Peter Temple - Dead Point

‘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.

I caught the 6.05 a.m. flight to Brisbane, two hours in the air, hired a car and drove for ninety minutes, never once lost, to reach the imposing gateway to Haven Waters. It was halfway across a 500-metre land bridge just wide enough for two lanes.

A man in a police-style uniform, light-blue and dark-blue, armed, left the gatehouse, came out into the white-porcelain light.

‘G’day,’ he said. ‘Have to ask for your name, address and purpose of visit, sir.’ He was a wiry man, ginger and freckled, big freckles. Cold and grey climes would have suited him better.

I gave my particulars. He wrote them down on a clipboard. Then he asked for two means of identification. Fighting my instincts, I handed over my driver’s licence and my Law Institute card. Forever on another record. One day D.J. Olivier might find me there and a young woman with a private-school voice would tell someone.

‘Only take a minute, sir,’ he said and went back. I saw him pick up a phone, talk, nod, put it down. There was someone else in the gatehouse, a movement. Expensive, a two-person guard, six shifts, that would cost management two hundred grand a year, plus benefits. Just to check tickets. Perhaps the second person also did patrols, that would ease the strain.

Gates opened. The man was waiting for me inside, gave me a map printed on card, laminated.

‘Down this road, sir. At the T-junction, turn left. Then first right, go past the golf clubhouse and the village.’

He was English, I caught that now.

‘First residence after the village. The entrance is on your right, first gate. Adriatica, that’s the name. It’s marked on the map. And the name’s on the gate.’

He pressed a small plastic disc, the size of a fat ten-cent coin, onto the windscreen above the registration sticker. ‘So that we can find you if you get lost, sir,’ he said. ‘We’ll take it off when you leave. Enjoy your visit, sir.’

Bugged, I drove across the bridge, down a curving road, through a landscape sculpted by bulldozers, blanketed with imported soil, planted with thousands of mature sub-tropical trees, grassed, lavishly watered. Water was always visible, on both sides deep inlets. I saw two fat joggers, a thin runner, half-a-dozen walkers, a woman in jodhpurs on a high-spirited chestnut horse. Then the golf course was on my left, greens like great dollops of pureed spinach, people on motorised buggies. I watched a man duff a tee shot.

The golf clubhouse was low, sinuous, heavy with flowering creepers, and then the village appeared on my right, a semicircle of whitewashed buildings of different heights, different roof shapes and pitches, a clock tower in the middle, someone’s idealised Mediterranean village, water glimpsed beyond the buildings, flashes at the end of narrow lanes. Two small parking areas were as snobbish as stockbroker bikies, European metal only, nothing Japanese here.