Bad Debts (28 page)

There wasn’t a single thing to lose.

‘I’ll have a shower,’ I said. ‘See if you can find the departure times.’

The woman was tall and thin and her labrador was old and fat. She was wearing a big yellow sou’wester that ended at her knees. Her legs were bare and she was barefoot.

There was no-one else on the beach. Just Linda and I and the woman and the dog and the gulls. We saw her a long way off, walking on the hard wet sand, hands in pockets, 185

head down, getting her feet wet when the tiny waves ran in. The dog walked up on the dry sand, stiff-legged, stopping every few yards for a hopeful inspection of something delivered by the tide.

When she was about a hundred metres away, I got up and went towards her. The labrador came out to meet me, friendly but watchful. I stopped and offered him my hand. He came over, nosed it, allowed me to rub his head.

When she was close enough to hear me, I said, ‘Mrs Vane?’

She nodded. She had strong bones in her face, big streaks of grey in her hair, skin seen too much sun.

‘Are you the widow of Paul Karl Vane of the Victoria Police?’

She nodded again, still walking.

‘Mrs Vane, I’d like to talk to you about your husband and the deaths of Anne Jeppeson and Danny McKillop.’

She kept looking at me and didn’t say anything until she was close, three or four metres away. The dog went to her.

She leant down and rubbed its head, eyes still on me. Her eyes were startlingly blue.

‘I was hoping someone would come,’ she said. ‘I don’t think I’ve had one happy day since they killed that girl.’

She put out a hand and I took it. We walked up the beach.

34

The shack was up in the hills behind Apollo Bay. We got lost once, retraced our route, found where we’d gone wrong. Cam was driving, the three of us crammed onto the bench seat, Linda in the middle.

On the way from Breamlea, keeping to the back roads, Cam said, ‘How come she doesn’t know what it is?’

‘Paul Vane never told her,’ I said. ‘He woke her up on the night Anne was killed and told her he’d seen it happen. He was electric, sat drinking all night. The next day, when the television had the news of Danny’s arrest, he told her Danny hadn’t done it, that it was murder, that he knew who’d done it but couldn’t tell anyone.’

‘So she kept quiet too,’ said Cam.

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I moved my cramped arm from behind Linda’s head. ‘She says it haunted her. When she read about Danny’s sentence, she was sick. Paul became morose, drank more, used to say he’d done the wrong thing but it was too late. Eventually he took early retirement. Then he got sick, bowel cancer. He kept telling her he was going to give her the evidence, that he was going to get a lot of money to provide for her after he was gone, that she should tell Danny that he was innocent and give him the evidence.’

‘Money?’ asked Cam. ‘Did he get it?’

I shook my head. ‘No. She thinks he tried to blackmail someone over Danny’s death and that’s why he was murdered. He told her where the evidence was the morning of the day he was shot.’

‘And then she rang Danny?’

‘Later. After Paul’s murder, the house was broken into and searched from top to bottom. Then Paul’s boat caught fire at its moorings at Sandringham and blew up. She says she was too scared to fetch the evidence. And then she was watching television and saw the news that Danny’d been shot. After that, there didn’t seem to be any point.’

‘That must be it up ahead,’ Linda said. She’d fallen asleep a few times on the trip, head lolling on to my shoulder.

The shack was old, just a big room and a lean-to, probably a timber-getter’s humble home. It was made of timber slabs, weathered to a light grey, but still solid. The whole place was leaning slightly, held up by a huge brick chimney.

We got out, stretching stiff limbs. The air was cold and moist. Far away, we could hear a vehicle changing gear on a hill, then silence. The birds were quiet at this time of day.

The front door was padlocked, no more than a gesture considering the condition of the door and its frame. I opened the lock with the key Judith Vane had given me.

Inside it was dark, almost no light coming through the dirty panes of the two small windows. To my right was the fireplace, a huge red brick structure, the front blackened almost to the roof by thousands of fires.

You couldn’t light a fire in it now. The opening, about the size of two fridges side by side, had been closed in with fibreboard. Some kind of wooden frame had been built in the opening and the fibreboard nailed to it. This work was recent compared to the age of the shack.

‘It’s in there,’ I said, pointing at the chimney.

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‘There’s a crowbar in the ute,’ Cam said. He went out to fetch it.

Linda and I looked at each other.

‘So, Jack Irish,’ she said. ‘This is it.’

I nodded.

Cam was in the doorway, a weary little smile on his face. He didn’t have the crowbar.

‘No crowbar?’ I said.

He took a step into the room.

There was a man behind him holding a pump-action shotgun. It was Tony Baker, with a big plaster on the side of his face where I’d hit him with the steel pipe.

‘Move along, coon,’ he said.

Cam came into the room. Baker came in too, a safe distance behind Cam. He’d done this kind of thing before.

Another man, in an expensive camelhair overcoat, came into the doorway. He was tall, somewhere beyond fifty, that was the only safe guess: full head of close-cropped silver hair, narrow tanned face with a strong jaw and deep lines down from a nose that had seen contact. He had a young man’s full, slightly contemptuous mouth. In one hand, he held a short-barrelled .38. In the other, he had the crowbar.

‘Jack Irish,’ he said. ‘I’m Martin Scullin. You’re a fucking pain in the arse.’ His voice was as flat and his diction as slow as Barry Tregear’s. Country boys both, grown old in the city. Or maybe it was the standard issue voice in the old Consorting Squad.

‘I’ve heard a lot about you,’ I said. To my surprise, my voice sounded normal.

‘Where’s the stuff?’ Scullin said. He didn’t sound particularly interested.

‘I don’t know. We’re just looking.’

Scullin looked at Tony Baker, no expression on his face.

Baker clubbed Cam across the jaw with the shotgun barrel. Cam went down like a suit slipping off a clothes hanger. He fell to his knees, tried to stand up.

Baker stepped over and hit him in the face with the barrel again. Twice.

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Blood spurted out of Cam’s nose, turning his shirt black.

Baker turned his bull-terrier head and looked at me. Even in that light, I could see the gold fleck in his eye.

‘I’m going to kill this coon,’ he said. ‘Then I’m going to kill that bitch.’

He kicked Cam in the ribs, a short, stabbing movement, full of power. Cam shook his head like a swimmer trying to clear water from his ears.

Baker kicked him again, harder. Cam put his hands on the floor, got into a sitting position, looked up, eyes closed. His mouth was wide open, a cave streaming blood.

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.

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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.’

35

190

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.’

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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.’

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‘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.