Peter Temple - Bad Debts

‘Staying at Ericson’s till the race. I want her to get to know this Dakota Dreamin.’

An old Land Rover pulled up next to us. A woman in her early twenties got out, moleskins, checked shirt, short hair, windburnt face: lean as string. Cam went over. They shook hands, said a few words.

Cam came back and got in, drove off. She followed us around and over the low hills and parked next to us at Ericson’s. She was out quickly, waiting, hands in flap pockets.

It was just as cold as the time before. Cam said, ‘This is Mr Strang and Mr Irish, Mr Strang’s lawyer.’ We shook hands. She was good-looking, big mouth, no make-up, a hint of wariness in the eyes.

‘You’re on time. That’s good,’ said Harry.

Tony Ericson came up the gravel path from the stables. More handshakes.

‘Use your kitchen table, Tony?’ Harry said. ‘Bit of talkin to do.’

Ericson led us inside the house and down a passage to a big, warm kitchen with an old Aga stove. We sat down at the table. Harry was at the top. Nancy Farmer was opposite me. She put her elbows on the table and laced her fingers. She had big wrists and strong hands like Harry’s.

‘Nancy,’ said Harry. ‘Mr Delray told you he wanted you to ride a bit of track on this Dakota Dreamin before Saturday.’

She said, ‘That’s right.’

Harry said, ‘This horse is goin to win.’

She kept looking at him, no expression.

‘It’s goin to win,’ Harry said, ‘because it’s the best horse in the race. There’s nothin else happenin.’

Nancy nodded. A little tension went out of her shoulders. ‘Why me?’ she asked.

‘Like your style, good hands, got a bit extra out of that Home Boy in the spring.’

‘Didn’t get me any more races in town,’ she said.

Harry smiled. ‘This’ll be the makin of you. Tony, tell Nancy about this bloke.’

Tony Ericson didn’t do much public speaking but he got through it. At the end, he said, ‘He goes down the beach every day. Me girl rides him in the water, on the sand. Four days he does a bit of track, not too much. Not the way the others do it, but he’s rock-hard now. Just right.’

Nancy said, ‘You trialled him at the distance?’

Tony shook his head. ‘No. He’s bred for the two miles but he’ll run a strong race at anything over two thou.’

She looked around the table. ‘I’ll do my best.’

Harry said, ‘You’ll understand if I say you can’t make any phone calls without Mr Ericson’s with you? You got a mobile with you?’

She shook her head. ‘Is this big?’ she asked.

Harry nodded. ‘Big enough.’

The tip of her tongue came out and moistened her lower lip. ‘I don’t have any calls to make,’ she said.

‘Good,’ said Harry. ‘There’s a thousand for the week’s work here. You want to talk about the race fee?’

Nancy looked at him, unsmiling. ‘It’s laid down.’ She paused. ‘Excuse me, are you the Harry Strang…?’

‘Things go right,’ Harry said slowly, ‘Mr Ericson here is a generous owner.’ He patted the table with both hands. ‘Well, business over. Let’s have a look at the bloke.’

At Dakota’s stable, a small girl in overalls was waiting, stroking the horse’s nose. She had short red hair and freckles.

‘This is me girl Denny,’ Ericson said. ‘Slim’s sort of her horse.’

Nancy shook hands with Denny. ‘Pleased to meet you, boss,’ she said. ‘Now that’s what I call grooming. You want to bring him out?’

The girl blushed with pleasure.

Dakota came out calmly, gleaming like a horse in a painting. Denny handled him as if he were a big labrador. He was saddled and bridled inside a minute. We walked behind Nancy, Denny and the horse to the track. Dakota had his head down, his neck extended. He looked as if he were deep in thought, a horse at peace with himself and his surroundings.

‘Walks like a stayer,’ Harry said. ‘You can always tell.’

At the track, Nancy adjusted the stirrups, swung up effortlessly.

‘Have a little muck about, get the feel of him,’ said Tony Ericson.

We watched for fifteen minutes while she took him up and down the track, trot, canter, short gallop, bit of walking around. When she came back to us, she said, ‘Nice horse, likes to run,’ rubbing his jaw. She got off and gave the reins to Denny.

‘Walk with me,’ Harry said. They hung back. When I looked around, they had their heads together, Harry talking with his hands. At the top of the gravel path, they caught up.

‘Friday, I’ll be back, talk some tactics, look at some movies,’ Harry said.

On the way home, Harry said to Cam, ‘Girl can ride. Strong, too. You got a feelin?’

Cam flicked a glance at him. ‘You know what Oscar Wilde said? Only one thing makes more of a fool of a man than a woman. And that’s a horse.’

Harry said, reflectively, ‘That so? Didn’t know old Oscar rode horses. Knew he rode everythin else.’

The sun came out as we drove over the Westgate Bridge. Off to the left, far off in the distance, I could see the observation platform at Yarra Cove. They had put three flags on it now. Big flags.

I got in another two hours’ work at Taub’s. The three tabletop boards had to be joined with hide glue. Charlie wouldn’t use anything else for this kind of work. Some cabinetmakers use epoxy resin glues. The joints were claimed to be stronger than the woods they joined. When I mentioned this to Charlie, he said, with feigned incomprehension, ‘Stronger than the wood? You want joints stronger than wood, welding is the trade.’

I measured out a quantity of hide glue, golden granules, dissolved them in water, added some more granules and heated up the liquid in the glue pot. While it was warming, I put the boards on the gluing stand and dry-clamped them. The fit was good. I unclamped them and, when the glue was hot, I carefully painted it on two interior edges with a hogbristle brush. Then I put hardwood strips down the outside to protect the outer edges and one-inch dowels outside them to spread the clamp pressure. I tightened the eight bar clamps, the outside pair first, then alternately on each side. At each end and at three intervals along the surface, I used three-by-three hardwood cauls and C-clamps to make sure that the pressure of the bar clamps wasn’t distorting the assembly.

It had to be absolutely flat. There were no second chances.

Then I tinkered with the clamps for a good fifteen minutes, trying to ensure that I had enough pressure but didn’t force out glue and starve the joints. ‘Trust your hands,’ Charlie used to say in the early days. ‘If you’re straining, it’s too tight.’ I didn’t quite understand this: Charlie could tighten the nuts on the Sydney Harbour Bridge with his bare hands without taking any strain.

When I’d cleaned up, I went home. Reluctantly.

Sunday night. I cleaned the kitchen and the bathroom, fed the dishwasher, tried to read the Sunday Age, opened a bottle of wine, drank half a glass, stared at the contents of the fridge. Made a cheese and gherkin sandwich. Women come into your life and all the hard-earned self-sufficiency deserts you. Suddenly you’re half a person again.

The phone rang. Long-distance beeps.

‘Jack Irish?’ Ronnie Bishop’s friend Charles Lee in Perth.

I said I was sorry about Ronnie’s death. I didn’t have the heart to tell him I wasn’t interested in Ronnie anymore.

‘Jack,’ he said. ‘I should tell the police this now that Ronnie’s dead. Remember I told you about the answering machine tape? How it was missing?’

‘I remember.’

‘Well, I found it. About half an hour ago. Under the drinks cupboard next to the phone. It must have slid under there when the burglar tipped out the phone table drawer. It’s got the messages from Melbourne for Ronnie.’