Peter Temple - Dead Point

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.’

Peter Temple

Dead Point (Jack Irish Thriller 3)

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.’