Hiding around a corner, I watched Jan Russo enter her office at ten past three. Steven Dupont was with her. No coppers in sight. I hung around for another five minutes for Cassandra Russo, but she was a no-show. I went down the corridor and tested Russo’s door, to find it open. The department head and Dupont stopped talking as soon as I entered. From the shifty looks on their faces, it was a fair bet they had been talking about me.
‘Good afternoon,’ I said cheerily. ‘So this is where the heavy-duty thinking goes down.’
‘You can knock, you know,’ Jan Russo said.
‘It’s a surprise. I bet Joseph Lavinsky was surprised when someone put a bullet through his brain.’
Before Jan Russo could answer, her daughter Cassandra entered the room. ‘Surprise!’ she said. I reminded her that she forgot to knock, while her mother asked if she had been suspended from school again.
Dupont told me he was calling the police this time.
‘Why?’ I asked. ‘So they can arrest Cassandra for truancy, or Jan for murder?’
‘No,’ said Dupont. ‘So they can take you down for murder, and for stealing thousands of dollars’ worth of computer equipment. Which, by the way, no one has mentioned to the police. Yet.’
‘I did it,’ Cassandra said. We all turned to look at the girl.
I thought she was going to try to cover for me about the computers, but she went on. ‘I killed ProJoe.’
‘Cassie, don’t say any more,’ her mother warned.
Dupont threw in his two cents’ worth. ‘Yes, that’s enough, Cassandra.’
She ignored them both. ‘What will happen to me, Steele?’ she said in a frightened sad voice.
Jan Russo interrupted. ‘You are a minor, Cassie. Nothing serious is going to happen.’
I had a suggestion. ‘You could say Lavinsky sexually assaulted you, Cassandra.’
‘He raped her, that’s what he did,’ Jan Russo said enthusiastically.
‘He didn’t rape me. He didn’t sexually assault me.’
‘Then why did you do it?’ I asked.
Cassandra looked glum. All she could say was, ‘Just because.’
‘That’ll go down well as an excuse,’ I said. ‘And where did you get the gun?’
I thought she wasn’t going to answer me, but after a few seconds she said, ‘At the club, the Go Kat Klub.’
‘You got it from a stranger in a club,’ I repeated. ‘That’s an old favourite for the police. They always believe that one.’
‘It was a woman. I got it from a woman at the club,’ Cassandra said, defying me to call her a liar.
She was lying, all right.
‘Why didn’t you just use one of your mother’s guns?’ I asked.
Cassandra appeared bewildered. She looked at her mother and pleaded desperately. ‘I didn’t tell him, Mum. Honestly, I didn’t.’
‘But you did, Cassandra,’ I contradicted. ‘When you said “guns don’t kill people; people kill people”. That was so different from the way you speak, and what you have to say. You know, it’s funny, no matter how cool teenagers are, they still repeat what their parents say, just like when they were little children. Or maybe you saw it on the wall of your mother’s gun club. How long has your mother been in a club, Cassandra?’
Jan Russo answered for herself. ‘Since before Cassie was born. A lot of women I knew were learning martial arts for self-defence, but that was too much of a hassle. So I joined a gun club, though I only told my closest friends. But how did you know?’
‘Lavinsky told me before he died.’
‘That’s not possible,’ Russo said.
‘I don’t mean straight before he died. You made sure he wasn’t doing any talking at all. But he told me earlier, that two things that look the same can be different by degrees. And two killings by bullets in the last thirty-six hours were different in one respect.’
‘Two killings?’ asked Cassandra. ‘You said no one was killed at the club.’
‘I lied. But, as a matter of historical record, I doubt we will find any mention in the papers of the death of Paul Franks at the Go Kat Klub. He was killed by a spray of bullets. Unluckily for him, they landed in the wrong places. But Lavinsky had one neat bullet hole through the middle of his forehead. Lavinsky’s killer had expertise with a gun. She probably killed the professor with the first shot to the head, and just pumped the other bullets into him, like I might have done, as the police were meant to think.’
Jan Russo took in a long breath and I thought, here we go, here comes the justification.
‘I would never have let Cassandra go to prison, even a prison for minors. But as far as I’m concerned, Lavinsky did rape her. Cassie is still a child. Her intelligence works against her. She won’t admit how inexperienced she is. Joseph took advantage of that. He did damage that could be with my daughter for the rest of her life. He could have side-tracked Cassie from the great tasks she’s destined for.’
I did not state the obvious: that knowing your mother had murdered someone you admired might give the teenager a few sleepless nights.
Jan Russo lamented the aftermath, if not the murder. ‘She wasn’t supposed to find out,’ she said hoarsely.
The chairman of the departmental Ethics Committee cleared his throat to intervene with wisdom. ‘The simple solution of unsolved robbery will satisfy the police. You’ll get out of this lightly, Hill. I’ll corroborate your story. And you can keep the computers. However, if you try to advance a different scenario, those computers will bring you undone, as will my revised memory of your whereabouts. Nothing will bring poor Joseph back, so I think it is in everyone’s best interests if we tidy our own nest.’
I had heard enough. I left the room.
___o0o___
THE COPPERS GRILLED me for three hours, but they let me go at the end of that, and only called me back twice. Both times, they appeared to be going through the motions.
___o0o___
THE GOOROO INSISTED we get rid of the computers, though I told him we didn’t have to. He kept saying I had cost him a grand, but, to this day, he has never asked me to give back the money. We loaded the gear into the tray of my EH ute, and at midnight, under a full moon, drove to a relatively isolated reach of the Tweed River. We threw two video monitors in, before we realised that an old Aboriginal man was watching us. He waved; put down a net he was holding and came over.
‘Could I have that thing?’ he said, pointing to the laser printer in my hand.
‘What are you going to do with it?’ I asked.
‘Put it in my crab pot,’ he said.
‘You still catch crabs around here?’
In way of reply, he went back to his camp and retrieved a large mud crab from a hessian bag.
‘Do you like muddies?’ he asked, offering the crab to me.
‘Sure, but you can have this printer for nothing. I don’t think it’ll be much use to you, anyway.’
‘It’ll be good,’ he insisted. ‘Tie some old bones to it. Once the smell gets through it, I’ll be able to catch muddies, even when I run out of bones.’
Sounded reasonable to me. I gave him the printer, and two computer boxes for other pots. The rest of the electronic gear we threw in the river.
Despite our protests, he insisted we take the muddie.
We ate the crab the next night. It was delicious.
Book Three
At large
15
Summer in Brisbane, December, 1991
IF YOU CAN’T STAND THE HEAT, it was damned thoughtless of your parents to let you be born in the northern half of Australia.
It was an unmercifully hot summer and someone was trying to frame me for the murder of racecourse hustler and playboy Marcus Georgio, also known, shortly before his demise, by the professional name of Caulfield Jones, of the little-known profession of turfologist.
I had tracked down one of Georgio’s women friends, a hard-bitten sleek blonde by the name of Crystal Speares, who could not give two flying d
ucks about his mortality. She had an icy temperament and her indifference to Georgio’s death, about the only sincere reaction I received from her, might have been because she now had to trouble herself to cross him from her social diary. Maybe she killed him herself, but had no need for remorse because I could not prove it.
I didn’t have much info to go on. I did not know how struggling jockey Billy Scharfe got to swim in the intoxicating but dangerous waters dominated by a shark like Speares.
Back in my flat, after I left the leggy blonde giving the lacklustre jockey a leg-up into her unit, I was in no great hurry to play smart and get out of Dodge. Natalie was on holidays and up the Sunshine Coast with her parents and her younger sister, Jane. I settled down to a cup of coffee and a phone call to the Gooroo in Tweed Heads.
A stone’s throw from the Queensland border is the town of Tweed Heads, officially in the State of New South Wales. Queensland-owned illegal bookmakers and brothels flourished in this sunny venal paradise in the eighties. Queensland coppers could not touch you here, and Sydney heavies and police had to come 800 kilometres if they wanted to discuss a silent partnership with you.
The Gooroo loved Tweed Heads, even though extended betting hours and live race coverage in pubs and clubs was quickly killing the SP bookie profession. That was about the only subject Gooroo never talked about. A softly spoken, silver-haired sixty-one-year-old, he could quote you the odds on a royal divorce, an invasion in the Middle East, or on contracting an STD when you did not use a condom. The Gooroo managed twelve phones, but I knew which one I could get him on.
‘I’d like $100 each way on the winner of the first,’ I said when he answered.
Gooroo had told me about a former Queensland Police Commissioner who took his cut from the then-flourishing SP bookmaking trade. At the time, registered legal bookies also controlled most of the illegal off-course SP. Differentiating between legal and illegal ventures back then was like distinguishing dollars from their equivalent in gold bullion. Anyway, the Police Commissioner always managed to have fifty pounds each way or win and place on the last winner in Brisbane. After the last race, the legal/illegal bookie would record a winning bet of fifty pounds each way in his ledger at the racetrack. The highest-ranking copper in Queensland would wake up each Saturday morning knowing he was going to back the last winner of the day.
‘Sure, you’re set, no worries, mate,’ the Gooroo lied. ‘How’s it going Steele?’
‘If you turn off that cassette recorder, I’ll tell you how it’s not going real good.’
A click down the line told me the Gooroo had turned off his protective taping machine.
‘Well, what do you make of it?’ I asked after I laid out the whole story, from seeing Georgio in the Feed Bin café, to finding him dead in a West End unit, to my little chat with Crystal Speares and seeing apprentice Billy Scharfe outside the blonde’s place.
‘Looks like someone has you the favourite for a murder charge. You didn’t do it by any chance, Steele?’
‘For Buddha’s sake, Gooroo, what do you think?’
‘No, I can’t see it myself. I’d say you’d be a hundred-to-one. What about one of those three sheilas in the photos? Sounds like Georgio was a pants man. That can be a dangerous hobby.’
‘I think Crystal Speares is in the clear,’ I surmised. ‘She’s a cannibal, without a doubt. But I think she prefers to roast her men real slow.’
‘And the other two women?’
‘I don’t know anything about them,’ I admitted. ‘Why would they want to set me up? At least Crystal was running with the racing crowd, so there might have been something in that.’
‘Well, there’s always that public servant who sent you to the interview, what’s her name?’
‘The lovely Kathy Billings. But she’s a stiff; stiffs don’t kill people. Do they?’
The Gooroo refused to eliminate the possibility. ‘Who knows what stiffs do? Look at it this way: Kathy Billings falls for hustler Georgio. All his other chicks don’t mind about one another – they’re hustling Georgio as much as he is hustling them, so no one has time to keep score. Except for this employment service sheila. She finds out about Georgio’s full book of rides, and decides she’s being dudded.’
‘Sounds farfetched to me,’ I said.
‘Maybe, maybe not. So, this Billings woman decides to lodge a protest with a .38. But she needs a bunny, because her protest might stop her going places in the world of stiffs. She checks out her files for the form of a humble starter called Steele Hill, and decides he is perfect for the daily double. She gets rid of mug lair Georgio and at the same time shafts you, a veteran performer in her unemployment stable who she is sick of feeding. Motive, opportunity and whatever else those dees on TV say. Correct weight and placings stand.’
I would never be rash enough to dismiss out of hand anything the Gooroo surmised. But doubt was gnawing at my belly. Talk about a new frightening possibility in a world of scary possibilities! That’s all the world needs now – stiffs taking Kathy Bates and Robert De Niro classes.
‘What about the .38?’ I protested.
‘Could have been Georgio’s. What do you know about the bloke?’
‘Not much. You picked him in one – mug lair. Flashy gambler, who never hits the surface without a splash of bugs bunny. Did he bet with you at all?’
‘The name’s familiar. I’ll look him up.’
I heard Gooroo turning the pages of a book.
‘Yair, he was into us for a grand. That’s peanuts. Not even monkeys kill for peanuts.’
‘Maybe he was into some heavies for more.’
‘Not that I’ve heard. There’s not much you can do, Steele. Worrying will only make it worse. They tell me New Zealand’s nice at this time of year. I might be able to lend you a few quid.’
I told him I did not want to leave Natalie behind. We talked about her, and about Gooroo’s wife June. We talked about his kids and his grandkids. We talked about the next day’s race programs, and the odds on the Sheffield Shield cricket competition. For a beautiful half-hour, Marcus Georgio, dead or alive, didn’t exist.
When I hung up, the funk came rushing back and nausea caught in my throat and my stomach. Okay, first thing is to get Kathy Billings off the suspect list. I dialled the Nundah employment service.
I was Kathy’s cousin from Adelaide. Was she at work? No, she had the day off. What a shame, I was really keen to catch up with her. And I don’t know her address, just where she works. Sorry, but we cannot give out the home addresses of staff. What a shame.
But she would be at the smoko in the city that afternoon. Smoko, what’s that? Oh sorry, figured you might be a public servant too. Smoko is an interoffice get-together. Would you know the address? Sure, here it is. It starts at five. Thanks very much. I do hope I can catch up with Kathy. I’m only here for a few days.
Five o’clock was six hours away, so I sat and tried to study the form guide. What a versatile word study is. Kids at university study to become upmarket stiffs – doctors and lawyers and engineers; Rastafarians study their religion; people like me study form guides. The objects of the three studies are like chalk, cheese and marshmallow. But there is enormous fervour in all three.
Only, I could not concentrate on my studies. I switched on the TV, to find an American talkfest hostess introducing Friday’s parade of geeks to me and the rest of housebound AustralAmerica. Okay, I thought, that should slow my brain down a bit.
The front door slammed inward against the wall, rattling the windows and distracting me from the telly. A police boot hung in the air, before lurching forward, propelling the recently promoted Detective Senior Constable Bill Schmidt with it. Schmidt was unable to stop himself from crashing to the floor. The silly bastard had just smashed down an unlocked door with his size-eleven boot.
Sergeant Frank Mooney smirked at the antics of Keystone Kop Schmidt. Then the senior cop’s face grew fierce as he looked down at the gun in his hand and remembered he meant seriou
s business. He pointed the gun at me.
‘Buddha,’ I said. ‘I know playing cards for money is illegal, but I didn’t know you blokes took it so seriously.’
‘Let’s go, Hill,’ Mooney scowled.
‘Are you charging me with something, Sergeant Mooney?’ I asked, wide-eyed and innocent. ‘Do I need a lawyer?’
‘Don’t give us that bullshit, Hill. I’m from the old school of copper. You’re from the old school of grub. You start talking legal rights and I start shooting you in the thigh.’
The Fitzgerald Inquiry of 1989 was meant to change police culture. The sergeant must have been washing his hair during the months the inquiry was on. I nodded towards Mooney’s gun. ‘That warrant in your hand looks in order. Only, next time, tell Schmidt that he has lousy style in picking up a date.’
The junior officer regained his balance and smiled. ‘Lucky it was your door and not your face I kicked in.’
I know when I am beaten by superior wit, so I turned to Mooney. ‘Mind if I keep my hands down, and you keep that gun out of sight? What on Earth will the neighbours think?’
Mooney put the gun back in its holster. We went outside with the Sergeant and Schmidt on either side of me. I pulled the fractured door closed and managed to lock it.
‘Don’t want to encourage crime,’ I said to my captors.
I nodded at Mrs Barnes, tending her roses. She looked at my escort.
‘It’s criminal what they get up to these days,’ Mrs Barnes said. ‘It’s the heat. This heat plays havoc with them.’
Cue quizzical expressions all round.
‘Aphids, I mean. Aphids on the roses.’
I nodded sympathetically.
___o0o___
AMELIA BARNES had invited me in for tea, one morning years earlier, after I admired her roses in bloom. I was in no hurry to get to the tote that day, so I accepted. She was 84-years old then. This I knew from the recent birthday cards she showed me. A slight woman she shuffled when she walked but still maintained a more-or-less straight back.
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