Cam sliced through the chain joining the handcuffs. ‘Have to wear that one for a while,’ he said. ‘There’s a bloke in Brunswick can take it off.’
‘Don’t you want to know?’
‘Never talk about sex.’
Cam listened to the story on the way to Linda’s, driving with his fingertips, blank face like a careful judge.
‘Jesus,’ he said when I’d finished, ‘you really know who to fuck with. Is there a course you can do?’
‘Some things you can’t teach,’ I said.
At Linda’s building, Cam parked illegally. The Alfa was where I’d left it. I went over. Unlocked. My mobile was on the passenger seat. I held my breath, leaned over, put my left hand between the seats, pain from the bites.
Tape. Notebook. I breathed again. We went upstairs. At the apartment door, Cam opened his corduroy jacket and took the big Ruger out of his waistband.
‘I don’t think you’ve got any warnings left,’ he said. He knocked loudly. ‘Federal Police,’ he said. ‘Open the door.’
We waited.
‘Reckon they think you’re in the acid,’ Cam said. ‘Boys and the dogs watching the bubbles.’
I opened the door. Cam went first. The file was gone but nothing else touched. I fetched two Carlsbergs from the pantry, uncapped them, and we sat in chairs and watched the video on the big flat screen.
A hotel security surveillance film, poor quality, date and time shown along the bottom: 03.12.94 23.14.
It was a compilation tape, people coming and going in a hotel foyer, eight scenes, not long, the last one at 2.36 am on 4 December 1994.
The tape ended.
Cam drank beer. ‘Have meaning?’ he said.
I was looking at my mobile. A message. ‘It has meaning,’ I said. I pressed the numbers.
‘Hello.’ Quick.
‘Jack Irish.’
‘The pictures,’ said Janene. ‘It’s them.’
‘Will you give evidence?’ I said.
A long silence.
‘Without you, Janene,’ I said, ‘they’ll go free and they’ll know money can buy anything and that you were just bugs to be squashed.’
She made a sniffing noise, I thought I heard her swallow.
‘Will you look after me?’ she said.
I touched my shoulder with fingertips. ‘I’ll look after you,’ I said.
‘Promise?’
‘Promise.’
43
We waited on the winter evening pavement, rocks in the city stream, trams squealing behind us, leaning against a car not our own, Cam smoking a Gitane, the pungent blue smoke drifting to me, wrapping around my face, making me eighteen again.
They came out, dark overcoats, handsome, she wore a scarlet scarf, long, not wound around her neck, just a loose knot on the chestbone.
I took two paces across the space. They saw me.
‘Jack,’ said Tony Haig. He had perfect teeth, a wry, welcoming smile. ‘Coming to Corsica?’
I was obstructing the pedestrian traffic, people had to walk around me. I didn’t care. ‘The River Plaza,’ I said. ‘The dead girl.’
Dogteeth holes in my shoulder, the three good-looking people, rich people, they owned the world, we were just bugs, Wayne said that, we looked at one another, a metre separating us.
‘Come inside and talk,’ said Steven Massiani. ‘This is solvable.’
I looked at Corin Sleeman. There were thin lines running down beside her mouth.
‘She wasn’t dead, Corin,’ I said. ‘Did they tell you she was dead? Did they tell you Senator Londregan killed her? She was alive. Katelyn was alive. They took her away and gave her to crazies to kill. Did they tell you that?’
She looked at me and I knew who had sent the man to give me Janene’s name. ‘What about Janene Ballich, Corin?’ I said. ‘She had to die too, didn’t she?’
Corin was looking down, her eyes closed.
‘And then there was Mickey,’ I said. ‘And Sarah Longmore.’
‘Jack, Jack,’ said Tony Haig, ‘you’re not well, you need a rest.’
‘Can’t live with something like this, can you, Corin?’ I said. ‘Do you dream about it?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘I can’t live with it anymore.’
She did not raise her head, crossed the space and came to me, put her hands out to me like a child seeking comfort.
I put out my hands, my sleeves pulled back, the handcuff showing.
‘For Christ’s sake, Corin, shut up,’ said Massiani. ‘Just shut fucking up.’
‘Let’s go,’ I said.
We walked down the street, Cam behind us. At the corner, I looked back. Haig and Massiani hadn’t moved, eyes on us.
In the car, I rang Barry Tregear.
‘It’s about some murders,’ I said. ‘I’m bringing someone to make a statement. There’ll be another witness arriving tonight. They’ll both need protection.’
He coughed, a cigarette cough. ‘What about you?’
‘No,’ I said, ‘not now. I know for certain now.’
44
Hands on the mounting yard rail at Flemington, windy day, I looked at Lost Legion. He was sweating a little, a gloss on his neck, on his chest, moving his feet as if finding the soft surface painful.
The jockey came out, Danny DiPiero, an apprentice, nine wins, first ride in the city, claiming three kilograms. Just a boy, he’d probably had the treatment in the room from the veterans, small men whose bodies were contour maps of vein and muscle and sinew, no subcutaneous fat, young men with faces aged by too little sleep, no food, too much food, induced expulsion of food, cooking in steam. And the drugs, some taken for their designed purposes, others not.
Danny stood earnestly before Lorna Halsey, silken arms folded, looking up at her, nodding. Harry Strang had chosen him, he had seen something in the boy at his fifth ride as he piloted a hopeless nag through a pile-up in a maiden in Murtoa to steal third place. ‘Little bugger can ride,’ he’d said. ‘Learns the game, he could be useful.’
I hadn’t seen Harry. You sometimes glimpsed him in the crowd, the sharp face under a hat and above a buttoned-up raincoat bought in England when Harold Wilson was prime minister. By now, he’d be somewhere on the public stand with his equally old binoculars.
I looked around for Cam. He would be taking the decision. The sweating would be worrying him, it could get worse, the horse wasn’t happy, sometimes they ran their race in the mounting yard.
Down the rail, I saw forearms, snowy cuffs, long sallow hands with fingertips touching. I leaned forward and I saw the profile. Cam felt my eyes, looked my way briefly.
I stood back from the rail, stood in the jostle, saw Cam again through the people. He was in light-grey
