Peter Temple: Bad Debts

‘You mind coming in the kitchen?’ she said. ‘I’m in the middle of Kirsty’s tea.’

We went down the passage into a large, warm room that had a kitchen on one side and lounge chairs and a television on the other. The girl was in pyjamas with small roses on them in front of the television, watching a game show.

‘Kirsty, this is Mr Irish. Say how do you do.’

Kirsty said it.

I sat at a pine kitchen table and watched Sue McKillop cut toast into squares and pile on scrambled eggs from a pan.

She found a small fork in a drawer.

‘You can eat in front of the TV tonight, darling,’ she said, taking the plate over to the girl and kissing her quickly on the forehead.

When she came back, she sat down opposite me. ‘My dad’s coming from Queensland tonight,’ she said. ‘He’s nearly eighty. I told him not to. We’ll be all right.’

I said, ‘What about Danny’s family?’

She smiled, a wan lip movement. ‘We’re it. He was brought up by his nanna. She died while he was inside. There’s just a cousin.’

‘Danny left a message for me to meet him at the Trafalgar on Saturday night,’ I said. ‘I didn’t get it until Sunday. Why did he want to see me?’

She moistened her lips. ‘He was scared. They waited for him outside here on Thursday night, but he parked around the corner and when he was walking towards the house he saw them.’

‘Who?’

‘I don’t know. Men. It’s from the accident. Something, I don’t know.’

‘The accident Danny went to jail for?’

‘Yes. He didn’t do that.’

‘Why do you say that?’

She shrugged. ‘Someone told him he was fitted up. Someone who knew.’

‘Do you know who the person was?’

‘No. It was a woman. Danny said something about her husband dying.’

‘When was that?’

‘About a month ago. He changed all of a sudden. Got upset easily. Why do you want to know?’

I hesitated. ‘I may be able to do something.’

She hugged herself. ‘You can’t do anything. You can’t bring Danny back.’

‘You said the police murdered him.’

‘Danny never had a gun. And if he’d had one, why would he threaten the police?’

‘Perhaps he didn’t know they were police.’

She ran a hand through her short hair. ‘The policeman who came here said the men identified themselves to Danny as police.’

‘Danny been okay since he came out?’

She looked me in the eyes. ‘Danny wasn’t a crim. He finished school in jail. He worked with a friend of mine at Marston’s. That’s how I met him. It’s a car part company in Essendon.’

‘He used to be on smack.’

She shook her head. ‘In another life. He wouldn’t even drink more than two stubbies.’

I believed her. One thing practising law gives you is a feeling for some kinds of truth.

‘When he saw the people waiting for him outside,’ I said, ‘what did he do?’

‘He went to a callbox and rang Col Mullens next door and Col came over and called me to the phone.’

‘Why didn’t he ring here?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘What did he say?’

‘He said he couldn’t come home because the house was being watched and he’d stay somewhere else for the night and sort it out on Friday. He was scared. I could hear it.’

‘Why didn’t he go to the police?’

She shook her head and took a tissue out of her sleeve. ‘Danny reckoned the cops were in on it.’ She blew her nose. ‘Had to be the cops fixed him up for the accident, didn’t it? Did you know they gave him pills and stuff to take every day before the trial? Danny said he didn’t hardly know where he was.’

‘No, I didn’t know that. So the men outside could have been cops?’

‘Suppose so.’

‘He didn’t say they were cops?’

‘No.’

‘Have you told all this to the cops?’

‘Yes. Friday night when they come around here.’

The girl came over with her plate. ‘Cream, please,’ she said, eyes fixed on me. Sue got up, took a tub of ice cream out of the fridge, put two scoops in a bowl and handed it to her daughter.

‘Would you like some?’ the girl said, showing me the bowl.

‘No thanks, Kirsty,’ I said. ‘I haven’t had my tea yet.’

She nodded and went back to the television.

Sue said, ‘I’m sorry. I haven’t offered you anything…’

I shook my head. ‘That’s fine. What did Danny do after this woman phoned him about being fixed up for the hit and run?’

‘He said he was going to get the case opened again. The person who told him said there was evidence.’

‘And did he find any?’

‘I don’t think so. I don’t know. He wasn’t a big talker, Danny. He’d sort of plan things in his head for weeks, just sit thinking, and then one day he’d just start doing something and he wouldn’t stop until it was finished.’ She looked around in pride and wonder. ‘Like this room. Danny built the whole thing in two weeks in his holidays. I didn’t even know he could knock a nail in.’

‘Great piece of work,’ I said. ‘Does this phone number mean anything to you?’ I read out the number Danny had left on the answering machine.

‘No. I don’t know that number.’

I had other questions but suddenly I wanted to be out of the snug room that Danny McKillop had built for his little family and out in the cold, streaming evening. I gave Sue my card and left. The child came to the front door and waved at me.

‘I should’ve taken the fucken package, Jack,’ Senior Sergeant Barry Tregear said.

We were sitting in my car in the carpark of the Kensington McDonald’s, eating Big Macs. Barry Tregear also had two large French fries and a large Coke. He was a big man with a pear-shaped head, its summit and three upper slopes thinly covered in greying blond stubble. He always looked two slabs of beer away from fat, even when I’d first met him in Vietnam, but nothing moved when he walked.

‘You could’ve gone back to Hay,’ I said.

Barry grew up somewhere out on the endless plains around a town called Hay in New South Wales. His father hadn’t come back from World War II, along with half of the other fathers of the kids in his school.

‘Fuck Hay,’ said Barry. ‘Bloke offered me half a motel outside Lismore. Was in Licensing with me. Turned it down like a stupid prick. He sells out a couple of months ago, doubles his money. And I’m still driving around in the fucken rain, member of an elite group. Number eight on the new Commissioner’s Top Ten shit list. Is that judgment or fucken what?’

He took a savage bite of his Big Mac.

A lot of work had drifted my way in the old days because of Barry. He’d been in Consorting and then Major Crimes, squads closed down now but once home for hard men all but indistinguishable from the criminals they spent most of their time with. I’d had plenty of clients who’d come in and said variations on ‘Barry Tregear reckons y’might get me a fair shake’.

I said, ‘You’ve got an ex-cop for a Police Minister now. He’ll see you old blokes right, won’t he?’

Barry took in about eight chips and chewed thoughtfully. ‘Garth Bruce is a cunt. And he’s got selective amnesia. You hear him sprouting all that shit about getting rid of the old culture in the force? Mate, I’m part of the old culture and fucking proud of it,’ he said around the potato.

‘What exactly is the old culture?’

‘The dinosaurs left over from when it didn’t count if you took an extra ten bucks for the drinks when you put in for sweet for your dogs. When you had to load some cockroach to get it off the street. Public fucken service. We’re the ancient pricks think it’s okay to punch out slime who dob in a bloke who’s walked out on the wire for them to fucking Internal Affairs. That’s us. That’s the old culture.’