Peter Temple: Bad Debts

‘Let’s say it’s a cop. Was a cop,’ she said. ‘What then?’

‘Died some time before Danny was shot. At least a month.’

‘How do you know that?’

‘I’m assuming the woman got in touch with Danny soon after her husband’s death. That’s when she rang. About a month before Danny was killed.’

Linda turned around. ‘What date was that?’

I told her.

‘Where’s the phone?’ she said.

‘Coming up.’ Cam was coming back, carrying a cordless phone. ‘I’m taking a stroll to pick up some other wheels. I’ll come back, see if you need anything.’

Linda took the phone from him. ‘Phone book?’

‘In the kitchen. On the fridge.’ He gave me a wave.

When she came back, Linda took a notebook out of her bag, sat down and punched a number.

‘Hello, Police Association? Can I speak to the secretary? Right. Who could I speak to about membership records? Oh, you’ve got a membership secretary. Denise Walters. I’d like to, yes.’

Linda waited, looking at me. ‘Denise, hi,’ she said. ‘My name’s Colleen Farrell. Dr Colleen Farrell. From Monash University Medical School. Denise, I wonder if you can help me. We’re doing a study on police mortality in Australia. Do you know about that? No? It’s at the early stages, but we think it’ll help the police case for a stress loading on salaries.’

Pause. ‘Yes. Abnormally high levels, we think, Denise. We’ve run into a little problem you might be able to help us with. We don’t have any data for Victoria for the last two months.’

Pause. ‘Yes, that’s right. We got the other data directly from the Commissioner’s office but the person there has gone on leave and I’d like to get up to date before I go on leave.’

Pause. ‘That would be terrific, Denise. I’ll wait on.’

We sat in silence looking at each other. Linda reached down, took the hem of her skirt and began to work it up, slowly, one thigh at a time, flexing her thigh muscles and moving her bottom from side to side. I could see the dark at the fork of her legs when she said, ‘Still here. Right. No serving members so far this year. Good. What about non-serving?’

Pause. ‘Two in January. None in Feb. One in March. One in April. Okay. Now, Denise, I’ll need the names to check against our register.’

Pause. ‘H. J. Mullins. T. R. Conroy. M. E. F. Davis. P. K. Vane. That’s V-A-N-E, is it? Terrific. I see we’ve got them all except Vane. You wouldn’t have any biographical data there, would you, Denise?’

Pause. ‘Just service dates. Um. ’63 to ’88. Special Branch 1978 to ’84. Look, Denise, you’ve been a great help. Thanks very much. Much appreciated.’

Linda put the phone down and pulled her skirt back to respectability. ‘I can’t bear to see a man salivate,’ she said. ‘The only possibility is P. K. Vane. He was in the Special Branch when Anne was killed, though.’

‘I’d say that lets him out. They spent all their time hanging around anarchist meetings. Six people and a collie dog and two Special Branch. Our bloke would probably be in Drugs, one of Scullin’s mates.’

There was a sound in the hallway. I felt my shoulders tense. Cam came in.

‘All fixed up,’ he said. ‘Listen, I’m shooting through. You want me, press auto and 8 on the phone. It’ll page me.’ He opened his jacket and showed the pager on his belt.

‘I’m in your debt, mate,’ I said.

Cam said, ‘Saturday, that’s the day we pay off debts. There’s plenty of food here.’ He eyed Linda appraisingly. ‘Try the cupboards in the big bedroom for clothes. You’re not far apart in size. Jack, there’s men’s clothes in the other bedroom. One of her exes. Biggish fella, I gather. Nice line in shirts. Help yourself.’

I went with him to the front door. He was outside when he said, ‘That little case of mine, that’s in the kitchen now. Under the sink. I wouldn’t open this door to anyone if I were you.’

I detoured to the bathroom on my way back, looking for aspirin. Pumping adrenalin leaves you feeling dull and headachey. I was studying the contents of the medicine cabinet when it came to me out of nowhere.

I can remember her saying she could go anywhere in safety because the Special Branch were always lurking somewhere.

Anne Jeppeson’s mother. That was what she had said.

The Law Department at Melbourne University looks the way universities should. It has courtyards and cloisters and ivy.

I loitered downstairs, near where a girl had set fire to herself during the Vietnam War. Nobody paid any attention to me. The whole campus was full of people in ex-army overcoats wearing beanies. I was just older than most of them. By about thirty years.

My man came out ahead of his students, striding briskly, looking the way lecturers usually look after a lecture: happy and smug. His name was Barry Chilvers and he taught constitutional law. He was also a civil liberties activist and knew more about the Special Branch than most people.

‘Barry,’ I said when he was level with me.

He jerked his head up at me, eyes startled behind the big glasses.

I took the beanie off.

‘Jesus Christ, Jack,’ he said, exasperated, ‘where’d you get that coat? And the beanie, for Christ sakes. It’s a Collingwood beanie. How can you wear a Collingwood beanie?’

‘Ensures that I’m not recognised,’ I said. ‘Got a moment?’

We went upstairs to his office. It was the same mess I remembered: books, papers, journals, student essays, styrofoam cups, newspapers, bits of clothing everywhere. Two computers had been added to the chaos.

I cleared away a briefcase and a pile of files from a chair and sat down. ‘You were looking very pleased with yourself,’ I said.

He scratched his woolly grey head. ‘One of the better days at the pearl-swine interface,’ he said. ‘Some days I come back and headbutt the door. To what do I owe this visit?’

‘Do you remember Anne Jeppeson?’

‘Sure. Got run down. She was a spunk. Politically loony but a spunk.’

‘Would the Special Branch have watched her?’

He put a thumb behind his top teeth, took it out. ‘It’s hard to say. Who says so?’

‘She said something to her mother.’

‘There was a lot of paranoia about the Branch. If you believed all the people who said the Branch was watching them, it wouldn’t have been a branch, it would have been the whole bloody tree.’

‘But it’s possible?’

He shrugged. ‘More than most, I suppose. She was into a whole lot of stuff the Branch would have had an interest in-Roxby Downs, Aboriginal rights in Tasmania, East Timor. You name it.’

‘East Timor? The Special Branch? I thought it was only interested in local stuff?’

Barry shrugged again. ‘The Branch, ASIO, ASIS, you can’t separate them. They scratched each other’s backs. So it’s possible, yes.’

I told him what else I needed to know.

He groaned. ‘Where some Branch goon was at a certain time in 1984? Jesus H. Christ, Jack, you don’t have modest requests, do you? When in ’84?’

I told him.

‘Not long before Harker got the boot and the new government closed the Branch down.’

‘That’s right. There’d be records somewhere, wouldn’t there?’

Barry shook his head. ‘Shredded. On orders from the highest authority. All records to be destroyed.’

‘So there’s no record of what they were up to?’

He clapped his hands. ‘Shredded,’ he said. ‘But not before being copied.’

‘Shredded? And copied?’

‘What do you expect?’ said Barry. ‘I think it was something the cops and the new Opposition found themselves in agreement on. Think about it. The files represent about five billion hours of coppers standing around in the rain dying to have a piss. You shred them and a couple of years later another government gets elected and wants you to start all over again, spying on the same bunch of harmless sods. They say they went through three copiers. Twenty-four hours a day for days.’