Bad Debts by Peter Temple Page B

hundred million dollar development being approved without public consultation?’
    The Minister smiled. He had a thin, sly face with high cheekbones. Something about it said cosmetic surgery. His full head of dark hair was the kind that doesn’t move in the wind. ‘Well, Andrew,’ he said, ‘I don’t know who these people are you’re referring to. Perhaps your colleagues at the ABC. Or at the Age. There are always some people who want to knock anything the government does. But they’re not the people who elected us to government.’
    ‘But—’ said Andrew.
    ‘The people who elected the Saunders government to power,’ Pitman went on, ‘want this State to come back to life. They lived in the Gulag created by the previous government quite long enough. It’s projects like this they want to see come to pass. Projects like this that inject huge amounts of capital and energy into this State.’
    Andrew made a few other feeble attempts to put Pitman on the defensive. Pitman ignored them and kept to his line about what the people wanted.
    Finally, Andrew gave up and said, ‘Within twelve months, this,’ he pointed at the gravel pit, ‘will be Yarra Cove, a huge six hundred million dollar marina, waterfront shopping and entertainment precinct and, arguably, Melbourne’s smartest new address. But will the Saunders government’s lack of concern for public consultation over projects that change the face of the city set a precedent for future developments? Andrew Leonard for “This Day”.’
    After that I had a choice between television entertainment on the themes of a) child abuse, b) parent abuse, and c) tree abuse. Failing these, there was a documentary on the drinking problem in Lapland. I failed all of these, killed the telly and fell asleep over chapter three of Eugene Marasco’s In the Absence of War.
    Some time in the small hours, startled by something in a dream, I awoke and staggered to the bed proper. But sleep had fled. I lay and thought about Danny, one-time police informer, addict, convicted hit-and-run killer, born-again model employee, husband and father. If his cousin’s mate, dead of smack, had told the truth, a policeman could have given him an alibi. And therefore the star witness was lying. The witness’s name was Ronald Bishop.
    I put on the light, got the file from the lounge, and read Ronald Bishop’s statement again. It was a model of its kind: Ronnie Bishop didn’t have any doubts about what he saw. I put off the light and fell asleep with the strange career of Danny McKillop turning in my mind.
    In the morning, I rang Barry Tregear at home to catch him before he left for work. A woman said he’d left but she would pass on a message. I gave her my name. About ten minutes later, he rang. From the noise, he was on a mobile phone.
    ‘Ronald Bishop?’ he said. ‘Morton Street, Clifton Hill. I’ll see what I can do.’
    I had breakfast at Meaker’s on Brunswick Street, a street which boasted trams and, at each end, a church spire. Sometimes, when a freak wind lifted the pollution, you could see the one from the other. Brunswick Street had been a grand thoroughfare once and a long passage between rundown buildings and hopeless shops for a long time after that. In the eighties, the street changed again. Youth culture happened to it. The old businesses—clothes-pressing sweatshops, drycleaners, printeries, cheap shoe shops, the gunsmith, dim central European coffee and snooker cafes—closed down. In their place, restaurants, coffee shops, delicatessens, galleries and bookshops opened. Suddenly it was a smart place to be.
    Meaker’s had been in Brunswick Street since before it was smart. It had changed hands several times and moved once but nothing had really changed. Well, nothing except the appearance of the customers. And the staff. There was a new waitress today. She was probably in her late twenties, tall and raw-boned with scraped back hair and an amused, intelligent look.
    ‘I’m