I went to my window. Heavier rain now, steady plinks on the pools in the gutter. The lights were on in McCoy’s abode across the street, presumably to assist him in committing some disgusting act on canvas. Or elsewhere.
The phone rang.
‘Here’s a number,’ said D.J. Olivier. ‘It’s good for an hour or so.’
I drove around to the Prince, parked in the loading zone around the corner. Inside, I found no youthful pioneers of the cyberfrontier energising themselves with the fermented juice of radiated Russian potatoes. The nicotine-dark chamber held only a mildly alcoholic accountant called George Mersh, who played seven games for Fitzroy, and Wilbur Ong and Norm O’Neill, both strangers to the cyber and approaching a frontier from which noone returned.
They saw me, mouths opened like demanding chicks spotting the parent bird.
I heard the words unspoken, raised a hand. The mouths closed.
‘Not today,’ I said. ‘I don’t want to hear about it today.’
We would speak of the Saints’ inglorious performance but not while the memory was so fresh. Raw. I rapped on the counter and opened the flap.
Stan appeared.
‘The phone,’ I said.
‘Your professional uses his mobile,’ he said, and smirked.
‘It’s the new asbestos. Don’t you read the papers, Stan? Worse than stuffing bits of asbestos into your ear.’
His eyed opened wide, then a knowing look came over his face. ‘What do you take me for?’
‘An enigma wrapped in a mystery. Three beers. And have something yourself. Have, what is it, a Wally?’
He shook his head. ‘Jesus, Jack. Stolly. Really.’
I went into the pub’s office/archive. The telephone was under one of Stan’s jumpers, which I moved with a rolled-up newspaper. Cautiously. Then I cleaned the handset with a paper napkin I found marking a place in a paperback called Get a New e-Life: Cybertactics for Small Business, and dialled.
‘Done the immediate stuff,’ said D.J. Olivier. ‘Queensland, driver’s licence, issued 1992, renewed January 1996, and most recently six weeks ago. Otherwise, he’s not on the books.’
Robert Gregory Colburne had no tax file number and was not registered with Medicare.
‘MasterCard, six weeks old, limit ten grand, it’s 600-odd in credit.’
‘Address?’
‘Brissie. Red Hill. Also for electoral roll. No phone in the name now or ever. There’s just one possible lippy smudge on this collar.’
‘Yes?
‘The name got a passport in 1996. Departed Sydney, April ’96, but there’s no mention of a return arrival.’
‘How can that be?’
‘Well, sometimes they come back in a sailing boat, tramp steamer, fucking hang-glider, land in Broome, Top End, Tassie somewhere, there’s not always a record gets on file. Till they try to leave through Customs again, nothing shows.’
‘Anything else?’
‘No traces at the moment between April ’96 and the licence renewal and credit card issue six weeks ago. Oh and he enrolled at Sydney Uni in ’91. Seems to have dropped out in the first year. He’s not there in ’92.’
‘What school?’
‘Walkley. Up there somewhere to buggery over the mountains. You go through Bathurst. I think.’
I thanked D.J. and joined Wilbur and Norm. The subject of St Kilda could not be postponed. We had a fact-free exchange of views. The new development today was that both students of the game found some positive things to say about the Saints’ appalling performance. Most of them would have escaped less scholarly eyes. It had been that way with Fitzroy through the many dark seasons, the times without comfort or hope, all our enemies grown taller and swifter, their hands bigger and stickier, their boots crafted to kick impossible bananas and their foul blows, trips and gouges apparently invisible to umpires.
Cheered, I left before the IT crowd arrived. If they were ever coming back. As I turned the corner, the rain paused. The air was cold, deceptively clean-smelling. I could hear water running in the gutters, a flow of toxic liquid heading for the river and the bay.
On the way home, Linda Hillier was on the radio, where I’d left her, on 3KB.
Congratulations. You’re listening to Melbourne’s smartest station, and that says something about you.
Tonight we’re talking about drugs. Heroin users complained on radio this morning that they were treated like second-class citizens. Well, the man I’m about to talk to, the Reverend Allen O’Halloran, says that’s what they are. What’s your view? The number to call is, and bookmark it in what passes for your phone’s mind…
One day, I would phone in. One day when I had the words to speak to Linda.
At home. A fire. No, too much effort. I put on the heating, went to the kitchen, began the defrosting of Sunday’s stew and opened a bottle of the exemplary Mill Hill chardonnay. Then I slumped in the armchair, switched on the television for the news.
Innocents dying, the guilty walking free, nature mocking the frailty of human habitations, a hijacking, a royal birth, a supermodel on drug charges, a politician caught out in a lie, a cat’s incredible sewer journey, the death of a revered pornographer and the legal battle over his archive of people doing things. Sport. And weather, a map, a man who knew about weather: cold, rain, the possibility of periods without the latter.
Watching this necklace of images strung in some electronic bunker, a part of my mind that bicycled along dull streets and sat on benches overlooking nothing was thinking about Robbie Colburne.
What to make of Robbie? Gets into university. Drops out. Runs up debts. Departs for foreign shores in 1996. Not recorded as coming back. Four years later, back nevertheless, renews his driver’s licence and, notwithstanding his credit history, gets a credit card with a $10,000 limit. Appears in Melbourne with a small but expensive wardrobe, gets a casual job as a barman, dies of a drug overdose.
A short but puzzling life.
Someone had to know more about Robbie. Someone had to be able to put some coherence into this narrative. It was just a question of who. The woman who left the message on the answering machine knew something. But I didn’t know who she was.
I rang Cyril Wootton on his latest mobile number. The numbers changed all the time.
‘You wish to make contact with me?’ he said. ‘How unusual. That’s twice in a few days. The hole in the ozone layer, El Pino, to what do I owe this?’
‘Nino. El Nino. Pina Colada. Expensive, this thing.’
‘How much?’
‘Yes or no. I’m happier with no.’ I didn’t want to go travelling.
‘Yes, if properly accounted for.’
‘Was it not ever thus?’
‘Ever thus my arse,’ said Wootton.
‘Really, Cyril,’ I said, ‘at times your vocabulary is at odds with your appearance. Your carefully cultivated appearance.’
14
The town of Walkley was a long and narrow blanket thrown over the spine of a ridge running out the back of the Great Dividing Range. To get there, you drove out of Sydney and on through hard country, high, gaunt, dry. Everywhere black rock broke the thin skin of soil, erosion gullies furrowed the slopes. The light was white and offended my city eyes.
I drove around until I found the school, it wasn’t difficult, parked the hired Corolla outside the only brick building. The wind was a shock, buffeting, frozen hands pressing against my face.
A sign took me past murmuring classrooms to the principal’s office. In the anteroom, a stone-faced woman, big, sat on a stool behind a counter. She looked at me and asked, ‘You’re not Telstra, are you?’
‘No.’
‘Bastards. Kin I do for you?’
‘Carly?’
‘Yes.’
‘I spoke to you yesterday. Jack Irish. The lawyer from Melbourne.’
‘Oh.’ She looked less stony. ‘Well. Melbourne. My little sister lives in Doncaster.’
‘I’m told it’s a great place to live. Does she like it?’