Apprentices in Brisbane and Melbourne rode their share of Saturday winners. Not like Sydney, where everything was old dogs for a hard road, with the hungriest senior jocks from New South Wales, interstate and New Zealand divvying up the spoils. The heart of many a young jockey, as well as many a fair maiden, has been broken in old Sydney town.
I nodded to the familiar faces, and wasn’t hurt by the lack of warmth in their acknowledgment of my presence. I’ve been warned off every Australian racetrack for life, so I have the mark of Jonah on me. Put yourself in their places, especially the jocks. In this job you have to get up at four most mornings to ride track work. By yourself, you have to control half a tonne of one of the most highly strung animals on Earth. You risk broken bones or worse on the track, and the stewards can take your job away from you for a month or more when you least expect it. In this atmosphere, superstition runs rife, and jockeys do not need the company of a Jonah like me. My ban prohibited me associating with almost everyone in the room, but the café was still a public place. Not in the least slighted, I grabbed a table in the corner.
They won’t let me onto a racetrack, but they can’t take the racetrack out of me. There is just something about 500 kilos of steaming horse muscle with a temperament as fragile as a flower. You watch in awe as the tiny fearless jocks on top of these fractious giants try to transmit race strategy through the flimsy reins.
I can see the day when racing stables will have psychiatrists attached to them, as most other professional sports already have. Some of the psychiatrists will be for the jockeys. Others will demand full reports from the stud where a horse was foaled. What was its relationship with its mother? Did it show any recognition of its father when the sire came for another $5000 quickie with a strange mare? How did it react during its first thunderstorm? When this happens, all of the jockeys and most of the trainers will think the racing world has gone mad. But they will be silent. The jocks will continue to ride track work at four in the morning, go for a hated psych session at 6 and try to communicate strategy through the reins on race day.
At my favourite Feed Bin table, I read the form guide as I waited for my avocado on toast and coffee.
As my early breakfast arrived, a tiny voice spoke in my ear. ‘Do you mind if I sit down, Mr Hill?’
I am only used to being called Mister by magistrates and dole officers, but Billy Scharfe’s voice had respect, not sarcasm, in it.
‘How you doing, Billy?’ I replied. ‘Pull up a pew; want some coffee?’
He declined. Billy Scharfe was an eighteen-year old apprentice jock. He wasn’t the brightest lad about, and was not over-endowed with ability, but, Buddha, he was keen. I had gained Scharfe’s gratitude at this same table six months earlier. When he had walked past my lucky table, I called out to him, ‘You’re Billy Scharfe, aren’t you?’
The country lad was embarrassed at being recognised, but sat down. I had done my money on one of his mounts, a horse called Rasta, at its previous two starts, when it had run fifth and sixth. Scharfe had jumped the horse out well both times, but things did not happen the way either of us would have liked in the straight. Rasta was running the next day, and Scharfe was up again. The price in the paper was fourteen to one.
We started to talk about Rasta. We agreed the horse settled well in his races, which was a comfort to both jockey and punter. The big problem for Rasta was the changeover into top gear in the straight. From what I’d seen on the racing channel, it wasn’t smooth enough; the horse became unsettled and couldn’t concentrate for fifty metres or so. A lot of punters put it down to the inexperienced jockey, but I had more faith in humanity.
‘Ever thought of leading on it?’ I asked.
‘Mr Harris don’t want that,’ Scharfe replied. ‘He says blokes up front cut each other’s throats in sprint races.’
Fred Harris was the horse’s trainer and the apprentice’s mentor, or boss, as the jockeys often called their master.
‘Yair,’ I said, ‘but they might give you a bit of peace, because Rasta hasn’t led before.’
‘I don’t think Mr Harris would like that.’ But I could see Scharfe was thinking.
I softly nurtured those thoughts. ‘You could say nothing else wanted to lead.’
‘I don’t think Mr Harris would believe that.’
I was betting Mr Harris would believe a cheque for the winning trainer’s percentage.
‘Worth thinking about it,’ I said, and left it at that. Scharfe went away thinking.
When you look at it impartially, I did wrong by the lad. Trainers go all mental when senior jockeys, let alone apprentices, disobey riding instructions. If Rasta led and folded up badly in the straight, word might get around that Scharfe was a cowboy. Even the horse’s winning was no guarantee against a backlash. Scharfe should not have been even talking to me. He was probably too dumb to know that and I was too smart to tell him.
Rasta won the next day, leading all the way at sixteen to one. I won more than a thousand dollars. The kid retained the ride next start, and it led all the way again. After that, Scharfe was replaced by a senior jockey with a smooth gear change. Rasta came from midfield to win his third race in a row. Three jockeys had gone berserk in a mad speed contest in the early part of the race. The three jocks were all surprised that Rasta was not up there, joining in the chaos. Mr Harris received a trainer-of-the-month award, which included a seafood dinner for two.
Billy Scharfe still struggled for good mounts, but, for a while, trainers remembered him as the kid who won two races in a row on Rasta. Scharfe told me he was always careful not to disobey Mr Harris’s instructions again. He did not tell me, but the grapevine did, that Mr Harris was always warning him about sitting at or near my table in the Feed Bin.
Sitting beside me six months down the track, Billy Scharfe was going against instructions again. The lad looked up, and my eyes followed his to watch a suit enter.
You do not see many suits in the Feed Bin. Even rich owners who brave the early morn go casual. The suit who had attracted Billy’s attention was familiar to me. Marcus Georgio was a tall, lean, pro punter, noted for wearing thousand-dollar suits and million-dollar chicks. That morning, no female was latched on to the sleeve of his suit. Maybe they only came out on horse-racing afternoons and racy nights.
Neither Scharfe nor I knew Georgio well enough to even nod in his direction. We returned to our form guides, as he went for his coffee. Billy did not fancy either of his mounts for the next day, and I had no inspiration for him. A few minutes of chit chat, and Billy headed off to work.
I drank too much coffee and studied lots of form, for about two hours. Most punters have given up studying the form closely, with so many race meetings to choose from. Big mistake. A punter should study the form of every horse in every race they are likely to bet on. If I followed my own golden rule, I might have been rich. Knowing what’s good for you is a lot easier than doing what’s good for you.
At 7:10, I walked into the morning light and home, to pick up the EH for the drive to West End and my interview. She doesn’t like to start so early in the morning, but a few words of encouragement eventually did the trick.
I parked the ute outside the block of units. There was no sign of life as I walked down the front footpath. Units one and two were on the left, three and four were on the right. A curtain behind the glass panels blocked the view into Unit four. A glow of electric light framed the edges of the curtain.
I knocked on the glass-and-aluminium door of Unit four but got no answer for my trouble. I half-turned to go back to the car, but found the aluminium door handle slid across easily in my hand. And so I found myself standing in the office of Caulfield Jones, turfologist.
It was a little untidy. A glass was upturned near a wet spot in the carpet. A cigarette had burned a hole in the same carpet. White ash encircled the cigarette stub. And a man who I took to be Caulfield Jones was stretched out on the floor.
Except that I knew him as Marcus Georgio. If Georgio was Jones, why hadn
’t he said anything to me at the Feed Bin? We knew each other by sight and had exchanged a few words over time. Maybe he wanted to surprise me. He did surprise me. Marcus Georgio surprised me by being dead. Recent bad luck number three for me; worse for Georgio. At least his bad luck was over.
I am not real keen on looking at dead people, but I have to admit to a certain fascination. Georgio had a lot of holes in the shirt around his chest, from which blood was seeping and drying fast in the heat. He had holes in his imported silk tie and a couple in his $1000 suit. His relatives would have to patch up that suit coat before they donated it to a charity shop. His killer had been pretty liberal with bullets. None in the head suggested an amateur killer, maybe someone like me.
I pressed my face close to the edge of the curtain to see that there was no one outside. Still early for office stiffs. Pulling my shirt out from my trousers, I wiped the outside door handle. I wiped the inside handle in the same way, with the shirt covering my hand. Without enthusiasm, I picked up Georgio’s wrist with my shirt-covered hand to confirm he was brown bread. No pulse.
Adrenalin pumped through my body. Too many thoughts were coming at once, but I knew rushing out of the office would be a mistake. What do they do in the movies? They investigate. I looked around. Apart from an upturned glass and the dead body, which I had seen enough of, only a mahogany desk and swivel chair intruded into the musty air of the office.
The desk calendar told me that the thought for the day came from Salvador de Madariaga:
First, the sweetheart of the nation, then her aunt, woman governs America because America is a land where boys refuse to grow up.
I might have pondered this metaphysical message, but I was stopped in my tracks by the script in red ink above the de Madariaga wit. It read: Steele Hill 7:45 a.m. I carefully ripped out the entry, as well as the next five. That would give the cops something to think about, other than looking me up.
Checking out the rest of the sparse room, I could not find the ashtray that should have gone with the errant cigarette ash near the body. I left the light on, as it logically suggested Georgio’s demise at a time before my appearance. I again used my covered hand to try a doorknob at the back of the room. It turned.
Hot and cold water taps perched above a sink. A coffee percolator bubbled happily on a bench covering a cupboard. I used a wash cloth to open a door to the cupboard. Inside were some detergent and bleach, nothing else. Turning around, I saw a tall, freestanding wardrobe with three framed photographs above it.
I opened the robe. Two French labelled shirts, a silk tie and two paisley ties were draped over hangers. A container of deodorant, socks and underwear lay on the floor. The spirit of Marcus Georgio as displayed in this robe was a lot more stylish than his representation in the other room.
I looked at the photos. They were prints of newspaper social-page pics, framed in black and silver. Kinda tacky and kinda upbeat, the framed newspaper cut-outs told the Georgio story precisely. Marcus Georgio and Dianne Usher are at a Gold Coast theme park. Marcus Georgio and Simone Freer watch a Gold Coast car race. Marcus Georgio and Crystal Speares sip champagne at Eagle Farm horseracing track during the Winter Carnival. All three women are beautiful in that plastic, social-page sort of way.
You might be wondering, just now, why a law-abiding citizen such as me, with no jail time, was so cautious about fingerprints. In theory, the authorities destroyed copies of my prints when I had my sentences suspended and was a good boy for the requisite period. But I am not one for theory when it comes to dealing with police. Besides, if the coppers got chatting with Ms Billings of the Employment Service, I knew they would quickly arrange a meeting between an inkpad and me.
I retrieved the de Madariaga wit from my shirt pocket and wrote the names of the three women above mine. Three more suspects took the edge off my red-lettered guilt.
The siren made me jump. I settled a little and thanked Buddha most coppers wanted to be Mel Gibson. If they had played it subtle, they could have been sticking a Ruger up my nose by now.
I clutched at the back door with my covered hand. No luck this time; it was locked. But the window above the sink was open. My exit would not have scored many points for elegance, but it was up with the best for speed. It would have been a graceful landing, had my heel not caught the gun.
If I told you I know next to nothing about guns, it would be the truth. This make of gun was the next to nothing I knew. It was a .38, a police .38. The first time one of these bang bangs was pointed at me, I almost laughed. They look like toys. The coppers had been replacing their .38s with Rugers and .357 Magnums over the years. Although of smaller calibre than the .38, the .357 looks much more menacing.
No doubt, some of the redundant .38s found their way into the nostalgic hands of those on the other side of the law.
On instinct, I slipped the thoughtlessly discarded gun into the pocket of my sports coat. I was clearing up after a messy killer, because I had a hunch this killer might be humble as well as untidy. Humble enough to give me the credit for their work.
My senses jangled, but I was confident the siren was still half a kilometre away, on the street parallel to Montague Road. I turned the EH into the next side street and waited. Sure enough, the cop car blasted past my street on its way to the scene of the crime. I waited and it seemed only the one police car was called to the scene.
I joined the stiffs’ metal parade to work as I drove north towards my flat. I kept on driving to Toombul Shoppingtown, which has a car park bordering an artificial creek with the exotic name of Schulz Canal. The canal became the new owner of a police .38, carelessly left at a West End murder scene.
Strolling through the centre, I waited for various shops to open. I bought compact discs, food, clothing, and all sorts of stuff I did not need nor want. Buddha, how could I have killed anyone kilometres away at West End? At the time, I was in the savage grip of shopping mania at Toombul.
One thing I did want was a phone book. I looked up S. Freer. I jotted down an address and phone number, then flipped onto Speares. Bingo, C Speares at Ascot, an upper-middle-class suburb near Eagle Farm race track. As I have said, I lived near Eagle Farm too, at Hendra. But Ascot and working-class Hendra are light-years and billions of dollars apart. I dialled the number. Bingo indeed. ‘Crystal Speares,’ said a husky voice, soft but with an annoyed edge. I hung up.
To get to Unit five or to any unit in that block, you press a button beside a high gate, and give the intercom your excuse for bothering one of the good people of Ascot.
‘Yes,’ was all I got from Crystal Speares when I pressed the button.
I explained I had a message from Marcus Georgio. The gate swung open and I walked through, to climb a flight of brick stairs to Unit five.
Tiredness showed in her eyes, surrounded by cascades of blonde hair. She held the door open, but didn’t seem inclined to let me in. The uninviting way she held the door only went to emphasise her firm breasts and rounded hips, barely concealed by a Country Road T-shirt. The leggy blonde was in her late twenties, and you could tell she could sprint with the best of them in the fast lane.
‘What about Marcus?’ Speares asked, with little interest.
‘He’s dead,’ I said, untactfully.
At least she bothered to raise her eyebrows at that, making those green and black centred sockets even wider.
She turned, leaving the door open, and took a cigarette from a packet on a coffee table.
‘Did you phone earlier?’ she called from the lounge.
She was not taking the news badly enough for my liking. To give her something more to worry about, I lied. I had not rung. Closing the door, I joined her in the lounge room.
‘Georgio had a car accident,’ I lied again. You get on a roll once you start.
‘Really,’ was her only comment as she sat down on the sofa, revealing black panties as the T-shirt crawled up her thighs.
‘No,’ I corrected. ‘That’s right, he was shot.’
&nb
sp; The eyebrows elevated again. ‘Did you kill him?’ she asked, as though inquiring how my morning had been so far.
‘I came here to ask you the same question.’
She smirked at that, her most expansive reaction yet. ‘I prefer my men alive, at least from the wallet up.’
‘Did Georgio keep his wallet in his trousers pocket or his inside shirt pocket, near his heart, as far as you were concerned?’
It took a few seconds for Crystal Speares to get my smart-arse inference. When she did, she laughed. More responsive all the time. In twenty years, she might shed a tear.
At least the phone made her jump. She was in no hurry to answer it. It rang three more times before I asked, ‘Is that the phone?’
Crystal Speares glared at me and grabbed the receiver, but was relieved to find the caller had hung up. She turned sharply in my direction. ‘What do you want from me?’
As she did, I saw a hint of a bitter, fifty-year-old woman, whose effective hustling days were long gone. You can do it – see the face of a child in an old person, or see a young woman’s face twenty-five years on. You can’t look for it, only be aware when it’s showing. I didn’t want a thing from Crystal Speares. I just wanted to get out of there. I said I was only a messenger, hurried out the door and skipped down the stairs.
I was about to persuade the EH into gear when I saw a boyish figure walking past the units I had just left. Only, he did not walk past. He spoke into the intercom and was admitted. Apprentice jockey Billy Scharfe was paying someone a visit.
9
Summer, December, 1989
BUB’S ABANDONED PLAY Waiting for Godot had been due to finish on December 20, when Nat and I were supposed to go to the cast party. The cast and crew were looking forward to it. They had had to promise to work feverishly through their summer holidays in order to get semi-famous former student Alison Kahn on board, before the university would come up with the meagre budget for the production. They figured they deserved a party.
But murder and a one-night run had destroyed all enthusiasm for the scheduled knees-up. So Nat decided the three of us, in need of cheering up, should take in some of the entrants in the annual radio station Christmas Lights display contest. My Cucumber invited Bub to ease the pain of having the tyres slashed on her vehicle to Hollywood stardom. I figure a sadistic streak in Nat made her invite me.
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