deliveries were made. Then his wife’s car went in for a service and when she drove it again the brakes failed. She broke her arm and some ribs.’
‘Did he go to the cops?’
‘Early on. They said there was nothing they could do. Hire a security firm.’
‘Did he tell them about the pressure to sell his factory?’
‘He says yes. He went to his local MP, too.’
I said, ‘Swanreach? Don’t tell me.’
She nodded. ‘His MP’s Lance Pitman.’
‘Eat your muesli,’ I said, not feeling like mine. We sat there, eating and looking at each other.
‘And then?’ I asked when we’d almost finished.
‘He says business began to fall off even before the men came to see him. He depended on five or six major customers. Two went, and then after the visit his biggest customer, more than half his business, went elsewhere.’
‘Reasons?’
‘They gave him a story he didn’t believe. He says they couldn’t look him in the eye.’ She paused and ate a spoonful. ‘And then one Friday night the place burnt down. Blew up, actually. Full of gas cylinders.’
‘Cause?’
‘Made to look like negligence, he says. Insurance wouldn’t pay. He thinks one of his workers set it up.’
‘So he sold?’
‘Yes. He was ruined. He says he could have sold the business for half a million before it all started. After the fire, it was worth nothing. No customers. No premises. The agents came around and offered half of the original offer and he took it.’
‘Why did he change his mind about talking to you?’ I asked.
Linda was studying the street. ‘He says it’s been boiling inside him all these years. He’s convinced the whole business killed his wife. And his divorced daughter, who lived with him with her kids, she said he’d gone neurotic and went to live somewhere else.’
‘Tell me about being followed.’
She smiled, a thin smile. ‘Talking about neurotic,’ she said. ‘All day Saturday I had this feeling someone was watching me. Then yesterday, after I left Swanreach, I stopped for gas and a car, ordinary cream Holden or something with two men in it, pulled up at the air hose. I realised I’d seen it parked way down the road from the house I’d been at.’
She took a deep breath. ‘Anyway, I went in to pay and I buggered about, bought a drink, looked at the magazines, studied the engine additives, fanbelts, whatever. The guy at the air hose pumped three tyres and then he stuck on the fourth one, at the back. His head kept bobbing up. Finally, he hung up the hose and they drove off. I went outside quickly and they were pulling up by the side of the road about a hundred metres down. In front of a parked car. I went by them—I didn’t have any choice—and they zipped out, forced their way into the traffic and sat about five cars behind me. I pulled in at a liquor place in Alphington and when I came out, they were at the kerb about two hundred metres back. So I changed direction, went back past them.’
‘You realised that would tell them for sure they’d been spotted?’
Linda shrugged. ‘I hate to say it, but I was completely spooked. I was hoping I was wrong. I hoped they’d go away.’
‘But they didn’t?’
‘They did a U-turn right in the face of traffic. I drove on for a bit, did an illegal U-turn at some lights, saw them on my right, and then I didn’t see them again.’
‘Where’d you go?’
‘Home first. Put the interview notes on the laptop. Then to work. That’s when I got the message from this arsehole in Sydney. Via this spineless arsehole in Melbourne. And discovered my computer wipeout.’ She smiled another wan smile. ‘First I’m followed, then at work I get two quick kidney punches. Go home for the knockout blow. Every square inch of the place searched. I kid you not. My old photo albums, Christ. They took the top off the lavatory cistern. Left it in the bath.’
I thought about Eddie Dollery and the money in the dishwasher. Was that only two weeks ago? Our coffees came. I was trying to think of something to say that wouldn’t reveal the jellyback in me when Linda said, voice low, ‘Oh, and about your friend Ronnie Bishop.’
‘What?’
‘I talked to someone I know from when I was on the compassion beat at the Age. She’s a welfarey, a youth worker, knew Ronnie Bishop from way back. She says she wanted to give a party when she heard he was found dead.’
I waited.
‘She says she thinks he got a whole lot of street kids into porn movies. She says she’s heard that Father Gorman runs the Safe Hands Foundation as a kind of brothel for sleaze-bags looking for under-age sex. Ronnie was a recruiting agent on the street.’
I remembered something Mrs Bishop had said: Ronnie loved films. He saved up to buy a movie camera. He was always filming things.
Linda lowered her voice even further. ‘Here’s the really interesting bit. My contact says that around the time of the Hoagland business, she was working in a youth refuge, lots of street kids with drug habits. One of them, a girl about fourteen, saw a man on TV one night and said, “That’s the bloke who fucked me and my friend.”’
‘Ronnie?’
She shook her head. ‘No. Lance Pitman MP, then Housing Minister.’
I closed my eyes and said, ‘Jesus. Did they go to the cops?’
‘No. No point. The girl wouldn’t talk to the cops. But she fingered Ronnie Bishop as the one who set it up.’
I looked out the window. Ronnie and Father Gorman and Lance Pitman and Scullin the cop. Under-age sex and porn movies. And the Kwitny family, patrons of the Safe Hands Foundation and owners of Charis Corporation. ‘What did they do about it?’ I asked.
‘This woman and another youth worker went to see Father Gorman. He gave them a lot of charm, said he’d look into it. They didn’t hear anything more. Ronnie wasn’t seen on the streets again.’
‘And they left it at that?’
‘They’re both good Catholics. He’s a priest.’
I said, ‘What are you going to do now?’
She gave me her unblinking look. ‘What the burglars didn’t know is that I’d backed up everything at work and on the laptop on disk. And the disk is in my bag. I’m going to try to link Charis Corporation to the companies that bought up Yarrabank. That’s the link I need. But if I can’t tie them together, I’ll write the story of the buy-up and see if the Age will run it.’ She blinked. ‘I’m sorry, Jack, I have to.’
I sighed and put my hand on hers. ‘Don’t be sorry,’ I said. ‘Let me tell you about my phone call from Perth.’
There was a piece of cardboard torn off a beer carton slipped under my office door. On it was written: I rembered somthing else about what you was asking about. See me at my house. It was signed: B. Curran, 15 Morton Street, Clifton Hill.
It didn’t mean anything for a moment, and then I remembered I’d left my card with the man who’d lived next door to Ronnie Bishop in Clifton Hill.
A car hooted outside. It was Cam. We had a meeting organised with Cyril Wootton and his chief commissioner at the pub in Taylor’s Lakes. Cam favoured places in the suburban wastelands for meetings like this.
It started to sprinkle with rain as we hit the freeway in Kensington.
We were in the fast lane, doing ten over the limit. On the right-hand bend coming up to the Coburg exit, Cam shifted into the middle lane, giving a furniture truck no more than a second’s warning.
Five hundred metres further, he went back into the fast, no warning. A hooter blared at us.
‘Having fun?’ I asked.
‘Two pricks on a bike been with us since Carlton,’ Cam said, voice normal. ‘Just wanted to see what they’d
