Bad Debts Part 13

'Jeez,' said the butcher, 'Long Gully Road. Be out there in the forest, I reckon.' He shouted, 'Les! Where's Long Gully Road?'

A tall youth with red hair came in wiping his hands on butcher's paper. 'G'day,' he said. 'Where's a pen? Have to draw youse a map. It's out to b.u.g.g.e.ry in the badlands.'

I'd tried P. Gilbert's number twice more that morning. No answer. I was eating my microwaved porridge when I decided to take a drive out to Daylesford. I didn't give much thought then to the pointlessness of driving for an hour to a house where no-one was answering the telephone. On the way I did, and almost turned back.

Twenty minutes after leaving the butcher's I was lost. The bush around Daylesford was veined with twisting, rutted roads going nowhere. Les's map wasn't much use after the first wrong turn. I was about to do a U-turn and try to retrace my route when I saw a man in overalls putting in a fence strainer post. Back in the trees a timber shack leant against a woodpile. He must have heard my approach but he didn't look up until I was out of the Celica.

'G'day,' I said. 'Looking for Long Gully Road.'

He looked at me for a while, big beard, eyes slit, jaws chewing cud. 'Back to the T-junction. Left. Third road on the left.'

I found the turnoff. The sign said NO THROUGH ROAD. Just off the ground, a square wooden board with an arrow had Koolanja Healing Centre, Spa, Ma.s.sage in peeling white paint on a green background. There were old bullet holes in it. I drove about a kilometre through the scrubby regrowth forest before a duplicate of the first sign pointed down a narrow track.

The buildings were behind a fence in a big clearing at the end of the road: a long, low weatherboard with a verandah along the front, a square cinderblock building with narrow windows and, behind them and to the left, a steel-frame shed without walls. The gate was closed and on it a sign saying CLOSED hung at an angle.

A car was parked in front of the cinderblock building: a BMW, not new. I suddenly realised that I'd never asked what sort of car Ronnie was driving. In the shed, I could see two other vehicles, a four-wheel-drive and an old Holden.

I parked outside the gate and let myself in. No dogs. Dogs appear quickly or not at all. Ahead of me a driveway ran for about thirty metres, ending in a gravelled area in front of the buildings. On either side of the drive, a formal garden had been attempted and long ago given up on. Only the winter rain was keeping the surviving plants going.

I walked down the drive. It had been planted with poplars but they'd never got beyond infancy. Near the house, I could hear the sound of piano music, something cla.s.sical. The front door was open. The music was coming from inside. I knocked loudly and said, 'Anybody home?' Nothing happened. I tried again. Only the music. Then it stopped and a voice said, 'One of Chopin's loveliest. And now for a complete contrast in composing style...'

The front door led into a long sitting room, furnished with stripped pine country-look pieces. The room was cold and unkempt, as if people had been dossing in it. In a stone fireplace, ashes were a foot deep. There were newspapers everywhere and all the surfaces held empty beer and soft drink cans and dirty plates.

I said my 'Anybody home?' again and went through into a big kitchen. The radio was on a shelf above the workbench, which was covered with the remains of meals long past.

I didn't look at the rest of the house. I went out the way I had come and walked over to the cinderblock building. Nothing happened when I knocked and called out.

I opened the door. A wave of warmth hit me. The air was moist and smelled of chlorine. Chlorine and something else. It was dark inside, the venetian blinds at the slit windows closed. I found a light switch. Two fluorescent tubes flickered, then lit up a sort of reception area, with canvas director's chairs and a gla.s.s coffee table holding stacked magazines.

I called out again. Nothing. I crossed the room to a half-open door. Beyond was darkness. I groped around and found another light switch just inside the door. I was looking down a corridor with two doors on either side and one at the end, all closed. The smell was stronger here. The air was also steamier.

My shoes made no sound on the grey felt-like carpet as I walked down the pa.s.sage. I opened the first door on my left.

It was empty except for a pine upright chair and a large, deep coffin-like object against the end wall. There were pegs on the wall to hold clothes. The smell in here was salty. I guessed the giant coffin was a flotation tank, a bath filled with salt water for experiencing weightlessness.

The hatch on top was closed. Without thinking, I walked across and slid it back. It was empty. I felt foolish.

The room on the right held another tank. I didn't look inside. The next door down on the right opened to reveal a room set up for ma.s.sage: table, shelves with small bottles. There were posters of Nordic scenes on the walls. Pine forests, snow, frozen lakes.

I didn't enter the room. As I turned to the door across the way, my eye caught a ghost of steam coming out from under the door at the end of the pa.s.sage.

I went down the pa.s.sage and put my hand on the door handle. Then something made me knock. No reply. I waited, knocked again.

Then I turned the handle and pushed the door open.

The smell came out on a great cloud of steam, the smell of stock made with chlorinated water, a pungent, medicinal smell that filled my sinuses and made my eyes water.

I retreated down the pa.s.sage to the entrance and watched the steam billow out of the room. Just turn around and go home, my inner voice said. Just walk out of this building, down the drive and find your way back to the man putting in the pole. Stop and tell him thanks for giving you s.h.i.+tty directions, you couldn't find Long Gully Road, so b.u.g.g.e.r it you were giving up. Go back to Daylesford and buy some bullboar sausages from the butcher. Tell Les you couldn't follow his map and it wasn't important. Drive home and have a shower. Forget about Danny and Ronnie and anybody else whose name ended in a diminutive.

But I didn't listen to my inner voice. When the steam thinned, I went back down the corridor.

I'd left the door only half-open.

I pushed it fully open.

The room was still dense with steam but I could see that it was like a large bathroom, tiled floor to ceiling. In the corner to my right, I could dimly make out a large spa bath, above the ground.

I took a step inside the room.

A man was in a sitting position on the floor in the corner to my right. He was wearing a loose pink garment. His left arm was at his side. His right was on his lap with a revolver in his hand. Something long-barrelled.

At first I thought he was wearing something on his head, a kind of big mask. Then I realised his head was twice its normal size, a bloated, suppurating mess.

I felt vomit rise in my throat, but I took another step into the room.

There was something in the spa bath. I couldn't see what. Steam was rising from the surface. The water was much hotter than any bath should be.

I wiped my eyes. Something insubstantial was bobbing gently on the hot bubbles. It was clothing, I thought.

I took another step. And as I did, trapped bubbles turned the clothing around and I saw the skull of a body cooked down to its bones.

The whole spa bath was stock made from a human being. I was going to be sick. I held off until I got outside and then the cold air took the smell out of my nostrils and the urge went away. I stood out in the weak sunlight for a while, thinking. Finally, I took a deep breath and went looking for something to wipe off fingerprints.

You should report crimes to the police. I didn't want to be the one to report this crime. Instead, I drove back to the man putting in the pole. He was tamping with a big metal post. This time I didn't get out of the car. I wound down the window. He looked up.

'You said turn right at the T-junction, didn't you?'

He looked at me with contempt. 'Left,' he said.

I shook my head. 'Well, f.u.c.k that for a joke, I've wasted enough time on this b.l.o.o.d.y call. I've got better things to do than f.u.c.k around in this wilderness.'

I took off with the wheels spinning. About two kilometres down the road, I found a signpost to Daylesford. This time Les was in the front of the butcher's shop. Going into a place filled with meat now was an act of sheer will.

'Thanks for the map,' I said, 'but I got lost and I had a flat.'

Les looked mortified. 'Map was okay,' he said.

'Not your fault. I reckon I missed the second turning and took the third.'

Les thought about this, eyes roofward. Then he nodded. 'That'd be right. Then you'd turn into Kittelty's Lane and then you'd be stuffed.'

'Stuffed,' I agreed. 'Anyway, I don't think I want to sell a copier to anyone lives out there. I'd rather do service calls to King Island.'

I bought some bullboar sausages and set off for the city. In Bacchus Marsh, I went to the post office and found the number for the Daylesford RSPCA. A woman came on. There were some animals in shocking condition at the health place in Long Gully Road, I told her. 'You'd better send someone today or they'll be dead.'

'Long Gully Road,' she repeated. 'What's the health place?'

'You'll see the sign,' I said. 'Look in the cinderblock building.'

I was reasonably sure they didn't record calls to the RSPCA. Almost everywhere else seemed to.

On the way back, I thought about Vietnam. In my time there I'd seen a fair number of dead and dying people. It puts another layer of skin on you. I should have been in shock at finding the bodies. Instead, I was feeling mildly elated. My instinct to pursue the trail of Ronnie had been right. Unless this matter was even more complicated than it appeared, one of the bodies was almost certainly his. The other man could be his old pal ex-doctor Paul Gilbert. I thought about the revolver in the man's hand. Had he shot himself? Had he shot the person in the spa first? I tried to remember the colour of the water in the spa. I hadn't registered it as any particular colour. Would it have been dark if the person had been shot in the bath? But the person might have been shot dead earlier and put in the bath.

But even if I had found Ronnie, that didn't advance things much. All I knew now was that the man accused of running down Anne Jeppeson ten years before had died violently, followed shortly by his accuser. I knew that Danny had believed he was innocent of the crime and that his wife said he had been told this by a woman conveying a message from her dying husband. I also knew that Danny McKillop had left messages for Ronnie Bishop. Then Ronnie had come to Melbourne and telephoned Danny.

The only obvious thing about all this was that it went back to Anne Jeppeson's death. That was what linked the dead men. Another obvious thing was that this was a good time to take a holiday in Queensland. I could simply run away from all this. I had run away from the private school my grandfather sent me to. I had run away from my mother's expectations and joined the army. I had run away from my wife's death and from my partner and from my duty to a client. Why not run away? Why change a lifetime's response now?

It's never too late to change. When I got to my office, I rang a man called Mike Drake in the Attorney-General's department. I'd been at law school with him and he had almost gone into partners.h.i.+p with Drew and me.

He sounded tired. 'You want me to ask the NCA if they know someone called Tony Baker? Are you aware that you don't ask the NCA questions? They ask you questions.'

He rang back inside fifteen minutes. The National Crimes Authority denied all knowledge of Tony Baker. 'That might be true,' he said. 'Or it might not.'

'Covers the possibilities,' I said. 'Thanks, mate.' It struck me that a description of Tony Baker might have helped the NCA identify him: five foot six, two hundred pounds, appearance of a .45 slug wearing a leather jacket.

I rang Linda Hillier.

'I've been ringing you,' she said. 'What happened to the answering machine?'

'Forgot to put it on.'

'Listen, that stuff we were talking about. I've been scratching round a bit. Can you meet me in Smith Street?'

18

Gerry Schuster was fat, and that's putting it politely. She was on a backless ergonomic kneeling contraption in an alcove created out of two computer workstations. I a.s.sumed that was what she was on. No part of what supported her was visible beneath a garishly coloured tent big enough to house four small Bedouin.

Linda said, 'Gerry, this is Jack Irish. He's got an interest in this stuff too.'

From beneath a greasy fringe that touched her eyebrows, Gerry gave me the look chefs reserve for three-day-old fish. 'Meechou,' she said. You couldn't have posted a five cent coin through her lips when she spoke.

We were in a large room on the third floor of an old building off Smith Street, Collingwood, not too far from Taub's Cabinetmaking. On the door, a plastic sign said: UrbanData. The room was divided into three by low hessian-covered part.i.tions. Gerry had the biggest one. Gerry had the biggest everything, as far as I could see. There were five women working at computers. In a corner, a bearded man of indeterminate age, about two weight divisions below Gerry, was staring at a monitor showing a bar graph in at least ten colours.

'UrbanData collect and sell data on anything to do with the city,' Linda had said on the way. 'Cat deaths, bicycle accidents, condom sales, anything. They can make the data talk, too.'

Gerry Schuster s.h.i.+fted, wobbled and said, 'I've got inner-city Melbourne property transfers 1976 to 1980 loaded. What you want to know?'

Her fingers lay on the keyboard like tired sausages, each one wearing a ring.

'Transfers in Yarrabank,' said Linda.

Gerry tapped a few keys. An outline map of greater Melbourne appeared, overlaid by a numbered grid. 'Zone 14,' she said and tapped in the number.

The outline disappeared, replaced by a map of an area of the city, also overlaid by a numbered grid.

Topaz-ring sausage touched the screen. 'This is the sub-zone here,' she said. 'Twelve.'

She tapped in 12.

Up came a gridded map showing Yarrabank, the river and part of the area on the opposite bank.

'It's this area here,' Linda said, pointing at the screen.

'Twelve stroke six,' Gerry said. She hit 12/6.

Now there was a detailed map of part of Yarrabank. At its centre was the Hoagland estate.

'Let's look at the picture.' Gerry pulled down a menu from the top of the screen. On it she blipped a command called Aerial. We waited for a second and then the map turned into an aerial photograph of the part of Yarrabank we'd been looking at.

'This is smart,' I said.

Gerry gave me a look of contempt. The sausages flashed through another set of keystrokes and the aerial photograph changed into a jigsaw puzzle of different-coloured pieces.

'Property boundaries in 14/12/6,' she said. 'Each piece is a separate t.i.tle.'

She pulled down a menu and blipped a command called Breakdown. A box appeared with about ten options. She chose Number. The figure 27 appeared.

'Number of t.i.tles in the sub-sub-zone,' said Gerry.

'Let's say I want to find the owner of that bit,' Linda said. She pointed to a small triangular piece on the bank of the river.

Gerry put the pointer on it and double-clicked it. From a menu called Data, she clicked the t.i.tleholders command. The screen went blank and then a list of names, addresses, dates and numbers appeared.

The most recent was Tilsit Holdings. The date of transfer was 14 February 1984.

'If you've got a name, you can do a search,' Gerry said, looking at Linda.

She pulled down a menu called Search, clicked Name and a box appeared.

She typed in Tilsit Holdings. A list of about eight properties appeared. She typed a command, went back to the jigsaw map and blipped a command called Site. Eight pieces of the mosaic went red. They were dotted along the river frontage in front of the Hoagland estate.

'All owned by Tilsit,' said Gerry.

Linda took a notebook out of her bag, flipped it open and ran a finger down the page. 'Can you try Muscanda Developments?' she said and spelt it.

I looked at her.

'Later,' she said.

The sausages were a blur. About half a dozen pieces of the puzzle in front of and beside Hoagland turned red. Some were tiny, two were quite large.