We watched another train, saw the faintest tremor in the plate-glass cafe window.
‘Your advice,’ said the judge.
‘Option one is that you save yourself a lot of money by popping around to your local jacks and telling them what you’re missing.’
‘And read the first rumour in the paper tomorrow? Option two, please.’
‘I can keep looking. There’s always the possibility of turning up something.’
‘Keep looking,’ he said.
‘The missing item?’
‘Photograph album. Red leather.’ He gave me his sad smile again. ‘You’re asking yourself how I could be so stupid.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I’ve stopped asking that question. I know the answer.’
He got up. ‘Thanks, Jack.’ A pause. ‘It’s silly but I find the fact that you’re a colleague strangely comforting.’
A judge calling me a colleague. As he went out, it occurred to me that this was probably the high-water mark of my legal career.
20
I caught the 6.05 a.m. flight to Brisbane, two hours in the air, hired a car and drove for ninety minutes, never once lost, to reach the imposing gateway to Haven Waters. It was halfway across a 500-metre land bridge just wide enough for two lanes.
A man in a police-style uniform, light-blue and dark-blue, armed, left the gatehouse, came out into the white-porcelain light.
‘G’day,’ he said. ‘Have to ask for your name, address and purpose of visit, sir.’ He was a wiry man, ginger and freckled, big freckles. Cold and grey climes would have suited him better.
I gave my particulars. He wrote them down on a clipboard. Then he asked for two means of identification. Fighting my instincts, I handed over my driver’s licence and my Law Institute card. Forever on another record. One day D.J. Olivier might find me there and a young woman with a private-school voice would tell someone.
‘Only take a minute, sir,’ he said and went back. I saw him pick up a phone, talk, nod, put it down. There was someone else in the gatehouse, a movement. Expensive, a two-person guard, six shifts, that would cost management two hundred grand a year, plus benefits. Just to check tickets. Perhaps the second person also did patrols, that would ease the strain.
Gates opened. The man was waiting for me inside, gave me a map printed on card, laminated.
‘Down this road, sir. At the T-junction, turn left. Then first right, go past the golf clubhouse and the village.’
He was English, I caught that now.
‘First residence after the village. The entrance is on your right, first gate. Adriatica, that’s the name. It’s marked on the map. And the name’s on the gate.’
He pressed a small plastic disc, the size of a fat ten-cent coin, onto the windscreen above the registration sticker. ‘So that we can find you if you get lost, sir,’ he said. ‘We’ll take it off when you leave. Enjoy your visit, sir.’
Bugged, I drove across the bridge, down a curving road, through a landscape sculpted by bulldozers, blanketed with imported soil, planted with thousands of mature sub-tropical trees, grassed, lavishly watered. Water was always visible, on both sides deep inlets. I saw two fat joggers, a thin runner, half-a-dozen walkers, a woman in jodhpurs on a high-spirited chestnut horse. Then the golf course was on my left, greens like great dollops of pureed spinach, people on motorised buggies. I watched a man duff a tee shot.
The golf clubhouse was low, sinuous, heavy with flowering creepers, and then the village appeared on my right, a semicircle of whitewashed buildings of different heights, different roof shapes and pitches, a clock tower in the middle, someone’s idealised Mediterranean village, water glimpsed beyond the buildings, flashes at the end of narrow lanes. Two small parking areas were as snobbish as stockbroker bikies, European metal only, nothing Japanese here.
This was where big money came to die, water without, guards within.
I found Adriatica behind a white creepered wall broken by bays housing big shrubs, leaves large and polished. Its gate was black wrought iron, ornate metal stems and leaves. It was a gate for cars. No-one arrived on foot in this place; there was nowhere to walk, nowhere to park, no pavement, no kerb, no gutter.
I parked in front of the gates, got out. It was warm. I took off my jacket and approached the gates.
‘Take off the coat,’ said a voice.
‘I’m not wearing a coat. I’m carrying my coat.’
He came into view from the left, a thin man, not young, slicked-back hair, one eyebrow like a furry caterpillar stuck to his forehead. The weapon held at his side, pointing at the ground, was extravagant, a long-barrelled. 38.
I said, ‘Put that fucking thing away. I’ve got an appointment to see Mr Filipovic.’
He shrugged, opened the gate.
I walked up a paved driveway to where a path through tropical jungle branched off to the house. The air was dense with exotic scents.
At the front door, a huge studded Moorish creation, another man, young, tee-shirt and jeans, was waiting, holding a device like a cordless telephone. ‘Gotta check you over,’ he said, then ran the metal detector over me.
‘Give him your coat,’ he said.
The man with the revolver had come up behind me. I complied.
‘Arms up,’ said the detector of metal.
I raised them. ‘Looking for a wire?’ I said. ‘Go very carefully.’
He smiled at me, excellent teeth. ‘I’m very careful. Loosen your tie, unbutton your shirt, cuffs too.’
You sensed a lack of trust in him.
When he was finished, he said, ‘Come in.’
We went through a hallway decorated with oversize Grecian-style urns, down a passage and into a sitting room the size of a four-car garage. It was full of white leather chairs and sofas and glass-topped tables holding heavy bowls of tortured coloured glass. On the wall above a fireplace hung a huge picture of a red rose lying on stone steps. The blowsy petals held perfectly rendered drops of dew the size of oranges.
Through the open French doors, you looked over a broad deck to where a boat was tied up, at least ten metres of gleaming white craft with a flying bridge. A man was working at the stern, kneeling on the deck, straightening up every few minutes to relieve his back.
‘Welcome to my house.’
The man had come into the room from a door to the right of the French doors. He was in his fifties, heavily built, oiled silver hair combed back, wearing only striped shorts and boat shoes. His skin was the colour of fudge and his chest was grey-furred, like the belly of an old dog.
I put out a hand. ‘Jack Irish.’
‘Milan Filipovic.’ He applied a challenging grip and I gave it back.
‘Strong hand,’ he said. ‘Don’t work behind a desk all the time, hey?’
‘Thanks for seeing me,’ I said.
‘Not a problem, mate.’
Another man had come into the room, a younger man, strong looking, a bodybuilder, with dark hair cut short. He was in shorts, a golf shirt and boat shoes.
‘Steve,’ said Milan. ‘He works for me.’
Steve didn’t offer to shake hands, just smiled, another mouth of first-rate teeth. Something in the local water, perhaps, or a good cosmetic dentist.
‘Hey,’ said Milan, ‘we’re jus goin out on the boat, test the engines. Steve, ask that cunt if he’s finished?’
