Bad Debts Part 28

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

'What the f.u.c.k 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 f.u.c.king 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

We were going through Royal Park, Linda driving Scullin's dove-grey Audi, Cam in the back, strapped up and st.i.tched 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 pa.s.sage 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. 's.h.i.t.'

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.

It was empty.

Not even cobwebs.

Nowhere to hide anything.

There was no sign that anyone had ever used the room, had ever had a secret life up here.

I groaned again. Going down would be even harder than coming up.

I squeezed my upper body through the entrance, reached out and got a grip on a branch above my head. I pulled myself up to it, getting a knee on the sill, then standing up. As I did so, the jagged end of a short dead branch almost took out my left eye.

I pulled my head back.

The tip of the branch was just inches away. It was bone white, except for odd grey marks, almost like fingerprints, on the underside.

I wanted to put a bandaid on the scratch on his cheek but he didn't want me to.

That's what Mrs Bishop had said when we first talked about Ronnie's disappearance.

Ronnie had been here.

Standing just where I was standing. A scratch on his cheek bleeding.

Ronnie had scratched his cheek on the branch. He had put his left hand to his cheek and it had come away with blood on it. In anger, he had grabbed the branch and tried to break it.

But it wouldn't break. And he left his blood on it, dark marks now weathered to grey.

'Are you all right, Mr Irish?'

Mrs Bishop was looking up at me, eyes wide.

'I'm fine,' I said. 'I'll be down in a minute.'

I scrambled back through the small door.

Somewhere in here. Somewhere in this empty room was Ronnie's evidence.

I went around the walls carefully, feeling for a loose board, a door to a hiding place. It took about five minutes.

Nothing.

The floor. Perhaps there was a gap between the floor and the ceiling below. I knelt down and tried to lift the nearest corner of the linoleum.

It wouldn't come up. It was held down by tacks, one every few centimetres.

I went all round the lino edge under the doorway, trying to lift it with my nails. It was tacked down tight. Along the right-hand wall, it was the same.

In the right-hand corner, a small piece came up.