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 starfucker?’
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, unbuttoning her top button 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.
‘Starfucking,’ 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?’
‘Not bad. Power and Imagination, it was called. They looked like artists and poets are supposed to, sort of pale and dreamy and wasted. They got that way on a strict diet of smack, speed and Bushmills.’
She swung her legs over mine and leaned back. ‘Eric was just chipping in the beginning. “Everything’s under control” was his favourite expression. We had a great time. Played all over Europe, did a tour with Fruit Palace, went to a party with Mick Jagger, met Andy Warhol. What a prick.’
‘Were you in love?’ I said.
‘Madly. I was just a kid. Only I didn’t know it. I was twenty-three, never really been out of Melbourne, married to a doctor I met at uni. Then one day this utterly strange and exciting creature came into my life. He had a kind of erotic presence, it was overpowering. And he lived in a world that had nothing to do with shopping and dishes and catching trams and alarm clocks and meals at certain times and lunch with your husband’s parents every Sunday. He put his hand on me and I was gone.’
I found the red wine and poured some into our glasses.
‘So that’s starfucking,’ Linda said. ‘And it all ends in tears, believe me.’
‘Everything’s got a price.’
She leaned over and kissed me half on the mouth. ‘Mine’s cheap. Plate of ravioli is the going rate. You’ve got a bit of an erotic presence yourself, if I may say so. Of the wounded rogue bull-elephant variety.’
‘Many a cow has told me that,’ I said. ‘I want to tell you something.’ I’d been putting this off all night.
‘So soon? There’s another woman already?’
‘I got escorted to see the Police Minister this evening. The cops know I was at the doctor’s place. They know I wiped my prints.’
Her eyes were wide. ‘How did they find out?’
‘Somebody must have remembered the Celica’s rego. Bloke I asked for directions, I suppose. They seem to have traced it to the guy who lent it to me. And matched its tyre prints with some I left at the scene. He says they matched them, anyway.’
‘What now?’ There was concern in her voice.
‘There’s more.’ I told her everything Bruce had told me.
‘That’s quite a session you had,’ she said when I’d finished. ‘You believe him?’
‘Mainly. It makes more sense than the version I half convinced myself was true.’
‘So Danny McKillop ends up getting lumbered with everything. Revenge killer. How come he didn’t start with this Scullin?’
I shrugged. ‘Could be any number of reasons. No-one will ever know.’
Linda lay back and looked at the ceiling. ‘What did Pixley tell you?’
‘Lots. He hates Pitman. He says Pitman tried to get him to do things for big donors to the party and shut down Hoagland so that he could sell the site to mates. He says Cabinet didn’t approve the sale the first time Pitman raised it. But someone leaked that it had been approved.’
Linda pushed back her hair. ‘Pixley says this outright?’
‘More or less.’
‘Paydirt,’ she said. She had the shine in her eyes I’d seen when the fat woman played the computer at UrbanData.
‘Not quite. He won’t go on the record. I also talked to Anne Jeppeson’s mother. Pixley’s daughter, Sarah, was in Anne’s class at school. They were close friends.’
‘Jesus. That’s stretching coincidence a bit. Wait a minute. The Cabinet leak about Hoagland…’
‘Bruce says Pixley told his daughter, who told Anne. Pixley also suggested that Bleek, the senior officer in the Planning department, was got to by Pitman. He’s dead too. Bruce says Bleek was corrupted by Pixley.’
‘Did Pixley mention companies?’
‘Hexiod and Charis. He says they’re the same thing.’
‘This is heavy stuff,’ Linda said. ‘Pass the wine.’
I poured some more of the red. ‘You won’t be able to drive after this,’ I said hopefully.
Linda looked at the fire through her glass. ‘Dear me,’ she said, ‘I’ll just have to stay over and fuck your face off. Listen, I think Bruce is trying to bullshit you. I’ve searched all the Yarrabank titles. What it looks like is that about eighteen months before Pitman decided to shut Hoagland eight companies began buying up the area.’
‘Eight companies?’
‘That’s right. Eight companies with names like Edelweiss Nominees Number 12 and Collarstud Holdings and Rabbitrun. And they in turn are owned by companies registered in places like the Cayman Islands and Vanuatu and Jersey.’
‘Dummies.’
‘Your normal shelf numbers. I’ve talked to five of the sellers. At least three real estate firms were involved. The owners were made reasonable offers. There was no hurry for possession, the agents said. They could stay on, no rent, if they wanted to. They would get sixty days’ notice to move. And there was a secrecy bonus if the buyer was satisfied that no word of the deal had leaked out for thirty days after the sale.’
‘Was it paid?’
‘Yes. More than a year before Pitman went to Cabinet with his proposal the whole area around Hoagland was stitched up by the eight companies. Well, all except one bit, a sheetmetal works. That changed hands about six months after the others. The land anyway. The factory burnt down.’
‘Someone who wouldn’t sell?’
‘Could be. I’d have to talk to the owner.’
‘What’s all this add up to?’
‘I’d say somebody had the idea for Yarra Cove and quietly bought up the properties through the nominee companies. The companies warehoused them, waiting for Hoagland to be closed and sold to Hexiod Holdings. But before anything could happen, the government lost the election. The nominee companies then one by one sold their waterfront properties to a company called Niemen PL and Niemen consolidated them into one property, a semicircle around Hoagland. Niemen applied for a rezoning for the consolidated property as residential. But the new government blocked them. So nothing happened for nine years. Then Pitman’s mob came back into power and the next day Hexiod sold the Hoagland site to Charis Corporation. Soon after that, Niemen sold the waterfront strip to Charis. Hey presto, the jigsaw’s complete. All is in readiness for a six hundred million dollar development.’
I felt tiredness creeping over me. ‘So Charis might only have come into the picture at the end?’
Linda put her glass on the floor. ‘I’d guess that all parties were in on the deal from the beginning. Hexiod wouldn’t have bought Hoagland if it wasn’t sure it could buy the rest of the land. The people behind the nominee companies wouldn’t have bought up the whole area unless they were part of a deal with Hexiod and Charis.’
‘And nobody,’ I said, ‘would have done anything unless they knew that Hoagland was going to be closed down.’
‘And sold to Hexiod.’
‘But you’re just guessing,’ I said. ‘It’s possible that Pixley was the one who tipped off the first buyers and that Charis is just the innocent last link in the chain.’
‘I doubt that.’
‘But nothing you know says that the whole thing was more than a little scam involving some small-time friends of Kevin Pixley’s.’
‘I don’t know what you’d call a big scam,’ said Linda.
‘Leaving Hoagland aside,’ I said, ‘there’s still no real evidence that Anne Jeppeson was murdered. Or that Danny was framed. In fact, I now think it’s extremely unlikely that Danny was framed.’
She hugged herself. ‘Because Bruce says so? Five minutes with the Minister and you come out in reverse.’
‘What he says makes more sense of the evidence than my conclusions. And no-one’s going to prove any different. Even if Pitman was somehow involved, you won’t nail him. You’d have to demonstrate a connection between him and one of the other parties. A tangible link. A beneficial link.’
Linda took my right hand and put it inside her pyjama top, under her right breast. ‘I love it when you sound lawyerly,’ she said. ‘Cup that. And demonstrate a connection.’
I wanted to cup it. And its twin. And to show a tangible link. But I felt a dread stealing over me and I took my hand away. ‘Linda,’ I said, ‘I think we’ve got to close the book on this thing. I’ve given my word to Bruce.’
She leaned back. ‘Your word? Your word what?’
I found it hard to say it. ‘I’ve told him that neither of us will take this any further. That includes the Hoagland sale.’
Linda stood up. ‘I don’t understand. Why? Why would you do that?’
How do you tell people about your fear that you might lose one of the few things that has given your life any meaning? ‘Bruce offered me a trade,’ I said.
‘A trade?’
‘Back off or be charged with a whole raft of offences over my Daylesford excursion.’
Linda shook her head in disbelief. ‘Bruce didn’t offer me a trade. You can’t speak for me. This whole thing doesn’t belong to you. You can’t suddenly take your ball and go home. This is a huge story. It could bring down a Cabinet Minister. Maybe the whole government. You can’t just switch it off because you’ve got cosy with the Police Minister.’
‘Listen to me,’ I said. ‘I’m not cosy with him. I’m scared. I’m under the gun. They’ll charge me. I’ll get convicted. Even if I don’t go to jail, I’ll get struck off the roll. I’ll never be able to practise again.’
She looked at me for what seemed to be a long time. Then she turned and went into the bedroom. I waited, stomach tense, not knowing what to do, knowing I was losing her. When she came out, she was dressed. She went over to where her jacket was hanging over a chair.
I said, ‘Can we calm this down? I’m-’
She cut me off, voice even. ‘Jack, as far as I can see four people have died over Hoagland. It’s likely that there’s been a spectacular piece of corruption. I was under the impression you cared about that. Now you’re telling me that the nice Police Minister has explained the whole thing to your satisfaction. And to help convince you, he’s threatened you with legal action. So to hell with justice, you’ve agreed to shut up. And you’ve agreed to shut me up. Well, I’m not yours to shut up. I don’t know what made you think I might be.’
I tried to get angry. ‘Hold on. A minute ago you were talking about a huge story. Now you’re campaigning for justice. Which one do you want to sacrifice me for? Justice or the huge story?’
There was something approaching contempt in her eyes. I knew about contempt in people’s eyes. In my life even outback barmen had looked at me with contempt in their eyes.
Linda took her jacket and walked to the door. When she got there, she turned and said, ‘If your new chum the Minister drops you in it because you can’t control me, my view is you should’ve asked me first. That’s about my pride. About your pride, I’d have thought you wouldn’t have given a fuck about getting struck off the roll if you could find out the truth about what happened to Danny McKillop. And if you think the Minister’s going to supply you with the truth, you have been living on some other planet for the last forty years. Goodbye.’