Prophets and Loss (A Johnny Ravine Mystery)

by Martin Roth

Napoli was a long, narrow restaurant just off the main Burke Road shops, with glass doors at the front that could slide open in summer.

  Matt was right about the place being popular. The pre-movies dinner crowd had already arrived, and the after-work drinks crowd hadn’t left. We grabbed the last table, right next to the kitchen, and then waited ten minutes just to place our orders with a middle-aged waitress who had to keep dabbing away pearls of sweat from her cheeks.

  I asked for spaghetti with a creamy shellfish sauce and Matt had something called a gourmet pizza, which turned out to be a block of charcoal-roasted bread with half an avocado and some brie on top

  “Make any money today?” I asked him.

  “Went long in a few positions that won’t close out till tomorrow.” He shoveled a slice of pizza into his mouth. “Nothing today.”

  I let it pass, and reflected that maybe I needed to take a course on finance - Australians were always taking courses - to learn how to understand what people like Matt and Tom Traherne were saying.

  I got back to more familiar territory. “Grant did a lot of business with Indonesia. Even after he got out of prison he still seemed to keep up some contacts. You remember that time you met and he asked you to forgive him?” He nodded. I put some spaghetti into my mouth, then tried to sound casual. “Do you remember anything unusual that he might have said? Anything else, I mean. Anything about soldiers?”

  “Soldiers? No, I think it was mainly all this Christian stuff.”

  “The Dili Tigers. Matt, do you remember how last time we met I asked if Grant mentioned them to you? Now you’re quite sure he didn’t?”

  “Yeah, like that’s the strange sort of thing I’d probably remember.”

  It was frustrating. What I imagined to be a weak link was not yielding. Most likely it had nothing to yield. “What about when you were working with Grant? Before he went to prison. You don’t remember Indonesians visiting the office? Maybe smoking clove cigarettes?”

  “Clove cigarettes? What are they?”

  “Special Indonesian cigarettes. Everyone over there smokes them. They have their own special scent. Like someone’s just lit a stick of incense in a public toilet.”

  “I’m glued to the screens when I’m in the office. Probably wouldn’t have noticed. The whole place smells a bit like a public toilet, anyway.”

  Above the din I could hear a wailing sax. In modern Melbourne style, Napoli was working to transcend its origins. In place of the standard Bay of Naples tourist posters, the pale blue walls were adorned with black-and-white art photos of African village scenes. And instead of O Sole Mio and Funiculi-Funicula, we were treated to the music of Charlie Parker and Miles Davis.

  We ordered cappuccinos. Matt took out his BlackBerry and began checking prices, a vacant look on his face. Then suddenly he spoke, not even looking up. “Yeah, actually, about a month ago it was, Tom said something about his Indonesian retirement plan.”

  “Tom said it? Tom Traherne? His retirement plan?”

  “Yeah, like a joke. He thought it was funny. He said he’d arranged this special Indonesian plan for his retirement.”

  “What did he mean?”

  “Dunno. I didn’t really think about it. I guess he’s big in some Indonesian shares or something. Maybe Grant put him into something good.”

  “I asked Tom about any Indonesian connections when I met him. He didn’t mention anything like that to me.”

  “I guess he forgot.” He still hadn’t looked up.

  Indonesian retirement plan? I could not start to imagine what he might have been referring to. I cut to the point of my meeting.

  “Matt, look this is an imposition. But can you take me back to the Prophetic Edge office? I’ve been there before with Tom, but I reckon maybe I’ll notice something new. Maybe you can show me some of the stuff that Grant used to be involved with at the office. You know, Grant’s wife Melissa is really imposing on me to find out who bumped him off. She asked me to check at the office again, and I’d really like to help her. Even if I just tell her that I went there, that’ll probably be enough.”

  Matt shrugged his shoulders. “Yeah, should be okay. Why not? It’s a pretty public place. People coming and going all the time. You just have to pay the fee and they give you a key and let you use the facilities.”

  I paid the bill and we walked the short distance up Burke Road to the office, narrowly avoiding being run down by a posse of teenage skateboarders heading in the opposite direction. As I’d hoped, the office was unoccupied, locked and with all the lights switched off. But several screens had been left on and were emitting a ghostly blue gleam. It was easy to see why some people believed aliens lived inside their computers.

  “What sort of stuff was Grant trading?” I asked.

  In a kind of a seamless movement Matt sat at one of the screens that had been left on and began bringing up a series of charts and diagrams. “Anything. Whatever looked hot at the time. Like most of us.”

  I walked to Tom’s desk at the far end of the room and, after ensuring that Matt wasn’t watching, riffled through his papers. Everything seemed to be related to his trading activities, or to the Prophetic Edge software. He didn’t seem to keep on the desk anything personal, like photos or hobby magazines. “What was hot when he went to prison?”

  Matt turned his gaze upwards. “That’s a good question. I’ve no idea. Could’ve been anything. The market had already tanked. Nothing springs to mind. But there were still a lot of new floats. He might have been playing around with those.”

  “He didn’t specialize or anything like that?”

  “No, not really. He would have had his favorites, like all of us. Stocks that had been kind to him over the years. You keep coming back to those. But I can’t think of anything. He was such a pro. He was right across the board.”

  With Matt again transfixed to his screen I tried to open the drawers of Tom’s desk, but of course they were locked. A filing cabinet behind the desk was also locked.

  I felt frustrated and stupid. This office was - according to both Rohan and Papa Guzman - the center of some kind of covert activity. Papa had even been murdered, apparently for finding this out. Yet I didn’t know what I was meant to be looking for, other than something with an Indonesian connection. What was the point?

  I had loved Papa Guzman. I felt intense guilt that I had been partially responsible for his death. I wanted to make amends, for his memory and for Maria. But surely they couldn’t expect any more from me. I had done all I possibly could; all that I could reasonably be asked to do. Now it was time for Rohan to tell everything to the police, and they could take over.

  “Matt,” I said with a heavy heart. “I’m off. You staying?”

  He looked up. “Yeah, London’s open, and I might hang about for New York.”

  “Okay. Thanks for all your help.”

  “Yeah, no worries. Thanks for the dinner. See you.”

  I walked back to my car. I felt depressed. I was at a dead end. It occurred to me that I’d come to Australia for a new future but here I was, once more, sleeping on the floor of a church and on the run from Indonesian militia terrorists. My life was going backwards.