Peter Temple: Bad Debts

‘Close it,’ Linda said, pointing at the hatch. As I bent down to slide the door over, there were four sharp sounds from below. Gunshots. They were trying to shoot open the lock on the front door.

I slid the hatch closed and stood up.

What was I supposed to do now?

The roof door to the internal stairs.

I looked around. About ten metres away I could make out a large, square structure. The lift housing.

‘Wait here,’ I said and ran. The roof was slippery, some kind of moss growing on the concrete. At the corner of the housing, I fell, sliding across the rough surface. I got up, sharp pain in the left knee. The door was a few metres away, open. I got to it, closed it and felt for the bolt.

There wasn’t a bolt. The door couldn’t be locked.

I opened it slowly, stuck my head in and listened.

Silence. The men weren’t at the front door any more. They were in the flat. There was nowhere to hide there. They would very quickly know we had got out.

I closed the door again and looked at it, felt it. Nothing on the surface of the door.

My fingers touched something on the door frame to my left. I felt to the right of the door. The same. Steel brackets.

The door was meant to be barred, not bolted.

Where was the bar? I felt around frantically, seeing better now, eyes getting used to the dark. No bar.

I looked around the roof. Away to my left, there was something moving.

I squinted, trying to see better.

Washing. Someone had hung a line of washing on the roof. Hung the line between what? I limped over. Two lengths of one-inch pipe with welded crossbars held up the washing line.

I went over to one, put both hands around it and pulled with all my force. It came out so easily that I fell over backwards, pipe clutched to my chest. Scrambling to my feet, I wrenched off the washing line and ran for the door, pipe at the port arms.

I was a few metres from the door when someone in the stairwell shouted something. I could only catch the word ‘stairs’.

I got to the door. I could hear footsteps thudding metres away.

The door wouldn’t close fully.

I stood back and kicked the door so hard I felt the impact in my wrists and at the top of my skull.

The door closed.

I stepped back, winded.

Something hit the door like a sledgehammer. It swung open and a man-short, bald-came through, left shoulder first, right arm coming around with a long-barrelled revolver held shoulder-high.

He was so close I could smell his breath: alcohol and garlic.

I brought the steel pipe I was holding around with all the force I had. It only had to travel about half a metre before it made contact with the side of the man’s head.

He went over sideways, hitting the doorframe with his right shoulder and falling back into the stairwell.

I dropped the pipe, slammed the door shut again and rammed the pipe though the brackets.

When I turned, Linda was behind me.

‘Jesus Christ,’ she said. ‘Come on. Cam’s on the roof next door.’

For a moment, I was too winded to move. Then I staggered after her. When we got to the parapet wall to the left of the roof hatch, I saw Cam.

He was on the roof of the building across the lane, sitting on the parapet wall, smoking a cigarette. Next to him on the wall were Linda’s laptop and bag. She must have thrown them to him.

‘G’day,’ he said. ‘Shove that ladder over.’

I looked over the edge of our wall. Six floors below, light was reflected off wet cobblestones. I looked over at Cam. His building was about four or five metres higher than ours. The gap between us was about the same.

I went over and got the ladder. It seemed terribly flimsy. I got it upright and leaned it over until Cam could catch the top rung. He pulled it up until he could hold the sides standing up.

‘Ladies first,’ he said.

I looked at Linda. She smiled, a tight little smile. ‘We used to do this at Girl Guides,’ she said. ‘Piece of cake.’

She scrambled across in seconds.

My turn. My knee was aching. I’d grazed my hip. I was having trouble breathing. I felt a hundred years old.

‘I was happier doing conveyancing,’ I said to no-one in particular.

Then I went across that inadequate bridge like a big monkey.

Cam had a ute this time, a battered Ford with a lashed-down tarpaulin over the tray. It was parked in a narrow blind lane off Little Bourke Street.

‘What’s the next stop?’ he asked.

We were all leaning on parts of the ute, trying to control our breathing.

‘Shoreham,’ said Linda and caught her breath. ‘On the Mornington Peninsula. I know a place there. It’ll be empty.’

Cam straightened up. ‘Country air,’ he said. ‘Let’s go.’ He started loosening the tray cover. When he had the back open, he looked at me and said, ‘They’re looking for two blokes, mate. Hop in.’

‘In the back?’

‘There’s a mattress. And pillows. Lots of air gets in. You can have a kip.’

I climbed in and lay down. Cam lashed the cover down. It was pitch-black under the cover, dark and claustrophobic and smelling of engine oil. I had to fight the urge to try and break out.

We were reversing over cobblestones. The springs transmitted every bump. I found a pillow, dragged it under my head, closed my eyes and tried to think about sharpening the blade of a number 7 plane. I was trying to learn how to grind a hollow angle and then hone the blade on that angle with a circular motion the way the Japanese did. I was thinking about how to improve my honing action when I fell asleep.

I woke with a start, no idea where I was, tried to sit up, bounced off the taut nylon tray cover, fell back in fright.

Cam’s voice said, ‘Nice place. They’d have something to drink here, would they?’

I knew where I was. How had I managed to fall asleep? I lay still and listened to my heartbeat while Cam loosened the cover.

‘Breathing?’ he said. ‘Relaxed?’

Inside ten minutes we were drinking whisky in front of a fire in the stone hearth of what seemed to be an enormous mudbrick and timber house. I went outside and stood on the terrace. There was a vineyard running away from the house.

I went back inside. Cam was on his haunches, fiddling with the fire.

‘Were they cops?’ I asked. I felt wide-awake. I’d slept for more than two hours.

‘Moved like cops,’ said Cam. ‘Very efficient. I gather you decked one.’

‘Tony Baker he calls himself,’ I said. ‘Came to the pub to scare me off. Made out he was a fed of some kind.’

‘If he’s a dead fed,’ Cam said, ‘we have other problems.’ He stood up and yawned. ‘That’s enough Monday now. I’ll find a bed.’

I looked at Linda. She was asleep, head fallen onto the arm of the sofa, hair fallen over her face. In the end, perfect exhaustion drives out fear.

‘I’ll just sit here,’ I said. ‘Reflect on how I got everybody into this shit.’

‘That’s the past,’ Cam said. ‘Think about the future. How to get everybody out of this shit.’

After a while, I got up and found a blanket to put over Linda. She didn’t wake up when I swung her legs onto the sofa and arranged a pillow under her head.

I kissed her on the cheek, got some whisky, put some more wood on the fire. The future. But we weren’t finished with the past yet. What had Paul Vane seen on the night Anne Jeppeson died? What was the evidence he knew about? And what was the evidence Father Gorman had told Ronnie to bring to Melbourne and where was it?

Time passed. I fed the fire, listened to the night sounds. It was after three before I felt tired enough to find a bed. Sleep eventually came.

Sunlight on my face woke me. It was after 9 a.m. My knee was stiff and sore and the skin around my hip was tender. I felt dirty. Looking for a shower, I went into the kitchen. Cam was sitting at the table, eating toast and jam, clean, hair slicked back.