‘Girls?’
‘And boys. That’s what it’s about. Boys.’
‘That’s what what’s about?’
‘Goin there. The record place. Triple Zero.’
‘Triple Zero. That’s its name?’
He nodded.
‘They went there to meet boys. Any boys in particular?’
‘Dunno. I said, only went in twice, didn’t really notice.’
‘But they were talking to boys.’
‘Well, yeah. In a group like, boys and girls.’
‘The time. How long were they in the store?’
‘Twenty, twenty-five minutes.’
‘You tell anyone you were doing this? Taking them to this place?’
‘No.’ Quick response. ‘Who would I tell?’
I got up, put my hands in my pockets, looked at a pen-and-ink drawing on the wall above the writing desk: a cobbled street, shops on either side. Somewhere in Europe. It was signed A. Carson. In the glass, I could see Whitton. He was rubbing his jaw with his right hand, looking at the ceiling.
I turned and walked around the library table, perched close to him so that he had to lean back and look up at me.
‘They’d kick your tyres a bit before you got a job like this,’ I said.
‘Cop in WA, that’s right?’
‘Right.’
‘Quit to be a security man at Argyle. Diamond mine pay better?’
‘Lots, yeah.’
‘And then the Hanleys. Big move. Perth to Melbourne.’
‘Married a Melbourne girl, she wanted to come back. Kept on about the green grass, all that. Never stopped.’ He shrugged. ‘What can you do?’
‘How long in that job?’
‘Hanleys? Nine years. Done all the driver courses, done one in England. Brands Hatch. Hanleys sent me. Ten days. Blokes from all over, America, Italy, you name it. Then Mr Clive Hanley died. Mrs Hanley wanted me to go to Sydney with her, she went to live in Sydney. Couldn’t go, the wife wouldn’t go, her family’s all here.’
‘England. So you know all the stuff. Unpredictable routes, evasive actions, emergency drills, that sort of thing.’
A slight blush crept up from his collar, tinged his jowls. ‘Yeah, all that.’
‘Put it into practice, driving the girls?’
‘Sure, yeah.’
‘So you’d never take the same route from the school to Armadale? Use different cars?’
He hesitated. ‘That’s right.’
I didn’t say anything, sat with my fingers on the table, still, expressionless, looking over his right shoulder.
‘Not worth much if they know where you’re going,’ he said. ‘All that stuff.’
I didn’t comment. ‘Know about the other Carson kidnapping?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Think about it before you gave in to the girls?’
He sat forward, shoulders hunched, eyes on the table. ‘Not enough,’ he said. ‘Jesus, not enough.’
‘So you told no one.’
‘That’s right.’
‘And you’re not involved in any way?’
‘Christ, no.’
‘Mr Whitton,’ I said softly, ‘you’re pretty much finished in this line of work. But things can get much worse. Whatever happens to this girl, even the best result, you are going to be gone over by people who will look into every pore of your skin, stick a probe up your arse and look at your eyes from the inside. If you’re involved, they’ll find out. Believe that, believe it. And then you’ll be finished in all lines of work. Listening?’
His eyes were still on the table.
‘Look at me,’ I said.
His head came up. His eyes were watering.
‘I’m asking you again, Mr Whitton. Tell me the truth. You’ll be glad you did. Are you involved in any way?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘No, no, no. No.’
The telephone rang at a writing table between the French windows. It was a flat black high-tech device and its ring was a gentle warbling sound, a sound suitable for a library.
Noyce came in without knocking. ‘Wait in your quarters, Dennis,’ he said.
Tom Carson was in the doorway, Barry behind him. They stood back to let Whitton leave. Then, not hurried, Tom went to the writing table. He sat down, took a fountain pen from an inside pocket, removed the top, fitted it to the back. He picked up the receiver.
‘Tom Carson.’
We watched him listen and write on the broad white tablet in front of him. He said only one word: ‘Yes.’
When he’d put the receiver down, Noyce went over to the table and pushed a button. We listened to the ringing, to Tom saying his name. Then a harsh, grating, high-pitched electronic voice said:
Tom’s voice:
They were all looking at me.
‘That’s pretty straightforward,’ I said to Noyce. ‘Purely out of interest, ask your friends at Jahn, Cullinan where the call came from.’
4
When they had gone, I rang Orlovsky on the high-tech library telephone. It was a long time before he answered.
‘Frank,’ he said.
‘How did you know?’
‘No one else lets it ring for five minutes.’
I saw the survivors of C Troop irregularly but we never lost touch. We were like people who had come through a death camp, bearers of a guilt that knew no rationality and admitted of no untroubled sleep. In any year, I talked to all of them. Except Lucas, who disappeared at night from a prawn trawler lolling in its reflection on a Torres Strait sea, and the small and lethal Jacoby, who went to Burma to fight for the Karen rebels and never came back. They called from truckstops and brothels, from jails and pubs, from backpackers’ hostels and a rich woman’s beach house in Byron Bay. I went to see one in the feral, freezing high country, slept in a foul-smelling bark tepee beneath strips of rabbit flesh black from smoke. It wasn’t that we liked one another that much. It was that we were like children of the same abusive father: beyond his reach now and scattered, but always joined by our secret knowing.
‘Listen,’ I said, ‘I need help with a job. Tomorrow. You free?’
‘Free till next Thursday,’ he said. ‘Then I’m on the road.’
I didn’t know what Orlovsky did for a living now. ‘Legal drug distributor,’ he’d said when I once asked him. I
