‘Good way back,’ Frank said. ‘Around ’82, could be ’83. Thereabouts.’
‘What happened?’
‘Nothin. Said he took her home, cleaned her up. Girl wouldn’t go to hospital, wouldn’t go to the police. Scared out of her wits. Put her to bed. Next day, gone.’
‘She tell him what happened?’
‘No. Kept talkin about a bloke called Ken. You got springs, then?’
‘I want the right springs,’ I said. ‘Not any old springs. Who was the girl?’
Frank stumped over to the door and flicked his cigarette end into the yard. ‘Juvenile harlot from Kinross Hall,’ he said.
‘She told him that?’
Frank thought about this. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘near enough. Sim said she was ravin. Drugs, he reckoned. Mind you, he was ravin a bit himself that night.’
‘Never reported it?’ I said.
‘Don’t know,’ Frank said. ‘Come round the next day, eyes narrer as bloody stamps side-on. Said, do me a favour, what I said about that girl, forget it. Load of rubbish I made up.’
‘And here you are doin it,’ said Jim. ‘He told you it was a load of rubbish. What more d’ya want?’
‘I want you to keep your mouth shut,’ Frank said. ‘Sim didn’t make it up. He could bloody bignote himself-me and Douglas Bader and Sailor Malan saved the world from the bloody Nazis-but he wouldn’t make anythin up. Not out of nothin. Not in his nature. Oh no, it happened. Believe you me. He never came near me after that. Saw me comin, he’d cross the street. Another bugger I wouldn’t go to his bloody funeral.’
Alex Rickard was ten minutes late but that was a misdemeanour by his standards. ‘Mac, Mac,’ he said, sliding onto the plastic barstool seat. ‘Back from the fucking dead. Where you been, mate?’
‘Here and there,’ I said. ‘What is it with you and these grunge pits?’
Alex looked around at the pub: yellow smoke-stained walls, plastic furniture, scratched and cigarette-burnt formica-topped bar, three customers who looked like stroke victims. It was on Sydney Road and John Laws was braying at full volume to overcome Melbourne’s worst traffic noise. The house smell was a mixture of burnt diesel, stale beer, and carbolic. ‘I dunno,’ he said, shrugging his boxer’s shoulders in the expensive sports coat. ‘It’s the kind of bloke I am. True to my roots.’
‘That’s the thing they all value most about you,’ I said.
‘You drinking?’ said the barman. He’d modelled his appearance on the barmen in early Clint Eastwood westerns.
‘Beer,’ said Alex. I ordered a gin and tonic. I wasn’t going to drink anything that came up from this pub’s cellar.
‘No tonic,’ said the barman. ‘No call for it.’
‘What do they drink gin with?’ I said.
‘Coke,’ said the barman. ‘You drink Coke with gin.’
‘Whisky and water,’ I said. ‘You got any call for water?’
He muttered something and left.
Alex rubbed the tip of his long nose between finger and thumb. ‘Y’know a Painter and Docker got it right where you’re sitting?’ he said. ‘Bloke walked in the door, up behind him, took this big fucking.38 out the front of his anorak. Three shots. Bang. Bang. Bang. Back of the head, two in the spine. Walks out the door. Gone.’
‘They get him?’ I said.
‘No witnesses,’ Alex said. ‘Sixteen people in the pub, no-one saw a fucking thing.’
‘Funny that,’ I said. ‘You get so wrapped up talking footy, they shoot someone next to you, covers you with blood, you don’t notice a thing.’
The drinks arrived. Alex paid, keeping his wallet well below the counter. ‘So they say you looked the other way on Lefroy,’ he said, not looking at me.
‘Who’s they?’
‘I done a few jobs for Scully.’
‘Scully tell you?’
‘Nah. The offsider.’
‘Hill? Bianchi?’
‘Hill. Bianchi’s dead. Went to Queensland and drowned.’
‘Wonderful news,’ I said. ‘Saves me killing him. Listen, your boy any good on the Human Services Department?’
He flicked his eyes at me, away, back. ‘Human Services? What the fuck you want with Human Services? They dealing now?’
‘It’s a private thing. I need the records of a place called Kinross Hall for 1985. It’s a kind of girls’ home. Who went in, who came out. All that.’
Alex drank some beer, took out a packet of Camel. ‘Smoke?’
I shook my head.
He lit up, blew plumes out of his nostrils. ‘Could be easy. Could be fucking hard. It’s in the database, my boy’s probably in there like a honeymoon prick. Not-well, there’s ways. But it’ll cost.’
‘How long to find out?’
Alex took out a grubby little notebook and a pen. ‘How d’ya spell this place?’
I told him.
‘Eighty-five. What’s the mobile?’
I gave him my number.
‘He can probably get in and look at the database inside an hour. Not there, I’ll have to think. I’ve got this sheila in the archives, knockers absent but Jesus, the arse on her. She can get all kinds of stuff. Thinks it’s sexy. Like I’m a spy.’
‘In your special way, Alex,’ I said, ‘you are. Want to talk about money?’
He gave me a long look, drawing on the cigarette. There was something of the fox about him. ‘Not now,’ he said. ‘Maybe if we have to go the next step.’
I was looking at the military history shelf in Hill of Content bookshop when the phone rang. I went outside into Bourke Street. It was lunchtime, street full of smart people in black.
‘That thing we were talking about,’ Alex said.
‘Yes.’
‘Don’t have to go the next step. Where are you?’
‘Bourke Street. I’m parked in Hardware Lane.’
‘The one on the corner?’
‘Right.’
‘I’m closer than you are. See you outside the side door.’
I spotted him from a long way away, across the lane, back to the car park, brown packet under his arm. When I got close enough, I saw him watching me in the shop window. I gave a spy-type wave, close to the hip. He turned and came over.
‘Here,’ he said. ‘Fucking phone book of stuff. Boy downloaded all the ’85 material in the file.’
I took the packet. ‘How’d he get in?’
Alex smiled his foxish smile. ‘They’ve got a link with Social Security. He reckons their data protection’s good as a knitted condom.’
‘What’s the bill?’
‘I’ll put it in the bank,’ Alex said. ‘Day will come.’
We shook hands. He looked at me for a while, deciding something. ‘Look after yourself,’ he said. He walked off, hand in pockets, chin up, at ease with himself.
It was just before dark as I entered the home straight, the long avenue of bare poplars, the light turning steely blue-grey, the wet road shining like a blade. I was thinking about the girl in the mine shaft. Could she have been brought from far away? Whoever pushed her into the hole in the ground had to know that it was there: you
