Dark Clouds on the Mountain. John Tully

menzies in the ground was its surreal exhortation, conjuring up visions of the deceased conservative 'Ming' as a political vampire in need of a stake through the heart and a silver bullet in the temple. Another graffito had proclaimed that fraser is a distended rectum and yet another had declared that the police are the agents of fascism. Jack doubted that had been the Marxist boy; Calvert was too serious for that kind of irreverent anarchism. He was the sort who would plough through Plekhanov and Lenin's Volume 38 or Volume III of Capital, then reach for Brecht for light reading.

      The half-rotten back gate was unlocked so Jack walked in, noting the faded enamel sign warning about the resident canine that had been altered to read beware of the ogre. Back in Tracey Devine's day, a blond behemoth of a student radical nicknamed the Ogre had lived in the block, notorious for his bouts of drink and ill-humour and his run-ins with the constabulary. Jack hadn't seen or heard of him in decades. There were weeds sprouting everywhere in Calvert's yard and an old ginger tomcat hissed at him from the fence. Jack pulled a face at it and it turned its back on him disdainfully. Was it the same one as the Ogre's orange beast, an animal as malign as Fat Freddie's Cat that had crept into Tracey's house during parties and clawed the bums of the revellers? It was quite possibly the offspring, thought Jack. This one was no doubt responsible for the acrid stench of cat's piss that no amount of rain could wash away. There was a tumbledown brick shed behind the Hill's Hoist which sported an assembly of greyish y-fronts and holey socks, and Jack made a beeline for that edifice, dragging the reluctant Bishop in his wake. ('Jeez, sir, oughtn't we get a warrant?') The door was half off its hinges and junk was spilling out: old papers, brushes, an old mattress, a broken Hoover twin tub washing machine, a roll of undyed calico, the end of a painted banner that read SMASH something or other, a small antique offset press that looked surprisingly well cared for, and some aerosol spray paint cans. Some rusty iron tools that looked as if they had belonged to a shipwright who'd come out on the First Fleet hung haphazardly on a board nailed up at the back. ('Worth a fortune,' calculated Bishop.) It all smelt musty from the recent rain, but Calvert's mates had been as busy as cats burying shit, cranking out propaganda for their cause on the ancient press.

      'Yes,' Jack hissed, pouncing on the aerosol cans. 'I'll give those smart arses a bit of direct action alright.' Three or four of the cans had blue paint in them. 'Now that might be evidence,' he told Bishop, though a little voice at the back of his mind told him he was only doing it to be a bastard and to annoy his daughter and that these Marxist boys and girls had as much contempt as he had for Nazis and their daubing of swastikas. But he'd come back with a warrant and annoy that little green-eyed clever dick with the Rubens hairstyle.

      Really? said the voice. You've no evidence and what about the beautiful Hannah? Can you really see her daubing her own grandfather's synagogue?

      I dunno, said the copper side of him. Scratch half of these things and there was a neurosis lurking at the bottom of it. All very Freudian; they probably didn't even know it themselves. He settled the debate by telling himself that it was all a matter of following up leads, taking no one's word for anything. And he actually liked the boy, Calvert. When he looked up, Bishop was eying him quizzically. No doubt the pimply little Northwest Coast sheep-shagger would entertain his mates after work in the pub with tales of his eccentric boss, Jack Martin, who spoke little yet seemed always to be debating with himself.

      Two days later, Calvert sat in Jack Martin's office. DC Bishop was lounging against the back wall worrying his zits, and the Inspector was seated in his swivel chair, his square jaw cradled in his hands, his blue eyes full of ironic amusement. The spray cans, bagged in clear plastic and labelled, sat upright on the desk between them. He was staring out of the window behind Calvert, a faint smile playing over his lips. Night was falling, with the last rays of a weak sun playing on the TV towers at the top of the Mountain. He was rather enjoying himself, despite the disapproval of his inner voice. Calvert had come in voluntarily to 'help with enquiries', but Jack was out to give him a hard time despite that. Yet from somewhere in the building, they'd rustled up a cup of camomile tea for their guest. Gordon Paisley had grinned malevolently when he saw Bishop brewing it. 'For goodness sake/I've got the hippy-hippy shake,' he sneered when he saw it going into Jack's office with the label hanging out of the mug. 'Jack Martin, a real 1960s love child.'

      Calvert sipped at the camomile and made a face. 'Vintage 1945?' he asked, raising an eyebrow in what seemed to be his defining gesture, but softening it immediately with 'Sorry, I do appreciate the trouble you've gone to.' He was a cool fellow all right, thought Jack grudgingly. There was something almost aristocratic about this revolutionary; he might pass as a Prince Kropotkin of the Antipodes except that his father stripped ingots in the Cell Room at the Risdon zinc works for a crust; Bishop had rung round all the Calverts in the phone book and found that out. The grandfather was an orchardist from down past the Huon but had too many kids for them all to continue on the farm. Calvert had probably taken elocution lessons; thanks to Bishop's enthusiastic sleuthing, Jack already knew that he'd been to the private Hutchins School on a scholarship. His old man was mighty proud of that, Bishop said.

      'Just answer the questions, Mr Calvert,' Jack said, turning back to face his victim, albeit with an almost avuncular smile on his face. 'The sooner you clear things up for us, the sooner we can all go home.' He sucked noisily at his own tea - Bushells, strong, black, with three sugars - and lit a cigarette, totally forgetting the new regulations and the fact that he had given up. 'Tell you what though, do you like a riddle?'

      'Maybe,' said Calvert, exhaling audibly and gesturing to Jack to continue.

      'Well, now,' Jack asked, leaning forward. 'Why do Proudhon and other anarchists prefer herbal tea?'

      'I dunno,' replied Calvert, looking sharply at Jack. 'Did he? Why do they?'

      'Because proper tea is theft.' Jack said it with a straight face. Calvert groaned; it was so bad that it was good, and Jack could see that he was wondering how this old porker had even heard of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon. As far as Bishop went, the ball had gone straight through to the wicket keeper: Proudhon wasn't on the syllabus at Hellyer College, or anywhere else under the auspices of the Tasmanian Education Department. Most of the coppers wouldn't have known their Marx from their elbow for that matter and for some of them the sports pages in the Herald Sun were the pinnacles of intellectual stimulation. Jack recalled his time as a junior constable. Once long ago as young constables, Jack and Damien Mazengarb had been assigned to keep the peace at a demonstration against the war in Vietnam. A gaunt Communist waterside union official from Melbourne - some kind of relative of Frank Bull's, he heard - was speaking. 'Why do the police always travel in threes?' the orator had asked, then answered his own question: 'Because one can read, one can write, and the other likes the company of intellectuals.' Jack had bridled at the time, but he had to admit that with some of them, the orator had a point. Calvert was disconcerted to know that a policeman had even heard of Proudhon, as Jack had intended. Jack suddenly pounced again, changing the subject back to Calvert's alleged anti-Semitism.

      'This is ridiculous,' said the young man, savouring Jack's smoke, though he dispensed advice about it. 'You should give that up, take it from me.' Jack stared at the cigarette that had jumped, unbidden, into his hand and stubbed it out. Calvert continued: 'Now, would you please tell me why you choose to drag me round here because I have a couple of spray cans in my shed. God, half the town must have them.'

      'Yes but not these particular spray cans, Mr Calvert,' Bishop broke in. 'It just so happens that the paint matches that from the walls of the synagogue.' Jack frowned at the upstart's interruption. This was his investigation now, and he didn't want this pimply greenhorn stuffing things up. Worse still, Bishop was smoking. Jack told him to put it out, but Calvert deliberately lit up a rolly cigarette, with a look that said plainly, what's sauce for the goose '

      'Yes, not these particular cans, Mr Calvert,' Jack said, reclaiming his patch, disconcerted by the fumes of White Ox. 'Moreover, you just happen to have a motive. You're angry, are you not, about what the Israelis have been doing to the Palestinians? Your friend, Hannah, perhaps she's angry with her own grandfather. A family dispute?'

      'The paint is for my car,' said Calvert, clearly annoyed for having to mount a defence against what he saw as absurd allegations, brushing a hand through his shock of red hair and exhaling a thin stream of smoke. 'If you found the