Peter Temple: White Dog

The media surged. Two wiry short-haired women in casual clothes appeared and shepherded the pair. Sarah Longmore held her chin up, looked straight ahead. For her, no dark glasses, no undignified attempt to hide her face. There was something disciplined about her, the way she kept her shoulders back, the way she held her head. The shepherds were good, clearing a path without bumping, just using their bodies, arms out, pushing backwards. At the kerb, the woman touched Drew’s shoulder, put her mouth to his ear and whispered something, went between the parked cars.

The passenger door of the four-wheel-drive opened, she slipped in and was gone.

Drew turned to face the scrum, the microphones pointing at him. I saw on his serious face a desire to entertain the cameras, and then I saw him deny the advocate’s thespian urge, shake his head. He said a few words, presumably no comment at this time, turned his back and set off across the street. The microphones drooped. They let him go.

I crossed the street too. He was waiting for me. In rain that was now gaining heart, we walked the two blocks to his old Saab in a lucky parking space near Grice Alley. It took many tries to excite the vehicle and, when it groaned, Drew flooded the carburettor and the engine died.

‘You’d think you’d have the hang of it by now,’ I said. ‘This’s been going on since the late eighties.’

‘It’s not a matter of the hang,’ said Drew, ‘it’s a matter of proper observance of a time-honoured ritual.’

We waited, the windows liquid. The car smelled of orange peels and desiccated apple cores, a hint of salty old swimming towel forgotten under a seat, stiff as a dead rabbit.

‘My first time in court for a while,’ I said.

‘Through luck not judgment,’ said Drew. ‘Bastards took me by surprise. Last I heard, they wanted her kept in the slammer. Good thing I had the escape ready.’

‘Was that Bully West?’

Bully was a bouncer, a reformed standover man who did semi-legal odd jobs for Cyril Wootton, my sometime employer. I’d glimpsed Bully’s brutal, pitted chin when Sarah Longmore slid into the car.

‘It was the Bully,’ said Drew. ‘Courtesy of Cyril. Alert of you.’

He tried the ignition again and the car started, the engine rough as sacks. All caution, Drew put his head out of his window and looked back. Then he pulled out, into the path of a taxi. Above the rubber scream and the hooting, I thought I could hear the cabdriver swearing, not in English.

After we caught the lights and turned left into Bourke Street, Drew said, ‘Shit, where’d he come from?’

‘The rear.’

He shook his head. ‘Don’t be so fucking sanctimonious. Remember a certain left turn near Piedemonte in St George’s Road? Hit an island, cracked the sump, we took off. Airborne, cropdusting the grass with engine oil.’

‘It wasn’t an island,’ I said. ‘It was a peninsula, and it wasn’t there the day before. Also there was no grass. In addition, I could plead youth and inexperience.’

‘Ah,’ said Drew, ‘and how fleeting is the time allowed for that defence.’

‘On fleeting, I saw the fleeting touch of the lapel.’

Drew looked down, touched his left lapel. ‘Just admiring the finest cloth Mr Buck stocks. Fleece of house-reared Aussie bleaters, hand-woven by toothless crones in the dim crofts of the Alto Adige. She is, of course, without sin in this affair.’

The oxygen was running low in the airtight Swedish vehicle. I tried to wind down my window but the handle didn’t work. The side vent resisted but a fist thump ended that and the city smell came in — cold, moist, petrochemical. It carried memories of late nights, arms around waists, kissed ears, kisses behind ears, the shivery feel of a hand not your own in your hip pocket.

We turned left into Elizabeth Street.

‘Mickey Franklin was in the shower on a Saturday evening,’ said Drew. ‘Five shots, very messy, all over the show, fired through a towel. The one that killed him went in the back of the head, in the hollow, bullet going upwards.’

I tried to wipe the windscreen with my hand, unhappy to be blind to the many dangers we faced. ‘And where was the sinless one? In her own words.’

‘At the fatal moment, at home in St Kilda watching television.’

‘How come they’ve got the weapon?’

We were at the LaTrobe Street lights. Drew looked at me, ran a finger under his nose. ‘They found it in a garbage bin near the scene. Cleaned and wrapped. She knows the thing, a. 32 Ruger, never licensed. She says Mickey Franklin lent it to her when she had a couple of break-ins, other strange stuff.’

The engine sounded even worse when we turned right at the lights, making the uneven, misfiring sounds of crippled Spitfires approaching the white cliffs of Dover in old World War II films.

‘Echo Bravo Foxtrot to Control,’ I said. ‘I say, old beast, I rather think this kite’s dying on me.’

‘Hiccups,’ said Drew. ‘It’s the weather. The weapon is awkward.’

‘Awkward, indeed,’ I said. ‘Found when?’

‘The morning after. Yesterday week. They sprang it on her before she called me.’

‘Clever devils. Drop me at the office? I’ve got an engagement.’

He looked straight ahead. ‘Where are we engaged today? In the Valley of the Moonee? On the Field of Caul? At Headquarters? Or at some idyllic country paddock, marvelling at what man and horse can together achieve? Assisted only by undetectable kick-arse drugs, diuretics and industrial-strength marching powder.’

‘A man with an easement problem is coming in.’

‘A man seeking ease,’ said Drew. ‘Aren’t we all? In the old days, your clients were seeking to stay out of the hard hotel.’

‘This is better. These clients tend to have their complete ears and comparatively few are tattooed inside their lower lips.’

Drew turned left into Russell Street. ‘Ah, the holy ground once more,’ he said.

The Melbourne Magistrates’ Courts had been in the stone building on our left, police headquarters across the street, all kinds of squads and units in the building nearby.

Trades Hall and its annexe, the John Curtin Hotel, were just down the road. Drew’s office was two blocks north. Once it had been the office of the firm of Greer amp; Irish, Barristers and Solicitors. The Greer and the Irish often walked down Drummond Street to appear for their clients at Russell Street. They also often drank at the Curtin, took pees with a future prime minister, standing side by side, swaying a little, aiming at white disinfectant balls.

But that time ended when my wife, Isabel, was murdered by a client of mine and I developed a powerful urge to destroy myself.

‘Strictly speaking, Wootton should tell you,’ he said. ‘The person who will add his exorbitant margin to what I am sure are your modest billed hours.’

‘Tell me what?’ I said.

‘To swab Mickey. As man of the track, you’ll know the swab.’

‘Cyril already has a swabbing expert. Cheap.’

‘We don’t need cheap. I can tell you that Cyril’s expert failed the police entrance test. Tester couldn’t fit two pencils above the eyebrows, one between the eyes.’

In silence, we drove down Victoria Parade and turned into Smith Street, Collingwood. The street seemed to be having a dealer-free day. From time to time, the cops came in numbers and displaced the drug sellers. It was like squeezing a balloon. When the pressure was removed, it returned to its original shape.

‘What would I be looking for?’ I said.

‘Christ knows. Anything.’

I waited and then I said, ‘Drew, the force’s full of dick-heads but they don’t generally land up in homicide.’

‘It may not be about dickheadedness. It may be about something else.’