Dead Point

16

At home, I half-filled the bath, drowsed in it for a long time with a glass of single malt, the end of a bottle given to me by Lyall, bought duty-free in some airport servicing a trouble spot. Or Santa bloody Barbara. It was peaceful in the big room, a bedroom when I bought the building. Once upon a time, a fire had sometimes been lit in the brick hearth on a cold Sunday afternoon, one person had read in the bath, the other had sat in the armchair.

I thought more about Robert Colburne. The judge was paying to find out what had really happened to him if he hadn’t accidentally overdosed. He said he was acting on behalf of someone who knew Robbie, lost touch with him for a long time, then made contact again in Melbourne.

I didn’t like the feel of that story, the distance it placed between Mr Justice Loder and Robbie.

Musing in the claw-footed bath, a bath big enough for two, if they arranged themselves.

I dismissed that memory, rose and donned un-ironed but clean garments and began the preparation of a modest meal.

I drank some red wine, moved roughly chopped onion around for a while, kept away from the hot spot that the famous and expensive French frying pan wasn’t supposed to have. The French are the finest conpeople in the world. I added garlic and mushrooms, a tin of tomatoes.

The video. Delivered by hand by men in an expensive car. Undercover cops? I switched off the gas, took my glass to the sitting room and plugged in the cassette, went to the couch and used the remote. The video flickered briefly, began.

A young man got out of a cab. This would be Robbie Colburne. He was tall and slim and, from on high and zooming in and out on him, the camera caught a certain athletic insouciance: chin up, arms moving freely, first two fingers extended pistol-like. It was night but made day by spotlights recessed into the building on his left. Light gleamed on his cheekbones, on his straight black hair combed back. He was handsome, all in black, a jacket worn over a tee-shirt.

The camera followed him to where he disappeared beneath a cantilevered porch bearing the name of the building, incised in polished concrete: CATHEXIS.

Daylight this time, someone sitting at a table on the pavement from across a busy street, traffic blocking vision for seconds at a time. Then a new camera angle, nothing obscuring the man now but the camera unsteady. He had a small glass on a saucer, the shortest of short blacks, drank a teaspoonful, looked around, newspaper in his hand, a half-amused look. He was dark, balding, a fleshy intimidating face.

Early evening, the young man again, Robbie, seen in profile, side-on, waiting to cross a busy street, finding a break in the traffic, walking diagonally, the confident walk.

Night again. A long shot in bad conditions, rain, a car window coming down, the camera zooming in, the young man behind the wheel, in a dinner suit now, white shirt, black bow tie, saying a few words to someone outside the vehicle.

End of moving pictures.

I’d asked Warren Bowman for a photograph of Robbie.

I’d expected a still, a mortuary picture. Instead, he sent me a collection of surveillance video clips showing Robbie under expensive observation, moving, in the street. Good of him but why? I could ask Detective Sergeant Bowman. But he would probably say that he was just being helpful.

And why did a casual barman like Robbie deserve this kind of photographic attention? Was it because he wasn’t just a barman, as my anonymous caller had suggested?

Warren Bowman said senior drug squad officers were on the scene quickly after the uniformed cops reported finding Robbie’s body.

Expensive surveillance, two cameras on one occasion. That only happened to persons of great interest. Unless Robbie was an accidental, someone filmed in the surveillance of someone else. But, in that case, he would be someone close to the target; there was no other way he would be caught on camera so many times.

Robbie caught up in the surveillance of someone else. Was that it? The fleshy man?

Back to cooking. Time to add the tuna, get the rice going.

I was eating in front of the television when the phone rang. Cam.

‘Little trip in the morning,’ he said. ‘Won’t take long.’

Peter Temple

Dead Point (Jack Irish Thriller 3)

‘I got talkin to the bloke at the hotel next door,’ Cam said. He wound down his window, flicked his cigarette end out, raised the window. We were in the V-8, passing the Fawkner Crematorium on the Hume, a sunny morning, petrol tanker ahead, Kenworth behind, stream of heavy metal coming the other way.

‘What’s the connection?’

‘Hotel’s part-owner of the carpark. Guest parkin. Carpark employs three blokes on eight-hour shifts, hotel provides security. In theory. This fella, he worked there eighteen months.’

‘The name again?’

‘Rick Chaffee. Two complaints about extra Ks appearin on the clock while he was there. One bloke from Adelaide had a logbook, he reckoned someone took his Discovery for a 200K spin.’

Cam edged out for a look, came back in. He was wearing Western District casual attire today, navyblue brushed-cotton shirt, heavy moleskin trousers, short riding boots. ‘On the day, this Chaffee, his story is he was on the phone, he thought he recognised the driver of the Land Cruiser, let him out without checkin ID. Honest mistake.’

‘They buy that?’

Cam shrugged. ‘What can you prove? Sacked him. Cops run the tape over him, the hotel bloke says. No form to speak of, some kid stuff in WA, he’s a WA boy, Mangoup, Banjoup, one of those up towns, they got hundreds. Plus he’s got an assault when he was a bouncer in King Street.’

He was steering with his fingertips, head back, index fingers tapping to the music, soft Harry Connick. ‘Worth a yarn, I reckon.’

‘If the bloke’s in this,’ I said, ‘it’ll take more than a yarn.’

Cam’s dark eyes lay on me for a moment.

I went back to reading the Age. The story at the bottom of page one was headlined: Call for Cannon Ridge tender probe.

It opened: The State Government was last night urged to hold an inquiry into the tendering process that awarded a 100-year lease on the Cannon Ridge snowfield and a mini-casino licence to a company associated with Melbourne’s millionaire Cundall family.

The company, Anaxan Holdings, has a glittering list of shareholders, including some of Australia’s Top 100 richest. A spokesman for shortlisted rival bidder WRG Resorts told a press conference yesterday that WRG has evidence that Anaxan knew details of all tenders before the vital second round of bidding.

The Minister for Development, Tony DiAmato, said WRG Resorts had not approached him. ‘I have no idea what they’re talking about. The previous government awarded this tender. We fought the whole idea of a private snowfield and another casino, everyone knows that. But it’s done, it’s history.’

Cam said, ‘I read that stuff you sent me. The Saint’s big with your crim tatt artist.’

I folded the paper. ‘That’s what my bloke said. Use half the phone book.’

I’d sent him the yellow A4 envelope left for me at Meaker’s, sent it by express courier, fat and silent Mr Cripps behind the wheel of his burnished 1976 Holden.

‘It’s down here,’ said Cam.

We turned right off the Hume, drove through a light industrial area, bricks, concrete products, pipes, turned left and went a long way, to the end of an unpaved road. Ahead, a sign on a wavy corrugated-iron fence was falling over. It said, no punctuation, Denver Garden amp; Building Supplies Plants Sand Soil Gravel Pavers Sleepers. The gate was half-open, drawn back until its sagging tip dug into the ground.

Cam nosed around it, parked in front of a long cement-sheet building, flat-roofed, meagre shelter over the door, one small window. Beside the door, three bags of cement had solidified, fused. We got out.

To the left of the gate was what remained of the Plants division of the business: a copse of birch trees in black plastic root bags, leaning inward, touching, dead; a conifer fallen over but indomitable, roots broken through the seams of the plastic bag and penetrating the packed soil; a row of concrete pots growing couch grass in abundance; some sad roses clinging to life, sparse leaves spotted with yellow.

The sound of a machine came from beyond the building. We walked around, passed an old pale-blue Valiant, buffed up, saw an expanse of dark, wet, rutted ground, big concrete pens holding gravel and sand, mulch, compost, other dark substances, everything untidy, spilling out of the enclosures, crushed into the ground.

The machine was a mid-sized lifter and it was moving rocks from one part of the yard to another, television-sized rocks for adding character to small, flat blocks in the outer suburbs.

We walked towards it and the driver saw us coming, the light glinted on his dark glasses as he looked our way, kept on going to his new pile, dumped the load with a crash, reversed the machine, gunned it back to the mother lode, took the bucket down, stuck it in with a ghastly screech, lifted, rocks falling out, swung around, went back, lifted the bucket to dump.

We were close, in the noise. The man turned his head towards us. Cam raised a hand, palm outward.

Bucket poised, the man cut the motor. He was big, no neck or chin to speak of, peaked cap too small for his long hair, tiny nose, arms like sewer pipes, belly hanging over a wide leather belt.

‘Yah?’

‘Rick Chaffee,’ said Cam. It wasn’t a question.

‘Want somethin?’ The man’s voice was reedy, not congruous with the body.

‘Few words about the parking garage.’

‘What?’

‘Curtin parking garage. You worked there.’

‘Jacks?’

‘No.’

‘I’m workin here,’ the man said. ‘Busy.’

‘Be a good idea to talk to us,’ Cam said.

‘Yah. Why’s that?’

‘You could be in trouble.’

Chaffee shook his head. ‘Not cops?’

‘No.’

He swivelled in his seat, stood up on the platform of the machine, towered over us, our heads at his knee-level. ‘What’s your name?’ he said to Cam.

‘Bruce,’ said Cam.

Chaffee drew on his sinuses, not an engaging sound, and spat to Cam’s right.

‘Bruce’s not a coon name,’ Chaffee said. ‘You look like you got a bit of coon in you.’

Cam turned his head to me, eyes full of resignation. ‘Far as I’m concerned,’ he said quietly, ‘you stayed in the car.’

‘We should leave,’ I said, more than uneasy, much, much more. ‘There are other ways.’

‘Won’t take long,’ Cam said. ‘Since we’re here.’

He turned back to Chaffee. ‘All I want to do is ask you about the Curtin carpark.’ Pause. ‘Mr Chaffee.’

Chaffee put a hand into an armpit, scratched. ‘Busy, boong, fuck off.’

Cam looked down, shook his head, coiled, sprang, hooked his right arm around Chaffee’s knees, pulled the big man out of the machine with one twisting movement, brought him over his head and dumped him.

Chaffee made a sound like a kicked dog as he hit the wet ground. He rolled over, balled himself, he was no stranger to being kicked, would try to grab the foot, the leg.

Cam stood back. ‘Get up, Ricko,’ he said, ordinary tone. ‘I’m in a good mood.’

Chaffee got up, wary of a surprise, but when he was on his feet, I could see he liked this turn of events. ‘Hey,’ he said, taking off the dark glasses, throwing them to one side, his eyes flicking to me. ‘Hey, no reason to fucken do that, really fucken stupid. Fucken boong stupid.’

Cam took a step closer, inside the range of the big arms, his hands at shoulder height, loose fists. He was as tall as Chaffee but 20 kilograms lighter. Chaffee put his head to one side.

‘Cocky fucken boong,’ he said, then grabbed at Cam’s shirtfront, lunging, forehead dropped for the butt.

Cam went forward, into the lunge, his right hand travelled upward no more than 10 centimetres, a corkscrewing fist that made contact with Chaffee’s nose, brought the man’s head up, opened his eyes wide with pain, his arms falling to his sides, cap falling off.

Cam took another pace, in close, hit him again, the same short, twisting punch, this time high in Chaffee’s chest, in the left collarbone. I thought I heard it break.

Chaffee went down, on one knee, both hands at his nose, blood running through his fingers. Cam put his hand in the man’s hair, pulled him forward, dragged him across the muddy, rutted ground, Chaffee moaning, not resisting.

‘Open the car door, Jack,’ said Cam, nothing different about his voice. ‘Wind the window down. Take the keys out.’

I opened the driver’s door of the Valiant, did as I was told. Cam pulled Chaffee up to the open door, dropped his head on the seat, got behind him, kicked him in the backside with his right boot.

‘Get in, Mr Chaffee,’ he said.

Chaffee crawled in, using the steering wheel to drag himself. Cam helped, gripped the man’s wide leather belt in both hands, pushed him in, slammed the door, a solid thunk.

Feeling his knuckles, flexing his fingers like a surgeon about to operate, Cam went over to the lifter, swung himself up, started the motor, gunned it, reversed, swung the machine savagely, came up to the Valiant.

‘Ricko,’ he shouted.

Chaffee was holding his chest now, his mouth open, blood in it, running over his lower lip. He looked at Cam, fear, wonder, in his eyes.

‘Who’d you lend the Cruiser to that day, the one they sacked you for?’

‘Dunno what you…’ Chaffee coughed blood.

‘You know, bubba,’ Cam said. ‘Ran your own carhire business at the Curtin. Tell me now. Quick.’

‘Know fuck-all about-’

‘Your mates nearly killed a woman that day, know that, Ricardo?’

‘Nah, don’t-’

Cam raised the hopper.

I stood back.

He dumped the full load of stones, big landscaping stones, on the Valiant.

Stones bounced on the roof, one went through the windscreen, stones fell off the sides, rolled onto the bonnet, the boot.

The roof collapsed, the right-hand door pillar buckled, the back doors popped open.

Cam reversed the machine, swinging around, screamed across to a pit of yellow paving sand, dropped the hopper, drove it into the sand, filled it, sand spilling, raised the hopper, reversed and swung, came back.

A last grey volcanic rock toppled off the Valiant roof, rolled down the crazed, opaque, holed windscreen, over the stoved-in bonnet, fell into a puddle.

In the car, Chaffee was making sobbing, wheezing noises, noises of terror. The roof was pressing on his head and he was trying to open his door, jammed by the impact.

‘Jesus, Ricky,’ said Cam. ‘You come through that alive. You’re tough, you WA boys.’

He pulled the lever, dropped most of a cubic metre of sand on the Valiant. The springs sagged, sand poured into the car through the hole in the windscreen, filled the depressions, slithered to the ground.

The Valiant was disappearing under rocks and sand.

Chaffee screamed.

‘There’s more comin, Ricko,’ said Cam. ‘Then I’m givin you the gravel shower.’ He waited. ‘The Cruiser. Who’d you lend it to? Last time I’m askin you, fat boy.’

‘Artie, Artie, I only know Artie.’ Chaffee’s voice was weak, he could barely speak.

Cam revved the engine, calmed it.

‘More, bubba,’ he said, ‘more.’

‘God’smyfuckenwitness, Artie’s all… I’m dyin…’

‘Damn straight,’ said Cam. He emptied the rest of the sand onto the car, switched off, climbed down, dusted his moleskins, hands brushing. He went over to the wrecked Valiant, tested the door handle, gripped the door pillar in his right hand, and jerked.

The door came open. Cam reached in with both hands and pulled Chaffee out, jerked him out, let him fall into the mud. Paving sand was stuck to the man’s blood, blood and sand all over his big chest, it was in his long hair, and he had a mask of yellow sand on his face, new black blood from his nose eroding it, creating thin furrows of blood.

‘Dyin,’ said Chaffee. ‘Help me.’

‘You’ll be fine,’ said Cam. ‘WA boy like you, Buggerup, the old home town, take more than a few rocks, bit of sand. What’s that word you called me? I forget. Want to say that again? That word?’

Chaffee put his head back, rolled his face away, into the mud, the white of an eye showing. ‘Mate,’ he said. ‘Sorry, mate.’

‘Well, that’s okay then,’ said Cam. ‘Sorry is such a good word. Pity more people don’t use it. Tell me some more about Artie.’

Chaffee groaned.

On the Hume, cruising, listening to Harry Connick again, I said, ‘A really good trip. A short bloke called Artie. Chaffee’s probably going to die back there and all we got was a short bloke called Artie.’

Cam was tapping his fingertips. ‘Only hit him twice, can’t die of that. Short Artie’s good too.’

‘How’s that?’

‘How many short Arties can there be? Short Arties with a Saint.’

Peter Temple

Dead Point (Jack Irish Thriller 3)

The answering machine was speaking to a caller as I opened the door of my office. I took the two steps and picked up the phone.

‘Ignore those words. Jack Irish.’

‘Jack, Gus.’

Augustine, Charlie Taub’s granddaughter. Alarm, a stab.

‘Charlie?’

‘What?’

‘He’s alright?’

She read my anxiety, laughed her sexy laugh. My shoulders and my chest untightened.

‘Never better. He said to tell you he’s staying another week. He’s playing bowls every day, he’s playing in a tournament next week. He said, and I quote, “Tell Jack, hot’s good for one thing.”’

I sighed.

‘Means something, does it, the message?’

‘Yes. Exactly as I feared. Will you marry me? Take me to Canberra with you?’

Charlie’s granddaughter was a fighter for the oppressed workers and, said the gossip, being courted for a safe federal Labor seat. That or in due course Australia’s highest union office.

‘I’m not going to Canberra,’ she said. ‘You’ve been reading that idiot in the Age. Anyway, I don’t think harem life would suit you.’

‘The zenana. We’d sit around, the boys, playing cards, crocheting, waiting for you to come home and pick one of us.’

‘I may need to give this Canberra business more thought,’ she said. ‘Stay close to the phone.’

It was just after noon. Much of the day ahead, much already accomplished: a trip down the bright golden Hume, the witnessing of a man having his nose broken, his collarbone fractured, tonnes of rock dropped on his prized car, followed by a coating of paving sand, enough sand to provide the base for a nice barbecue area.

Moving on. I settled down at my aged Mac and attended to the affairs of my bustling legal practice, to wit, a letter to Stan’s father’s tenant, Andreas Krysis, asking him to desist from storing things in Morris’s garage, which was not part of his lease.

Hunger struck. I went around the corner and bought a salad pita, came back and ate while reading the sports section of the Age. The daily bulletin on all football clubs said that, notwithstanding the team’s atrocious performance against West Coast, the St Kilda club president was standing firm behind the coach. ‘He has our full confidence. We have always said that we are with him for the long haul.’

In football-speak, these sentiments translated as: Full confidence — most committee members want to sack the bastard. The long haul — until the next game. Saturday at Docklands Stadium was Waterloo for the coach.

I rang Drew. He was in court. I rang my sister.

‘So,’ Rosa said, ‘to what?’

‘To what what?’

‘Do I owe this honour?’

‘I’ve been away a bit. I went to see Claire.’

‘I know that. I talk to her every second day. You may recall that I’m her aunt.’

It was hard for me to grasp that people saw themselves as aunts or uncles. I had neither, had never felt a vacuum in my life.

‘Anyway,’ she said, ‘you’ve been back for over a week.’ An edge to her voice, not anger, not the usual exasperation. Worse. Knowingness.

‘Lunch,’ I said. ‘It’s been a while. Your choice of venue after the cruel things you said about mine last time.’

‘Lunch.’ She managed to roll the word around in her mouth, endow it with sinister meaning.

‘What about The Green Hill?’ I said. ‘Very fashionable, I’m told. They know me there at the highest levels, the boss shouted me a tankard of Leprechaun ale the other day, Leprechaun, some name like that, very ethnic.’

Silence.

‘Andrew Greer stood me up,’ she said finally.

The masticating on lunch now meant something.

A moment of calculation.

‘Drew? What, a legal matter?’

‘No. A lunch.’

‘I didn’t know you knew Drew. In a lunching sense.’

Sparring. A spar.

‘I don’t. I thought I was going to have the opportunity.’

‘To do what?’

‘Get to know him in a lunching sense.’

‘Well, he’s a busy man, things come up, that’s the law.’

‘Lawyers don’t work on Saturdays.’

‘The lawyers you know. Lawyers in name only. Accountants in drag. Tax avoidance, mergers and acquisitions. Drew is a criminal lawyer. They never stop, never sleep. Never eat, some of them.’

She knew. She could not know, but she knew. Some psychic vibration had reached her, bounced off a star, found her.

‘I don’t know what this is about,’ I said. ‘What time are we on? What time is it on your side of the river?’

Silence.

‘Well, I rang you, so whose prerogative is it to end the conversation? Tricky point of etiquette, not so?’

‘Sometimes I hate you,’ she said and put the phone down.

On the other hand, she could know if Drew had told her.

I sat back in my captain’s chair and my shoulders sagged.

Why had I been so stupid as to speak my mind to Drew? What did it matter if he became entangled with Rosa? What was one more clear-felled forest, one more toxic waste dump, one more nuclear test site in my immediate vicinity?

I sat in this mood of despond for a while and then, for want of something to do, I dialled Telstra inquiries. Since the privatised utility wanted to encourage people to use this free service, it took six minutes to get the number of Baine’s Newsagency in Walkley.

‘Baine’s,’ said Terry Baine.

‘Terry, Jack Irish, I talked to you-’

‘Mate, telepathy, mate, on the verge of ringin ya,’ he said. ‘Got the name of that girl, Sim come in this mornin.’

‘How’d the barra go?’

‘Yeah, well, big as great whites ya believe the bastard. Sandra Tollman, that’s the name.’ He spelled it. ‘Sim says she married a Forestry bloke. Says he heard that. Christ knows where he’d hear that.’

I said my thanks.

‘Got your number, mate. You’re on the record. Comin down for the vroom-vroom next year, look you up.’

Adult life was all desire and expectation. Until it was too late. I went home to change for Mrs Purbrick’s library-warming.

Peter Temple

Dead Point (Jack Irish Thriller 3)

David, Mrs Purbrick’s personal assistant, opened the huge black front door. His smile seemed genuine.

‘Jack,’ he said, extending his beringed right hand, the hand with the green stones, ‘we’re delighted you could come.’ He dropped his voice. ‘I must say I found the muscle you brought with you last time rather intimidating.’

‘Just her manner of speech,’ I said. ‘She works with film people most of the time. I gather they only respond to a rough touch.’

He nodded, serious. ‘I’ve heard that too. They like the firm smack of something or other.’

‘The smack and the other, probably.’

David laughed. ‘This way. Everyone’s in the library telling madame how clever she is.’

We went through the gallery-like hall, through the open double doors into the wide passage, eight-paned skylights high above, parquetry and Persian rugs beneath our feet.

Music was coming from somewhere. Gershwin. We were close to the library door before the voices within became audible.

‘Please,’ said David, waving me in.

There were at least two dozen people in the room, more women than men, standing close together, laughter and teeth flashing. For a moment, I looked, wished Charlie were there to see his elegant bookcases filled with books, glowing in the lamplight, the people in the room made handsomer, better somehow, by being in the presence of his craftsmanship.

‘Jack, Jack. Darling, so distinguished.’

Mrs Purbrick, on heels so high her toes had to bend at near-right angles to touch the ground, in business gear again, a dark suit, jacket worn over an open-necked white shirt unbuttoned for a considerable distance, great mounds beneath, ceremonial mounds. And, in keeping with the after-work nature of the occasion, severe horn-rimmed glasses. She took me by the lapels and brushed me on both cheeks with her inflated lips, the kiss of balloons, turned to face the room.

‘Everyone, everyone, meet Jack Irish, who helped Mr Taub build this magnificent library.’

I cringed. There was a polite round of applause. Then I was taken around the room and introduced to people, youngish people, summer-in-Portsea, winter-in-Noosa, week-in-Aspen people. Over someone’s shoulder, I recognised the face of Xavier Doyle, the boyish charmer from The Green Hill. He smiled, threaded his way over, patted me on both arms, a form of embrace.

‘And here you’ve bin tellin me you’re a legal fella, Jack,’ he said. ‘Why didn’t ya just come right out and say you’re an honest workin man?’

‘Shyness,’ I said.

‘You know each other,’ said Mrs Purbrick, touching Doyle’s cheek. ‘How lovely. Two of my favourite men.’

Doyle shook his head at her. ‘Now, I won’t share you with him, Carla,’ he said. ‘That’s a warnin.’

To me, he said, ‘This lovely lady is one of my investors, my angels, a person of faith in The Green Hill and its future.’

‘A commodity required in abundant measure.’ A tall man in his early sixties, solid, with a full head of wavy grey hair, was at Doyle’s side, a head taller. He put out a hand to me. ‘Mike Cundall. Congratulations, beautiful piece of work.’

‘Thank you, on behalf of Charlie Taub,’ I said. ‘I’m the helper. Just here as the front man. Charlie’s in WA. Also he hasn’t worn a suit since his wedding.’

Cundall nodded. He had grey eyes, clever eyes, appraising, in a lined, stoic face. He’d been drinking for a while. ‘Carla tells me you’re also a lawyer,’ he said.

‘In a small way.’

‘My father was a lawyer who liked woodwork. He made garden things. Benches that fell over. He’d come home from Collins Street, out of his suit and into overalls, straight to the workshop and stay there until dinner.’ He looked around, moistened his lips. ‘Which he’d devote to shitting on me.’

A bow-tied waiter with a tray of champagne flutes appeared. We armed ourselves.

‘Well,’ said Cundall, ‘this is probably a good moment.’ He coughed and raised his glass above his head. People stopped talking.

‘Carla’s invited us around,’ he said, ‘to admire her new library. I must say I’m quite stunned by its elegance, stunned and jealous. And we have with us one of the builders of this thing of beauty, Jack Irish. I’d like to propose a toast: to Carla and her library, may it give her much pleasure.’

He raised his glass and everyone followed. A happy murmur.

‘Thank you, Mike darling, thank you,’ said Mrs Purbrick, waving her glass at the room, ‘and thank you all for coming, you busy people, my dear friends.’

Xavier Doyle moved off, winding his way towards two blonde women, tanned, golf and tennis tans. They broke off their conversation, turned to him, faces opening.

‘A mind like Paul Getty behind all that Irish boyo crap,’ said Mike Cundall. There was no admiration in his tone.

‘Nice place, The Green Hill,’ I said. ‘On the basis of one visit.’

Cundall was lighting a cigarette with a throwaway lighter. ‘Do you smoke?’ he asked. ‘Forget your manners, nobody smokes any more.’

I shook my head.

‘Yes. The Green Hill.’ He blew smoke out of his nostrils. ‘Money shredder, the Amazon dot com of pubs. Thousands of customers, own vineyard, Christ knows what else, sinks ever deeper into the red.’

‘You’re an investor?’

‘Don’t insult my intelligence. My wife’s thrown money at The Green Hill. Her own money too. Was her money, I should say. It belongs to the ages now.’

The waiter was back. He had a crystal ashtray on his salver.

‘I’ll put this here, sir,’ he said, drawing a thin-legged table closer to us and placing the ashtray. Then he offered more champagne.

‘Nice drop,’ I said.

‘Roederer, sir. The Kristal.’

We lightened his tray. Another bow-tied man arrived with a silver tray of hamburgers, on sticks, exquisite miniatures, each the size of a small stack of twenty-cent coins, to be eaten at a bite.

Cundall twisted his cigarette in the ashtray. ‘Smoked salmon’s not good enough any more,’ he said, ‘too common.’ He put one hamburger in his mouth, took a second. When he’d finished both, his mouth turned down. ‘Instant indigestion these days.’

‘How’s Cannon Ridge going?’ I said.

‘That’s my son,’ said Cundall. ‘My son and assorted rich boys. Sydney rich boys. The fucking dot com brigade. New economy.’ He put down most of the champagne in a swig, held up his glass like an Olympic torch. ‘Still, Cannon Ridge’s old economy. Real asset, real business, combines leisure and gambling. Boys got a fantastic bargain.’

The waiter arrived. Cundall finished his glass, took another. ‘Get me a whisky, will you?’ he said to the youth. ‘Something drinkable. With Evian. Just a bit.’ He looked at me. ‘Whisky, Jack?’

‘That would be nice.’

‘Decent shots,’ said Cundall, blinking.

‘Sir.’

‘Good lad.’

‘I see there’s some unhappiness about the handling of the tenders,’ I said.

‘Politics of business,’ said Cundall, slurring slightly. ‘WRG wants to build a whole fucking town on the Gippsland Lakes. Get the new government in some shit over Cannon, good chance they won’t get knocked back on that.’

He eyed me. ‘Good practice, anyhow,’ he said. ‘Always takes a while to sort out a new lot, find out who to pay, who to play.’

‘Jack, darling, you haven’t met Ros Cundall.’ Mrs Purbrick was holding the arm of a tall, dark-haired woman, once beautiful, now merely good-looking.

We shook hands.

‘I’m very taken with this room,’ said Ros Cundall. ‘I’ve always wanted a library. Do you think your Mr Taub would build one for me?’

‘At least you can be sure it’ll hold its value,’ said Mike Cundall. ‘Unlike that cocaine palace.’

Ros Cundall didn’t look at her husband, made a wry face. ‘Mike built a Las Vegas wing onto our house,’ she said. ‘All it lacks is the bedrooms for the harlots.’

‘I thought you could go on using the house for that,’ said Mike Cundall.

Mrs Purbrick laughed, an unconvincing trill. ‘Oh, you two,’ she said, ‘so wicked.’ She was watching David talking to one of the waiters.

Our whiskies arrived. We made small talk. Then, all at once, everyone was leaving, much brushing of lips on cheeks. Ros Cundall asked me for a card. So did two other people. Charlie might be building libraries full-time in future.

Near the front door, Xavier Doyle came up behind me.

‘Jack,’ he said. ‘Mind I see you down the pub now.’

‘Count on it.’

‘That Robbie, you find out anythin more about the lad?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘He’s a mystery.’