Peter Temple - White Dog

She took it, raised it and gently bit the flesh behind the thumb. ‘Any time,’ she said.

‘Dilthey,’ said Cameron Delray. ‘Never heard of him. Where are you?’

‘Drouin,’ I said.

‘That voluntary?’

‘A tidy town. I’m passing through.’

‘Give me a bit.’

I was approaching Dandenong before he rang back. I pulled over, watching a storm sky building over Melbourne, coming from the west, blue-black rolling clouds.

‘Got him,’ he said. ‘Want to do something today?’

‘Might as well.’

‘King Street. It’s called the Officers’ Club.’

I groaned.

‘You’ll fit in with the public-service crowd. Crack a fat on the way to the station, twenty bucks. Juices em up for the wife in Camberwell, they come in holdin the briefcase in front.’

‘What those women have to endure. After a long day driving the kids. Where in King Street?’

He told me how to find the place.

‘Tell em Mr Costello’s expectin you. Popeye. He’s a nice bloke, could’ve been a judge, just got off on the wrong foot.’

‘And who am I?’

‘Say Cam rang.’

In the city, the storm broke as I was leaving the parking garage in Little Collins. I retreated and watched the deluge. It lightened after a few minutes and I set off. In time for the sleet and then the hailstones, small marbles skittering in the street, bouncing off the cars, just too small to dent.

The man ahead of me at the Officers’ Club counter was wearing a fawn raincoat and carrying an umbrella and a briefcase. He put his change in a side pocket, didn’t bother about his wallet.

‘Mr Costello’s expecting me,’ I said to the receptionist.

She might have been Mr Costello’s mother, still helping at the school canteen after all these years. The man leaning against the wall could have been the school bully, still waiting to take half or more of whatever you bought.

‘And it’s who?’ said Popeye Costello’s mum, friendly.

‘The person Cam rang about,’ I said.

She picked up a telephone, pressed a button. ‘The person Cam rang about,’ she said.

‘Yes, right.’

‘He’s got someone with him,’ she said. ‘Through the portrait room and into the club room. You’ll see a door in the right corner, it’s got two green lights over it. Have a seat outside. Michael won’t keep you waiting.’

I passed through the portrait room, a characterful chamber, panelled, lit by brass picture lights above paintings of several centuries of British soldiers, mostly in dress uniform. The frames were gilt, broad, carved. Everything was fake.

The club room was large, dim, a bar on the left, not busy. The officers, not many of them, were standing around two small podiums upon which women were performing. The women were fully dressed and their behaviour suggested that they were uncomfortable in their garments. There was tugging, rubbing and long-nailed groin-scratching of a languorous heat-affected kind.

The officers, all in civilian dress, were offering helpful suggestions.

‘Show us yer pussy,’ said one.

The woman pulled up her skirt. Beneath it she was naked and shaven. The officers made approving noises.

As I crossed the room, I had a view through a door into a corridor lined with booths curtained with semi-transparent material. A young man came out of one, followed by a big-breasted pale woman in a bikini and high heels. She was adjusting the top. The man looked as a first-time parachutist might upon landing.

I took a seat on a slippery banquette in the corner. The door with the green lights opened and a long-haired man in a leather jacket came out. His face was mostly nose, spread over it like a frog.

‘He’s only fucking human, Pop,’ he said over his shoulder.

The man in the fine-striped shirt and stockbroker braces behind him said, ‘Nobody’s proved that to my fucking satisfaction. Just do it.’ He came into the doorway. ‘Cam’s mate? Come in.’

He waited for me to go in and closed the door, went around a glass-topped table covered in papers, some in piles clamped by bulldog clips. Two three-drawer filing cabinets stood together against a wall with four small security monitors on them. That was it for furnishings.

‘So what’s your name?’ he said.

‘Jack Irish. I’m a solicitor.’

Popeye Costello had a round face and round glasses and a big grey-flecked moustache. He scratched it, scratched his bald head. ‘You the one knocked that fucking Marty Scullin?’

‘Yes.’

‘Goodonya. The cunt. You could’ve sold tickets, got a full fucking house at the MCG. What can I tell you about the Dill.’

‘The Dill?’

‘Wayne Dilthey.’

‘I’m interested in a woman called Janene Ballich. His name came up.’

‘She worked here a coupla months. JJ she called herself. Nice kid, country kid, bit raw, the punters like that. Bit thin too. Not the needle though. Show one fucking track here, they get the arse, that’s what I call human resources management, i.e. junkies are more trouble than they’re fucking worth.’

‘And Dilthey?’

‘Yeah, the Dill. Worked for me, ’92–93. Came from Brisbane, bloke I know up there gave me a ring.’

You never know what you can ask. ‘What was his job?’

Costello shrugged, held up big hands. ‘This and that, y’know.’

I waited but I knew there wasn’t any point. ‘Janene disappeared in 1994,’ I said.

Costello tapped his fingernails on the glass tabletop. ‘Didn’t know that,’ he said, ‘but they do, they do. The kid was no Einfuckingstein, that can be a major risk factor. They get taken in by these cunts, the talkers.’

‘Like Wayne?’

‘As a for example?’

‘Her mother says Wayne was Janene’s agent, so to speak.’

Costello laughed, a good laugh, showed his lower gold fillings, you wanted to laugh with him. ‘So to fucking speak,’ he said. ‘The prick.’

I had to feel my way here. ‘Taken in and they disappear?’

He tapped nails again, still amused, but I was on borrowed time. ‘Well, disappear,’ he said, ‘what’s that mean?’

‘Possibly dead,’ I said.

More tapping. ‘Or possibly just fucked off. Check Kalgoorlie, check Darwin, check fucking Port Hedland. Thousands of fucking disappeared kids, mate, can’t all be dead.’

His telephone rang. He listened, grunted, found a remote. Out of the corner of my left eye, I registered the monitors come on. I looked: reception, bar, overheads of the big room, two people on the floor, a woman, flashes of naked flesh.

‘Fuck,’ said Costello, weary. ‘Another fucking idiot. I shouldn’t have to do this anymore. Excuse me.’

He got up, not hurried, left the room. I watched the grey murky screen. A man was on top of the woman, the officers didn’t seem to be coming to her aid. Then someone appeared and kicked the man in the head, it jerked him sideways. It was Costello. He kicked the man again, grabbed him by the collar and the seat of his pants, lifted him bodily, ran him headfirst into the bar counter, stepped back, did it again, carried him off-screen.

A minute or two went by, watching the screens. The wrestler wasn’t leaving by the front entrance, nothing happened there, just the tuckshop lady talking to someone in uniform, a security guard. No, it was a cop. Not urgent talk, the cop was laughing. She gave him something. It looked like a Freddo. It was. He opened it and ate it.

Costello came through the door. ‘Shit,’ he said, on his way back to his chair. ‘Always when the fucking gymrat’s on his smoko. Doesn’t fucking smoke either. Naturally.’

I said, ‘I don’t want to waste any more of your time. Wayne and Janene.’

He was pulling at his cuffs, getting comfortable again, not a sign of exertion or unease on the round face, a man in round glasses who had just kicked another man in the head twice, lifted him clear of the victim, run him into the bar twice. Then he had possibly taken him down a fire escape and thrown him into the alley.