'Yes.'

Complicit, I didn't say that it was not so much a personal journey on a road less travelled as a trip in a crammed bus on a six-lane freeway. All I wanted to do was read. This would stop me thinking about the distinctly unhealthy coughing note I'd detected in the port engine.

My companion went on exploring metaphors for his condition all the way to Melbourne. From time to time, I fed him a new one to keep him from asking me questions.

Home. The comforting feel of one's own tarmac.

On the way from the airport, I got off the suicidal freeway before the tollway began, perversely took to choked Bell Street, and at length found my way to St Georges Road and Brunswick Street. It was early afternoon, overcast. I lucked on a parking spot near Meaker's, went in and ordered a toasted chicken sandwich from Carmel, the worldly child.

'Tell him it's for Jack,' I said. 'That sometimes stops him leaving the bones in.'

'I'll write it down,' she said. 'I'm too scared to speak to him.'

Enzio the cook was subject to mood swings. From bad to much, much worse, and back. I'd almost finished reading the form for Mornington when his squat figure emerged from the kitchen, scowled at the room, came over and put a plate down in front of me: big sourdough slices containing Enzio's secret filling of chicken, red capsic.u.m, ricotta and other unidentifiable stuff, the whole flattened under a hot weight. I felt saliva start.

Enzio sat down, looked around, pointed his blunt and unshaven chin at me. 'Listen,' he said. 'Hair transplants. What you think?'

'Can we talk about this later? Hair and food don't mix.'

He ignored my plea. 'This woman,' he said, 'she likes hair.'

'A new woman?'

'At the market. Her husband died. She talks about his hair all the time, lovely hair, strong hair.' He ran his hand over the surviving strands on his scalp. Unlovely, unstrong.

I looked at my sandwich. The point about a toasted sandwich is that it is eaten warm.

'Talks where? Where are you when she talks about hair?'

He jerked his head. 'Where you think? Where you talk this kind of talk?'

I gave him the lawyerly eye. 'Enzio, if this woman wanted hair, she wouldn't be talking to you in bed about hair. She's feeling guilty because she's having such a good time. Her hairy husband, all he had was hair. That's all she can find to say about him. You, on the other hand, you've got something else.'

I paused, bent my head closer. 'It's not hair she wants, Enzio. Get me?'

The ends of Enzio's mouth bent down, slowly, a sinister, knowing look.

'f.u.c.k hair,' he said. He made a gesture with his right forearm that brooked no misinterpretation.

'Exactly. Now get back to work.'

He left. In the doorway to the kitchen, he turned. Our eyes met. He gave me a confident nod. Several nods.

Next patient, Dr Irish. Would that all problems admitted of such effortless solutions. In particular, my problems. The sandwich was still warm. Halfway, I signalled for the coffee, the short signal, thumb and index fingers a centimetre apart.

Carmel brought the potent eggcup of coffee and a yellow A4 envelope. 'Enzio says this came yesterday.' She touched the tip of her tongue to her upper lip, a kissable upper lip. 'He's whistling,' she said. 'Is there a secret?'

'Make them come to you,' I said. 'Never use force.'

She nodded, no expression. 'Thank you. I believe some call you the cookmaster.'

'The knowing do,' I said.

Carmel was clearing the table next to the door as I left.

'Your work here will never be done,' she said.

The office was cold and I noticed dust. How could anyone trust a solicitor whose office was dusty? I put on the blow heater and the smell of hot dust filled the room. How had this dust problem crept up on me?

Cyril Wootton on the answering machine, twice, a Wootton urgent but not irascible, which was unusual. My sister, Rosa, mildly exasperated, which was not. Drew Greer, saying unkind, mocking things about St Kilda's performance against West Coast. Sad but to be expected from someone rendered agnostic by the death of Fitzroy. And Mrs Purbrick.

Jack, darling, such short notice but you must come for drinks tomorrow, six-ish, no excuses accepted.

It's business, I thought. And my chance to meet the Cundalls. Everyone else had.

I rang Cyril.

'As always, Mr Wootton will be delighted to have made contact with you,' said Mrs Davenport. Every day, she sounded more like Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.

'But do we ever really make contact, Mrs Davenport? We talk, we may even touch, but do we make contact? I mean, in the sense of...'

'Putting you through,' she said.

'Jesus, Jack,' said Wootton, 'mobile that's not switched on, what the f.u.c.k is the purpose...'

'Silence is the purpose, Cyril. The silence in which to do one's work.'

He gave me a silence. Then he made a noise, not so much animal as vegetable, the noise a sad carrot or potato might make, the noise of something deeply, hopelessly embedded in mud.

'The client would like a progress report,' he said.

Spoilt rotten, judges. a.s.sociates and clerks and tipstaffs and witnesses and defendants and jurors and learned counsel in silly wigs, all hanging on their every word, many of them hanging and fawning.

'Tell the client I'll report when there's something worth reporting.'

Wootton whistled, put the phone down. He'd be one of the fawners. I'd have to ask Cyril how it was that Mr Justice Colin Loder brought the problem of Robbie Colburne to him.

I sat down and thought about my progress. Nil, really. Robbie left the country and didn't appear to have come back. That was about it. It was strange but there were possible explanations.

Time to go home. Dawn in cold Lithgow seemed days away.

Halfway to my car, I heard a car slowing behind me, looked around, flight-or-fight coming into play: a red Alfa, new, two men in it. At an unthreatening crawl, it drew level, and the pa.s.senger window slid down.

'Jack Irish?'

The man was young, sleek dark hair, a mole beside his mouth. He was wearing a grey polo-neck and a soft-looking black leather jacket without a collar.

I nodded, kept walking.

'For you,' he said, holding out a brown paper bag. 'From a friend.'

Without thinking, I took it. The car pulled away, braked before it took the sharp corner, a double pulse of red light in the gloomy day.

The bag held a video ca.s.sette, new, unlabelled. Courtesy, presumably, of Detective Sergeant Warren Bowman.

At home, I half-filled the bath, drowsed in it for a long time with a gla.s.s of single malt, the end of a bottle given to me by Lyall, bought duty-free in some airport servicing a trouble spot. Or Santa b.l.o.o.d.y Barbara. It was peaceful in the big room, a bedroom when I bought the building. Once upon a time, a fire had sometimes been lit in the brick hearth on a cold Sunday afternoon, one person had read in the bath, the other had sat in the armchair.

I thought more about Robert Colburne. The judge was paying to find out what had really happened to him if he hadn't accidentally overdosed. He said he was acting on behalf of someone who knew Robbie, lost touch with him for a long time, then made contact again in Melbourne.

I didn't like the feel of that story, the distance it placed between Mr Justice Loder and Robbie.

Musing in the claw-footed bath, a bath big enough for two, if they arranged themselves.

I dismissed that memory, rose and donned un-ironed but clean garments and began the preparation of a modest meal.

I drank some red wine, moved roughly chopped onion around for a while, kept away from the hot spot that the famous and expensive French frying pan wasn't supposed to have. The French are the finest conpeople in the world. I added garlic and mushrooms, a tin of tomatoes.

The video. Delivered by hand by men in an expensive car. Undercover cops? I switched off the gas, took my gla.s.s to the sitting room and plugged in the ca.s.sette, went to the couch and used the remote. The video flickered briefly, began.

A young man got out of a cab. This would be Robbie Colburne. He was tall and slim and, from on high and zooming in and out on him, the camera caught a certain athletic insouciance: chin up, arms moving freely, first two fingers extended pistol-like. It was night but made day by spotlights recessed into the building on his left. Light gleamed on his cheekbones, on his straight black hair combed back. He was handsome, all in black, a jacket worn over a tee-shirt.

The camera followed him to where he disappeared beneath a cantilevered porch bearing the name of the building, incised in polished concrete: CATHEXIS.

Daylight this time, someone sitting at a table on the pavement from across a busy street, traffic blocking vision for seconds at a time. Then a new camera angle, nothing obscuring the man now but the camera unsteady. He had a small gla.s.s on a saucer, the shortest of short blacks, drank a teaspoonful, looked around, newspaper in his hand, a half-amused look. He was dark, balding, a fleshy intimidating face.

Early evening, the young man again, Robbie, seen in profile, side-on, waiting to cross a busy street, finding a break in the traffic, walking diagonally, the confident walk.

Night again. A long shot in bad conditions, rain, a car window coming down, the camera zooming in, the young man behind the wheel, in a dinner suit now, white shirt, black bow tie, saying a few words to someone outside the vehicle.

End of moving pictures.

I'd asked Warren Bowman for a photograph of Robbie.

I'd expected a still, a mortuary picture. Instead, he sent me a collection of surveillance video clips showing Robbie under expensive observation, moving, in the street. Good of him but why? I could ask Detective Sergeant Bowman. But he would probably say that he was just being helpful.

And why did a casual barman like Robbie deserve this kind of photographic attention? Was it because he wasn't just a barman, as my anonymous caller had suggested?

Warren Bowman said senior drug squad officers were on the scene quickly after the uniformed cops reported finding Robbie's body.

Expensive surveillance, two cameras on one occasion. That only happened to persons of great interest. Unless Robbie was an accidental, someone filmed in the surveillance of someone else. But, in that case, he would be someone close to the target; there was no other way he would be caught on camera so many times.

Robbie caught up in the surveillance of someone else. Was that it? The fleshy man?

Back to cooking. Time to add the tuna, get the rice going.

I was eating in front of the television when the phone rang. Cam.

'Little trip in the morning,' he said. 'Won't take long.'

'I got talkin to the bloke at the hotel next door,' Cam said. He wound down his window, flicked his cigarette end out, raised the window. We were in the V-8, pa.s.sing the Fawkner Crematorium on the Hume, a sunny morning, petrol tanker ahead, Kenworth behind, stream of heavy metal coming the other way.

'What's the connection?'

'Hotel's part-owner of the carpark. Guest parkin. Carpark employs three blokes on eight-hour shifts, hotel provides security. In theory. This fella, he worked there eighteen months.'

'The name again?'

'Rick Chaffee. Two complaints about extra Ks appearin on the clock while he was there. One bloke from Adelaide had a logbook, he reckoned someone took his Discovery for a 200K spin.'

Cam edged out for a look, came back in. He was wearing Western District casual attire today, navyblue brushed-cotton shirt, heavy moleskin trousers, short riding boots. 'On the day, this Chaffee, his story is he was on the phone, he thought he recognised the driver of the Land Cruiser, let him out without checkin ID. Honest mistake.'

'They buy that?'

Cam shrugged. 'What can you prove? Sacked him. Cops run the tape over him, the hotel bloke says. No form to speak of, some kid stuff in WA, he's a WA boy, Mangoup, Banjoup, one of those up towns, they got hundreds. Plus he's got an a.s.sault when he was a bouncer in King Street.'

He was steering with his fingertips, head back, index fingers tapping to the music, soft Harry Connick. 'Worth a yarn, I reckon.'

'If the bloke's in this,' I said, 'it'll take more than a yarn.'

Cam's dark eyes lay on me for a moment.

I went back to reading the Age Age. The story at the bottom of page one was headlined: Call for Cannon Ridge tender probe Call for Cannon Ridge tender probe.

It opened: The State Government was last night urged to hold an inquiry into the tendering process that awarded a 100-year lease on the Cannon Ridge snowfield and a mini-casino licence to a company a.s.sociated with Melbourne's millionaire Cundall family The State Government was last night urged to hold an inquiry into the tendering process that awarded a 100-year lease on the Cannon Ridge snowfield and a mini-casino licence to a company a.s.sociated with Melbourne's millionaire Cundall family.

The company, Anaxan Holdings, has a glittering list of shareholders, including some of Australia's Top 100 richest. A spokesman for shortlisted rival bidder WRG Resorts told a press conference yesterday that WRG has evidence that Anaxan knew details of all tenders before the vital second round of bidding.

The Minister for Development, Tony DiAmato, said WRG Resorts had not approached him. 'I have no idea what they're talking about. The previous government awarded this tender. We fought the whole idea of a private snowfield and another casino, everyone knows that. But it's done, it's history.'

Cam said, 'I read that stuff you sent me. The Saint's big with your crim tatt artist.'

I folded the paper. 'That's what my bloke said. Use half the phone book.'

I'd sent him the yellow A4 envelope left for me at Meaker's, sent it by express courier, fat and silent Mr Cripps behind the wheel of his burnished 1976 Holden.

'It's down here,' said Cam.

We turned right off the Hume, drove through a light industrial area, bricks, concrete products, pipes, turned left and went a long way, to the end of an unpaved road. Ahead, a sign on a wavy corrugated-iron fence was falling over. It said, no punctuation, Denver Garden & Building Supplies Plants Sand Soil Gravel Pavers Sleepers. The gate was half-open, drawn back until its sagging tip dug into the ground.

Cam nosed around it, parked in front of a long cement-sheet building, flat-roofed, meagre shelter over the door, one small window. Beside the door, three bags of cement had solidified, fused. We got out.

To the left of the gate was what remained of the Plants division of the business: a copse of birch trees in black plastic root bags, leaning inward, touching, dead; a conifer fallen over but indomitable, roots broken through the seams of the plastic bag and penetrating the packed soil; a row of concrete pots growing couch gra.s.s in abundance; some sad roses clinging to life, spa.r.s.e leaves spotted with yellow.

The sound of a machine came from beyond the building. We walked around, pa.s.sed an old pale-blue Valiant, buffed up, saw an expanse of dark, wet, rutted ground, big concrete pens holding gravel and sand, mulch, compost, other dark substances, everything untidy, spilling out of the enclosures, crushed into the ground.