’s the important thing.’

She leaned across and kissed me on the mouth. ‘Yes. That’s the important thing.’

We didn’t stay for the rest of the day’s racing. On the way back, I put the radio on. Fitzroy was leading Collingwood by two goals with eight minutes to go.

‘Got anything on it?’ Harry said.

I said, ‘Just my whole life.’

‘That’s too much,’ Harry said. ‘It’s only a game. Not like the horses. You and the lady free for dinner? Cam’ll show up, gets out of Sydney alive.’