Prophets and Loss (A Johnny Ravine Mystery)

by Martin Roth

  Chapter Twenty-One

  I looked at my watch. It was just 7:00 am. So why was someone unlocking the church side door. It was presumably the pastor, but why so early? I leapt out of the bedding, shoved it all in the lost-property cupboard, grabbed my dagger from my swag and crouched behind a table. I was already fully dressed, a habit from freedom fighter days. When you are on the run you cannot afford to be caught with your pants off.

  “Johnny, where are you?” called a lady’s voice that I recognized as Melissa’s. “The pastor said you’re here.”

  I stood up from behind the table as she walked into the hall. I was startled to see that she was not alone.

  “We have to talk to you,” said Melissa. “Briony and I have been up all night talking about this. Johnny, you know Briony.”

  I stared at them. “I’ve met Briony before. Yes. Where’s the gangster escort?” I looked around. I was only half-joking.

  “Put the knife down, big boy,” she said. “Only us.”

  “Johnny, let’s sit down somewhere,” said Melissa. “We have a lot to tell you.”

  The church door had locked behind them, and they were clearly alone. I slipped the weapon back into my swag. “I’ll make some coffee.”

  “We’ve been drinking coffee all night,” said Briony. “Enough.” Her raspy voice made it sound as if she had been drinking bourbon.

  I escorted them into the pastor’s office, and we sat around his desk. They were both wearing jeans and sweaters. Their hair was ill groomed and neither had on any make-up. Yet it struck me that these two, both in their mid-thirties, were as beautiful as any women I had ever known.

  “They were using me,” said Briony.

  “Who?”

  “Some men at La Rue. When Grant got killed. That’s what we’ve come to talk about.”

  I tilted my head to show my interest. But I remained wary.

  “They knew that Grant was coming. And they knew he was just coming to talk. He wasn’t really there for sex. So they could call me away while he was in the room. Someone banged on the door and said there was an absolutely urgent phone message. That I had to call someone immediately. Of course no one answered when I phoned the number. And then when I went back to the room Grant was dead. I never realized they planned to kill him.”

  “It didn’t occur to you to tell all this to the police?”

  “I did tell them. More or less. It seems there really was a phone call for me. Someone saying my boy was in hospital.”

  “Briony has a boy,” said Melissa. “Living with her mother.”

  “I believed one of the guys when he told me that it looked like it had all been set up by another customer. It was only after they tried to get you…” She looked at me. “After that I started to realize that they were just using me.”

  “You didn’t seem to mind them using you when you phoned me and asked me to come and see you.”

  “Johnny,” said Melissa, annoyed. “She’s telling you she’s sorry for what’s happened.”

  “It’s okay,” said Briony. “It’s true. I did what they asked me. They told me what to say to you. They said they were just going to give you a fright. But now I can see they were going to kill you. They used me, Johnny. And I don’t ever let any man use me. Not any more. That’s why I phoned Melissa, to tell her everything.”

  “And we need to tell you,” said Melissa. “Not everything’s been the way I thought it was.”

  “It’s all about Grant,” said Briony.

  “I’ll explain,” said Melissa. “It’s all this Indonesian business. And Grant. Briony just told you, he wasn’t going to see her about, you know, about sex.”

  “The first man in the history of the universe who didn’t want to see me about sex,” said Briony. “Well, at first he did. That was a long time ago.” She looked at me. “And then you were the second.”

  “What about Rohan?” I jested. “That journalist from The Age? You saw him before me.”

  “Grant was the first and you were the second,” insisted Briony.

  I smiled, but Melissa looked serious. “There’s something dangerous going on.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “Don’t tell me...”

  “Look, it’s like this,” said Melissa. “Grant used to be involved in all kinds of deals. You know that. Good things and bad things. And he’d gotten in deeply with a lot of dubious Indonesian businessmen. Indonesian money was behind La Rue. Grant was involved in all that. I met Grant at La Rue. I told you that.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I got into drugs. Not in a big way. Not heroin. Mainly all kinds of pills. Starting from my time at university. I wasn’t an addict or anything.” She paused for a moment. “Yes I was. And I did a bit of work at La Rue. I told you that. It was quick money. Briony was there, so I knew her. And that’s how I met Grant. He rescued me. Gave me hope. He helped me get off all the pills, and we got married. He saved me. Johnny, this is a pretty terrible thing to say, but I don’t think I really believed in God. I believed in Grant. I shouldn’t talk like that, should I?”

  I shrugged my shoulders. “You’re only in church.”

  She smiled. “I never told you this, but when Grant went to prison I didn’t know how I would be able to survive. Luckily I knew it was only for a few months. But then he turned to Jesus. I thought I’d lost him forever. To another man.” She laughed. “He took me to church with him, but I think I was always a pretty reluctant Christian.”

  It was good to see Melissa laughing so freely again. An overnight talk with Briony seemed to have worked wonders. A weight had been lifted from her shoulders.

  “But you know what happened next?” she asked. “One of the girls at La Rue phoned and said she’d seen Grant there. That’s when I hired a private detective to take photos. I started going crazy. I didn’t know what was happening. I was sure he’d been faithful to me. And I knew he’d had a business involvement with the place. But why was he going there again? I was too scared to ask him, in case it really was to play around with the girls. And then he got killed there.”

  “Is all this what you came to tell me?” I asked.

  “Did you know that Grant had some sudden big debts from his stock market trading? That’s why he worked out a plan to make quick money by smuggling Indonesians into Australia, and providing them with identity papers. He did it well, Johnny, you know that. Everything he did was professional.”

  I nodded. It didn’t seem necessary to mention that he’d been caught and sent to prison.

  Briony spoke. “Mel and I did a lot of talking last night. We don’t know exactly what’s going on. But we’ve put together a lot of the pieces, from things that Grant said or questions that he asked. This is what we think. Grant still kept in touch with some of the people he’d smuggled in. And he started hearing disturbing things. It seemed that he might have been helping bring in terrorists. Indonesian militia people pretending to be Timorese refugees. They were planning some kind of guerrilla operation in Australia. Against the Australian military.”

  “Against the Australian military? In Australia? You can’t be serious.”

  “I don’t mean war. I mean like terrorism. Bombs and stuff.”

  “And Grant found out about it?”

  “He heard that something was going on. He knew it was serious. And it seems he knew that there was a connection with La Rue. That’s why he was visiting me, to try to find out more.”

  “And I didn’t realize that,” said Melissa.

  “And he knew that some of the people arranging it were people he’d helped smuggle into Australia. He felt he had to do something to stop it. So he came to see me. He wanted me to help him. To find out what was going on.”

  “And did you?”

  “Yes. Up to a point. But it was difficult. He wouldn’t really tell me much. He just kept asking all these strange questions, about people I might have met and things I might have heard. I tried to answer all his questions, but I wasn’t really sure if I was helping h
im much. And then they killed him.”

  I thought hard. “But why on earth didn’t Grant just go to the police? If he knew something was going on?”

  Melissa answered. “We guess that it was very difficult for him. He had helped smuggle hundreds of Indonesians into Australia. After he got arrested he refused to tell the police who they were. In most cases he had no contact with them anyway. He didn’t know where they lived and he didn’t keep many records. But he did keep a few papers, and the police were able to track down some of the illegals.”

  “I remember waiting for the knock on the door,” I said. “It was a tense time after he got arrested.”

  “Anyway, a couple of dozen illegal immigrants got thrown out of Australia as a result of information the police found at our house. Some of them were ordinary families who were making a new life here. Grant felt terrible about that. Really bad. So we think that when he realized that something was going on and that people he had smuggled in might be involved he didn’t feel he could go to the police. He didn’t know exactly who were doing these things. He would have had to turn in more people. He decided to find out what was happening first as far as possible. He did it all very quietly. He didn’t even tell me so much. I think he wanted to protect me.”

  There was one more question I needed to ask. “Why didn’t Grant come and talk to me about it? I would have done anything for him. He was my best friend. I reckon if he’d leveled with me I’d have found out what was going on.”

  Melissa bowed her head. She was silent for a little while. “Johnny, don’t think bad of him. But almost certainly he couldn’t be sure that you weren’t one of the people involved in this whole thing. There was so much deception. He knew your record. But, well, who was to know who to trust?”

  Sadly, it made sense.

  I pondered matters. “What’s the La Rue connection?” I asked.

  “The place is now completely controlled by Indonesian businessmen. Since Grant gave up his share. Did you know that a lot of rich Indonesians come to Melbourne for the casino? A lot of the top military people too.”

  I did know that. I could recall entering one of the casino’s private gaming rooms and even with the place empty I could smell the scent of clove cigarettes.

  “So they use La Rue as a place for picking up girls. They feel safe there.”

  I stood and walked to the pastor’s bookcase and fingered a shiny red decorative boomerang. A small metal plaque said it was presented to him many years before by one of the Alice Springs churches. “Who killed Grant then?

  “I don’t know that,” said Briony. “Probably the same men who tried to kill you. All I know is that there have been some sleazeball Indonesians looking for girls at La Rue over the last couple of months. The meanest of them is their boss. His name’s Alberto.”

  The revelation was so expected that it had no shock value.

  “I know Alberto,” I said. “Have you met him?”

  “He’s there a lot. Him and some others.”

  “Nice guy, don’t you think? Sensitive. Humane.”

  I thought I had absorbed Aussie irony pretty well, and knew how to use it, but Briony didn’t notice.

  “No, not really,” she said. “He’s a real pig.”

  “A real pig at La Rue?” exclaimed Melissa, who knew her irony. “Hard to believe, isn’t it? Usually all the customers are such gentlemen.”

  This time Briony smiled. “He’s not bad looking. He’s clean and he’s sometimes quite charming. His English isn’t so good, though he still cracks a lot of jokes. But he has this mean streak. I know lots of our clients have that, deep down somewhere really hating women. Except that with Alberto it’s so much deeper. Even when he’s completely sober he can be cruel.” She paused and looked down at the pastor’s desk. “Real cruel. I won’t tell you some of the things he’s tried to do to me and the other girls.” Then she smiled again. “He treats his own men nearly as badly.”

  Silently I applauded Briony for her perception in judging character. “So what’s he and all the others doing so often at La Rue?”

  “They seem to be using it as a kind of base. They all meet there sometimes. Brothels have got some of the best security in Melbourne.”

  “They meet there? So the owners are part of this…this plot, whatever it is?”

  “No, I doubt that they know what’s really happening. They probably think it’s just another bunch of rough military visitors. Anyway, these guys had a little party several days ago. With a whole lot of us girls. Lots of beer and cognac. I heard a few things. It’s going to be on Anzac Day.”

  “That’s in less than a week,” said Melissa.

  “What’s going to be on Anzac Day?” I asked.

  “I don’t know exactly,” resumed Briony. “But I heard them talking about trying to do something against Australian soldiers. One of them got real drunk and pulled out some plans.”

  “Do you think these things are still at La Rue?”

  Briony shrugged. “Don’t know. Could be. They’re there a lot. It seems to be a kind of hideout for them.”

  I almost clapped my hands together. “So that’s it. We pretty much know what’s going on.” I sat down at the desk again. “The pastor was right. He said I shouldn’t be involved. Now we can go to the police. They can take over and find out whatever it is that’s happening.”

  Suddenly a man’s voice came from the doorway. “Johnny.” I looked with a start. I hadn’t heard anyone else enter the church. It was the pastor.

  “Johnny,” he said again. “The police have just been at my place. They’re looking for you. They said no one answered the door at your home. To be on the safe side I said I wasn’t sure where you were.”

  “It’s okay,” I said. “Everything’s pretty much cleared up. Now we can talk to the police.”

  “They have a warrant to search your home,” continued the pastor. “And they hinted that they plan to arrest you.”

  “Arrest me?”

  “Very early this morning a young guy named Matt was found murdered at his office. The Prophetic Edge. Where Grant used to work.”

  “Murdered? Matt?”

  “A police officer told me a security camera at the office recorded this Matt fellow going in last night with another man. One of the bosses of the company has identified that man as you, Johnny. And the camera saw you leave by yourself.”

  “Sure, that’s right, but...”

  “Don’t worry Johnny. You’re going to be all right. They think they’ve got the murder weapon. It seems Matt was killed with a heavy wrench. Someone smashed him with it pretty hard. He’s a mess. They’re probably searching your apartment right now. And they’ll be taking fingerprints. Trying to match them up with those on the wrench. That’ll show it wasn’t you.”

  I gripped the pastor’s desk with both hands to try and ease the sudden rush of nausea.