I chewed a nut. ‘His relatives,’ I said. ‘Lost touch with him, now they want to know a bit more about his life.’
Doyle nodded. ‘Perfectly understandable.’ He flashed a cuff, looked at his watch. ‘Day’s flyin away from me. Jack, it’s a pleasure to meet you. We’ll be seein more of you now? Promise me that.’
‘Promise,’ I said. ‘Xavier.’
‘Call me Ex,’ he says. ‘It’s what they call me.’ He turned his head to Dieter. ‘Fix this feller in your mind,’ he said, ‘and take proper care of him.’
He was at the inside door when he turned and came back. ‘Next week we’re launchin this little cookbook we’ve knocked out, Jack. The Green Hill Food it’s called. Lots of the legal brotherhood comin. And the sisterhood, mind you. Your presence is required. Got a card on you?’
On the way out, I waved goodbye to Dieter. He was standing at a hatch talking to a young woman on the other side. They were both looking at me. He waved back, a polite wave.
Outside, in the rain, the meter had long expired and the Stud had a note under the driver’s wiper. It read: ‘If you ever consider selling this, ring me.’ There was a name and a number and, after it, in parentheses, the words Traffic Inspector. Such is luck.
9
‘Kashboli?’ I said, studying the menu. ‘What does Kashboli mean?’
‘Where have you been, Jack?’ asked Andrew Greer, my former law partner and friend since law school. ‘Kashmiri plus Bolivian. Two interesting cuisines.’
I loosened my tie. ‘With absolutely fuck-all in common.’
‘Exactly. Until united by fusion cuisine.’
We were sitting in the window of Kashboli, an eating and drinking place on lower Lygon Street whose premises had previously housed a famous Carlton dry-cleaning establishment. Where a bar with a mosaic top now stood, garments were once handed over, precious garments, mainly Italian men’s items handed over by Italian women — dinner jackets the men had proposed in, wedding suits, good linen trousers, dark single-vent jackets, many let out a bit at the seams by the skilled fingers of loved ones. It had been my dry-cleaner when I was a five-suit man practising criminal law with Andrew in nearby Drummond Street.
‘Hello, young lovers, wherever you are.’
A seriously big man, big and fat man, in loose white garments, shaven skull, no neck, head like a nipple with features, had appeared behind the bar, sang the line in a singing pose, chin raised, hands up, palms outwards.
Andrew gave him a wave. So did all the other patrons, late-working trade unionists from headquarters down the road by the grim and dedicated look of them.
‘Our host, Ronnie Krumm,’ said Drew.
‘Is that Kashmiri Ronnie Krumm or Bolivian Ronnie Krumm?’
‘Neither. Ronnie’s from Perth, travelled widely in search of the new. I understand the family’s in hardware, very big in the hardware.’
‘Hardware, software, Ronnie’s big all over. What’s the fat content of Kashboli tucker?’
Drew was intent on the menu. ‘Excessive but only good fats. Premium, I’m told. No finer fats available. Well, what’s your fancy or will you be guided?’
‘Be my trained labrador.’
Drew ordered what appeared to be a form of fish stew. It came in minutes, a minefield of a dish. You chewed uneventfully and then you bit on anti-personnel chillies and your eyes lit up from behind. Fortunately, it came with a glass of a sweet off-white substance, a neutralising agent, possibly crushed antacid tablets in a sugar solution.
‘Interesting,’ I said, recovering. ‘Fusion brings electrocution. Tell me about The Green Hill.’
Drew was savouring the Kashboli fish and chilli stew with no sign of strain, no resort to the pale liquid.
‘The Green Hill?’ He raised his glass of Bolivian cabernet to the light, his eyes narrowed, the long face took on a stained-glass religious look. ‘Not your kind of place. Very few geriatrics arguing about football at The Green.’
‘Tell me,’ I said.
‘Thinking of taking someone? A date, is it?’
‘With destiny. It’s for a Wootton client. And I’ve been there. This afternoon.’
‘Shit. Boring. How is the love life?’
‘She’s taking pictures in Europe. Not enough time between assignments.’
‘To do what?’
‘Fly home for twenty-whatever hours and go back the next week.’
‘Serious concern?’
‘I suppose.’
‘Extremely fetching person. In a mildly intimidating sort of way. Not talkative exactly,’ said Drew.
‘No. Well, she can be. Depends.’
‘Yes. All life depends. It’s pendant.’
‘The Green Hill?’
‘Testimony to one man’s dream,’ Drew said. ‘Xavier Doyle, heard of him?’
‘I met him. Very affable. He shouted me a pint of Shamrock, told me to call him Ex.’
‘Radiates charm, Mr Doyle. Gave character for a bloke of mine, waiter at The Green, stark naked outside the National Gallery on New Year’s Eve, pointed his bum at a cop. By the time Doyle was finished, I thought the mago was going to award the lad compensation.’
Ronnie Krumm was coming our way, a white tent with a large shining head where the flagpole should be, hipping his way through the tables.
‘Everything all right?” he said. ‘Not too hot for you?’
‘Was this a hot one?’ said Drew. ‘Ronnie Krumm, Jack Irish. Jack used to be my law partner.’
I shook Ronnie’s fleshy hand.
‘And you eat together,’ said Ronnie. ‘Amaazing. I’m still trying to kill my ex-partner.’
‘I never heard you say that,’ said Drew. ‘Call me when you succeed, I’ll see what I can do.’
Ronnie winked and moved on to one of the tables of trade unionists.
‘Yes,’ said Drew. ‘Xavier Doyle, the boy’s a dreamer and a doer. Cook from Dublin, guitar player, he sees the huge old place, used to be a temperance pub, falling down. So he finds the money to buy it, plus megabucks for renovations.’
‘How do you do that?’ I tried to defuse a bite of stew with a big swig of the Bolivian.
‘I don’t know exactly. They say he won over Mike Cundall. And Mrs Cundall, no doubt. And now he’s in with little Sam Cundall and the Sydney sharks, tendering for ski resorts and casinos.’
The Cundall family were in commercial property, carparks, mortgage lending, internet dream factories, many other things. They also gave away large sums and, by all accounts, turned on a good party.
‘Cannon Ridge. How do you know he’s in that?’
Drew was looking into his glass. ‘Because I know things. So what’s the interest in The Green?’
‘Someone called Robbie Colburne was a casual barman there. Dead of an overdose.’
He drank, rolled the wine in his mouth, squinted. ‘Bolivian,’ he said in wonder. ‘Excellent. Half the price of an equivalent local drop. And made by Aussie mercenaries. What happened to loyalty? Patriotism?’
‘You sound like Cyril.’
‘Now there’s a patriot. Fought abroad for his country.’
‘Which broad was that?’
He gave me the Greer frown. ‘Very weak, Jack. It’s all that buggering around with carpentry. You don’t do enough law. Keeps the mind alert. So what’s the problem with a dead waiter? The more the merrier, I say. Did he have a ponytail?’
‘A barman. I’m told the cops were interested in him.’
‘Always interested in barmen, the cops. Source of free drinks. I ran into your sister the other day.’ His eyes were not on me; they were on something behind me.
‘It’s usually the other way around,’ I said. ‘Did she mention that she’s uninsurable?’
‘At lunch with my friends the Pratchetts.’
Dick Pratchett QC was the doyen of the criminal bar, a huge bearded man who cross-examined in a hoarse whisper and sometimes waited for answers with his eyes closed. Juries loved him and so did many murderers and lesser criminals roaming free.
I said, ‘Ah. The trophy bride. Rosa’s friend.’
Pratchett had recently married my sister Rosa’s doubles partner, a woman a good twenty years his junior. Strike three.