Dead Point (14 page)

‘Not clever,’ said Cam.

‘No, well, the whole thing’s not clever. This car blocks Sandy near The Strand, the other one’s behind him, his door’s locked, the animal smashes the window with a sledgehammer, one of those little ones, y’know?’

We waited.

‘Sandy’s got the money in this bag, it’s a kid’s schoolbag. He just offers it to the bloke. No, they pull him out…’

She sniffed, found a tissue, wiped her nose. ‘Anyway, the bastards bashed him.’

‘How bad?’ said Harry.

Jean looked at the table. ‘This woman from across the road hadn’t come out, she’s a nurse, he’d a died there. Rib punctured his lung, jaw broken, nose broken.’

She looked at us. ‘He was offerin them the bag.’

We sat in silence.

‘Cops say what?’ Harry asked.

Jean looked at the table again, shrugged. ‘Nothin. Lookin for them.’

More silence.

‘You can say anythin,’ Harry said.

She sighed. ‘Dave’s on the piss before lunch, smokin again. Eight years off em, back to sixty a day. Doesn’t sleep. I’m scared. We’ve had it now, goin down the tubes here for three, four years. More. Bloody owners. First they love the trainer, then the trainer’s ratshit, horse’s better than the trainer…’

‘What about the horse?’ said Cam.

‘Took him off us. The next day. The one bastard rings up, says they’ve decided they want him with a more experienced trainer. Jesus, I could’ve…’

She caught herself, put a hand on top of Harry’s, rubbed it. ‘Last luck we had was with you. Thought that was the start of big things.’

Harry put a hand on hers, briefly, a hand sandwich.

Jean got up, galvanised, brisk. ‘Shit, you don’t want to hear this. More tea? I can make fresh.’

We shook our heads.

She made the gesture of helplessness. ‘Well, that’s all.’

Silence. The labrador came into view in the orchard, stately walk, tree to tree, the honorary colonel inspecting the regiment. One tree offended him and he peed on it.

Harry looked at his Piaget, a slim instrument that cost as much as a good used car, put his palms together. ‘Bit of urgency creepin in,’ he said, getting up.

We all stood up.

I said, ‘See you outside in a minute.’

They left and I turned to Jean.

‘The blokes Sandy recruited. Locals?’

‘From the pub in town. The Railway.’

‘Jean,’ I said, ‘I need the names and addresses of everyone – owners, owners’ relatives, Sandy’s blokes, everyone this thing touched, don’t leave anyone out. Have you got a fax?’

She nodded. I gave her my card.

‘Tomorrow?’

‘Today,’ she said. ‘Tonight.’

We went outside. Jean hugged Harry, kissed him on the cheek, shook hands with us, some moisture in her eyes.

On the way back to the city, on the tollway, after the brief rolling bumps of the cattle grid, the trip up the hard, lined track, on the made road, the freeway, Harry said, head back on the leather rest, ‘This would not be a personal problem, am I right?’

‘Could be personal,’ Cam said. ‘Could be local, could be global.’

‘Put on Willy,’ said Harry. ‘Haven’t had any Willy for a while.’

‘This Sandy,’ I said. ‘He put the team together. In a pub.’

‘Oh, sweet Jesus,’ said Cam.

Long before they dropped me it was night, Friday night, dripping.

I drove the Youth Club to the Prince after the game, very little said on the way. Very little needed to be said. A supporter near us had screamed most of it at the coach at three-quarter time, two sentences:

Lookitthescoreboardyafuckenmongrel. Seewhatya fuckendonetous
.

Us. Done to us. The coach wasn’t one of us. Coaches were transients and carpetbaggers. And only a few players in any era in any club ever became one of
us
. The supporters were us. They were the investors. Gave the club their hearts, dreams, they expected a return. Every game was an annual general meeting.

‘That Docklands stadium,’ said Eric Tanner. ‘That’s not a proper footy ground.’

‘Like playin in a circus tent,’ said Wilbur. ‘It’s not right.’

I prepared to reverse park. It was going to be tight.

‘Loadin zone,’ said Wilbur Ong. ‘No can do.’

‘No can do?’ said Eric Tanner. ‘No can do? It’s bloody Satdee, no bloody loadin goin on.’

‘Not the point,’ said Wilbur, calmly. ‘Loadin zone.’

I went in, put a back wheel on the pavement. I didn’t care. ‘Well,’ said Wilbur. ‘A lawyer, Jack, expect to find a bit of respect for the law in a lawyer.’

‘Last place you’d find it,’ I said. ‘Look elsewhere. It’s a loading zone. Am I unloading you lot on the Prince or not?’

Wilbur sniffed, faith in the law’s majesty undiminished. We departed the vehicle, burst into the Prince in a low-key way.

It was a low-technology evening. In residence, six silent people and a dog. The cybermeisters were hanging out elsewhere this evening, perhaps at The Green Hill in South Melbourne, sipping a Green Hill pinot noir, flipping through the Green Hill cookbook.

Stan came over, very much the happy hangman today. ‘My,’ he said, ‘you boys really know how to pick a team. Yes, I take my hat off to you. These Sainters, they could be the Roys come back in another jumper…’

‘This place still serve beer?’ said Eric Tanner. ‘Mind you, there’s some says you haven’t bin able to get a beer here since Morrie retired. Not what you’d normally call a beer.’

‘Touchy today. Beer comin up.’

When we had our beers in front of us, had a sip, wiped off our moustaches, Norm O’Neill, next to me, said quietly, not a register I knew he commanded, ‘Well, made up me mind, Jack.’ He looked to his left, at the others. ‘Speakin for me, that’s all.’

I didn’t say anything. There wasn’t any defence to mount for the Saints. This was execution day.

‘Yes,’ said Norm. ‘Reckon I’m stickin with the team. Can’t give up on a side that’s so bad. Be inhuman, like leavin a hurt dog in the street.’

Wilbur nodded. ‘The boys’ll come good,’ he said. ‘Sack the coach, that’ll be a start.’

‘Things wouldn’t a bin so bad today,’ said Eric, ‘if that bloody ump hadn’t found a free for the bastards every time they get a hard look.’

I looked into my beer. It had happened. The graft had taken. The donor hearts hadn’t rejected the recipient.

‘Hero, that Harvey,’ I said.

‘And Burkie,’ said Norm.

‘What about that Thompson boy?’ said Eric. ‘Kid’s all heart.’

And so it went. The years fell away: we might have been talking about Fitzroy. I signalled for another round. Stan took his time. When he arrived with the first two, he said, ‘Gets worse from here too, don’t it. Next week, your girls play the mighty Roys.’

Norm put a hand under his cardigan and produced a fixture card, studied it through his thick, smudged lenses. ‘Says here,’ he said, ‘next week St Kilda plays Brisbane.’

‘After Brisbane, there’s another word,’ said Stan. ‘Lions. L-I-O-N-S. Brisbane Lions.’

Norm folded the card and put it away. ‘Don’t say that on my card. And it never bloody will. Only Lions left are right here.’ He waved around the room at the photographs. ‘And you, Stanley, you’re a disgrace to the memory of these great men.’

He looked at me, looked at Eric and Wilbur. ‘Am I right? Am I right?’

‘You’re right,’ said Wilbur.

‘Damn right,’ said Eric.

‘Beyond right,’ I said.

A chastened Stan brought the other beers and slunk off. We resumed our discussion of the virtues of individual Saints. Then I drove home and set about making Saturday night bearable. Ten minutes into this, the phone rang. Wootton.

‘Just checking the out-stations,’ he said, full of gin, jovial Saturday-evening Wootton, back from his golf club, stuffed with nuts and little sandwiches and bonhomie. ‘Anything to report, old sausage?’

‘The out-stations? I think you’ve got a wrong number. Wrong century too.’

‘If you have,’ he said, ‘the client will be at the same spot on the dial tomorrow morning, 9.30 a.m. Precisely.’

The judge was in a zippered white cotton garment that slotted in somewhere between a NASA spacesuit and Colonel Gaddafi’s overalls. He ordered orange juice and a toasted wholewheat muffin with honey.

‘Breakfast,’ he said. ‘I’m on my way to tennis. You don’t want to eat too much before tennis.’

‘Fatal,’ I said.

We were back at the window table at Zanouff’s in Kensington, the less-hungover weekend breakfast crowd beginning to straggle in.

The juice arrived. Colin Loder drank half the glass at a swig.

‘The dead man’s name is Marco Lucia,’ I said.

‘I beg your pardon?’

It was too early for this kind of rubbish, even from a judge. I said, ‘You didn’t hear me?’

He gave me a surprised look, weighed up the matter. ‘I don’t know the name, Jack. An expression of surprise.’

I’d rung D.J. Olivier after Wootton’s call the night before.

D.J. was part of the seven-day-week world, Saturday night was just another night. A woman rang back at 10.30 p.m., found me deep in melancholy and self-loathing.

‘The subject,’ she said in a private-school voice, ‘has no criminal record. Passport issued March 1996, left the country in April that year, returned January 1998. Name mentioned in reports of a criminal case in July 1999. An article in the Brisbane
Courier Mail
in September ’99 refers to someone who may be the subject.’

‘What’s the criminal case?’ I said.

‘Assault, unlawful detention. Subject was the complainant.’

‘And the article?’

‘Organised crime in Brisbane and the Gold Coast. Someone interviewed refers to someone of this name as, I quote, Milan’s fucking star, unquote.’

Milan’s fucking star
.

I liked the way she said that. ‘Thanks.’

‘Our pleasure. Let us know if you need a broader inquiry.’

Mr Justice Loder’s muffin arrived, golden honey in a bowl. When the waiter had left, I got out the photograph of ‘Robbie’ and put it next to his plate. He looked around, unzipped a pocket and took out a spectacles case, put on a handsome gold-rimmed pair, looked at the picture without picking it up.

‘Well,’ he said, put a finger to his lips. ‘As I said, this inquiry is on behalf…’

My hands were palm-down on the table. I kept my eyes on the judge and raised the fingers of the right one. ‘I’m working for you,’ I said. ‘You get the bill.’

He breathed deeply, looked out of the window, closed his eyes for a second. He had long eyelashes. ‘You’ll understand this isn’t easy,’ he said.

‘I understand.’

He held my eyes for a few seconds. ‘I met him in Italy several years ago. In Umbria. I was staying at a friend’s house. The friend was away, and this young man arrived on the doorstep with a letter of introduction to my friend from someone in London.’

He had the diction of a schooled witness.

‘Calling himself?’

‘Robbie Colburne. He said his mother was Italian, from the Veneto, and his father was Australian. He spoke good Italian.’

‘Eat your muffin,’ I said, ‘it’s getting cold.’

He looked at the plate, broke off a piece of muffin, held it like a dead spider, put it down. ‘I think I’ll skip the muffin.’

I said, ‘I only need the pertinent bits.’

‘A relationship developed. I had a week left of my holiday. He said he was planning to spend a few years in Europe. I didn’t see him or hear from him again until a month ago. He rang me one night. My wife was away. She’s often away.’

Without looking at it again, Loder slid the photograph over to me. ‘He was an attractive person. Intelligent, full of life. And a lot of sadness in him.’

‘Most people have to settle for one of those things,’ I said. ‘Generally, the last one.’

Loder smiled, cheered up a little. ‘That’s what’s pertinent,’ he said. ‘I suppose.’

Zanouff’s was filling up, people wearing dark glasses, two couples with trophy children, dressed to be cute, caps worn backwards, expensive running shoes. One of the fathers had a tic in his right eye, a stress tic. He kept touching it but it wouldn’t stop.

‘You resumed the relationship?’

‘Yes.’

‘I won’t put icing on this,’ I said. ‘Are you scared of something?’

The judge smiled, made a gesture of openness with his arms, spread his fingers. The smile didn’t have any staying power. Nor did the gesture. He gave up, closed his arms, put one hand over the other.

‘Something’s missing,’ he said.

‘Robbie?’

‘Yes.’

‘Of what value?’

A sad smile. ‘How do you value a career?’

‘Not talking about the degree certificates?’

‘No.’

A train was leaving Kensington station, an empty rattle of train, windows flashing sky.

‘Anything happened since you noticed the loss?’

He closed his eyes again. ‘Nothing. I’m petrified. My dad’s still alive.’

‘And then there’s the dignity of the law,’ I said, cruelly.

He revived, face turning stern. ‘I suspect that the dignity of the law transcends and outlasts that of its humble servants, Mr Irish.’

A dignified response from the Bench.

‘Silly remark, allow me to withdraw it,’ I said. ‘Let me tell you what I know about Marco Lucia.’

When I’d finished, Loder said, ‘Can you be sure it’s the same person?’

‘Pretty much. Only one person matches.’

We watched another train, saw the faintest tremor in the plate-glass cafe window.

‘Your advice,’ said the judge.

‘Option one is that you save yourself a lot of money by popping around to your local jacks and telling them what you’re missing.’

‘And read the first rumour in the paper tomorrow? Option two, please.’

‘I can keep looking. There’s always the possibility of turning up something.’

‘Keep looking,’ he said.

‘The missing item?’

‘Photograph album. Red leather.’ He gave me his sad smile again. ‘You’re asking yourself how I could be so stupid.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘I’ve stopped asking that question. I know the answer.’

He got up. ‘Thanks, Jack.’ A pause. ‘It’s silly but I find the fact that you’re a colleague strangely comforting.’

A judge calling me a colleague. As he went out, it occurred to me that this was probably the high-water mark of my legal career.