Peter Temple - Bad Debts

I went back to my office and rang the last number Cam had left. He didn’t seem to leave the same number twice running. A woman with a French accent invited me to leave a message. My eye fell on the mobile phone in its little plastic case next to the Mac. I’d bought it in a fit of technological anxiety and used it about four times. I left the number with the French lady and walked over to Charlie’s.

‘So,’ he said. ‘Had the breakfast. Ready for the day’s work.’ He was preparing a length of wood for steam-bending, using a block plane to chamfer the edges that would be in tension. This was to stop the wood fibres breaking loose. In the corner, the low potbelly stove was fired up, and Charlie’s ancient steam kettle was starting to vibrate.

‘I’ve been out since dawn,’ I said. ‘Looking for people.’

He shook his head sadly. ‘A man with a profession. What does he do? He goes to the races and he looks for people who should stay missing.’

The mobile phone went off in my pocket, a nasty, insistent electronic noise. It was Cam. ‘The big man wants to have breakfast tomorrow,’ he said. ‘You on?’

I said yes.

‘Pick you up quarter to eight.’

I felt Charlie’s eyes on me as I closed the flap and put the phone in my pocket.

‘So,’ he said. ‘Mr Big Business Man. Mr Executive. So busy he can’t go to the telephone anymore, has to take it with him. Next it’s no time even to go for a shit. Take a little shithouse around with you, do it in the motor car.’

‘You need to keep up with things in my line of work,’ I said.

‘Yes,’ he said, disbelief in his tone. ‘When you going to finish that table, Mr Walking Telephone?’

‘Friday. Well, Sunday.’

‘Got a big job yesterday,’ he said. ‘Man wants me to make him a library in Toorak. Panelled. Carved. Don’t know if I’m up to it anymore.’

‘No,’ I said, ‘you’re not up to it. Play bowls instead. Give the work to somebody who can do it.’

‘I just might,’ Charlie said. ‘Or maybe I’ll get an apprentice, hey? Smart girl. Strong. Not afraid of work. Reliable even.’

‘Good idea,’ I said, heading for my bits of table. ‘Anyone would want to spend five years making mortice and tenon joints and finding out about the finer points of lawn bowls.’

Charlie finished his planing and took the boards over to the steam box. It was a length of glazed sewerage pipe, eight feet long, sixteen inches in diameter, plugged at both ends. The steam went in at one end and escaped through a hole at the other. He gave it an appreciative smack with a huge hand. ‘You want to know something?’ he said. ‘You can give a schmuck a walking telephone. But what you got then is a schmuck with a walking telephone.’

‘Gee, you can learn a lot around here,’ I said, ‘just by listening.’

The workshop was warm from the steam box and the rest of the afternoon slipped by. At quarter to six, we called it a day and went around to the Prince. What Charlie called the Fitzroy Youth Club was in position at the bar.

‘Jack, my boy,’ said Wilbur Ong. ‘Did I tell you I tipped eight out of eight three weeks in a row now? In me granddaughter’s tipping pool, round this place she works. Hundreds in it. I give her me tips Thursday nights when she comes for tea. Me daughter’s girl.’

Norm O’Neill’s huge nose came around slowly, like the forward cannon on the USS Missouri swivelling to speak to Vietnam. ‘You can only get eight out of eight, Wilbur,’ he said slowly and with menace, ‘if you tip against the Lions.’

Wilbur gave him a pitying look. ‘Norm,’ he said, ‘if you was forty years younger I’d take you outside for jumpin to that conclusion. ’Course I don’t tip against the Lions. It’s the girl. She takes all me other tips and changes that one. She reckons tippin against the Lions is the only sure thing left in the footie.’

‘I don’t think you brought your daughter up right,’ Eric Tanner said.

Stan came out from behind the bar and switched on the television set on the wall in the corner. It was news time. When the set was first put in, Stan tried to keep it on all the time but the Youth Club kept switching it off. Now it went on for the news and football.

The news opened with a helicopter view of Dr Paul Gilbert’s health centre with at least ten vehicles parked outside the front gate.

‘Two men have been found shot dead at an isolated property bordering on the Wombat State Forest outside Daylesford,’ the woman newsreader said. ‘One of the bodies was in a hot spa bath. Police said the men might have been dead for as long as a week.’

The helicopter went in for a closer look. I could see two men in plain clothes standing outside the house. They looked up at the helicopter and the one on the left’s lips said, ‘Fuck off.’

‘Police said the bodies had been identified. Their names are expected to be released later this evening. The property is owned by Dr Paul Gilbert, a Melbourne general practitioner who was permanently barred from practice in 1987 after being found guilty of a variety of drug offences. He served two and a half years of a six-year sentence. Dr Gilbert lived on the property. He has not been seen in Daylesford for more than a week.’

The news went on to other things. I finished my beer and drove home. The streets seemed to be full of white Holdens. Had a white Holden followed me to Daylesford? My neck hair prickled.

When I got home, I rang Linda Hillier. She wasn’t at her desk, said a man. He took a message. I was looking sadly into the near-empty fridge when the phone rang.

‘We need to talk,’ Linda Hillier said.

‘Endlessly,’ I answered. Then I went for it. ‘Can you come around here? No. Will you come around here?’

‘What’s the address?’

I walked around the corner to Papa’s Original Greek Taverna and bought some bread, olives, dolmades and an unidentified fish stuffed with thyme and basil from Mrs Papa. Menu price less fifteen per cent, that was our deal.

I was just out of the shower when the bell rang. I pulled on underpants, denims and a shirt.

‘Well, hello,’ she said. There was rain on her hair.

‘You’re wet,’ I said.

‘So are you. At least I’ve got shoes on.’

She had changed since this morning. She was wearing a trenchcoat over grey flannels, a cream shirt and a tweed jacket. I caught her scent as I took the coat and jacket. It was, in a word, throaty.

‘This is nice,’ she said, looking around.

We stood awkwardly for a moment, something trembling in the air between us. I looked around at the books in piles on every surface, the CDs and tapes everywhere, the unhung pictures, seeing the place for the first time in years.

‘It’s sort of gentlemen’s club mates with undergraduate student digs,’ she said.

I cleared my throat. ‘Come into the kitchen and I’ll give you a drink. What would you like?’ The kitchen was respectable. I’d cleaned it recently.

‘Whisky and water if you’ve got it.’

She had a good inspection of the contents of the open shelves while I got the drinks, watching her out of the corner of my eye and telling her about my visit to Father Gorman. I poured myself a glass of Coldstream Hills pinot noir from a bottle I’d started on the day before.

‘Cheers,’ I said.

‘Cheers. I’ve met Gorman a couple of times. He’s a walker for high-society hags. Something slimy about him.’

‘A walker?’

‘Takes them to the theatre, to parties. When their husbands are too busy fucking the secretary.’

‘You’re very knowledgeable,’ I said. ‘I’ve got a fish. If you’re hungry.’

‘A fish,’ she said thoughtfully. Our eyes were locked. I couldn’t look away. I didn’t want to look away.