‘An employers’ secret agent, Mr Bergh. Years ago, when the unions could still get up a decent strike. Before a Labor government broke the Builders’ Labourers.’
‘Does everyone except me know that?’
‘Unusually, no. Bergh planted thugs in marches, demos, the blokes at the back who lob the first unopened can of VB at the cops, that sort of thing.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Appeared for one of his thugs. You were on sabbatical then.’
He was saying that this was in the time, the long time, when I was drunk, half-drunk, getting drunk again, after my wife Isabel’s murder.
‘The client told you?’
‘We were pleading guilty, mate, as befits people shown on television poking what looks like an electric cattle prod up a police horse’s bum. A former racehorse. With not unpredictable consequences.’
‘Took off at great speed?’
‘No. Reared and endangered lives, jockey fell off.’
‘Surprising. Given a touch of the jigger, your race-horse generally shows a bit of toe, leaves the field behind. That’s the idea of jigging them. So the client told you about Bergh?’
‘Not him. Another bloke came in. An extremely dubious character. I got the impression that he’d hired my client and was a bit worried about what I’d do in court. I didn’t want to discuss the matter with him, so he said, listen, just don’t do anything that’ll piss off Alan Bergh.’
‘And?’
‘Over a cheering glass with the labour aristocracy down at the John Curtin, I asked about Bergh. The word was that he did jobs for employers. The nasty work. Not still in business, is he?’
‘He’s in some business. Haven’t worked out what it is yet.’
I was still trying to work it out in the last moments before sleep. I tried to find a thread in everything I knew about Robbie/Marco. Hopeless. It wasn’t a fabric, it was a heap. And now there was a sophisticated attempt to blackmail a judge of the Supreme Court sitting in a drug importation case.
Marco was murdered. He was being watched, and then he was murdered. The supplier of the surveillance clips knew that and wanted me to know that. Milan Filipovic hadn’t thought it likely that Marco had stuck a too-potent needle in his arm.
‘Needle’s a big fucken surprise to me,’ he’d said.
But Detective Sergeant Warren Bowman said the dead man had needle tracks.
Alan Bergh and the woman in the car belonging to a Sydney high-flier. How did they fit into Marco’s life and death?
Sleep claimed me, troubled sleep, full of strange places, peopled with strangers.
29
Up early stumbling around the streets, back to Richmond in peak-hour morning traffic, thinking about Colin Loder and his dad. That was what worried him most: his dad finding out that he had it off with non-women.
Not his brilliant legal career crashing. Not his wife and children finding out. Just his expectation of his dad’s horrified reaction. His dad probably had his suspicions anyway.
Mr Justice Loder should announce that he was being blackmailed because he was gay or bi, had been silly enough to appear on camera.
Was that all Colin was worried about? Consenting adults? Did his album hold photographs that told a different story?
In Bridge Road, I parked in a loading zone and rang the bell at Vicachin Business Agency.
‘Yes,’ the voice hissed again.
‘Lester rang about me. Yesterday.’
The door bolt unlocked.
The stairway was dark. Upstairs, the offices of Coresecure and Vicachin faced each other across a dim corridor. Vicachin’s door opened and a young woman, unsmiling, beckoned me into an office, walls decorated with travel posters. She opened an inner door and stood back.
A balding middle-aged man in a black suit and striped shirt was behind a desk. He stood up and put out a hand. ‘Call me Tran,’ he said, briskly.
‘Jack Irish.’
‘Sit, Jack.’ He sat down and adjusted his glasses. ‘Your friend tells me you want to know about Alan Bergh. There’s not much I can tell you.’
He had an American accent.
‘He’s gone somewhere?’
‘Well, he hasn’t been in for a couple of weeks.’
‘Have you told anyone?’
‘No.’ He wasn’t looking at me, looking down, fiddling with his glasses.
‘Something may have happened to him.’
He shrugged. ‘I don’t like to interfere. Mind my own business.’
‘Do you know much about Coresecure, Tran?’
Tran held up his hands. ‘God knows. Something to do with company security. I think Alan was a soldier once. He speaks some Vietnamese.’
‘Who’s the landlord?’
‘I collect the rent.’
An answer to a question I hadn’t asked. ‘That’s up to date?’
‘Oh yes. Three months in advance.’
‘What did you find when you checked his office?’
‘Nothing.’
As he said it, he knew he’d been taken, tugged at an earlobe, perhaps thinking about the mind-myown-business problem.
‘You worry whether someone’s collapsed, heart attack, you know,’ he said.
‘Of course. Would you mind if I had a look?’
Tran’s eyes said nothing. ‘I don’t understand. Your friend says you’re a lawyer. What is your interest in Alan?’
‘It’s complicated. I think it’s important to find Alan. Very much in his interests. You can trust me not to involve you in any way.’
A long think.
‘I can’t let you into his office.’
‘You don’t have to.’
More thought. Then he opened a drawer at his right and took out two keys on a metal disc, put them on the desk. He stood up, turned his back on me, went to the window. I took the keys.
‘Thank you for talking to me, Tran,’ I said. ‘I imagine a security consultant’s office would be guarded by the latest alarm system.’
He turned. ‘No. Nothing of value, I suppose. Sorry I couldn’t be more help.’
We shook hands and I left. The outer office was empty. I crossed the corridor and unlocked the Coresecure office. Inside, it was dark and musty.
I felt like a burglar.
In many ways, I was a burglar, always intruding, taking things I had no right to.
There was little to take in the Coresecure office. It consisted of two rooms, the front one not used, the back one minimally furnished. There was a desk, nothing on it except a telephone and a box of tissues. The drawers contained printer paper, an ink cartridge and a box of ballpoints. A printer was on a stand next to a filing cabinet, empty. To the right of the desk, a bookshelf held capital city telephone books, copies of an American magazine called CORPORATE SECURITY, and a dozen or so books, company histories and books about business failures and corporate crime.
The wastepaper basket was empty.
I went behind the desk, picked up the telephone and pressed the redial button.
Nothing. Last call cleared.
Standing behind Alan Bergh’s desk, in his boring office, his telephone in my hand, a feeling of disgust, of failure and futility, settled on me. This was not the way an adult should spend time.
I pulled a tissue out of the box, wiped the instrument, replaced it, realised how silly this was for a member of the legal profession, gave the phone an extra rub anyway and went around looking for other things I’d touched. Paranoia satisfied, I clicked off the light.
In the near-dark of the outer room, reaching for the doorknob, I saw the mail basket. The mail was collected downstairs and someone, Tran’s assistant no doubt, posted it through Coresecure’s slot. It fell into a basket attached to the door.
A burglar. A thief.
I did a quick sort of Coresecure’s mail and left, posting the firm’s keys through the mail slot after closing the street door.
Back to Fitzroy, to the office. I’d never spent so much time there. I didn’t want to be there. I wanted to be at Taub’s, making things. Any things.
At my table, I opened the purloined mail. I’d stolen two bank statements, a credit card statement, and a mobile-phone bill.