Cavalier had the option of emailing the story from home but decided to drop into the city office. He wanted to make sure the story would be on the paper’s website by Saturday morning, which he’d have to discuss with editor Driscoll, a bespectacled and intense forty-year-old. Twenty years in journalism competing with mainly male egos had hardened her, giving her more wrinkles around the eyes and mouth than she may have expected or deserved. So much so that she was thinking of Botox injections, which were fashionable among her television ‘sisters’ of the same generation, who were fighting to hang onto jobs in front of the cameras.
It was nearly 2 a.m. when Cavalier took a lift to the editorial floor, and Driscoll was surprised to see him. Her manner softened with Cavalier, who had been kind and helpful when she was a nervous young reporter, fresh out of university. Now she had power over him and the unenviable task of judging his work. Despite Cavalier’s strong record, she feared that one day his drinking would diminish his skills and she’d have to fire him.
‘I thought you might want to spend some time on this,’ she said. ‘It might be big.’
Cavalier opened his iPad. ‘I’ll do eight hundred words.’
Thirty minutes later, he was printing out the article for Driscoll.
‘Sources?’ she asked.
‘Can’t say.’
‘Bill Grant rang me to get you there. He has to be one.’ Cavalier smiled. ‘I promised not to tell,’ he said.
Two days later, Cavalier was surprised to receive a call from Jacinta Cin Lai. ‘Who gave you my number?’
‘Er . . . Mr Thomas Gregory.’
‘That was kind of him.’
‘Said you’d talk to me. Somewhere private, please.’
‘I know a cafe that’s quiet in the afternoon. Say, 3 p.m. . . .?’
They met at Leroy Espresso on Acland Street, in semi-bohemian St Kilda. The rustic decor featured incomplete brick rendering, sculptured busts in recesses and an odd collection of paintings. Michael Jackson’s ‘The Way You Make Me Feel’ was on the sound system. Jacinta was already there, poring over her iPad, when Cavalier arrived. She removed her reading glasses and stood up to shake hands. She was wearing a denim jacket, black leather pants and high heels, which made her taller than Cavalier. Her wide smile, revealing a crater of perfect white teeth, was perfunctory. There was little warmth from her. She was all business.
Cavalier started with some small talk in English, then broke into Thai.
‘You speak Thai well,’ she said.
‘I was married to a Thai. She insisted I learn. I still return there often—at least once a year—for a cricket tournament.
‘Cricket?’ she said, puzzled.
‘Yes. Twenty international teams are involved.’
‘I was wondering about your sources on the Labasta killing,’ she said, changing the subject.
‘Everyone seems to want to know about my sources!’ Cavalier said with a grin. ‘I’ve been reporting a long time. They’re good.’
‘Like Mr Grant and Mr . . . er, Gregory?’
He nodded. ‘And I have contacts among crims too.’
‘It’s just that your article . . .’
‘Yes?’
‘Some elements were accurate enough. Others were not.’
‘Are you going to tell me which bits you consider accurate?’
‘I was more interested in your sources. Mr Gregory said you would cooperate.’
‘Did he now? It depends. I answer your questions, you answer mine. Deal?’
Jacinta stared at him, as if assessing more than his comment.
‘I can tell you this,’ she said, ‘it was an expert hit. From what we can deduce, it must have been a bullet from a high-calibre rifle, which fired from perhaps fifty, or even sixty, metres down the alley. The bullet fragments come from a specially crafted handmade variety. Maybe a new military variety.’
‘Who told you this?’
‘Your friend Mr Grant. He is good with ballistics. And I only discovered this in the morning, by speaking to him. But the police investigation, as you are well aware, is still underway, which means he would not wish you to publish it.’
Cavalier studied her before saying: ‘You did well. State police are not overly cooperative with their federal co-workers.’
‘I have become aware of the ill feeling. Why is this?’
‘They’re rivals,’ Cavalier shrugged, ‘just like your country’s military and police.’
Jacinta shook her head. ‘This is not true,’ she said, ‘they are most cooperative.’ Again she changed the subject. ‘Mr Gregory thinks it was a military-style attack.’
‘How did he deduce that?’
‘He thought that such a strike—such precision—was more like that of a trained sniper than . . .’ Jacinta paused.
‘Than a gangland murderer?’
She nodded.
‘Hmmm,’ he mused, leaning back in his seat. ‘There are ex-military types joining some of the gangs. The Melbourne gangs pay well. There is more action and money than in the fire brigade.’
Jacinta looked bemused. ‘Fire brigade?!’
‘We’ve had thousands of soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq in the last couple of decades. Many want an adrenalin rush after their front-line experiences. They try to join the police, the feds and the fire brigade.’ He paused, dropped his voice and said, ‘Some have psychological problems. They’re addicted to action. They drink and do drugs, and end up seeing shrinks.’ He pulled a face. ‘A handful have ended up as muscle, or even hit men, for gangs.’
Jacinta sipped her coffee, and looked at her watch as if she wished she were somewhere else.
‘My turn,’ Cavalier said. ‘What are you investigating in Australia?’
‘Nothing will be reported. It’s off the record, or so Mr Gregory said to remind you.’
‘I won’t write anything.’
‘I am now preparing a report on this murder.’
‘That’s all?’
‘It is not easy.’
‘How long have you been in Australia?’
‘Two weeks.’
Cavalier frowned. ‘You’re telling me that you’ve been tracking this . . . Virgillo Labasta?’
‘We are . . . were . . . interested in his movements, yes.’
‘“We”? Your Thai special investigation unit?’
Jacinta nodded so slightly that Cavalier wondered if she were denying it. Claiming to have another appointment, she departed abruptly.
*
Cavalier’s article, which speculated that Labasta’s murder was a gangland killing, caused more fallout than anything he’d ever written. All the big Melbourne gangs’ heavy-duty lawyers began threatening the newspaper with legal action. The big gangs, other than Kev ‘Caveman’ Mollini’s Brunswick Gang, were upset that they were implicated because of their long-running rivalry. Pressure mounted on Cavalier both to reveal how he’d arrived at his conclusions and his sources. He refused.
When two members of a Brunswick Gang rival group were shot and wounded in an ambush in a city lane in the early hours, there was genuine fear that a new gang war would flare up. The newspaper’s chairman received an intimidating phone call from an unknown source and Driscoll received death threats. When she refused to fire Cavalier, she was ordered to offer him a redundancy package.
‘He won’t take it,’ she told the chairman. ‘At least, I don’t think so.’
‘If he doesn’t, offer him a two-day week.’
‘And if he still wants to stay on the paper?’
‘Look,’ the exasperated chairman said, ‘if he doesn’t go, you will!’
Driscoll met Cavalier in the cafe in the paper’s foyer and explained her dilemma.
‘So, we both lose our jobs,’ he said, stirring his coffee, ‘if I don’t take either the redundancy or the two days?’
‘I’ve checked your redundancy payout. You’ve been with the paper thirty-five years. If you go without being fired, it’s just over nine hundred thousand dollars.’
‘You think I can be bought off?’ he asked with a smile.
‘No, never. But you know there are hundreds of journalists who’ve taken redundancies.’
‘When would this take effect?’
‘I could string it out a few months until the end of the financial year and say you had a couple of assignments to complete.’
‘When would the money come through?’
‘The day you finish.’
He took a deep breath.
‘It’s a big step,’ she said, ‘you’ve had a great run.’
‘Could I write freelance articles for you?’
‘Vic,’ she said with a pained expression, ‘that’s what all the redundancies ask. We just don’t have the budget.’
‘But I have a great title for a column.’
‘What?’
‘From the scrap heap.’
Driscoll didn’t laugh. She was sad.
‘I tell you what,’ he said, ‘I’ll take the package in six weeks. I’d like to finish my current investigation.’