Bad Debts (19 page)

The future Yarra Cove was much larger than it had appeared on Gerry Schuster’s computer screen. I parked near a wooden observation platform next to one of the three site gates. A burly man in a dark-blue uniform with a red shoulder patch that said AdvanceGuard was talking to the driver of a ute in the gateway.

There must have been twenty earthmoving vehicles, giant yellow insects, attacking the glum expanse of grey mud. At least as many trucks moved around the area on temporary roads, stretches of coarse aggregate sinking into the clay.

Not a trace remained of anything that had been there before. I stood at the rail, ten metres up, and after a while the ripping and pushing of the machines began to make some sense. They were gouging massive trenches, the width of streets, running from the waterfront. All of them led to an oval-shaped area, bigger than a football field, marked out with yellow nylon cord threaded through the eyes of metre-high steel needles stuck in the ground. The site huts, a small village of them, were in the middle of the oval. Eventually, the oval would be a yacht basin, with the trenches becoming canals leading from the riverfront. The Hoagland flats must have stood where a small digger was unearthing pipes in one ploughed-up patch.

For a while, caught up in the sheer scale of the operation, I watched the machines roaring and grinding, scooping and reversing, dumping, wheeling, their grey breaths pumping out and being snatched by the sharp-toothed little wind off the river. The whole scene was one of power: man and machine changing a landscape by sheer force.

This was what it was all about.

Sheer force.

Anne Jeppeson thought she was taking on the power of Heartless Bureaucracy. What hit her was the sheer force of Money.

She died so that someone could make a fortune out of rich people’s desire to park their boats outside their front doors.

122

It came to me with absolute certainty that my little inquiry into the lives and deaths of Danny McKillop and Anne Jeppeson was of no consequence whatsoever. Nothing would change what had happened, no-one would be called to account for it. Anne, Danny, Ronnie Bishop, the doctor, me—we were all just minor nuisances.

I felt like shouting Fuck into the wind but there was someone else on the platform, a thin man with a week’s grey stubble and wispy hair sticking out from under a beanie.

He was drinking a can of Vic Bitter. Looking at me, he drained the can and threw it over his shoulder. ‘Used to live here,’ he shouted over the noise. ‘Fucking shithole. Should’ve flattened it years ago.’ He took another can out of his anorak and popped it.

The daylight was almost gone when I parked outside my office. I had the key in the lock when I sensed someone behind me.

‘Mr Irish.’ It was a friendly voice. I turned. Two men, solid-looking, in dark suits. The one who had spoken held up an open badge wallet. ‘Detective-Sergeant James,’ he said. ‘The Commissioner of Police would like a word, if it’s convenient.’

‘It’s not,’ I said. ‘Tell him to make an appointment.’

‘If it’s not convenient, I have instructions to arrest you,’ he said, voice still friendly.

‘On what charge?’

‘Several charges. One is conspiring to pervert the course of justice.’

‘In what matter?’

‘Murders. Two of them.’

A gap appeared in my social calendar. I rode in the back of their grey Ford. No-one said anything. When it was clear that we weren’t going to police headquarters, I asked where we were going.

‘Collins Street,’ said the spokesman.

At the Hyatt on Collins, the driver showed the attendant a card and we drove into the underground carpark. We parked in a reserved bay next to the lift.

‘Let’s go,’ said the spokesman.

The three of us went up to the twelfth floor. When the lift door opened, Detective-Sergeant James’s partner went out first.

‘After you,’ said James. ‘Number seven.’

123

I followed his partner down the hushed pink and grey corridor. As he passed a door, he indicated it with his thumb and kept walking. I knocked at number seven. The partner had turned around about ten metres down the corridor and was looking at me. James, near the lifts, was studying a print on the wall.

The door was opened by a man in shirtsleeves and red braces. His tie was loose and he had a drink in his hand. ‘Come in, Mr Irish,’ he said.

It was the Minister for Police, Garth Bruce.

The suite was pale grey and pink like the corridor. We went through a small hallway into a large sitting room furnished with French period reproductions. A bottle of Johnnie Walker Black Label, an ice bucket, a water carafe and cut-glass whisky glasses stood on a table against the wall. A briefcase was open on a small writing desk between opulently curtained windows.

‘Thanks for coming,’ Bruce said. ‘Sorry about the escort. Let me give you a drink.

Whisky, anything.’

I said no thanks, curtly.

He was at the side table with his glass. He put it down and turned, a big man, bigger in life than on television. He’d boxed. There was scar tissue around his eyes. It hadn’t shown up on television. That would take skilful make-up. ‘Jack,’ he said, ‘this is friendly.

Let’s have a quiet drink together. It’s very much in your interests. Okay? What’ll you have?’

I asked for whisky and water. He made two drinks and brought mine over. We sat down a metre apart. He took a big drink.

‘That’s better,’ he said, sighing. ‘Jesus, what a day. Politics. Win one, lose ten.’ He took a cigarette out of a packet and offered the packet to me. I shook my head.

Bruce lit up with a lighter, blew out a long, thin stream of smoke and tapped the cigarette in the direction of an ashtray. Ash drifted to the carpet. He sat back, shoulders loose, and said, ‘Jack, I’m told you’ve been asking around about a lot of old business, things that happened nine, ten years ago. That right?’

‘Who tells you?’

He had another big drink. His eyes never left me. There was an appealing sadness about them. ‘Let me tell you a story,’ he said. ‘I haven’t got a lot of time. I don’t want to dance around with you. When I got this job, I appointed a new Commissioner and a new deputy. The first thing I said to them, I said: “The fucking joke’s over.”’

124

He leaned forward. ‘I was a cop for nearly twenty years, Jack. I know the system, I know what goes on. Everything. These new blokes knew that I knew what I was talking about. Cops’ve been bullshitting politicians for years. They can’t do that to me. I’m not going to sit in a high chair and be fed shit with a spoon. That’s why the Premier wanted me in this job.’

He drew on his cigarette and studied me. The silence and the open gaze were disconcerting. He hadn’t been a cop for twenty years for nothing.

‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘the point is, when this Danny McKillop got knocked behind the Trafalgar, I called in the file. I’ve had it with all this Dirty Harry shit. They see it on television. Twenty years, I fired three shots, all in response to cunts firing at me.’

He sat back, stubbed out his cigarette, put his hands in his pockets. ‘I read the wife’s statement, reckoned there were some questions about what made McKillop so scared.

Told the Commissioner that. He came back with all the background, the Jeppeson trial stuff, and the missing person’s report on this Bishop.’

Bruce got up, took out another cigarette, flamed it with the lighter, went to the windows. ‘Can’t sit for long,’ he said. ‘Back’s buggered. Anyway, Jack, what the Commissioner tells me is that the blokes he’s had going over this business find your tracks all over the place. You’re giving Vin McKillop money, you’re in Perth, you’re everywhere.’

He turned his head towards me. ‘What’s really worrying, Jack,’ he said quietly, ‘is that you were out there in the bush at Daylesford and it looks liked you wiped clean a whole lot of places. Places that could have had the prints of whoever topped Bishop and the druggie quack.’

He looked out into the night again. ‘Now that is very, very serious,’ he said. ‘You know how serious, Jack.’

I had seen this coming but I still didn’t know how to handle it. Bruce turned. There was a sheen on his face and on his scalp showing through the short, thinning hair.

‘I never found the doctor’s place,’ I said. ‘Got lost.’

He gave me a slow cop smile. ‘That’s a porky, Jack. If you were going to tell porkies, you should’ve changed the tyres on that motor Col Boon loaned you. Your tracks are all over the place.’

He came back to his chair and sat down carefully. ‘That was a really stupid thing to do.

The Commissioner wants to charge you. But he came to me first. That’s why you’re sitting here, not in metropolitan remand.’

125

We sat in silence for a while. The little carriage clock on the mantelpiece chimed the half hour, a silver splinter of sound.

Bruce picked up his glass, looked at it, rolled it like a thimble between his big, hairy hands. ‘I knew that prick killed your wife,’ he said, not looking at me. ‘Wayne Milovich.

Knew him for years. He was always a dangerous animal. Only had to look at his eyes.’

I didn’t know what to say. There was silence again. Bruce rolled his glass.

‘Crim tried to shoot my daughter,’ he said. ‘She was in the kitchen, looking in the fridge.

Went through her hair, through the cupboard, through the wall. Couldn’t pin it on him.

Bloke called Freely. We knew it was him. His whole fucking family, about fifty of them, said he was watching TV at the time. Couldn’t shake them. And by Jesus we shook some of them.’

‘I never heard about that,’ I said.

‘No. We kept it quiet. You don’t want to give the other animals ideas.’

He got up, collected my glass and made the drinks. While his back was turned, he said, voice just a little rough, ‘She was sixteen, lovely girl. Not the same again. Ever. Lost to me. To all of us. In and out of the funny farms. Cut her wrists, swallowed anything she could find. They found her on the beach just before Christmas. Her birthday was Boxing Day. Twenty-first that year. My fault, I suppose. My wife thought so, anyway. Never forgave me.’

I looked at the big back, the way he was holding himself. ‘You can’t take the blame for what mad people do,’ I said. ‘You couldn’t know.’ My voice seemed too loud.

‘You could say I did know,’ Bruce said flatly. ‘He told me he was going to do it. Outside court. He said, “Watch your family, Bruce, something could happen to them.” I told him, “You wouldn’t have the guts, you chickenshit little bastard.” I laughed at him. He was a runt, five foot fuckall. You’d never credit that he would do it.’

He brought my drink over. I got up to take it. We stood together awkwardly, not knowing where to look, some kind of bond of loss between us. I knew now why I wasn’t in metropolitan remand.

‘Cheers,’ Bruce said.

‘Cheers.’

We drank.

‘Never said anything to you? Milovich.’

126

‘Just the normal abuse. I wouldn’t have paid any attention if he had. I wouldn’t have done anything.’

‘Would you have told your wife?’

I shook my head.

Bruce nodded. He drank again, wiped his mouth and said, ‘You see Danny McKillop after he got out?’

‘No.’

‘So what, you heard about the shooting, started poking around?’

‘No. I was away for a couple of days. When I came back there were messages on my answering machine from him. I didn’t even remember who he was. He was waiting for me at the Trafalgar that night. Only I didn’t play the tape till the next day.’

‘What did he say?’

‘Said he was in trouble. He was scared.’

‘You talk to the wife?’

‘Yes.’

‘She tell you about the phone call, about Danny getting the idea he didn’t kill the Jeppeson woman?’

I nodded.

‘You reckoned there might be something in it, did you?’

I nodded again.

Bruce shook his head. ‘And Vin McKillop? He help you along with the theory?’

I shrugged.

Bruce gave me the look. ‘Jack,’ he said, ‘don’t come the lawyer with me. If I don’t help you, you’re going to have to practise in Somalia, somewhere like that.’

I didn’t ponder the matter. ‘Vin says someone saw Danny miles away from his car and dead drunk about twenty minutes before Anne Jeppeson was killed. And there was a cop with Danny earlier. Someone called Scullin. Vin says Danny was Scullin’s dog.’

127

Bruce sighed and shook his head. He went over to his briefcase and took out a manila folder. He waved it at me. ‘I can’t show you this,’ he said, ‘but I’ll tell you what it says.

Sit down.’

I sat down.

‘Danny wasn’t a dog. Vin was a dog. Vin was Scullin’s dog in those parts. And Vin thought that being an informer gave him some kind of immunity. The next thing Scullin hears is Vin is dealing speed on a fair scale and he’s claiming he’s got police protection.

Scullin didn’t like that. He put him away. Four years. Vin’s been trying to get even ever since. He’s obsessed with Scullin.’

I said, ‘So?’

Bruce tapped the folder. ‘It’s Vin fed Danny all that stuff about being innocent, about Scullin being around that night. It’s all bullshit. There’s no question that Danny was the driver. Vin’s idea was that Danny might go nuts and nail Scullin for him.’

I thought about this for a while. Bruce sat down again, gingerly, and lit a cigarette.

‘There’s something else,’ he said.

I waited.

‘The gun Danny had on him at the Trafalgar.’

‘The gun the cop says he had on him. Yes.’

‘It’s the gun that knocked Ronnie Bishop and his druggie doctor mate out at Daylesford.’

This took a bit of absorbing too.

‘You know what that means, Jack?’ Bruce was holding the folder against his chin.

I had an idea. ‘Tell me.’

‘Danny was going to kill you that night. You and Scullin and Ronnie Bishop were the trifecta. Good thing you didn’t listen to your messages. Danny wanted to knock you, mate. He reckoned you helped fit him up.’

My mouth was dry. I finished my drink, got up and opened a bottle of soda. The realisation that you’ve been a blind prick is not an easy one to come to terms with.