Prophets and Loss (A Johnny Ravine Mystery) Read online

  Chapter Three

  Mornings are a good time for brooding. So are afternoons. Not to mention nights. With plenty of time on my hands, and with my best friend murdered in a brothel, I was broodier than a battery hen.

  I boiled some water and poured myself a cup of instant coffee. Then I lay back on my bed and gazed upwards, towards the mud-colored water stain that had been etched onto the ceiling during some long-ago downpour. I reflected that if that phone call was what it seemed to be, then Grant had gotten himself mixed up in something particularly dangerous.

  Happy-go-lucky Grant. Life’s-a-big-game Grant. Let’s-see-how-many-adventures-we-can-have-today-and-not-get-caught Grant. Flirting with the deadly. And now dead.

  No kinky games, according to the latest information Pastor Thomas had learned from the police. It had been a violent strangulation, possibly carried out by another client of the establishment, who had fled without trace. Someone pretty strong. Grant was a fit man, and had put up a struggle.

  Yet there was no obvious motive. There’d been no attempt to steal anything from Grant. Was it a gang murder? Revenge for some past misdeed? Some kind of payback?

  And, of course, the big question: why was he there?

  A series of hissing noises erupted from the smash repair’s, followed by some abrasive squeaks. It sounded like a dragon chasing a possum. I looked at my watch. Pastor Thomas had demonstrated again his abilities to achieve the miraculous, by getting me the cell phone number of the girl who was with Grant just before he died. Briony was her name. She said she could fit me in for a thirty-minute interview at 1:00 pm. That was in a couple of hours.

  “Just a quickie, lover,” she’d murmured in a throaty, coquettish whisper. “Don’t be late. I’ll get the Roman Room ready.”

  I was in no hurry to meet her at all. It was costing me $120 - the standard rate. I didn’t have a credit card and I didn’t usually have that kind of ready cash at hand. I could hardly ask the pastor to pay for a brothel visit out of church funds, so I had little choice but to borrow it from my swag.

  More than twenty years as a guerrilla fighter had taught me that life was little more than a series of near misses and lucky escapes. He who hesitated was dog fodder. Always keep a few basic supplies at hand. So under my bed was a small leather rucksack I called my swag, containing the documents that Grant had somehow procured for me - passport, driver’s license, Medicare card and the other lucky charms that were needed for life in this country - together with a dagger and cash.

  Briony worked at La Rue, one of many licensed brothels in Melbourne and sometimes said to be the grandest. I’d never been there, though I recalled a recent visit to a similar establishment. A lawyer from Mildura had phoned and asked me to look for the two daughters of one of his clients - a well-respected dairy farmer - who were alleged to be working at a particular business in North Carlton.

  I quickly located them there, two bulky young ladies named Bronwyn and Sally. Issued with red and purple negligee they had been magically transformed into busty belles called Amber and Jade, catering for aging libidos from a society that flaunts youth.

  They were having the times of their lives, making big money, and not minding the rough treatment, which was pretty similar to what they got at home. They resented my appearance, and told me so in spicy cow-paddock language, but at least I could report back home that they were in good shape.

  It wasn’t the sort of work I envisaged doing when I came to Melbourne, but somehow I was quite good at it. It was all Grant’s idea. “Your background in ‘bodyguard and security services,’ nudge, nudge, wink, wink” - arm around my shoulder - “and you’re looking for your father. Let’s set you up as a private investigator. ‘Missing persons a specialty.’”

  He’d arranged a room for me in the Box Hill office building where he ran a couple of his other businesses, posted a sign on the door, and said he’d see me right. He’d even somehow obtained the necessary papers, verifying that I’d done all the required training, to get me through the police check and licensed by the Private Agents Registry.

  He procured assignments through various solicitor mates. I served court orders and divorce notices and I located missing persons. Often it was no more difficult than running a search on a CD-ROM directory. It was fifteen minutes work. He even knew a couple of PIs who sometimes sub-contracted to me some tail jobs for insurance companies.

  But it had all pretty much dried up with Grant’s imprisonment. He abandoned his contacts with shady solicitors, and suddenly my work went AWOL. I checked the office mail and answering machine every day or so, but it was a forlorn task. Fortunately, Grant was always bubbling over with ideas. He planned a new import-export business with Indonesia, and he put me on salary as translator and office manager.

  And now, three months after his release, he was dead.

  I took a long swig of coffee. It was far too sweet. Sugar was cheap and plentiful in Australia, and I invariably put in too much. Perhaps the pastor was right: I was losing my fire. Becoming soft. But wasn’t that why I came to Australia – to flee my wild life?

  I moved to the desk and booted up my computer. Like just about everything else I owned it was a Grant hand-me-down. Windows 95, an antique 140-megabyte hard drive and software that could detect any computer virus created before 2006. But sufficient for me.

  I logged onto the internet. Time to search anew for my father.

  Who was I kidding? I wasn’t even sure about his name. It was only shortly before my mother died, when I was fourteen, that I started asking her about him, and even she didn’t know much. He was an Australian, she said, called John. John Ravine, or something like that. Hence the name I had given myself. But perhaps it was Raven. Or Rabin, or Levin, or Levine. (Was I part Jewish?) She thought he looked around twenty when they met. Or maybe twenty-five. Perhaps older.

  He was tall. Yes, but any Australian man would seem tall to my mother. And he was so handsome and charming. And there wasn’t much more she could tell me.

  Since arriving in Australia I had spent months at the State Library in the city. I had sought out old newspapers to try to find reports of Australians in East Timor. I had looked through old telephone directories to find names similar to my own. I had phoned or written to just about everyone in Australia with a name like mine.

  I got dozens of sympathetic replies, not one of which led me to believe I was any nearer to an answer. One old lady replied from Brisbane that she felt sure she was my mother. An elderly couple in Perth offered to adopt me. Several families told me to come and visit any time.

  Now I stared into the computer screen and clicked onto the Mormons’ huge FamilySearch.org site. Four hundred million names. Surely my dad’s ancestors were among them.

  I typed in my name, and was directed to John Ravin, christened at St Bride Church in Fleet Street, London, in 1623, and to John Raven, christened at Saint Martin in the Fields Church in London in 1841. Then to Jean Rabin of Meuse, France, to Juan Labin of Santander, Spain, and to Juan Lavin of Cuba. The possibilities were endless. I’d been there many times before. Why did I persist?

  And then I glanced - as usually seemed to happen - at the photo of Jacinta, in a cheap plastic frame next to the computer. This was the plump girl with the sad smile I had loved with all my heart. The girl with flowing black hair and a mole at the back of her neck. I’d called her my little goldfish. Jacinta. We were only together for three months. We’d gotten married just a few weeks after we met. When you’re on active service you don’t waste time.

  And I entered brood mode once more. Jacinta. Why did I leave you at that farmhouse? Why couldn’t I have saved you?

  Somehow I had expected my move to Australia to mark a major change. A step forward. At the very least I assumed I would find my father.

  But instead I found myself spending half my life in gloomy contemplation. I missed the passion and intensity of survival in the mountains. The commitment. The sense of purpose. Life in Australia was f
ar too easy. Maybe Grant’s death was, in some twisted way, for the best. I’d be forced to fend for myself more. That could be a challenge.

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