Peter Temple - Bad Debts

I thought the Lord probably wanted a good swift kick up the arse for him, but I held my tongue. Father Gorman poured coffee. We both had ours black and sugarless. It was very bad coffee. I went back to Ronnie. ‘He was working for the foundation when he testified against a hit-and-run driver,’ I said.

Father Gorman took a sip of coffee. ‘I recall that well, yes. A tragedy. Lovely young woman.’

‘Did Ronnie ever say anything about his testimony?’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Did Ronnie ever talk about what happened that night?’

Father Gorman put his cup down and inspected me. ‘I suppose we talked about it at the time. It would have been odd not to. Is there some reason why I should recall such a conversation?’

‘Not if you don’t. Did Ronnie mention when you saw him that the hit-and-run driver was out of jail and had been in touch with him?’

Father Gorman shot his left cuff to look at his watch. ‘Jack, my heavens,’ he said. ‘I’ve a speech to deliver. I’m going to have to be dreadfully rude and cut short our talk. No, I can’t say that he did mention anything like that. Would the man want to harm him?’

‘I don’t think so. I think he wanted something else.’

He frowned. ‘And what could that be?’

‘It’s not clear. Have you any idea who Ronnie might turn to if he wanted to hide, Father?’

Father Gorman was already on his feet. ‘Hide? That’s a strange thing to suggest, isn’t it? Why would he want to hide?’

I got up. ‘It seems Ronnie was worried about his safety before he disappeared.’

He furrowed his brow, a look of deep concern. ‘His safety? I thought you said the man posed no threat to him? My impression was that he was deeply troubled about his health, Jack. He certainly didn’t suggest that he wanted to hide. Are you sure about this?’

He was walking me along, holding my arm. I felt like a parishioner in need of comfort. ‘Let me see you out. Don’t hesitate to give me a call if there’s anything else I can do for you. I’m sorry our talk was so short. My work’s an endless round of functions and speeches. I try to find an individual message for each group, but it’s a battle. You’d know that. Lawyers understand. Every client’s a new client, isn’t that so? I toyed with the idea of the law, you know, but someone else had other ideas.’

At the front door, something made me ask a final question. ‘When did you last speak to Ronnie, Father? I mean, before he rang you about coming to see you?’

Father Gorman stroked his chin. It was shaven to perfection. ‘It would have been as much as seven or eight years ago, Jack. I got quite a surprise when I heard his voice, but I placed it straight away. I don’t forget voices for some reason. The Lord’s compensation for forgetting everything else, I suppose.’

He saw me to the lift. In the lobby downstairs, the ex-screw made a big show of logging me out.

‘Well, old sausage,’ said Wootton. ‘It’d be another matter if this was an inquiry you were pursuing on my behalf.’

I’d tracked Wootton to the street bar of the Windsor Hotel, a Victorian pile near Parliament, after ringing his office on the way back from Father Gorman’s. He stopped off there every day on his way home. It was Wootton’s sort of place: wood panelling, photographs of cricket teams.

We were sitting at a window looking out on Spring Street. It was just after 5.30 p.m. and the place was filling up with pudgy young men in expensive suits and club ties. Wootton was wearing a dark pinstripe suit with waistcoat, shirt with narrow stripes and a tie with little crests on it. His thinning hair was brushed back on his perfectly round skull and his moustache, dyed jet black, was bristly but trim. He looked like an old-style Collins Street banker and that was the way he wanted to look.

I’d known Wootton in Vietnam. He’d been a sergeant in stores, thankless work in the service of country. In lieu of thanks, he’d taken money from about twenty bars and brothels for supplying them with everything from Fosters beer to Vegemite. Wootton would have gone home very rich if two military policemen hadn’t seized his stash of US dollars two days before he was due to fly out. He never faced trial. The MPs thought the loss would be enough of a lesson to him. He never said another word about his money. And nor did they.

‘Cyril, I think I’ve got more than enough credit in my account to cover this little favour. But if it’s too much trouble-’

‘Steady on, Jack,’ said Wootton. ‘No need to get shirty.’ He took a sip of his whisky and water and rolled it around in his mouth, lips pursed. When he’d swallowed, he sighed and said, ‘I’ll have to go and do this from a bloody public phone, you know. Give me the number and the dates.’

I sipped my beer and read the Herald Sun Wootton had left behind while I waited. The lead story was another police shooting. A policewoman had shot dead a man who came at her with a knife when she attended a domestic dispute in Reservoir. The new Police Minister, Garth Bruce, was quoted as saying: ‘As a former policeman, I know the demands and dangers of the job. I am not, of course, passing any opinion on what took place in this incident. The coroner will decide that. But I’m determined that the police force will move away from the culture of the gun that’s become entrenched over the last ten years or so.’ There was a photograph of the Minister: a big serious man with short hair and rimless glasses.

Wootton was away about fifteen minutes. He came in brushing rain off his suit. ‘Can you believe it?’ he said. ‘Supposed to be a bloody five-star hotel. Had to go outside in the rain to find a phone that worked.’

A black Mercedes pulled up outside and two Japanese men in soaked golf outfits got out of the back. They stood close together in the drizzle, cap peaks almost touching, watching the driver unload two massive golf bags and wheelchair-size chrome golf buggies from the boot.

‘Sons of Nippon,’ said Wootton, flicking moisture off his moustache. ‘Don’t know if I’d go swanning around Tokyo if I’d worked thousands of Japs to death in World War II.’

‘Those two look a bit young to have worked anyone to death in World War II,’ I said.

‘Don’t be facetious. I need something to eat.’ He went over to the counter. A barmaid served him immediately. They knew the man here. He came back opening a bag of salt and vinegar chips. ‘Want some?’

I shook my head. He crammed a handful in under the moustache. Pieces stuck to it. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘it’ll take about ten minutes for the reverse directory.’

Until Wootton went back to his phone, we continued our argument about how much I’d added to my fee for getting a gun pointed at me by Eddie Dollery.

When he came back, Wootton took an old envelope out of his inside jacket pocket and handed it over. On the back were about a dozen telephone numbers, all the calls to different numbers made on Mrs Bishop’s telephone in the three days Ronnie was there. Against each one, in Wootton’s neat hand, was a name and address.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘I hope I’ve contributed to you finding your catamite.’

‘Sodomite,’ I said. ‘He presumably had catamites. I only asked you to do it for me because I’m sworn to uphold the law.’

Wootton stuffed some more chips in his mouth. Through them, he said, ‘Hah bloody hah. Joined the Boy Scouts, have we? Dib, Dib, Dib. Dob, Dob, Dob.’

‘That’s the Cubs, Cyril,’ I said. ‘But how would you know?’

I went home and tried Linda Hillier at Pacific Rim News. She was in Sydney, a man said. Back tomorrow. I poured a glass of white wine from an opened bottle in the fridge and studied the phone calls from Mrs Bishop’s number. The calls to Danny McKillop and Father Gorman jumped out at me. That left nine calls. I rang Mrs Bishop. We went through the other calls from the beginning of the list. She had made all the calls except the last one. It was to a P. Gilbert, Long Gully Road, Daylesford. Made at 4.07 p.m. on the day Ronnie vanished.