where you’ve seen them.’
I gave them all to her and I didn’t breathe.
She looked at the top one. ‘Fuck,’ she said, ‘that’s him. He’s the one came to the bedroom door, said Wayne was on his way.’ She looked at the others. ‘Yeah, that’s him. The others I don’t know.’
‘There’s a chance of settling this business once and for all,’ I said. ‘You wouldn’t have to be scared anymore.’
‘Well, that would be nice,’ she said, ‘but I’m not putting myself on the line. I mean, they think I’m dead, don’t they? They don’t know I’m alive.’
‘They may know you’re alive. They may have thought you’d be too scared ever to put your head up.’
‘They’d have fucking thought right,’ she said.
‘Things have changed. Now they may want to be sure.’
‘Jesus,’ she said. ‘It’s just me, it’s just my word against them.’
‘I don’t think they’ll see it like that,’ I said. ‘They won’t want your word heard at all.’ I got up. ‘You can be kept out of this, Janene. With luck. But I might need you to look at other pictures.’
‘Okay,’ she said, ‘but I’m not coming to Melbourne, right?’
‘Can you go to Perth?’
‘Yeah, I suppose.’
‘If I need to, I’ll send the pictures over the net to someone I can trust in Perth. You can look at them there.’
‘You can send them to Teresa at home, she can do that scanning stuff. She sends progress pictures of houses all over the place. I’ll give you the e-mail address.’
Janene went away and came back with a card.
We went to the door. ‘Goodbye,’ I said. ‘I’ll be in touch.’
We stood awkwardly. She puffed out her cheeks, nodded. Then, on impulse, she kissed my cheek. ‘I feel better,’ she said. ‘Like there’s some way this can end. I’m trusting you, Jack. You won’t let me down?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I won’t let you down.’
35
At the airport, I rang Wootton, told him what I wanted to know about the River Plaza. Then I flew home, sitting beside an elderly woman in the window seat who was going to see her grandson play football in an under-15 grand final in Dandenong.
‘Hate flying,’ she said as the take-off engine noise rose. ‘Be a dear and hold my hand, will you?’
I held out my right hand. She put her small palm on it, threaded her fingers through mine, closed her eyes. The noise increased, we were running, I could feel the tension in her fingers. I gave a little squeeze. We broke free of earth and rose into the blank white West Australian sky, lorded it over the thousands of brick bungalows, the shining solar collectors, banked over the small hills, turned in the direction of the world.
‘I think we’re up,’ I said. ‘Safe, for the moment.’
‘Thank you, dear,’ she said and let go of me. I missed her hand, I didn’t hold many hands, couldn’t remember the last hand held.
I read the Australian. The lead story on page three was the building industry royal commission. Counsel assisting the commissioner put it to the MassiBild representative, Dennis Cambanis, that until recent times the company’s building sites were ‘dirty money laundries’.
‘I mean by that there was and may still be a widespread system of paying workers cash top-ups and the cash is dirty money. It comes out of the drug trade, it is discounted money.’
‘I’ve never heard of anything like that, your honour,’ said Mr Cambanis. ‘This is just rubbish. With respect, your honour, I think counsel has been watching too much television.’
‘Like a banana?’ said my sidekick. ‘I’ve got a spare. One’s plenty for me.’
‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘My name’s Jack.’
‘I’m Nola.’
We peeled our bananas. Nola put the peels into the banana bag. It was a good banana. I should eat bananas, a source of potassium, Isabel had always put a banana peel under her tomato seedlings.
‘Both the girls went east,’ Nola said, chewing thoughtfully. ‘Couldn’t wait. Don’t know why. Only place east I ever wanted to go was Tasmania. Saw this thing on the telly. All that water, so green. Like England. Mind you, never been to England either. My late hubby was English, he never wanted to go back. I used to say, when you retire, we’ll have a trip to England. Over my dead body, he always said. Would’ve had to have been, died a week after his retirement do, they gave him a clock. Came home, he’d had a few, he says, last bloody thing I need from now on’s a clock.’
I smiled and nodded. I didn’t want to be trusted with Janene’s life. I didn’t want to be trusted with anything heavier than a lease. Isabel died because my client Wayne Waylon Milovich thought I’d done a bad job when entrusted with his future. My life since then had been guided by the principle of taking care but not responsibility. But not over this business. I’d drifted away from my beacon, I’d lost sight of the flashing light. Now I was giving assurances.
My last session with Milovich was brief, I had four people to see and an appearance that morning. While maintaining his innocence, the creep now wanted to plead guilty. I told him the prosecution’s case was shaky, I thought I could take it apart, he had a good chance of walking. ‘Well, I’m in your fucken hands,’ he said. On our day in court, everything went wrong, we struck a mago in a bad mood, and Milovich got twice what a guilty plea and a bit of contrition would have earned.
So I could put my finger on the day, on the precise moment in the battered room in Pentridge, when the only part of my life in which I was unreservedly happy had its date for expiry set. But that was with hindsight. In the course of this business I’d had at least two signals that only a potato could miss. I hadn’t missed them. I’d ignored them.
A prostitute who looked fifteen killed by a big man in a suite in the city’s most expensive hotel. Who was he? Who were the others? People who knew Mickey Franklin, who knew him well enough, trusted him enough, to call him in to take care of things.
Did they send for Mickey? Was he the fixer? Did Mickey make the problem with the dead girl disappear? In December 1994, Mickey still worked for MassiBild. He was a fixer for MassiBild. He dealt with the contractors, a preparation for hell, said Steven Massiani.
‘From the eastern states, are you, Jack?’ said Nola.
‘Just the one,’ I said. ‘I’m from Melbourne.’
The refreshment trolley was approaching.
‘What about a little drink?’ I said.
She patted my arm. ‘Well, Jack, it’s naughty but I don’t mind half a glass of beer around this time of day.’
It was raining on Melbourne, no wind, just water falling through air pollution. A dented bus from security parking collected me, a reckless youth with a bad mullet driving. ‘Col sends his regards,’ he said. ‘He says, let me get this right, he says to say you’re a person of interest to someone and you’re not due back till next week. Make sense?’
I looked at the darkening world pinstriped with grey. ‘Tell him I said thanks,’ I said.
36
After the awful tollway, the jammed streets, I parked where I could look across the open space and see the old boot factory, my place of residence.
Early evening in the expensive inner city, a woman getting home, claiming a park, taking her briefcase out of
