The Shark Net

by Robert Drewe

  I’d never seen and heard anything like this from the Reverend Gilbert Cameron back at St Paul’s, Nedlands. ‘Black is always black and white is always white,’ declared Billy Graham, ‘but above the black and white waves the invisible ensign of Christ’s cross and the fact of redeeming grace.’

  His arms swept us up. His hands were cupped, seeming to draw us in to him. ‘Christ stands with the man and woman in the street,’ he said. ‘Repent. Believe in Christ the Lord. Be saved.’ Then, suddenly quieter now, he invited everyone to come forward and receive Christ.

  A tremor flickered through the audience. It seemed a lot of Perth people were aching to be saved. In every row people shifted in their seats and began to stand, to respond, to join him on stage. Soon they were deciding for Christ all over the place – healthy people, cripples, old and young, the well dressed and the casual.

  He kept quietly urging and beckoning us to join him. It was hypnotic. It was contagious. The people getting up from their seats didn’t look like religious maniacs. They looked like your average movie audience on a Saturday night. I recognised neighbours and a contingent of boys from Wesley College whom I’d played sports against. I saw my friend John Sturkey. I saw the chemist’s wife and my old maths teacher. Two rows along I saw Eric, the Dunlop delivery driver, sitting by a sign saying ‘South Perth Methodists’. People stood up all along the rows of chairs and people began sliding down from the roofs of the cattle, horse and pig pavilions. The chemist’s wife stood up. Eric stood up and joined Billy Graham. People were having conversions all around me.

  After a while my mother stood up, too. As she rose to her feet she gave me a small confiding smile. She didn’t do anything to try to influence my own decision but I still felt an immense pressure to join her and the serene-looking people on stage. I thought, it’s easy. All I have to do is believe in God.

  I admired the way my mother calmly rose to her feet, moved determinedly out of our row and walked forward down the aisle, seeking contentment in her life. She looked small but noble, both Dot and Dorothy at once. I felt a protective, almost fatherly love for her. I could see this would be a valuable and adult experience to share with her. I wanted to be a better person, too.

  I wanted to follow her into the realm of goodness. I wanted to join her and the Reverend Dr Billy Graham and his celebrated American crusade and the thousand-person choir and the halt, lame and blind, and the Methodist boys from Wesley College, and Methodist Eric with his harelip and funny voice, and the sumptuously robed Lord Mayor, and the Anglican Archbishop, even Honest Dave, the Premier, standing there self-consciously behind his ex-serviceman’s badge. I was sorely tempted. But I sat tight.

  After a while my mother and the other converted people left the stage and returned to their seats and the crusade was over. Billy Graham said a short prayer for the converted and was easy on the rest of us. People left quietly. We drove home in silence.

  THE BRIDGE

  On the November day that the Governor officially opened the Narrows Bridge across the Swan River my father was escorted home by police. He’d been to the opening ceremony that morning but it was late, about eleven p.m. by then, and he’d been driving the Fairlane in circles for almost an hour trying to get off the new bridge.

  The Fairlane was his company car these days, the model that Janet Leigh drove in Psycho. Alfred Hitchcock and my father both favoured Fords. (I’d noticed that the used-car yard where Janet Leigh traded her car for a Fairlane was full of Fords, and that Janet’s body even ended up in the boot of her Fairlane – not that her boyfriend and sister looked too upset about it.)

  Ever since my father left the saloon bar of the Esplanade Hotel that Friday evening he’d been driving the Fairlane back and forth across the new bridge, and up and down the three-and-a-half miles of the new Kwinana Freeway which led away from it, and around the loops and figure-eights of the bridge approaches and off-ramps. When the police car spotted him heading south for the fourth or fifth time, still trying to find the off-ramp for Mounts Bay Road and home, he was almost out of petrol. They put on the siren and stopped him.

  When they walked up to the car he said, ‘Much obliged.’ He explained that he was endeavouring to get home to Dalkeith, introduced himself and, as he always did, added firmly, ‘State manager, Dunlop.’

  The policemen said, ‘Follow us,’ got back into their car and led him north and west and off the bridge. They escorted him home.

  He’d obviously been drinking. Perhaps they thought some traffic confusion could be excused on the opening day of the bridge. Anyway, they weren’t traffic cops but detectives. They were making yet another random circuit of the neighbourhood of the South Perth flat where Patricia Berkman had been stabbed to death in her bed ten months before. The last thing the homicide squad wanted was some driving-under-the-influence paperwork and their time wasted on traffic-court appearances.

  When the cars pulled up outside our house my father showed his gratitude in his usual way. ‘You must come in for a drink,’ he said.

  The younger detective-constable said, ‘We’re on duty.’ The senior detective-sergeant looked at the younger officer, then at his watch and said, ‘Just a small one.’

  When they came into the house, my father gave an over-cheery rendition of his ‘I’m home!’ whistle. As if we didn’t know that, what with their loud voices and two cars in the driveway. We didn’t whistle back. My mother had stopped returning the evening whistle a while back, and Bill and I didn’t whistle beyond about nine p.m., especially if there could be trouble brewing. The three men bustled in and, as cops do, immediately filled the room.

  My mother modified her surprised look, mustered up some social graces and fetched some beers from the fridge. My father jerked his head at me to turn off the TV. He didn’t appear too fussed at having been brought home by the police. He was speaking in his hearty Friday-night voice and acting pretty bluff.

  ‘These gentlemen were kind enough to help me with a traffic problem on the Narrows Bridge,’ he announced to us. ‘A wonderful bridge, by the way. Top notch. Full marks to Dave Brand and everyone concerned.’

  He motioned the cops into the lounge room and began pouring beer into the pewter tankards he reserved for visiting sportsmen and VIPs. ‘By the same token,’ he said, as they eased themselves into chairs, ‘those direction signs are woeful. Definitely below par. I’ll be having a word,’ he added solemnly, for everyone’s benefit, implying Heads Will Roll. The lost-on-the-bridge matter was closed.

  I left the room and my mother made us coffee. We sat at the dining table by the open door half-pretending to be chatting while we listened to their conversation. They were on first-name terms already. The detective-sergeant was John McCurry, the younger detective was Max Kommer.

  ‘I know Goodyear supplies the police force at the moment,’ my father said, winking and topping up their tankards, ‘but we’d be more than competitive. How many vehicles do you run, as a matter of interest?’

  He was at ease now, once more the host, in his element. ‘Anything Dunlop can do for the police …’ he went on. ‘Tyres, batteries, flooring, footwear, mattresses, sporting goods …’ He loved this sort of business contact, where two accidentally connected principals were suddenly linked by a mutually helpful form of barter. It was how things worked in this branch manager’s town. It was good business and it was also more than that. It was the most common form of male friendship: the generous exchange of assistance, information and wholesale goods. It allowed everyone to benefit.

  My father and the detectives drank two bottles of beer in no time and then McCurry sent Kommer out to the car to check the radio. Everyone seemed relaxed. ‘Bit of a coincidence seeing you fellows,’ my father said. ‘We’ve just had to do a bit of police work ourselves and sack a fellow for thieving.’

  They put on polite faces. Theft, eh? ‘Is that so?’ McCurry said. ‘Did you report him?’

  ‘No, no, we didn’t want to take up police time with a petty thief. One of our
truck drivers. Caught him stealing from his mates’ lockers.’

  The set of my father’s jaw said firm-but-fair, managerial-but-humane. The sack, yes, but not gaol. Anyway, if you brought in the police the company looked bad, too. ‘The other drivers laid a trap with indelible ink. They marked a couple of tenners in a wallet. The money disappeared and this fellow had the ink all over his fingers and pocket.’

  The cops raised their eyebrows. ‘Very impressive,’ McCurry said.

  ‘Absolutely,’ said Kommer.

  ‘Don’t like to sack a family man,’ my father said. ‘Leaves a nasty taste all round. Heap of kids. Speech impediment. A bit odd in the mouth department.’ He tapped his top lip. ‘But I shouldn’t say any more.’

  ‘Maybe we know him,’ McCurry wondered. ‘Does he have a name?’

  ‘No names, no pack drill,’ my father said. But he kept shaking his head as if he didn’t know what the world was coming to. ‘A bloke who steals from his workmates … Throwing away a steady job like that …’ He sipped his beer reflectively.

  ‘Pretty low,’ McCurry agreed.

  ‘I don’t envy what you fellows have to do,’ my father said. ‘We should all be bloody grateful.’

  I’d never heard him say ‘bloody’ before.

  ‘Nice of you to say,’ McCurry murmured over the rim of his tankard.

  ‘What with all you’ve got on your plate …’ my father continued. He opened another bottle and topped up their drinks. ‘Where would we be without you blokes?’

  I waited for McCurry to say, ‘Still on the bridge, I suppose.’ He said, ‘Yeah, well.’

  They lowered their voices then. A confiding note crept in. They were onto crime cases. But they didn’t waste time on petty theft. They were just chatting generally but they were talking about actual murders. My father was pursing his lips and nodding solemnly, like a magistrate, and laughing politely when one of them highlighted what he saw as murder’s amusing side.

  ‘What about the Berkman murder?’ my father asked suddenly. The naked divorcee. My mother and I looked up. We didn’t even pretend not to listen. We were all ears. The question seemed a bold and nosy one. I knew he’d had a lot to drink then. The detectives looked at each other. Kommer waited for McCurry to answer.

  McCurry said in a low voice, ‘Well, I can say this …’

  I was desperate to hear more but my father stood up and said, ‘Just a sec, John.’ He walked purposefully across the room, gave my mother and me a meaningful frown and shut the door on us.

  All we could hear for the next half-hour was a low rumble of voices, punctuated now and then by exclamations of agreement and surprise from my father. Then their voices rose to a normal level again and my father opened the door and they came out. When the detectives were leaving, all the men looked each other firmly in the eye. They exchanged business cards. My father said, ‘John, Max. Any time I can be of assistance …’

  ‘Same here, Roy,’ said McCurry.

  Of course the next morning I asked my father who the trapped thief was. He gave me a look. He was drinking Alka-Seltzer. ‘Don’t like ears flapping,’ he said. ‘Never have. The matter’s finished. The man’s lost his job.’

  I asked my mother later. ‘It was Eric, who comes here, wasn’t it?’

  ‘You guessed it,’ she said. ‘I didn’t tell you.’

  As it happened, a fortnight later Detective-Sergeant McCurry needed a new Dunlopillo mattress and pillows. My father was pleased to arrange it. Christmas was coming and all parties exchanged Christmas cards. This exchange sealed the relationship. Once you were on the Christmas card list – my parents’ list contained four hundred names – you were there forever.

  The homicide squad had its hands full that Christmas. Five days before Christmas Day, Jillian Brewer, described in the papers as ‘the beautiful twenty-two-year-old heiress to the MacRobertson chocolate fortune’, was murdered in her bed in her apartment in Brookwood Flats, on Stirling Highway in Cottesloe.

  The killer had begun with a hatchet. He hacked into her face, breasts, thighs, stomach and pelvis. He severed her windpipe and fractured her skull and pubic bone. He struck so hard he split the hatchet’s wooden handle. Then he snatched up a pair of scissors and stabbed her in the breasts, abdomen, liver and buttocks.

  The scissors belonged to the murdered woman, but the hatchet belonged to one of my best friends.

  Simon Watson and I were in the same class at school. We swam and surfed together. I crewed on his old plywood Gwen-12 yacht, sitting out on the trapeze, my arse skimming the waves, while he shouted orders. We went to the Claremont dance. In lifesaving competitions we alternated as Rescuer and Patient, Hero and Drowning Swimmer.

  Simon lived at 4 Renown Avenue, a block behind Brookwood Flats. Earlier on the Saturday of Jillian Brewer’s murder he’d been doing the gardening chores for his parents, using the hatchet to chip the edges of the lawn. That night, prowling first through the Watsons’ property, the killer had picked up Simon’s hatchet and taken it with him.

  It turned out that the killer had worn gloves in order that any fingerprints at the scene or on the murder weapon would not be his. The next few weeks, encompassing Christmas and the first hot days of the summer holidays, were a difficult time for Simon and his family.

  Brookwood Flats was prominently situated on the turnoff to North Cottesloe. I passed the big red-brick apartment building every time I went to the beach. I wanted to talk to Simon about Jillian Brewer’s murder. At the same time it was so terrible and gruesome it was beyond my understanding.

  Simon was an open, chatty, humorous boy but he wouldn’t talk about the murder or even the murder weapon. By now I was thinking about the hatchet as if it were a person – as if it were the murderer.

  The police didn’t want him to discuss it. Neither did his parents. If and when they caught the killer he’d probably have to give evidence. But … but … Jesus, Simon! Your axe killed that girl. The murderer was in your yard! He was looking through your windows at you, at your sister! Who do you think did it?

  Simon gave a tortured look and clammed up.

  During the holidays an organisation called the Eureka Youth League of Australia wrote to me out of the blue and invited me to join up.

  I wondered how they knew me and my address. Why did they want me, anyway? The letter (unsigned) pointed out that my ‘sporting prowess’ and ‘community service’ had come to the League’s attention. ‘You are obviously on the wave of the future,’ the anonymous flatterer declared.

  How nice of them to say so, I thought. Still, I wondered how I’d attracted their interest. Was it my bronze lifesaving medal (one of only approximately two hundred awarded in the State each year) that had helped me catch the wave of the future? They’d mentioned sporting prowess. Maybe my track-and-field third placing in the second division of the under-sixteen 880 yards had come to their attention. Community service? Search me.

  I flipped through their attached newsletter, Spotlight, which listed the many and impressively varied things the Eureka Youth League stood for: more swimming pools and recreation facilities for young people; the vote for eighteen-year-olds; equal rights for Aborigines; equal pay for girls and women; a better deal for apprentice tradesmen; adult wages for junior workers doing adult jobs; an end to whipping and hanging; bans on atom bomb tests; world peace and disarmament; and – right at the end – a People’s Government to Build Socialism in Australia.

  The Eureka Youth League pointed out that if I and the rest of Australia’s youth leaders got together (Australia’s youth leaders!) we could help bring about world peace. We would stop Britain testing any more A-bombs on the Monte Bello Islands, fifty miles off our coast. We would be a friend to all peoples. Yes, I thought. Absolutely. I felt even more virtuous than when I’d signed the lifetime no-alcohol pledge for the Women’s Christian Temperance Union when I was eleven.

  The Eureka Youth League had picked their youth well. I was a joiner. I’d already joined the school magazine
committee and the debating committee and the dramatic society and officer cadets and every sport possible. I was showing leadership and Spartan attributes all over the place – until nine a.m. anyway. In summer I got up at five-thirty and swam laps through the algae and jellyfish in the Claremont baths; in winter I ran cross-country courses before breakfast. Then, ravenous and tired by nine, I ate my lunch under the desk and, to stay awake, wrote imaginary curricula vitae in my maths books, listing my marriage to Brigitte Bardot, knighthood and Olympic gold medals in three sports.

  I’d always filled in coupons and application forms and sent away for things. I was ever optimistic that what came back this time would make me stronger and smarter and wouldn’t be junk. When I was younger I’d sent my pocket money away to Sydney post-office-box addresses for disguise kits (‘Realistic beards, wigs and moustaches! Put thirty years on your age! Fool your parents! Trick your friends!’), Popeye badges, Phantom skull rings, Lone Avenger pistol holsters and Charles Atlas muscle developers.

  I’d even persevered with the step-by-step lessons from the Brodie Mack School of Cartooning. Brodie Mack insisted that everything you drew, from animals to battleships, had to start as a circle. It was a pay-as-you-draw system. Brodie Mack didn’t want you to rush into the world of cartooning. After two years all I’d learned to draw were circular cats, dogs and rabbits and bald circular businessmen smoking cigars the shape of elongated circles. I began to think that Brodie Mack was scared of the competition. Learning to draw with the Brodie Mack School of Cartooning wasn’t cartooning, it was slow geometry.

  Earlier, as a reader of Chucklers’ Weekly, I’d enthusiastically joined the Charlie Chuckles Club and become a Chuckler. Charlie Chuckles’s personal signature glowed on my Chuckler membership card and growing number of Chuckler awards. I loved being published and seeing my name in print. I loved the regular five-shilling prizes for my rhyming verse, drawings and competition entries (‘Unscramble the Film Stars’ Names!’). As long as I was being published and paid I was easily able to suspend disbelief that my publisher was a kookaburra.