world. I added garlic and mushrooms, a tin of tomatoes.
The video. Delivered by hand by men in an expensive car. Undercover cops? I switched off the gas, took my glass to the sitting room and plugged in the cassette, went to the couch and used the remote. The video flickered briefly, began.
A young man got out of a cab. This would be Robbie Colburne. He was tall and slim and, from on high and zooming in and out on him, the camera caught a certain athletic insouciance: chin up, arms moving freely, first two fingers extended pistol-like. It was night but made day by spotlights recessed into the building on his left. Light gleamed on his cheekbones, on his straight black hair combed back. He was handsome, all in black, a jacket worn over a tee-shirt.
The camera followed him to where he disappeared beneath a cantilevered porch bearing the name of the building, incised in polished concrete: CATHEXIS.
Daylight this time, someone sitting at a table on the pavement from across a busy street, traffic blocking vision for seconds at a time. Then a new camera angle, nothing obscuring the man now but the camera unsteady. He had a small glass on a saucer, the shortest of short blacks, drank a teaspoonful, looked around, newspaper in his hand, a half-amused look. He was dark, balding, a fleshy intimidating face.
Early evening, the young man again, Robbie, seen in profile, side-on, waiting to cross a busy street, finding a break in the traffic, walking diagonally, the confident walk.
Night again. A long shot in bad conditions, rain, a car window coming down, the camera zooming in, the young man behind the wheel, in a dinner suit now, white shirt, black bow tie, saying a few words to someone outside the vehicle.
End of moving pictures.
I’d asked Warren Bowman for a photograph of Robbie.
I’d expected a still, a mortuary picture. Instead, he sent me a collection of surveillance video clips showing Robbie under expensive observation, moving, in the street. Good of him but why? I could ask Detective Sergeant Bowman. But he would probably say that he was just being helpful.
And why did a casual barman like Robbie deserve this kind of photographic attention? Was it because he wasn’t just a barman, as my anonymous caller had suggested?
Warren Bowman said senior drug squad officers were on the scene quickly after the uniformed cops reported finding Robbie’s body.
Expensive surveillance, two cameras on one occasion. That only happened to persons of great interest. Unless Robbie was an accidental, someone filmed in the surveillance of someone else. But, in that case, he would be someone close to the target; there was no other way he would be caught on camera so many times.
Robbie caught up in the surveillance of someone else. Was that it? The fleshy man?
Back to cooking. Time to add the tuna, get the rice going.
I was eating in front of the television when the phone rang. Cam.
‘Little trip in the morning,’ he said. ‘Won’t take long.’
Peter Temple
Dead Point (Jack Irish Thriller 3)
‘I got talkin to the bloke at the hotel next door,’ Cam said. He wound down his window, flicked his cigarette end out, raised the window. We were in the V-8, passing the Fawkner Crematorium on the Hume, a sunny morning, petrol tanker ahead, Kenworth behind, stream of heavy metal coming the other way.
‘What’s the connection?’
‘Hotel’s part-owner of the carpark. Guest parkin. Carpark employs three blokes on eight-hour shifts, hotel provides security. In theory. This fella, he worked there eighteen months.’
‘The name again?’
‘Rick Chaffee. Two complaints about extra Ks appearin on the clock while he was there. One bloke from Adelaide had a logbook, he reckoned someone took his Discovery for a 200K spin.’
Cam edged out for a look, came back in. He was wearing Western District casual attire today, navyblue brushed-cotton shirt, heavy moleskin trousers, short riding boots. ‘On the day, this Chaffee, his story is he was on the phone, he thought he recognised the driver of the Land Cruiser, let him out without checkin ID. Honest mistake.’
‘They buy that?’
Cam shrugged. ‘What can you prove? Sacked him. Cops run the tape over him, the hotel bloke says. No form to speak of, some kid stuff in WA, he’s a WA boy, Mangoup, Banjoup, one of those up towns, they got hundreds. Plus he’s got an assault when he was a bouncer in King Street.’
He was steering with his fingertips, head back, index fingers tapping to the music, soft Harry Connick. ‘Worth a yarn, I reckon.’
‘If the bloke’s in this,’ I said, ‘it’ll take more than a yarn.’
Cam’s dark eyes lay on me for a moment.
I went back to reading the Age. The story at the bottom of page one was headlined: Call for Cannon Ridge tender probe.
It opened: The State Government was last night urged to hold an inquiry into the tendering process that awarded a 100-year lease on the Cannon Ridge snowfield and a mini-casino licence to a company associated with Melbourne’s millionaire Cundall family.
The company, Anaxan Holdings, has a glittering list of shareholders, including some of Australia’s Top 100 richest. A spokesman for shortlisted rival bidder WRG Resorts told a press conference yesterday that WRG has evidence that Anaxan knew details of all tenders before the vital second round of bidding.
The Minister for Development, Tony DiAmato, said WRG Resorts had not approached him. ‘I have no idea what they’re talking about. The previous government awarded this tender. We fought the whole idea of a private snowfield and another casino, everyone knows that. But it’s done, it’s history.’
Cam said, ‘I read that stuff you sent me. The Saint’s big with your crim tatt artist.’
I folded the paper. ‘That’s what my bloke said. Use half the phone book.’
I’d sent him the yellow A4 envelope left for me at Meaker’s, sent it by express courier, fat and silent Mr Cripps behind the wheel of his burnished 1976 Holden.
‘It’s down here,’ said Cam.
We turned right off the Hume, drove through a light industrial area, bricks, concrete products, pipes, turned left and went a long way, to the end of an unpaved road. Ahead, a sign on a wavy corrugated-iron fence was falling over. It said, no punctuation, Denver Garden amp; Building Supplies Plants Sand Soil Gravel Pavers Sleepers. The gate was half-open, drawn back until its sagging tip dug into the ground.
Cam nosed around it, parked in front of a long cement-sheet building, flat-roofed, meagre shelter over the door, one small window. Beside the door, three bags of cement had solidified, fused. We got out.
To the left of the gate was what remained of the Plants division of the business: a copse of birch trees in black plastic root bags, leaning inward, touching, dead; a conifer fallen over but indomitable, roots broken through the seams of the plastic bag and penetrating the packed soil; a row of concrete pots growing couch grass in abundance; some sad roses clinging to life, sparse leaves spotted with yellow.
The sound of a machine came from beyond the building. We walked around, passed an old pale-blue Valiant, buffed up, saw an expanse of dark, wet, rutted ground, big concrete pens holding gravel and sand, mulch, compost, other dark substances, everything untidy, spilling out of the enclosures, crushed into the ground.
The machine was a mid-sized lifter and it was moving rocks from one part of the yard to another, television- sized rocks for adding character to small, flat blocks in the outer suburbs.
We walked towards it and the driver saw us coming, the light glinted on his dark glasses as he looked our way, kept on going to his new pile, dumped the load with a crash, reversed the machine, gunned it back to the mother lode, took the bucket down, stuck it in with a ghastly screech, lifted, rocks falling out, swung around, went back, lifted the bucket to dump.
We were close, in the noise. The man turned his head towards us. Cam raised a hand, palm outward.
Bucket poised, the man cut the motor. He was big, no neck or chin to speak of, peaked cap too small for his long hair, tiny nose, arms like sewer pipes, belly hanging over a wide leather belt.
‘Yah?’
‘Rick Chaffee,’ said Cam. It wasn’t a question.
