Bad Debts by Peter Temple

bit driven. And Ronnie’s the only person who can help me. If I knew a bit more about him, I might be able to find him.’
    Charles looked at his nails. Clean, pink, blunt nails. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘ask away.’
    ‘Why did he go to Melbourne?’
    ‘He said he had to see someone.’
    ‘Do you know what about?’
    ‘I’d only be guessing.’
    ‘Even a guess might help.’
    ‘There were phone calls from Melbourne.’
    I waited. Charles sipped his drink. There was a beautiful sunset going on outside. I could see a coral glow on the wall of the neighbour’s house. You don’t see sunsets in Melbourne in winter. It isn’t even clear to me that the sun rises in Melbourne in winter.
    ‘A man rang twice.’
    ‘Was that unusual?’
    ‘Yes. To ring here, that was unusual. I stop in on my way from work every day and give the garden a sprinkle, that sort of thing. It’d die if it was left to Ronnie. He doesn’t come home until all hours, so I listen to the answering machine and I ring him at the shop if it’s anything he needs to know about. The only person who calls from Melbourne is his mum and she generally rings on Sunday mornings.’
    ‘What did the man say?’
    ‘He said he needed to speak to Ronnie urgently. I rang Ronnie and gave him the message. Twice.’
    ‘Did he say anything?’
    Charles was silent again for a while. He was still at war with himself about answering my questions.
    ‘The first time he said something like, “Oh, Christ, no”. Something like that.’
    ‘The man gave a name and a number to ring?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Can you remember the name?’
    ‘I’m afraid not. I’m hopeless about names. It’d be on the tape.’
    I felt a small flush of excitement. ‘You’ve got the answering machine tape?’
    ‘No. The burglars took all the tapes. They took all the CDs too, but you can understand that. Ronnie didn’t wipe any answering machine tapes. He just put in a new tape. Some of them have got messages that go on for half an hour or more, my dear. He’s got these weird girlfriends. They don’t seem to want to talk to him. They just pour out all this drivel about men and shopping and films to the machine.’
    ‘But all the tapes were here?’
    ‘Yes. They were all in the phone table drawer. The burglars dumped the drawer on the floor, my dear. Gave it a kick too, by the look of things. Pens and stuff everywhere. They took the tape out of the machine, too.’
    I tried the name Danny McKillop on him.
    ‘I can’t say yes and I can’t say no,’ he said. ‘I think it was an Irish sort of name. But I can’t be sure.’
    ‘Did Ronnie ever talk about his past?’
    ‘Never. The man was like the Sphinx. Could’ve been born yesterday.’
    What had Ronnie’s mother said? Doug always said he would make a good spy.
    ‘He never mentioned any names?’
    Charles picked up his glass and stuck the tip of his tongue into the liquid. He looked at me over the rim. ‘Not ever. I’ve been over all this before. I told the detectives that. They asked these questions. I told them the same thing. Ronnie simply did not talk about himself except in the vaguest way.’
    ‘These were the detectives about the break-in?’
    ‘Oh, absolutely not. That was PC Plod from the local station. These were men in plain clothes. Rather grubby plain clothes in the case of one of them.’ He laughed, a light laugh, verging on the nervous.
    ‘And they identified themselves as policemen?’
    He didn’t answer for a few seconds, turning a gold band with a single red stone in it on the little finger of his right hand. ‘No,’ he said. ‘They didn’t. They came to the door at home. It’s just around the corner. My unit. About nine at night. Smelling, reeking of drink, if you don’t mind. One expects more.’
    ‘You assumed they were detectives?’
    ‘Yes. I did. They were, I think. They had that manner. The smaller one took out some sort of notebook. He wasn’t small, mind you. The opposite. Just smaller. He said