Peter Temple: Dead Point

A voice said: Should the new government have scrapped its predecessor’s granting of a licence for a privately run ski resort and casino at Cannon Ridge? Let’s hear your views on 1300 3333, that’s 1300 3333. I’m Linda Hillier, talking with you on 3KB, Melbourne’s station for the new century.

It was a voice I hadn’t heard for a long time. Drivers behind me began to hoot. I came back to the present and got the Lark moving, turned left. Outside the boot factory, parked under a dripping elm, I listened to Linda Hillier and her callers. She had the talkback touch: silk and steel, kiss them and kick them. Touch had always been her strong point. Early in our relationship, we’d sat in this car at this spot, glued at the mouth, hands going about their business, the business hands want to go about.

But that was long ago.

I killed the radio and lugged the shopping bags upstairs. Each year, the eventide falls faster and only sound and activity can hold the gate. I lit the fire, put on some Mahler, loud, got busy cooking, rang Cyril Wootton’s numbers, all of them. I found him in the last refuge of the scoundrel: home.

‘My God,’ he said, ‘where are you, what’s that ghastly noise?’

I turned down the volume. ‘The person. There’s room for speculation here.’

‘Matter’s closed. You’ve been remunerated.’ The clipped military tone was blurred by a long day of duplicity and substance abuse.

‘Time on the meter, as you well know. Tell the client your information is that the official explanation doesn’t hold up.’

I could hear him suck his teeth.

‘Get back to you, old fruit,’ he said.

Back was five minutes. ‘The client would like a meeting. Maximum discretion is required.’

‘And who,’ I said, ‘is better equipped to provide that?’

Then I rang Cam’s latest number. A woman answered, light voice, not a voice I knew. ‘I’ll see if Mr Delray is in the mood for callers,’ she said.

Cam came on. ‘Jack.’ He’d been close enough to hear my voice. What did that mean? Silly question.

‘I’d cross Cyril off the list,’ I said. ‘There are things you can’t fake.’

‘Glad to hear it. Monday morning, free early? Eight-fifteen? We could eat.’

‘What meal is that, your time?’

‘Too soon to know yet. Pick you up where?’

‘Charlie’s. He’s away. I’ve been slacking. Bring something.’

I ate in front of the television, watching the first part of a British drama about a middle-aged artist with an unsympathetic wife, a doctor. The man hit the singing sauce closer to breakfast than lunch, rooted the nanny in the mid-afternoon lull and, before dinner, wine glass in hand, delivered a withering attack on bureaucrats, multinationals, cultural imperialists, and people he didn’t like much.

I identified strongly. Not much later, I went to bed and succumbed to the arms of Milo. One day these crumbly grains will be a listed substance, prescription only, traded on cold streets, the price floating on the surging sea of supply and demand.

‘Do you know who I am?’ the man in the perfect dark suit asked.

I nodded. My inclination on seeing him had been to leave and, later, to chastise Wootton severely for not warning me. ‘What would you like me to call you?’

He hesitated for an instant. ‘Colin will be fine.’

The waiter arrived, a plump young woman in black, not fully alert yet. In that condition, we were companions.

‘Weak latte for me, please,’ said Mr Justice Colin Loder.

‘Short black.’

The judge was short and trim. His curly dark hair was razor-cut, parted at the left with the aid of a ruler. He looked as if he’d gone to sleep before 9 p.m. the night before, and come to our meeting fresh from swimming five kilometres followed by a full-body massage. I envied that in a man.

We were sitting at the window table in a cafe called Zanouff’s in Kensington, in Bellair Street, across the road from the station. You could see the trains taking the condemned into the city.

‘Don’t judges have flunkeys they send out on business like this?’

‘Good flunkeys are hard to find these days,’ he said.

Colin Loder put his elbows on the table, put his fingertips together. Steepling they called it in the body-language trade. ‘You have something to tell me about Robert’s death.’

‘I don’t think it was an accidental overdose.’

A deadpan look. ‘Why would you know better than the police?’

I gave him a dose of steepling. He noticed. ‘It’s hard to know what the police know,’ I said. ‘You can’t find out from what they say.’

He unsteepled, moved his mouth, almost a smile. ‘Like politicians. What do you know?’

‘I don’t like the proposition that someone doesn’t come home for days and when he does, he accidentally overdoses in his garage.’

Colin Loder’s black eyes were on me. ‘But it’s possible, isn’t it?’

I said, ‘Yesterday I was told that the police were interested in Robbie before his death.’

He touched his chin with a finger, brushed the blue cleft. ‘Told by?’

I looked at him, letting him know I wasn’t going to answer, my expression telling him, you’re not in your court now, Mr Justice Loder.

He held my gaze and then his mouth moved, a tiny twitch of the ruby lips. He’d got it.

‘What does interested mean?’ he said. ‘Exactly?’

‘It’s an inexact term.’

‘Here we go,’ said the plump serving person, striving to be cheerful. ‘Weak latte and a short.’

We watched a train leave the station.

Colin Loder sipped, put his cup down. He wasn’t going to lift it again. He wasn’t meeting me for coffee, probably didn’t drink coffee, for health and fitness reasons.

I tried mine. Terrible. ‘Would you know about police interest in Robbie?’

He raised an eyebrow. ‘No, I wouldn’t know about that.’

Spots of rain on the tarmac outside. I wanted to end this encounter, drive to Meaker’s and there drink decent coffee and dwell on more interesting matters. For example, the form for Cranbourne.

‘Well, I thought I should express my doubts to you,’ I said. ‘I’ve done that. And the coroner will probably agree with the police.’

I stood up. He didn’t.

‘It’s Jack Irish?’

‘Yes.’ He knew that.

‘Someone said he couldn’t understand how you kept your practising certificate.’

‘Someone?’

‘I mentioned your name to someone.’

‘Tell someone I’m of a lovable disposition and my legal clients don’t complain,’ I said. ‘That’s how I keep my practising certificate. Nice meeting you.’

He held up a placatory hand, a pink-palmed soft hand. ‘Sit down, Jack.’

Reluctantly, I did.

‘I’m sorry,’ the judge said. ‘That was impertinent of me. And I’m sure your doubts are well founded.’

I didn’t want an apology. I wanted a reason to leave.

‘Well, obviously we need to know more,’ he said.

‘I don’t think there’s anything more I can do.’

He looked down. ‘I’d deem it a kindness.’

Pleading is hard to bear, even a judge’s pleading. ‘It would save lots of money if someone gave me Robbie’s history,’ I said.

‘This may sound strange, but I don’t know anything about him. Just that he came from Sydney and was a casual barman at The Green Hill.’

‘I’ll tell you what I know about Robbie,’ I said. ‘He lived alone in a one-bedroom unit. The neighbours liked him. He put in a light bulb for the old lady downstairs, took her garbage out a few times. He wasn’t seen often but he came and went without any noise. That’s it.’

Loder nodded. ‘Did he have a drug habit?’