Bad Debts by Peter Temple Read Free Book Online Page A

field in this Topspin bugger’s race, Cam.’
    While Cam talked, consulting the laptop, Harry kept a steady thirty kilometres over the speed limit and we covered the 110 kilometres in sixty-five minutes. It wasn’t raining in Ballarat and the locals were standing out on the pavements, looking at the sky in amazement. Many of them had the pale, staring look of people newly pushed out of institutions. Someone once said that nobody went to live in Ballarat; you had to be committed by a magistrate.
    Dowling Forest is on the other side of town, at the foot of a round, bald hill. By the time we got there, thin and steady rain was falling.
    ‘That’s more like it,’ said Harry. He’d said nothing since the Happy Henry story, listening to Cam in silence. He parked well back from the gate and took over my newspaper.
    Cam locked the laptop into its housing under the dashboard.
    ‘Well?’ he asked, big hands on his thighs.
    Harry reached into his Donegal tweed jacket with his right hand and came out with an envelope about a centimetre thick. ‘I’ll give you the nod,’ he said. ‘Yokels lined up, I take it.’
    ‘Better be,’ Cam said. He put the envelope in the inside pocket of his trenchcoat and set off briskly.
    I got the Sakura Pro FS100 out of the boot, loaded it, hung it around my neck, put on my Drizabone and followed. Harry was on the car phone.
    We were in Ballarat for two reasons. The first was a three-year-old filly called Topspin Winder running in the third. She had started five times and her best run was a seventh place at her first outing. After four runs, she’d been given an eight-week rest. When she’d reappeared at Pakenham the week before, she’d run eighth.
    I bought a race card and wandered into the huge barn of a betting ring. Most of the city bookmakers were fielding, trying to keep afloat until the Spring Carnival could rescue them. It was five minutes before the second race and there was a fair amount of action by country standards. I went out onto the grandstand. Over to the right, the members were snug behind glass. Out here it was all streaming eyes and snuffling noses.
    The second looked a mediocre affair on paper and it proved to be one of those races where it’s a pity something has to win. Or come second. Or third.
    ‘Not much pace in that,’ said the caller.
    ‘Putting it bloody mildly,’ said the man next to me. ‘First time I’ve seen the whole field trying to throw a race.’
    I went back through the betting ring to the mounting yard.
    Cam was near the hot dog vendor, eating something wrapped in paper. As I looked around, Harry rounded the corner of the stalls. The small man stopped and patted his raincoat pockets, looking down.
    When he looked up, he nodded briskly to himself, as if he’d found what he was looking for. Then he set off in the direction of the carpark.
    Cam crumpled up the greaseproof paper and shot the ball into a bin a good three metres away. He set off for the betting ring. As he entered the large opening, he patted a thickset man in a greasy anorak on the arm.
    I didn’t waste any time checking the odds. Topspin Winder was showing 40-1 with the book nearest the entrance and I took it. I invested a modest $50, not enough to scare anybody. By the time I’d finished my circuit, Cam’s team of punters had struck terror into the numbers men: Topspin was down to 15-1.
    Then the second wave hit the bookies—a panic rush of Topspin’s connections, caught napping by Cam’s troops and now jostling with the dumb money that was always on the alert for a plunge. The market went into freefall, ending up on 6-1.
    On my way to have a look at the beast concerned, I passed Cam, leaning against the mounting yard fence. He was smoking a little cigar and reading the card. Nothing in that Aboriginal/Scottish/Italian face suggested anything other than mild boredom.
    Topspin was equally impassive. I’d seen her at her previous three appearances and had grown rather fond of