Bad Debts (2 page)

‘That’s half the people I know.’

I went home. The flat smelled of musty books. It took me back to the start of my legal career, searching through document boxes stacked like tin coffins in a crypt. I put my bag in the bedroom and opened the sitting room windows. The cold came in like a presence. At the end of the lane cars flicked by. The rain held in the streetlight’s cone seemed to rise from the sharkskin pavement.

I made a drink of whisky, ice and tap water and slumped on the sofa beside the telephone. In the gloom, the little red light on the answering machine blinked nervously. I went to push the button and thought, bugger it. Tomorrow.

I finished the whisky, made some Milo and took it to bed, feeling tired and lonely. It took six pages of a Bolivian novelist to put me away.

3

8

On Sunday I fiddled around, doing nothing, restless, vaguely sorry for myself. I spent an hour writing a letter to my daughter in Queensland. Claire was cooking on a fishing boat out of Port Douglas. In my mind, I saw her, a beautiful stick with wrists the size of some men’s knuckle-bones. She was circled by large males, blond men with permanent sunburn and the eyes of dead sharks. I thought about the first time I saw Claire’s mother, on Bells Beach. She had been surrounded by testosterone-crazed surfers, all lying belly down to hide their erections.

I reread Claire’s most recent letter. It made too many mentions of the boat’s skipper, a man called Eric. I ended my letter with some delicately phrased warnings about the distorting effects of propinquity on judgment. Still, at least Eric had a job.

I walked to the corner to post the letter. The sky was low, the colour of misery, wind whipping the naked trees. There was no-one in the park except a man and a small boy sitting at a table near the playground. The boy was eating something out of a styrofoam box, his eyes on the table. The man was smoking a cigarette. He put out a helpless hand and touched the boy’s hair.

I went home and the winking light on the answering machine caught my eye as I came in the door. I pressed the button and slumped on the couch.

Jack, Andrew. Thought you’d be back by now. Listen, I’ve pushed a little lease thing your way. Bloke called Andropolous. I just got his cousin off a couple of obtaining-by-deceptions. Andy’s all right. Cash in hand. Pause. By the way, Helen’s fucked off. Give me a ring when you get back. Cheers. Oh, my secretary says a guy called McKillop was around here today looking for you. Ex-client, I gather. See you.

The machine’s deep voice said: Thursday, July 23, 6.20 p.m. Andrew Greer, former law partner.

Jack. Mate, it’s Danny McKillop. Pause. Danny, y’know, the hit-and-run? In ’84? I’m out.

You said ring you, like if there was something? I’m in a bit of strife, mate. You reckon you can give me a ring? It’s 9419 8432. Tonight if you can. Cheers.

The machine said: Thursday, July 23, 7.47 p.m.

I stopped the machine. Danny McKillop. Y’know, the hit-and-run? It meant nothing. A former client? A client who went to jail. Plenty of those around. I pressed the button again.

Jack, Laurie Baranek. Look, this agreement needs a bit extra, know what I mean? Can we stick in a coupla other penalties? I just want it so he understands he don’t deliver, he’s in big shit. Get my meaning? Ring me. Not at work, I’m on the mobile.

9

Friday, July 24, 2.28 p.m. Laurence Baranek, vegetable merchant and property speculator.

Jack, it’s Danny. McKillop. Get my message? Listen, ring any time, doesn’t matter what time. Pause. Jack, I’m in deep shit. Can you meet me in the carpark of the Hero of Trafalgar in Brunswick? It’s off Sydney Road. Seven o’clock tonight? I wouldn’t ask only I’m shitting myself, okay? Cheers.

The man said it was Saturday, 25 July, 3.46 p.m.

There were no more messages, just a lot of silences and disconnections. Danny McKillop? The name still meant nothing. I rang the number. No answer. I put on Mahler, made a beef stew, opened a bottle of wine, rang my sister and listened for half an hour. The day passed.

On Monday, Cameron Delray, the small man’s enigmatic footsoldier, picked me up at Taub’s Cabinetmaking in Fitzroy. It’s in Carrigan’s Lane, a grubby one-way that runs down to Smith Street, Collingwood. Cam blocked the street with his Kingswood. I was at the back of the shop making myself useful, ripping some ash for a bureau carcass. I switched off the machine with my knee and took off my helmet.

Cam gave me a nod and walked over to where Charlie Taub was fine-tuning some clamps on a George III writing table.

‘G’day, boss,’ Cam said. ‘How’s the apprentice coming on?’

‘Not bad,’ said Charlie, taking the long-dead cheroot out of his mouth and looking at it.

‘Five, six years, he’ll make a joint that fits. Then I’ll sell him the business and retire.’

I was taking off my leather apron. ‘Retire at ninety?’ I said. ‘Premature, that’s what they’ll say. Best work still ahead of him.’

Cam said, ‘Get along without the boy for a bit?’

‘I’ll try,’ Charlie said. ‘Fifty years on my own, if I’m ready yet I don’t know.’ He gave me his appraising look from under the exploding grey eyebrows. ‘I blame myself,’ he said.

‘Introducing you to Harry Strang.’

I said, ‘Don’t torture yourself, Charlie. People have introduced me to a lot worse than Harry Strang. By a factor of about three thousand.’

‘Horse business,’ Charlie said. ‘Never met a man it didn’t ruin.’

‘I should be so lucky to be ruined like Harry Strang,’ I said. ‘I’m scared Harry’ll die before he ruins me.’

10

‘Material possessions,’ Charlie said. He lit the cheroot with a kitchen match and coughed for a while, waving the smoke away with a hand the size of a tennis racquet. ‘Material possessions he’s got. Otherwise, a ruined man. Ruined.’

Cam’s Kingswood smelt faintly of expensive perfume. The radio was on. An ABC voice, rich with authority, was saying:

The Premier, Dr Marcia Saunders, today defended the six hundred million dollar Yarra Cove project.

Approving the project, which will transform a large section of the west bank of the Yarra, was one of the new government’s first acts.

Dr Saunders said she and her party had for years in opposition called for a number of large Melbourne developments to be given the go ahead.

The Premier’s voice, hoarse, slightly too loud, the voice of someone you interrupt at your peril, followed.

The previous government was so obsessed by its hatred of anyone who made a profit and created jobs that it allowed this State to stagnate. Well, the people of Victoria have had enough of social engineering. This government is trying to get this State moving again. We’re unashamedly pro-development and so are the people who voted us into office.

The announcer came back.

Opposition leader David Kerr said the Yarra Cove project had no merit whatsoever.

David Kerr’s gravelly voice said, This government would like to hand the whole State over to their pals the developers. Yarra Cove is bad enough, but it’s just the beginning…

‘Yarra Cove?’ said Cam. ‘What the hell is Yarra Cove?’

‘Sounds tropical,’ I said. ‘Topless girls in grass skirts swaying by the banks of the Yarra, that sort of thing.’

‘In this climate,’ Cam said, ‘they start topless, they’ll end titless.’

We were on Johnston Street. I closed my eyes as Cam aimed the Kingswood at a gap between two vehicles that had to grow about two metres before he reached it. It obviously grew. I opened my eyes. Cam punched over to 3MP Easy Music. They were playing ‘The Way We Were’, probably for the fifth time since breakfast. He screamed and punched over to a man talking about public transport.

11

Harry Strang lived in Parkville, in a huge Victorian house behind high red-brick walls.

Cam spoke into the voicebox in the studded street door and the door unlocked itself.

The house was fifty metres away, at the end of a stone path that wound through a two-gardener garden.

Lyn Strang let us in. Harry’s wife was in her forties, sexy in a bush-hospital nurse way: short hair, snub nose, legs-apart stance. She had a generous mouth, big knowing hands and broad calf muscles. Lyn had been married to a small-time country trainer called Ronnie Braudel. Ronnie lucked on to a horse called Fiery Continent, a little thing with no more breeding than the average can of dog food. But the horse was more than the sum of his parents. He was an equine freak, a once-in-a-lifetime horse.

Ronnie Braudel was just smart enough to keep his mouth shut and look for help with the horse. His old man knew Harry Strang, and Harry knew what to do with Fiery Continent.

It took just under twelve months to set it up, but it was the mother of all paydays for Ronnie. He transferred his operations to Queensland, taking with him a new friend, eighteen-year-old Valma, a highly qualified nail technician from Wangaratta. Harry extended his sympathies to the deserted wife and Lyn Braudel ended up the fourth Mrs Harry Strang. She gave Harry about thirty years’ start and he conceded two hands in height but there was an electricity between them.

Harry was waiting in the study. The room was the idea of a study that is stored up in heaven. It had a full wall of mahogany bookshelves, probably five metres high and ten metres wide, opposite the windows. The upper shelves were reached by four teak and brass ladders that moved on rails. On the shelves was what seemed to be every book ever written on horse racing. The other walls displayed a collection of racing paintings and prints. Between the windows hung a set of photographs in walnut frames of Harry Strang winning English and French races in the late 1940s and early 1950s: the English and Irish Derbies, the King Edward VII Stakes, the Queen Alexandra Stakes, the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe, the Grand Prix de Deauville, the Prix de Diane, the Grand Prix de Saint Cloud.

Harry could ride at about the same weight now as when he was in the photographs. He was tall by jockey standards and looked taller because of his shoulders-back, chin-up carriage. He had a full head of short hair, dark with some unscented oil, a small-featured face barely lined. Today he was wearing a Donegal tweed suit, dark-green silk tie on a creamy shirt, russet brogues. I could never help staring at his feet. You can’t buy handmade brogues to fit ten-year-olds in the shops, so Lobb’s in London made Harry’s shoes: $400 a shoe.

‘Jack, Cam,’ he said. ‘Sit.’

12

Harry liked to get on with it.

We sat down in leather club armchairs. Harry went behind the desk, a classic piece in the style of Eugene Harvill made by Charlie Taub. Almost everything in the apartment was made or restored by Charlie.

Harry put his hands on the desk. They were the hands of someone half his age and twice his size: square-tipped, tanned, strong-looking. There was nothing wrong with his eyes, either.

‘Crook arm, Jack?’ he said.

I hadn’t been aware of touching it. ‘Just a strain,’ I said.

Harry cocked his head. ‘Give it the balsam three times a day. Now. Business. A bloke I’ve done some transactin with across the years, he reckons he’s got somethin for us.’

The years spent in Europe had done nothing to take small-town Victoria out of Harry’s voice.

There was a knock at the door and ancient Mrs Aldridge, Harry’s housekeeper for thirty-odd years, came in, followed by Lyn Strang carrying a tray of coffee things. At the table, Mrs Aldridge took command, shooing Lyn out of the room. When we had each been served a cup of hell-dark brew from the silver pot, plus a chocolate biscuit, business resumed.

‘This fella’s name is Tie. Rex Tie,’ Harry said. ‘Trains a few cattle out in the bush.’

Cam said, ‘Time Urgent.’

‘That’s the one,’ Harry said.

‘You do that Time Urgent thing?’ Cam asked.

‘What’s past is past,’ Harry said. ‘I want to have a little look, see if Rex Tie’s brain’s still workin. We’ll have to get on the Drizas, motor out to the bush next week. Suit, Jack?’

I nodded.

‘Good. Cam, let’s step over and look at the movin pictures.’

We went across the passage into Harry’s wood-panelled cinema and sank into the plush armchair seats. Cam plugged in the video cassette I’d given him, pressed some buttons on a remote control, and moist Pakenham appeared on the wraparound screen. Harry had been at Pakenham. I’d seen him up near the back of the stand, on his own as 13

always, grey felt hat, undistinguished raincoat, eyes stuck to the X15 binoculars. You never went near Harry on a racetrack, that was the rule. You didn’t talk to Cam either if you saw him. My job had been to video New Ninevah’s run with about twenty thousand dollars’ worth of small video camera. For this and a bit of legal work, I got paid a retainer.

‘Take the start in slow, Cam,’ said Harry.

We watched in silence.

‘Again,’ Harry said. And so it went on. It took nearly ten minutes to watch a race that was over in 1 minute 24.20 seconds. When Cam put the lights on, Harry looked at me and said, ‘Did he or didn’t he?’

I shrugged. ‘Looked like he was trying to to me. Didn’t miss the start this time.’

‘No,’ Harry said. ‘No, he came out fightin. Cam?’

‘Clean, I’d say,’ Cam said. He was putting a label on the video cassette. ‘Reckon he just don’t like the wet.’

Harry got out of his chair. ‘Course we could be pissin on the wrong campfire again.’ He walked over and looked out the window, hands in his jacket pockets. ‘Doubt it though.’

He sighed. ‘Well, that’s it for today, gentlemen. Ballarat on Wednesday. Freeze our arses off as usual. Come round nine for a bit of sustenance. Suit? Jack, Cam’ll drop you back. Then he’s got some computin to do. That and clean the gutterin and prune the roses.’

‘After that I’m going to put on my burglar suit and give the dogs savaging practice,’ said Cam.

‘I forgot,’ Harry said. ‘They’re getting rusty.

4

Cam dropped me at my office, which is down the lane from Taub’s Cabinetmaking. The sign outside said ‘John Irish, Barrister & Solicitor’ but I didn’t do much that resembled law from the place. Apart from the odd lease or conveyance for Harry Strang, most of my income came from collecting serious debts or finding witnesses. It was something I’d drifted into doing when I stopped being a criminal lawyer.