Dead Point Part 17

'I've got a picture. It's in my jacket. Inside pocket.'

Milan looked at Steve. Steve felt around in my jacket, found the photograph, showed it to Milan without looking at it.

'Hey,' said Milan, a broad smile, real pleasure. 'The Pole. Marco Polo.'

Now Steve looked. 'Good f.u.c.ken riddance,' he said. He was smiling too.

'Overdose?' said Milan. 'What?'

'Smack.'

Another boat came from nowhere, rocked us with its wake. 'a.r.s.ehole.' Milan shook his head. 'So a needle?'

'Yes.'

Milan puffed out his cheeks. 'Needle's a big f.u.c.ken surprise to me,' he said. 'What's the Feds' interest?'

This was not progressing. 'What kind of work did Marco do?'

Milan smiled at Steve. Steve smiled back. 'What you reckon, Steve? What kinda work Marco do?'

'I dunno, Milan.'

'Marco's all c.o.c.k,' said Milan. 'Work it out.'

'If someone wanted to kill him, why would that be?'

Much laughter. Milan held his empty gla.s.s out to Steve. 'More,' he said. 'Whattabout you, Jack?'

I shook my head. 'I'm not getting anything here,' I said. 'You want me to pa.s.s on messages, you won't answer a simple question.'

Milan considered this, working his tongue over his teeth. Then he leant over. 'Listen, Jack, the c.u.n.t's just a big p.r.i.c.k and a thief. Maybe he stole somethin, made people angry. He's no f.u.c.ken loss.'

He straightened up. 'But don't lookit me. You know how I'd a killed Marco? You know?'

I shook my head.

'I bring him out here, I open him up a little, just for blood, tie him to a 200 kilo line. Then I throw him over and I tow the c.u.n.t around lookin for sharks. Tow him till all I got on the line is a bit of bone.'

Steve's mobile shrilled. He said a few words, handed it to Milan.

Milan listened. 'Tell him to f.u.c.ken wait,' he said. 'I'm comin.'

He gave the phone back to Steve. 'Home,' he said.

The first you saw of Haven Waters was the clock tower. What need did these people have of the time?

Tired, the feeling of the whole body being tired, not the earned tiredness of exercise, of physical work, just tired in the bone marrow. I went down the dark pa.s.sage to the kitchen without bothering to switch on a light. The clock on the microwave said 9.14. I'd been up for seventeen hours, four hours in aircraft seats, three hours driving.

And bubbles of sour pineapple juice kept rising. Milan was right. It built up acid, it would probably clean the bowel. Scouring, they called it in horses.

Milk. I needed milk, drank two gla.s.ses, not terribly old. Then I opened a bottle of red and sat on the couch in the sitting room waiting for the place to warm up. Food I had no need of I never wanted to eat again.

The buzzing of the tired brain.

Marco Lucia. Milan had not spoken well of him. But what had the judge said?

...an attractive person. Intelligent, full of life. And a lot of sadness in him.

There would certainly have been a lot of sadness in Marco if Milan had had his way and towed him around the Queensland coastline as live shark bait. Bleeding bait.

Listen, Jack, this c.u.n.t's just a big p.r.i.c.k and a thief. Maybe he stole somethin, made people angry. He's no f.u.c.ken loss.

A big p.r.i.c.k and a thief. Would the judge agree with this description? Yes, if I understood the term relationship properly.

Marco Lucia on the run from something in Queensland. He comes to Melbourne. Many people think Melbourne is a long way from Brisbane.

Marco takes on the ident.i.ty of his school friend, Robbie Colburne.

How was it possible to do that?

Groaning, I got up and found my notes.

Robbie Colburne and Marco Lucia both left the country in April 1996.

School friends. They'd gone to Europe together. But only Marco came back. Was it the case that Robbie didn't need his ident.i.ty any longer? Because he was dead?

Marco could've been Robbie's brother, Sandra Tollman had said. Both pale, with black, black hair.

I poured some more wine, put the video in the slot, sank into the couch with the remote in hand.

Marco going into the Cathexis building. The new Melbourne landmark. Hideous but the very edge of architecture.

The unknown man at a pavement table, dark, balding, a fleshy face seen from across a busy street, then a new camera angle, a second camera, unsteady. The man drinking the shortest of short blacks, newspaper in his hand, looking around, half-amused.

Worth trying to identify the man? No, too hard.

Early evening, Marco in right profile, side on, several parked cars between him and the camera. He is waiting to cross a street, a narrow street, vehicles flashing by. He takes a break in the traffic, walking diagonally, the confident walk.

Nothing there.

Marco in his dinner jacket in a car.

I sat in the half-dark thinking about the origin of the clips. State cops? Feds? I thought about Marco waiting to cross the street, wound back.

Marco waits to cross, waits, a gap, he walks, he's in the middle of the street. Freeze the frame.

To Marco's right, on the other side of the street, is a parked car. There is someone in the driver's seat.

Was Marco walking towards the car?

I looked at the clip in slow motion. Definitely someone in the car, that was all. And the number plate was visible but unreadable.

Too tired to think any more. I needed Milo and my new book, bought at the airport and only just violated. It was called Love and Football Love and Football. The warm, innocent liquid and a brief read of my book, that would be my reward for a long day in the field.

Tomorrow, I'd take the video in to get some enhancements.

In the cracking dawn, I shambled around Edinburgh Gardens and along the pavements of North Fitzroy, nothing on my mind but the signals coming from all regions of my body distress calls, warnings, entreaties.

Home, I raided my shrinking store of new shirts, stockpiled in more prosperous times, and showered long and hard and hot, adjectives that could be applied to Marco Lucia if I'd got the drift of the exchange between Milan Filipovic and his whitefanged and complaisant colleague.

After a cup of tea and, at the kitchen table, a few more pages of my new book, a moving tale of innocent pa.s.sions corrupted by corporatism, I departed for Meaker's. There I breakfasted on fat-trimmed bacon and mushrooms on toast, lavish quant.i.ties supplied by an Enzio who appeared to have been irradiated. Twice he winked at me from the kitchen door, both times running a hand over his scalp. The message seemed to be that my reading of the widow had been correct: hair she had not been pining for.

At 9 a.m., I was at Vizionbanc in South Melbourne, just around the block from The Green Hill, showing the manager the images I required.

'Eleven,' she said. 'We're a bit slow today. A morning sickness problem.'

The problem of morning sickness I understood perfectly.

I used her phone to ring Mr Cripps, the postman who wouldn't retire, and arranged for him to pick up the prints. This was done through Mrs Cripps, who could relay messages to the puttering Holden without using a mobile phone, a device her rotund husband once told me he abhorred. That was, in fact, the only thing he had ever told me. Telepathy was not ruled out.

On the way back, I pa.s.sed the casino, even at this early hour vacuuming in hapless poker machine addicts. It was one thing to put your faith in your scientifically arrived at choice of beautiful creature, to be urged to realise its full potential by a small and muscular person. Hoping a flashing and programmed electronic device would give you money was another matter. Entirely.

At my professional chambers, I found that the fax machine had extruded paper: Jean Hale's list of everyone a.s.sociated with the Lucan's Thunder plunge. Guilt a.s.sailed me: I had given the matter no thought.

And, on the answering machine, Mrs Purbrick.

Jack, I'm experimenting with a new caterer and I need a man of taste. Give me a ring soon, darling.

Pause.

I'm in my beautiful library constantly. Devouring books. And Ros Cundall is green with envy.

Would it hurt to be Carla Purbrick's taster? What could she tell me about Xavier Doyle, Robbie's employer?

Drew was next.

Woodmeister, you're listening to a man who's had a mystical experience. I think I'm in love. In l.u.s.t and in love. Ring and I'll share this with you.

Not Rosa. Please, G.o.d, not Rosa.

I read Jean Hale's list. Plumbers and electricians and painters and redundant teachers. It was even worse than I'd expected.

I rang her. The ring went on for a long time. A man answered, gruff. I asked for her. She was outside with horses.

'What's your name?' he said.

'I'm a.s.sociated with Mr Strang.'

'Right. Sorry, I'll get her.'

Jean Hale came on.

'Jean, Jack Irish. How's Sandy Corning?'

'Better. He's going to be okay. We're going to see him today.'

'Good. Can you ask him to rule out people on the list? People he has complete confidence in?'

'Yes. Sure.'

'And fax it to me again?'

A hoot outside. Mr Cripps. I said goodbye, found a $20 note, went out and exchanged it for a stout envelope.

'Exemplary service, as always,' I said. He nodded, expressionless as a whale. The yellow Holden puttered away, its waxed surface dotted with fat beads of rain. Beading. You'd done the wax job properly when the result was beading.

Thinking about how little beading had occurred in my life, I returned to my chair and opened the envelope. The ca.s.sette and four prints, two enlargements of Robbie crossing the street, two of the man at the pavement table.

The registration number on the car Robbie was walking towards was now readable. And the person in the car was a woman, half her face visible, looking in Robbie's direction over the top of dark gla.s.ses.

I studied the fleshy man in the other pictures. There was a reflection in gla.s.s behind him, that would be the cafe window, a reflection of writing on something, not a flat surface, the word a.s.set a.s.set.

a.s.set?

It didn't matter. I strolled around to the Lebanese and rang Eric the Geek, Wootton's attenuated computer ace, prince of hackers. There were redialling sounds and science-fiction lost-in-s.p.a.ce noises before he answered.

'Yeah.' Not an interrogative inflection. This was about as expressive as Eric got but the single grunt conjured up his gloomy, damp-jumpered, patchily shaven presence.

'It's Jack. I need a name.'

I read out the registration number.

'Minute. Number?'

I gave him the number. While waiting, I studied the notices on the board near the phone. House-minding, dog-walking, appliances for sale, a new homemade wanted poster with a photograph of a thin, dark-haired young man described as a heroin addict, missing dogs, cats, a budgie, probably now inside one of the missing cats. The phone rang.

'Jack.'

Return of the cyber-Visigoth.

'Exactly,' I said.

He sniffed, coughed, a cough that needed attention. 'Hang on,' he said.