White Dog (2 page)

‘Mickey Franklin was in the shower on a Saturday evening,’ said Drew. ‘Five shots, very messy, all over the show, fired through a towel. The one that killed him went in the back of the head, in the hollow, bullet going upwards.’

I tried to wipe the windscreen with my hand, unhappy to be blind to the many dangers we faced. ‘And where was the sinless one? In her own words.’

‘At the fatal moment, at home in St Kilda watching television.’

‘How come they’ve got the weapon?’

We were at the LaTrobe Street lights. Drew looked at me, ran a finger under his nose. ‘They found it in a garbage bin near the scene. Cleaned and wrapped. She knows the thing, a .32 Ruger, never licensed. She says Mickey Franklin lent it to her when she had a couple of break-ins, other strange stuff.’

The engine sounded even worse when we turned right at the lights, making the uneven, misfiring sounds of crippled Spitfires approaching the white cliffs of Dover in old World War II films.

‘Echo Bravo Foxtrot to Control,’ I said. ‘I say, old beast, I rather think this kite’s dying on me.’

‘Hiccups,’ said Drew. ‘It’s the weather. The weapon is awkward.’

‘Awkward, indeed,’ I said. ‘Found when?’

‘The morning after. Yesterday week. They sprang it on her before she called me.’

‘Clever devils. Drop me at the office? I’ve got an engagement.’

He looked straight ahead. ‘Where are we engaged today? In the Valley of the Moonee? On the Field of Caul? At Headquarters? Or at some idyllic country paddock, marvelling at what man and horse can together achieve? Assisted only by undetectable kick-arse drugs, diuretics and industrial-strength marching powder.’

‘A man with an easement problem is coming in.’

‘A man seeking ease,’ said Drew. ‘Aren’t we all? In the old days, your clients were seeking to stay out of the hard hotel.’

‘This is better. These clients tend to have their complete ears and comparatively few are tattooed inside their lower lips.’

Drew turned left into Russell Street. ‘Ah, the holy ground once more,’ he said.

The Melbourne Magistrates’ Courts had been in the stone building on our left, police headquarters across the street, all kinds of squads and units in the building nearby.

Trades Hall and its annexe, the John Curtin Hotel, were just down the road. Drew’s office was two blocks north. Once it had been the office of the firm of Greer & Irish, Barristers and Solicitors. The Greer and the Irish often walked down Drummond Street to appear for their clients at Russell Street. They also often drank at the Curtin, took pees with a future prime minister, standing side by side, swaying a little, aiming at white disinfectant balls.

But that time ended when my wife, Isabel, was murdered by a client of mine and I developed a powerful urge to destroy myself.

‘Strictly speaking, Wootton should tell you,’ he said. ‘The person who will add his exorbitant margin to what I am sure are your modest billed hours.’

‘Tell me what?’ I said.

‘To swab Mickey. As man of the track, you’ll know the swab.’

‘Cyril already has a swabbing expert. Cheap.’

‘We don’t need cheap. I can tell you that Cyril’s expert failed the police entrance test. Tester couldn’t fit two pencils above the eyebrows, one between the eyes.’

In silence, we drove down Victoria Parade and turned into Smith Street, Collingwood. The street seemed to be having a dealer-free day. From time to time, the cops came in numbers and displaced the drug sellers. It was like squeezing a balloon. When the pressure was removed, it returned to its original shape.

‘What would I be looking for?’ I said.

‘Christ knows. Anything.’

I waited and then I said, ‘Drew, the force’s full of dick-heads but they don’t generally land up in homicide.’

‘It may not be about dickheadedness. It may be about something else.’

‘I think your client’s reaching parts clients don’t normally reach,’ I said.

‘Fuck off. Where’s your sordid little alley?’

‘Next sordid little alley after this one. How’d you get involved in the first place?’

‘I appeared for her on a little drugs charge. A long, long time ago. Her father came to court. I clearly made an impression on Sir Colin.’

‘Cut of your jib, the lapels. Why was he knighted?’

‘Services to something or other. Being rich. A complication is that the deceased had moved on to screwing Sir Colin’s younger daughter. Sarah’s gone into hiding now.’

‘What was Mickey’s secret? Screwing one Longmore woman would have been success enough for most men.’

‘Perhaps just another peak in the range. A climber, a stranger to the concept of enough. Upwards, ever upwards. I have no fucking idea.’

Drew was nibbling at his lower lip, something he did when unhappy. You notice things like this when you spend too much time with people.

‘Sarah wants me to do the trial,’ he said. ‘Compounding the stupidity of pleading not guilty. When her old man rang, I knew it was a job for Pratchett QC, freed more murderers than the stormers of the Bastille. But no. Me.’

We threaded the lane and parked across the street from my office. I said, ‘So, find further ways to harm poor dead Mickey Franklin. That’s the task.’

‘Dead but not poor,’ said Drew.

‘We’d just be taking her money, Wootton and I.’

‘I have no doubt that you will apply the standards expected of you as an officer of the court.’

‘I said that. Take money for no obvious return. Well, things are quiet.’

‘She hasn’t confided in me, of course.’

‘Of course. Nor would you allow her to.’

‘Here’s the number.’ He offered a card.

I put it in my top pocket. ‘This enjoyable excursion,’ I said, ‘would it be billable?’

Drew looked at me, down his nose, shook his head. ‘I think the sawdust’s getting to you,’ he said. ‘The man’s worth millions.’

I tried the door handle, it resisted. ‘A little thing before we part. Any tips on where to go with this?’

Drew was silent for a while. Then he said, ‘I’m just a solicitor. As you once were.’

‘And still am,’ I said. ‘Keep your expectations low.’

I fought the door handle, useless. I shouldered the door, it gave. I fell into the wet bluestone gutter.

‘Great exit,’ said Drew, looking down at me. ‘You leave well.’

I rose and went into my office and made the call to Simone Bendsten, comber of the public record.

‘Nice car, Jack,’ said the man behind the counter at the corner shop. He’d seen me park outside, he didn’t miss much.

‘Very nice, George,’ I said, ‘but not mine.’

He nodded, a man who first opened his shop door in the mid-1950s when almost everyone in the suburb caught the tram to work and having a motorbike was a big deal. Now the place was gridlocked with Saabs and BMWs and what people paid for a worker’s house could have bought the whole block in 1950.

‘Where’s that girl?’ he said.

I thought about the long-ago day I’d come in with a Claire Irish shoulder-high to a medium-size brown dog and held up my daughter for inspection.

I’d said, ‘Claire, this is my friend George.’

‘Gorb,’ she’d said.

‘George,’ I said.

‘Gorb,’ she said, and gripped the finger held out to her by George.

Gorb he would always be.

‘Still in Queensland,’ I said.

George nodded. ‘They all come back. Holiday, it’s all right, not bad. Live there, no. Everything stings you.’

I heard the sound, the dangerous murmur, the jostling, gossiping, teasing, scuffling sound of teenagers released from school for lunch.

‘Quick,’ I said. ‘Salad roll.’

I went back to Linda’s car, sank into the leather and watched the country’s future invade the shop. Longer hair for girls this year, boys in anarchy – shaven, long, greased, bleached, dyed.

A knock on the passenger window, a big hand. I unlocked the door.

‘Gone fucken upmarket, have we?’ said Senior Sergeant Barry Tregear, sliding in, filling the cabin, bringing the smell of cheese and onion chips, cigarette smoke, Old Spice aftershave. He adjusted his seat, belched.

‘Excuse,’ he said. ‘Early lunch. Following fucken early breakfast.’

He produced a cigarette, put it in his mouth, groped himself, couldn’t find anything.

‘Fuck,’ he said. ‘Bastard took my lighter.’

I pushed in the dashboard lighter. It heated in an instant, changed colour.

Barry used the lighter, put it back without looking, slotted it, no hesitation in the hand.

‘This cunt in Dandenong,’ he said, ‘he goes to call on the ex-de facto, 3 am, he’s off his tits. She’s out of it in the bedroom with the next cab, give or take a good few. The boy’s not happy, goes out to the shed, finds the wood splitter.’

I was watching a teenage embrace, stylised, she wound around him, found a way to push back her hair at the same time.

‘Stop now,’ I said.

Barry sighed, added a hint of garlic to the stew of scents in the car. ‘Two kiddies in the next room. And teddy bears, whole fucken room’s full of teddy bears. All sizes. I’m too old for this kind of shit.’

I said, ‘You should have stuck to cleansing the streets of drugs.’

He shook his head, sighed again. ‘Jesus, that was a good gig. Just walk around and make bear noises at the cunts. They bugger off around the corner, end of story. Now I have to keep up with these fucken shorthairs – they’re on a mission from God.’

The teen embrace unwound. He flicked the bottom of a tiny buttock with fingertips as she set off for Gorb’s. She turned her head and gave him a look that was not likely to discourage the practice.

I said, ‘Sometimes I think you’re losing sight of what called you to your work. The burning desire to fight crime wherever you found it.’

‘The burning I remember is when you pee,’ he said. ‘Now there’s this woman, they brung her from New South, from traffic, playground patrol, some such shit, wouldn’t know a crim from a fucken cardinal. She’s clean, that’s her qualification. Might as well make Mother fucken Teresa the commissioner.’

‘Dead,’ I said, ‘but she’d probably have recognised a cardinal. Man in a purple dress. Is that right? Purple? For what exactly are you blaming the woman?’

Barry looked at me, incinerated a centimetre of cigarette. ‘Everything,’ he said. ‘I blame women for everything. Next item. This Franklin business.’

‘Yes. Lips sealed?’

‘Dunno. Can’t feel my lips anymore, the dick’s not the same either. You reckon there’s a link between dick and lips?’

I smoked passively while I thought about the question.

‘I have no doubt,’ I said, ‘that a link will be found. Franklin?’

Barry looked at me, smoked, squinted. ‘Mate, under the new hygiene, people get spanked for talking to blokes like you.’

‘Live dangerously. More dangerously.’

A jet of smoke hit the windscreen, fanned. ‘Well, Drew’ll be looking for manslaughter,’ he said. ‘Looking and fucken hoping.’

‘I gather not.’

He eyed me. ‘Not? She’s Mick’s ex-root, they say he was giving it to the sister at the same time. Had the gun, had a key, there’s a witness saw her near the place. Plus no backer for the cuddled-up-in-bed-at-home-with-a-book crap. Reasonable case, yes?’

‘Well. Purely circumstantial.’

‘Nailed, mate. Nailed like Jesus.’

‘What’s the strength of this witness?’

‘I gather she’d seen her before, saw her having a fight with some bloke over a park. Fucken oath, no teachers like that in my day.’

I looked. A tall woman with cropped hair and long legs was exchanging words with some of the teenage loiterers outside Gorb’s. It was a joking exchange but you could see that she was an officer talking to the troops.

‘Just as well,’ I said. ‘Out there in Hay you farm boys were already over-excited by the bra ads in the
Women’s Weekly
. That and seeing the farm animals doing it.’

‘To this day,’ said Barry, ‘a bra ad can put a bit of strain on the daks. Unfortunately just a bit. Then there was the step-ins.’

Rain on the windscreen, the tiniest drops.

I said, ‘A fetching thing, a step-in. So no doubt there?’

Barry had the last of his cigarette, came close to smoking the filter.

There was no chance of him using an ashtray. I pressed the button, his window sank. He didn’t look when he flicked the butt. It could have landed in a passing pram.

‘Doubt?’ he said. ‘Well, the doubt’s either done him or had him done. It’s like a fucken jail. There’s three things to get through. Come from outside, you got help or you go home.’

‘And Mickey? Talk there?’

Barry sighed again, moved the big shoulders. ‘Well, Mick and the Massianis, six years on the job. They say very tight with Steve.’

‘I’m slow here.’

‘Me too, got to go,’ he said, patted me on the shoulder. ‘Keeping down in the weights, I see. Good dog. Have a drink one day, no business, okay?’ He got out, closed the door, stuck his head back in. ‘This, though. The tip-off. Who was that?’

I watched him go, heading for Gorb’s, stiff-legged cop walk from too much sitting in cars. The teenagers blocking the door noticed him coming, parted, found reasons not to look at him.

I left my office and walked the short distance to where the dented, pitted and gouged side door of Taub’s Cabinet-making was set in a redbrick wall on a lane that led to Smith Street, Collingwood. Opening it released the smell of hide glue.

I was looking directly at a low bench. On it stood the skeleton of a desk, a big and intricate construction, it would be deep enough for two people to lie side by side on its top, long enough for them to be basketball players. Even imprisoned in a steel cage of clamps, even without its sides, top, doors or drawers, you knew it was a special piece of furniture, probably far too good for the person who had commissioned it. It was probably too good for all the people who would sit behind it, dozens of them, because things made by Charlie Taub could last for centuries.

The man was standing behind the desk framework, left hand resting on the end of a three-metre sash clamp. Somewhere beneath the huge callused fingers was the spindle.

‘So,’ said Charlie Taub.

‘So,’ I said. ‘So, indeed.’