Peter Temple - Bad Debts

Bruce came over and stood in front of me. ‘What do you say, Jack? It’s not a big ask.’

I stood up. ‘I’ll talk to her,’ I said. ‘And thanks.’ I put out my right hand. He took it in both of his.

‘I’ll give you a number for me,’ he said. ‘Got a pen?’

I got out my notebook and wrote down the number.

‘If anything comes up,’ he said, ‘ring it and say…what shall we say? Say John English wants to talk to the Minister.’

At the door, we shook hands again. ‘You’re doing the right thing, Jack,’ he said. ‘This is the only way to do it.’

The two men drove me back to my office, silence all the way.

We were eating ravioli and drinking red wine in front of the fire when I asked, ‘What did Legge mean about the return of the starfucker?’

Linda looked at me thoughtfully while chewing. A large piece of glossy hair had fallen over one eye. She was wearing an old pair of my pyjamas. It came back to me that there is a brief stage in relationships when women like to wear your clothes.

‘In what context was this remark made?’ she said.

‘The day I met you. Talking about you coming back to Melbourne. Later on, he called you an ex-groupie and you said something nice about his wife.’

‘You give good ravioli,’ she said. ‘The Age is full of people like Legge. Done all their growing up there, can’t work anywhere else. What do you do around here, generally speaking, after ravioli?’

‘Oh, around here we just horse around, generally speaking.’

‘Horse around? Can you show me how that’s done? I’m a city girl.’ She slid off her chair into a sitting position on the carpet. The pyjama pants tucked up into her groin. ‘Is there any special equipment needed?’

‘Generally speaking, we make do with the bare minimum. Improvise.’

‘Is that so?’ she said, unbuttoning her top button with her left hand.

Later on, I fetched another log from the pile under the fire escape. The lights were off and the firelight made the room look both mysterious and comforting. We sat side by side on the couch, silent for a while, companionable.

‘Starfucking,’ I reminded her.

Linda said, ‘I went off with a singer in a rock band. I walked out on my husband of three years and my job. It seemed like a good idea at the time.’

‘Good band?’

‘Not bad. Power and Imagination, it was called. They looked like artists and poets are supposed to, sort of pale and dreamy and wasted. They got that way on a strict diet of smack, speed and Bushmills.’

She swung her legs over mine and leaned back. ‘Eric was just chipping in the beginning. “Everything’s under control” was his favourite expression. We had a great time. Played all over Europe, did a tour with Fruit Palace, went to a party with Mick Jagger, met Andy Warhol. What a prick.’

‘Were you in love?’ I said.

‘Madly. I was just a kid. Only I didn’t know it. I was twenty-three, never really been out of Melbourne, married to a doctor I met at uni. Then one day this utterly strange and exciting creature came into my life. He had a kind of erotic presence, it was overpowering. And he lived in a world that had nothing to do with shopping and dishes and catching trams and alarm clocks and meals at certain times and lunch with your husband’s parents every Sunday. He put his hand on me and I was gone.’

I found the red wine and poured some into our glasses.

‘So that’s starfucking,’ Linda said. ‘And it all ends in tears, believe me.’

‘Everything’s got a price.’

She leaned over and kissed me half on the mouth. ‘Mine’s cheap. Plate of ravioli is the going rate. You’ve got a bit of an erotic presence yourself, if I may say so. Of the wounded rogue bull-elephant variety.’

‘Many a cow has told me that,’ I said. ‘I want to tell you something.’ I’d been putting this off all night.

‘So soon? There’s another woman already?’

‘I got escorted to see the Police Minister this evening. The cops know I was at the doctor’s place. They know I wiped my prints.’

Her eyes were wide. ‘How did they find out?’

‘Somebody must have remembered the Celica’s rego. Bloke I asked for directions, I suppose. They seem to have traced it to the guy who lent it to me. And matched its tyre prints with some I left at the scene. He says they matched them, anyway.’

‘What now?’ There was concern in her voice.

‘There’s more.’ I told her everything Bruce had told me.

‘That’s quite a session you had,’ she said when I’d finished. ‘You believe him?’

‘Mainly. It makes more sense than the version I half convinced myself was true.’

‘So Danny McKillop ends up getting lumbered with everything. Revenge killer. How come he didn’t start with this Scullin?’

I shrugged. ‘Could be any number of reasons. No-one will ever know.’

Linda lay back and looked at the ceiling. ‘What did Pixley tell you?’

‘Lots. He hates Pitman. He says Pitman tried to get him to do things for big donors to the party and shut down Hoagland so that he could sell the site to mates. He says Cabinet didn’t approve the sale the first time Pitman raised it. But someone leaked that it had been approved.’

Linda pushed back her hair. ‘Pixley says this outright?’

‘More or less.’

‘Paydirt,’ she said. She had the shine in her eyes I’d seen when the fat woman played the computer at UrbanData.

‘Not quite. He won’t go on the record. I also talked to Anne Jeppeson’s mother. Pixley’s daughter, Sarah, was in Anne’s class at school. They were close friends.’

‘Jesus. That’s stretching coincidence a bit. Wait a minute. The Cabinet leak about Hoagland…’

‘Bruce says Pixley told his daughter, who told Anne. Pixley also suggested that Bleek, the senior officer in the Planning department, was got to by Pitman. He’s dead too. Bruce says Bleek was corrupted by Pixley.’

‘Did Pixley mention companies?’

‘Hexiod and Charis. He says they’re the same thing.’

‘This is heavy stuff,’ Linda said. ‘Pass the wine.’

I poured some more of the red. ‘You won’t be able to drive after this,’ I said hopefully.

Linda looked at the fire through her glass. ‘Dear me,’ she said, ‘I’ll just have to stay over and fuck your face off. Listen, I think Bruce is trying to bullshit you. I’ve searched all the Yarrabank titles. What it looks like is that about eighteen months before Pitman decided to shut Hoagland eight companies began buying up the area.’

‘Eight companies?’

‘That’s right. Eight companies with names like Edelweiss Nominees Number 12 and Collarstud Holdings and Rabbitrun. And they in turn are owned by companies registered in places like the Cayman Islands and Vanuatu and Jersey.’

‘Dummies.’

‘Your normal shelf numbers. I’ve talked to five of the sellers. At least three real estate firms were involved. The owners were made reasonable offers. There was no hurry for possession, the agents said. They could stay on, no rent, if they wanted to. They would get sixty days’ notice to move. And there was a secrecy bonus if the buyer was satisfied that no word of the deal had leaked out for thirty days after the sale.’

‘Was it paid?’

‘Yes. More than a year before Pitman went to Cabinet with his proposal the whole area around Hoagland was stitched up by the eight companies. Well, all except one bit, a sheetmetal works. That changed hands about six months after the others. The land anyway. The factory burnt down.’

‘Someone who wouldn’t sell?’

‘Could be. I’d have to talk to the owner.’

‘What’s all this add up to?’