I didn't know what to say. There was silence again. Bruce rolled his gla.s.s.

'Crim tried to shoot my daughter,' he said. 'She was in the kitchen, looking in the fridge. Went through her hair, through the cupboard, through the wall. Couldn't pin it on him. Bloke called Freely. We knew it was him. His whole f.u.c.king family, about fifty of them, said he was watching TV at the time. Couldn't shake them. And by Jesus we shook some of them.'

'I never heard about that,' I said.

'No. We kept it quiet. You don't want to give the other animals ideas.'

He got up, collected my gla.s.s and made the drinks. While his back was turned, he said, voice just a little rough, 'She was sixteen, lovely girl. Not the same again. Ever. Lost to me. To all of us. In and out of the funny farms. Cut her wrists, swallowed anything she could find. They found her on the beach just before Christmas. Her birthday was Boxing Day. Twenty-first that year. My fault, I suppose. My wife thought so, anyway. Never forgave me.'

I looked at the big back, the way he was holding himself. 'You can't take the blame for what mad people do,' I said. 'You couldn't know.' My voice seemed too loud.

'You could say I did know,' Bruce said flatly. 'He told me he was going to do it. Outside court. He said, "Watch your family, Bruce, something could happen to them." I told him, "You wouldn't have the guts, you chickens.h.i.t little b.a.s.t.a.r.d." I laughed at him. He was a runt, five foot f.u.c.kall. You'd never credit that he would do it.'

He brought my drink over. I got up to take it. We stood together awkwardly, not knowing where to look, some kind of bond of loss between us. I knew now why I wasn't in metropolitan remand.

'Cheers,' Bruce said.

'Cheers.'

We drank.

'Never said anything to you? Milovich.'

'Just the normal abuse. I wouldn't have paid any attention if he had. I wouldn't have done anything.'

'Would you have told your wife?'

I shook my head.

Bruce nodded. He drank again, wiped his mouth and said, 'You see Danny McKillop after he got out?'

'No.'

'So what, you heard about the shooting, started poking around?'

'No. I was away for a couple of days. When I came back there were messages on my answering machine from him. I didn't even remember who he was. He was waiting for me at the Trafalgar that night. Only I didn't play the tape till the next day.'

'What did he say?'

'Said he was in trouble. He was scared.'

'You talk to the wife?'

'Yes.'

'She tell you about the phone call, about Danny getting the idea he didn't kill the Jeppeson woman?'

I nodded.

'You reckoned there might be something in it, did you?'

I nodded again.

Bruce shook his head. 'And Vin McKillop? He help you along with the theory?'

I shrugged.

Bruce gave me the look. 'Jack,' he said, 'don't come the lawyer with me. If I don't help you, you're going to have to practise in Somalia, somewhere like that.'

I didn't ponder the matter. 'Vin says someone saw Danny miles away from his car and dead drunk about twenty minutes before Anne Jeppeson was killed. And there was a cop with Danny earlier. Someone called Scullin. Vin says Danny was Scullin's dog.'

Bruce sighed and shook his head. He went over to his briefcase and took out a manila folder. He waved it at me. 'I can't show you this,' he said, 'but I'll tell you what it says. Sit down.'

I sat down.

'Danny wasn't a dog. Vin was a dog. Vin was Scullin's dog in those parts. And Vin thought that being an informer gave him some kind of immunity. The next thing Scullin hears is Vin is dealing speed on a fair scale and he's claiming he's got police protection. Scullin didn't like that. He put him away. Four years. Vin's been trying to get even ever since. He's obsessed with Scullin.'

I said, 'So?'

Bruce tapped the folder. 'It's Vin fed Danny all that stuff about being innocent, about Scullin being around that night. It's all bulls.h.i.t. There's no question that Danny was the driver. Vin's idea was that Danny might go nuts and nail Scullin for him.'

I thought about this for a while. Bruce sat down again, gingerly, and lit a cigarette.

'There's something else,' he said.

I waited.

'The gun Danny had on him at the Trafalgar.'

'The gun the cop says he had on him. Yes.'

'It's the gun that knocked Ronnie Bishop and his druggie doctor mate out at Daylesford.'

This took a bit of absorbing too.

'You know what that means, Jack?' Bruce was holding the folder against his chin.

I had an idea. 'Tell me.'

'Danny was going to kill you that night. You and Scullin and Ronnie Bishop were the trifecta. Good thing you didn't listen to your messages. Danny wanted to knock you, mate. He reckoned you helped fit him up.'

My mouth was dry. I finished my drink, got up and opened a bottle of soda. The realisation that you've been a blind p.r.i.c.k is not an easy one to come to terms with.

'What about the doctor?' I asked. 'Where's he come into this?'

'Wrong place, wrong time. That's what it looks like. You can tell me something else. This Hillier woman. She's scratching around the Yarra Cove history. What's that all about?'

I said, 'There's not a lot you don't know, is there?'

'I'll be open with you. The Yarra Cove history is a sensitive subject for the Premier. For the whole f.u.c.king party. What's Hillier looking for?'

'I don't think I can tell you that.'

Bruce got up, big hands holding his back, and walked over to the desk. He began to pack up his briefcase. 'You can go,' he said. 'Those blokes brought you will take you up the road and charge you. Good luck.'

I didn't feel like going anywhere. I didn't want to be charged. I didn't want to tell my pathetically naive story in court. I didn't want never to be able to call myself a lawyer again.

'She thinks closing the Hoagland estate was part of a plan to put together the Yarra Cove site. It looks like Lance Pitman closed down Hoagland so that some mates could buy it. They'd started st.i.tching up the properties around it long before.'

Bruce stood his briefcase upright. 'She work this out all by herself?'

I said, 'I talked to Kevin Pixley. He as good as shafts Pitman.'

Bruce took his hands off the briefcase and looked at them. 'Jack,' he said quietly, 'do you know who the biggest crook ever to hold ministerial office in this State is?'

'Be an open field, wouldn't it?'

'No. There's a clear winner. Kevin f.u.c.king Pixley. You are sitting here and telling me that you and this journo woman are taking the word of a man who was in the pocket of every shonky developer in the State. Did you go to his big house? Did he tell you about the place at Portsea? Tell you about that little six-bathroom shack in Port Douglas? Didn't happen to mention his old uncle who left him the money, did he? Or his brother, good old Wal Pixley, the one who always seemed to know where to buy property? The one with the instinct for buying cheap just before the rezoning sent prices through the roof?'

I drank some more soda water.

'Let me tell you about Hoagland,' Bruce said. 'I know all about b.l.o.o.d.y Hoagland. Closing it was decided on about eighteen months before it came to Cabinet. Only three people knew. The Premier, Pitman and Pixley. Putting together a big waterfront site was Pixley's idea. He told his mates, small fry, little property crooks he'd helped out, and they started to buy up the land around the site. But things went sour. They say he wanted a huge payoff for his tip. One last payday before the South of France. His mates didn't want to come over with a ma.s.sive sum of money before they could sell the properties. So Pixley turned nasty. Said, I'll f.u.c.king show you. And when it came to Cabinet, all of a sudden Pixley doesn't want a bar of closing Hoagland. He organises a little Cabinet revolt. They say he got his daughter to tip off the Jeppeson woman. And he leaked it that Cabinet had approved the b.l.o.o.d.y thing.'

I said, 'All or nothing? That doesn't sound smart.'

'It was smart,' Bruce said. 'The story is his mates said okay, okay, we'll come over with the money. Just stop opposing it. Unorganise your little Cabinet revolt. And he did. End of opposition in Cabinet. Then of all the f.u.c.king luck, Danny McKillop gets off his face and decides to go for a drive. End of opposition outside Cabinet.'

'What about when it came to selling the site? Pixley opposed that too. How does that fit?'

'Well, there's two schools of thought. One says it was just a replay of the first scam. The b.a.s.t.a.r.d wanted another bite at the cherry. More money from his mates. Blackmail. The other school says it was just a big sham. He knew he was going to be rolled out of Planning. He'd corrupted the whole b.l.o.o.d.y department. Him and his offsider Bleek, the department head. The Premier'd had enough, thank G.o.d. So Pixley thought, here's a way to go out with dignity. Rolled on a matter of principle.'

There was a knock at the door. Bruce went out and closed the door behind him. I drank more soda water and thought about Pixley.

Bruce came back in, leaving the door open. He said, 'I'm pressed, Jack, I've got to be somewhere. If your friend Ms Hillier goes on with her inquiries, she's going to find out what a crook Pixley was and how a couple of his mates, small-timers, made a few quid out of Yarrabank. None of it's got anything to do with the Yarra Cove developers. Charis is clean. The site was offered to them and they bought it. But the Pixley part's not a bad story, the f.u.c.king Age will love it, the ABC's little t.u.r.ds will come in their pants. Their panties.'

He looked at me for a while.

'Jack, I want a favour from you,' he said. 'You've made a c.u.n.t of yourself over Danny McKillop, right?'

He waited.

I nodded.

Bruce looked away. 'I think you've had enough pain with this Milovich. I'm going to lean on the Commissioner. I'm going to get them to wipe you out of this like you wiped your Daylesford prints. I'll get the files cleaned up. No charges. No trace of you.'

I felt a surge of grat.i.tude, a great sense of relief.

'What I want from you is that you get Ms Hillier to back off the Yarrabank story. If it was up to me, I'd give her a hand with it. Pixley deserves his name written in s.h.i.t on every building in town. But the Premier takes the view that it will sink the government. Taint everything we've ever done, everything we do in future. We'll just limp through our term. And then the voters will dump us. All because of Kevin Pixley.'

Bruce came over and stood in front of me. 'What do you say, Jack? It's not a big ask.'

I stood up. 'I'll talk to her,' I said. 'And thanks.' I put out my right hand. He took it in both of his.

'I'll give you a number for me,' he said. 'Got a pen?'

I got out my notebook and wrote down the number.

'If anything comes up,' he said, 'ring it and say...what shall we say? Say John English wants to talk to the Minister.'

At the door, we shook hands again. 'You're doing the right thing, Jack,' he said. 'This is the only way to do it.'

The two men drove me back to my office, silence all the way.

23

We were eating ravioli and drinking red wine in front of the fire when I asked, 'What did Legge mean about the return of the starf.u.c.ker?'

Linda looked at me thoughtfully while chewing. A large piece of glossy hair had fallen over one eye. She was wearing an old pair of my pyjamas. It came back to me that there is a brief stage in relationships when women like to wear your clothes.

'In what context was this remark made?' she said.

'The day I met you. Talking about you coming back to Melbourne. Later on, he called you an ex-groupie and you said something nice about his wife.'

'You give good ravioli,' she said. 'The Age is full of people like Legge. Done all their growing up there, can't work anywhere else. What do you do around here, generally speaking, after ravioli?'

'Oh, around here we just horse around, generally speaking.'

'Horse around? Can you show me how that's done? I'm a city girl.' She slid off her chair into a sitting position on the carpet. The pyjama pants tucked up into her groin. 'Is there any special equipment needed?'

'Generally speaking, we make do with the bare minimum. Improvise.'

'Is that so?' she said, unb.u.t.toning her top b.u.t.ton with her left hand.

Later on, I fetched another log from the pile under the fire escape. The lights were off and the firelight made the room look both mysterious and comforting. We sat side by side on the couch, silent for a while, companionable.

'Starf.u.c.king,' I reminded her.

Linda said, 'I went off with a singer in a rock band. I walked out on my husband of three years and my job. It seemed like a good idea at the time.'

'Good band?'