Peter Temple - Black Tide

‘No. Too many funny signs.’ I listed them.

Drew took a mouthful, savoured it, studied the ceiling. ‘For a lawyer,’ he said, ‘you’ve acquired some unusual powers of observation.’

‘There’s more.’ I told him about Gary being followed by a man, Gary meeting Jellicoe, Jellicoe’s murder.

‘Jesus Christ,’ he said. ‘How do you manage to get involved in this kind of shit? What does Gary do for a quid? Apart from borrowing it?’

‘According to his tax return, he’s a security consultant.’

‘His tax return. You’ve seen his tax return?’

‘Yes.’

‘At the flat?’

‘No.’

He closed his eyes. ‘Forget the question.’

‘I’ve had someone look at his clients. Private companies overseas, about a dozen of them. Companies owned by other companies. Registered in one place, owners registered somewhere else-Cook Islands, Cayman Islands, Luxembourg, British Virgin Islands. Andorra.’

I took out the two-page report from Simone Bendsten and passed it over. The waiter took our plates away.

‘Nice names,’ Drew said. ‘Klostermann Gardier, Viscacha Ltd, Scazon, Proconsul No 1. Some kind of tax dodge?’

‘Not by Gary. Declared an income of $345,000, paid tax on about $185,000. The tax people audited him, okayed all his deductions. Mostly business travel expenses, documented by American Express statements.’

‘So?’

‘Gary was a cop for five years. Drummed out, his ex-wife says. On the take. Then it’s a job in security for TransQuik. Cop fallback position, generally not the beginning of a glittering career. Wrong. Last year, he declares three hundred and fifty grand as a global security adviser. And there’s still a TransQuik connection. Worth $55,000.’

Drew read on, came to Simone’s link-up of Aviation SF with Fincham Air and the director of TransQuik.

‘Connection?’ he said. ‘The term tenuous was invented for describing connections like this.’

‘I rang TransQuik. Four people say, sorry, never heard of Gary Connors. Then a man calls from Sydney, says all the company knows about Gary Connors is that he worked for them as a security officer and left of his own volition a long time ago.’

‘Yes?’

‘I took a chance. I asked how come an associated company was paying Gary large sums of money. Man said he didn’t know what I was talking about. End of conversation.’

Drew was wearing his watchful courtroom expression.

‘But not for long,’ I said. ‘An hour later, I get a call from a lawyer with Apsley Kerr Woodward in Sydney. She says she is instructed to tell me that TransQuik has no connection with Gary Connors or with Aviation SF.’

Drew raised his eyebrows.

‘I never mentioned Aviation SF. Somebody at TransQuik knows Aviation SF paid Gary.’

‘Ah,’ said Drew. ‘Well, maybe a little thicker than tenuous. But still. You want to walk carefully with TransQuik. Big end of town. All the towns. I take it you saw Linda tangling with Mr Steven Levesque the other night?’

Steven Levesque. The handsome man with the wayward hair and the genuine laugh. I nodded. ‘What’s he got to do with it?’

Drew sighed, shook his head. ‘Levesque is TransQuik. Was, anyway. Levesque and the Killer Bees. Carson and Rupert and McColl. You should talk to my mate Tony Rinaldi. Remember Rinaldi? The fat bloke who used to sing?’

‘Yes. Quit the DPP’s office last year.’

‘Well, you don’t miss everything.’

‘Only the important things. How is it that you miss nothing?’

‘Nice little drop this,’ Drew said, examining the label. ‘Barone Ricasoli. A red baron. I miss nothing because I’m a citizen of the world, playing a full part in civic life. You, on the other hand, allow the affairs of the public sphere to pass you by while you master pigeonhole joints.’

‘Dovetail. Tricky things.’

The main course arrived: dark meat falling off the bone, pool of glistening dark sauce, sweet potato with flecks of something, baby green beans, crunchy.

We didn’t talk for a while. Finally, Drew said, ‘Jesus, how can I get Donelly to owe me money, lots of money? Are these bits of apricot?’

‘Stick around, make yourself known, your turn will come. Sooner or later, he’ll be up for pinning a kitchenhand to the wall with a knife.’

The bottle was low. I signalled to the swimmer for another. ‘So Tony Rinaldi knows about TransQuik?’

‘Oh yes. More than he should, I reckon. I had a few glasses with Anthony one night, his wife went off with a librarian from Camberwell library. Female librarian. That hurt the boy. Bloody Eltham artist is one thing, big dick notwithstanding. At least he had a dick.’

We went back to savouring the shanks. The new bottle arrived. I waived the approval ritual, went directly to Go.

‘A bitter man, Tony Rinaldi,’ said Drew. ‘First the wife’s knee-trembling in the library stacks, then he gets shafted in the DPP’s office. He reckons the DPP’s a silent partner in this new place, The Dining Room. Top of Collins Street. Know it?’

I shook my head. I’d been too dazed by encountering Linda’s perfume to notice much when I was last at the top of Collins Street.

‘Like eating at the Melbourne Club, I gather. Only with decent food and Jewish members. Victorian grandeur, my client Simeon Haldane, Melbourne Grammar and Cambridge, tells me. That’s Simon with an e stuck in. You went to Grammar, you’d probably know Simeon. About your vintage. Same dissolute appearance.’

‘Charged with what?’

‘Usual. Male minors, all orifices, possessing a range of educative pictorial stuff. Bit of light caning.’

‘Sounds like an ordinary day at boarding school.’

‘Simeon sat two tables away from the Premier at lunch at The Dining Room last week. The leader eats there all the time, takes the visiting money for dinner. Stuff themselves on prime Victorian meat. That’s all Simeon wanted to do really.’

We breasted the tape together, put the implements down on plates naked save the bones.

‘No,’ I said. ‘Simeon doesn’t stand out in my mind. Could be any one of fifty people from school. Why did Rinaldi get the boot from the DPP?’

Drew was looking at his empty plate in sorrow. ‘Not clear to me. Something to do with the Levesque gang. Tony was moving the flamethrower freely at that point, the wife, the librarian, the DPP, all blazing. Also, it was bottle three.’

I poured. ‘Want to go to the footy on Saturday?’

‘The footy? What, just pick a game? Any old footy?’

‘Saints and Geelong.’

‘Christ, what a pair. So, we’d be going for nobody, just like to see a game? Any old shitty game? That’s it?’

‘No. We’re going for the Saints.’

Drew emptied his glass of Barone Ricasoli’s 1986 Chianti Classico. ‘We? You and the Prince?’ Incredulous tone, loud. People looked at us.

‘Well, not the Prince as a whole.’

Drew glanced around, a what-the-fuck-are-you-looking-at glance. ‘The old buggers? You and the old buggers?’ Even louder, more incredulous.

‘Yes. Drew, steady, the other customers think we’re about to have a fight.’

He sighed, looked around again, apportioned the rest of the Ricasoli. ‘This is, well-you hear some strange things. I’ll be fucked.’

I couldn’t think of the right thing to say.

Drew sighed a few more times. ‘Jesus, Jack, are you all off your fucking heads? The Brisbane bloody Lions at least represent a bit of the old Roys. So they train in Brisbane. What the fuck does that matter? Everybody plays all over the place. Footy in fucking Sydney, Brisbane, Perth, wall-to-wall cankerous Poms at every game. Where the hell did Fitzroy end up training? Not in Fitzroy. Some players never came near Fitzroy except to front up to the faithful to raise a few bucks. Footy players are just mercenaries, can’t you grasp that? They’re not like your old man, his old man, however fucking many bloody Irish played for the Roys. These are just contract players. And that’s been going on a long time. Didn’t stop the team being Fitzroy, did it? Did it?’