Peter Temple: Bad Debts

Baker hit him under the jaw with an upward movement of the shotgun butt. Cam fell over sideways.

Baker stepped back, readying himself to kick.

‘Leave him,’ I said. ‘It’s in the chimney.’

Baker looked at Scullin.

Scullin said to me, ‘Get it.’

Baker pointed the shotgun at me. Scullin passed me the crowbar.

I looked at Linda. She was kneeling next to Cam, holding his head, blood all over her arms.

The fireplace cover came off easily, nails squeaking. In the fireplace was an old stove, a Dover, filthy with soot, stovepipe rusted.

‘Get up there,’ Scullin said.

There wasn’t room for me and the stovepipe. I took it in both hands and worked it loose. It came off and fell behind the stove with a crash. I got on the stove awkwardly, kneeling, bent over, and looked up the chimney. Soot fell on my face. Dark. I couldn’t see anything.

‘Get up there,’ Scullin said again.

I pressed my hands against the chimney sides, got on one leg, then the other. I was in the chimney from below my waist up.

I put my hands up and began to feel around.

Nothing. Just flaking soot. I reached higher. A ledge. The chimney had a jink.

My fingertips touched something. Smooth. Cold. I felt sideways, found an edge.

A box. A metal box. Felt up. A projection. The lid. Ran my fingers left and right.

‘What the fuck you doing up there?’ Scullin said. ‘Is it there or what?’

There was something on top of the box.

‘It’s here,’ I said. ‘It’s here.’

I bent my knees slowly, got the right one on the stove, turned my body to the left, arms above my head.

‘Get a fucking move on,’ Scullin said.

I ducked down, came out of the chimney, soot falling like a curtain, bringing my right arm down and around my body.

‘Here,’ Scullin said, ‘give it to me.’

He was just a metre away.

I shot him in the chest, high, right under the collarbone. He went over backwards.

Baker was looking at me, a little smile on his face.

I shot him in the stomach. He frowned and looked down at himself.

I got off the stove and shot Scullin again, in the chest.

Baker was bringing up his shotgun, slowly. He was looking at the floor.

‘Steady on, Jack,’ he said thickly, like a very drunk man.

I shot him again, in the chest. The impact knocked him up against the wall. Then he fell over sideways.

‘Stop now,’ Cam said. ‘I think they understand.’

We were going through Royal Park, Linda driving Scullin’s dove-grey Audi, Cam in the back, strapped up and stitched and plastered by the doctor in Geelong. I came out of my reverie. No-one had said anything for eighty kilometres.

Something flat, that’s all. Ronnie’s friend Charles’s words. Ronnie had brought something small and flat to Melbourne.

‘Ronnie’s evidence,’ I said.

Linda glanced at me. ‘What?’

‘I know where Ronnie’s evidence is,’ I said.

I gave her directions.

Mrs Bishop took a long time to open her door.

‘Mr Irish,’ she said. ‘How nice to see you.’ She inspected me. ‘Have you been in mud?’

‘Doing a dirty job,’ I said. ‘Should have changed. Can I come in if I don’t touch anything?’

We went down the passage and into the sitting room. I looked around. On a bookshelf between the french doors was a small stereo outfit, no bigger than a stack of three Concise Oxfords. On top was the CD player.

The CDs, a modest collection, perhaps twenty, were on the shelf above in a plastic tray.

‘Mrs Bishop,’ I said. ‘I wanted to come around and say how sorry I am about Ronnie. But I had to go away.’

She nodded, looked away, sniffed. ‘Both my men,’ she said. ‘Both gone.’

I wanted to pat her but my hand was too dirty. I waited a while, then I said, ‘You told me Ronnie put a new CD with your others.’

She cheered up. ‘That’s right. It’s Mantovani’s greatest hits.’

‘Have you played it?’ I said, and I held my breath.

She put out a hand and found a cleanish place to touch my arm. ‘I haven’t been able to bring myself to,’ she said. ‘It’s the last thing Ronnie gave me.’

‘Do you think we could put it on for a little listen? It might help me.’

Her look said that she thought all was not well with my thinking processes, but she switched the player on, found the CD in the tray and, holding it like a circle of spiderweb, put it in the drawer.

She pressed Play. The drawer slid in.

We waited.

The silken strings of Mantovani filled the room.

I expelled my breath loudly.

‘Thank you, Mrs Bishop,’ I said. ‘I don’t think it’s going to help me after all.’

Her eyes were closed and she was moving her head with the music.

I got into the car and slammed the door. ‘I don’t know where Ronnie’s evidence is,’ I said. ‘Shit.’

Cam started the motor. ‘Let’s think about a drink,’ he said.

Doug always said Ronnie would make a good spy.

‘Hang on,’ I said. ‘One more try.’

This time, Mrs Bishop opened her door in seconds.

‘Sorry to be a nuisance,’ I said.

‘Not at all, Mr Irish.’

‘Did you live in this house when Ronnie was a boy?’

She smiled. ‘Oh yes. We’ve always had this house. It was Doug’s mother’s. Doug grew up here, too. I wanted to sell it when we went to Queensland, but Doug wouldn’t have a bar of it. He was a very wise person, wasn’t he.’

‘Very. Mrs Bishop, did Ronnie have any special place in the house? A secret place?’

‘Secret? Well, just the roof cubby. But that wasn’t a secret.’

‘The roof cubby?’

‘Yes. It’s a little hidey-hole in the roof. Doug’s father made it for him when he was a boy.’

‘Ronnie didn’t by any chance go up there?’

She frowned. ‘To the roof cubby? Why would he do that?’

‘He didn’t?’

‘Well, I don’t know. I wasn’t here all the time, but-’

‘Could I have a look at it?’

She didn’t reply for a moment. Her eyes said she was now reasonably certain that I was deranged. Then she said, ‘Are you any good at climbing trees, Mr Irish?’

The entrance to the roof cubby was the ventilation louvre in the back gable of the house. It was about six metres from the ground, brushed by the thick, bare branches of an ancient walnut.

I considered calling for Cam. But pride is a terrible thing.

‘You wouldn’t have a ladder?’ I said.

Mrs Bishop shook her head. ‘That’s how you get up there. The tree.’

I took hold of the lowest branch of the tree. There was moss on it. I groaned.

It took five minutes to get up there. I almost fell out of the tree twice and a branch poked me in the groin before I got close enough to the small door to put out a hand and push it. It resisted. I put out a foot and pushed.

The door opened with a squeak, swinging inwards and pulling in a short length of nylon rope attached to a ringbolt in the bottom of the door. I puzzled over this for a moment before I realised that this was how you closed the door from the outside: you pulled the rope.

I clambered across from my branch, got my head and shoulders and one arm in and pulled myself across.

The floor of the hideaway was below the level of the doorway. I lowered myself tentatively into the gloom. About a metre down, my feet touched the floor. For a while I couldn’t see anything, then gradually I made out the corners of the room. Light came from the door, now a window, from gaps between the bargeboards and the roof. It was a little box, perhaps three metres square, with a pitched ceiling, boarded off from the rest of the ceiling of the house. The floor was covered with flower-patterned linoleum.