Drive By

by Michael Duffy

  This surprises me, because when the papa and Imad and Farid talked to me about drawing a line in the sand I always thought Rafi was going to be one hundred per cent legitimate, not like a money launderer or something. Now I see he will be crossing back again and doing business with Farid. I feel sad when I hear this and that they did not ever tell me about it. I feel very lonely to think I will be the only one left on my side of the line. P’raps this is because they think I am stupid.

  Rafi knows the plan, I can see that, he looks ashamed and I can see him thinking of a story to tell Farid, all he wants is to stop Farid being angry with him. I see then how really weak Rafi is, like suddenly there is a window and I can see his heart, but Farid doesn’t see that, he pushes him back against the side of the car and starts yelling again.

  That is us brothers. We are strong men in situations, but we are often in the wrong situation and it doesn’t matter how strong you are then because it is too late. This thought starts to come to me as I stand there next to the Subaru and Farid yelling at Rafi, but I don’t get to the end of it until a long time later. I am not stupid, but I spend a lot of my time thinking about engines.

  People started coming out of their houses to see what the noise was. When they saw Farid and his boys they went back inside. But then the papa came out and said for Farid to stop or someone would call the jacks. So in the end we all went back to the barbecue and the women were all over Rafi like they always were, even Danielle was holding his chin up with her hand and dabbing this ointment stuff on his face.

  That Rafi, I’m telling you. He can do anything and as far as women go, nothing he does do is really wrong. You tell me if that’s a good thing for a man.

  DAY SIX

  Bec arrived early and waited outside the courts, watching various groups assemble along the loggia. The Habib parents were there with one of their daughters and Danielle Dwyer, talking loudly. Lebanese people were always excited about something, in Bec’s experience, as though they didn’t have as much time as everyone else.

  ‘Done your reading over the weekend, Bec?’ She turned, saw Mabey had arrived, Thomson a few steps behind.

  ‘It wasn’t much of a handover, ma’am.’

  ‘Please call me Karen. We’re partners in this trial.’

  As though she could make it true just by saying it.

  ‘I—’

  ‘Is there a problem? Do I have to make a phone call?’

  ‘No.’

  Mabey looked impressive as always, tall and with an expensive haircut, perfect makeup and that gaze suggesting she understood everything. Wherever that came from, Bec wanted some of it. Wondered how long she’d have to wait.

  The barrister said, ‘I was seriously pissed off when Sergeant Knight announced he was leaving us. Martin and I have put a lot of effort into this case.’

  Like being back in school.

  ‘One of the—’

  ‘I’m told by Russell you’re on top of every detail, we can put you in the box to answer further questions? The defence has agreed to this, despite your presence in court so far.’

  One of the many things Knight had forgotten to mention. Bec gulped. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Brian Harris is up after morning tea. When it’s your turn, take us through the car details. Try to keep it simple. Stay outside till then.’

  She swung around in a swirl of robes and strode off. There had been a flicker of humour there, mixed with the toughness. Some private joke.

  Bec’s teacher Miss Peach had liked to tell the class that private jokes were not funny. That had stopped a lot of giggling, although it was not the force of her argument that did so but the strong sense that Miss Peach carried within her deep reserves of potential violence. Bec couldn’t recall any actual incidents at this remove, but the belief had been widespread. Miss Peach had not been happy, you could see that in her face too, but she had been effective.

  Bec took a seat and suddenly the loggia was empty, except for John Habib, down the other end playing games on his mobile phone. Presumably he was to give evidence too. For an hour she sat on the bench, tense in case Thomson came rushing out to demand a piece of information she might not be able to give him. Gradually she began to feel bored, thought about the investigation, and the leads she would have pursued had she been in charge. Knight had described them as dead ends, but Knight was lazy. Fat and lazy.

  One lead was Teller’s girlfriend, Sharon Zames. Last year’s interview had been frustrating, leaving a strong sense of things unsaid. Bec would have called her back, but Knight had said no, cut their losses.

  ‘In Homicide we can chase every rabbit down every hole. But just because we can doesn’t mean we always do.’

  Sometimes during Beldin he crossed the line between teaching and patronising, and she hadn’t worked out how to deal with this.

  Harris arrived, standing in front of her on the flagstones. He was breathing heavily as though he’d run all the way from Parramatta. ‘What’s this with fucking Russell, gone to Adelaide?’

  You think the bosses talk to each other, always know more than you. But not always.

  ‘He—’

  ‘Fucking hell’s that all about? He’s the OIC for Christ’s sake.’

  As though he couldn’t just call Knight and ask him. She went to rise, but Harris was standing so close this was not feasible, unless she wanted to push him away.

  Bec let him rant. You are not the problem, Chevon had once told her after she’d been in a fight at school, had stepped in to help someone and got trounced. The principal had blamed Bec for the fight instead of the bullies, and she’d been shattered. You are not the problem. It was a bit of advice her mother had received after an intervention from DOCS, who had taken away Bec’s brothers for a while and forced Chevon to attend counselling. Much of it had gone over her head, but she’d remembered the bits that seemed to offer potential excuses for her own flaws.

  ‘You’re not listening, are you?’ Harris said.

  There were beads of sweat on his forehead, and she saw his anger was irrational, felt a twinge of interest. It must have shown in her eyes.

  He blinked and suddenly calmed down. ‘Yeah. I do go on. My brother died of a heroin overdose, back in the nineties.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Don’t be sorry.’ She could see it was a prepared response, for when he judged it necessary to explain who he was. Bec felt mildly excited, as she always did when she’d just worked something out.

  Harris told her the story, of the shattered parents, the increasing criminal activity, the decline into a state of chaos where death might come by any day. It was a familiar story: at heart, every junkie’s story was the same.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘enough of me. How’s it going?’

  ‘There’s a photo in the brief that’s mislabelled.’

  She hadn’t intended to say that.

  ‘Fuck! What?’

  Bec told him about the Marsden photo, repeated what Knight had said. Thought she’d put it out of her mind, but here it was.

  Harris looked concerned. ‘So it got through the committal?’ She nodded. ‘Knight’s in the shit if this gets out. Could mean his job.’

  ‘I didn’t—’

  ‘Poor Russ, still a sergeant. He’s getting old, isn’t he?’

  ‘Well—’

  ‘Lose his super and everything. Sad way to end your life.’

  She hadn’t thought of it like that.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It’s just a street, isn’t it? Just a few hundred metres? No one’s saying Marsden made it up?’

  ‘No—’

  ‘Doesn’t go to the fact the two men did meet?’

  ‘No . . .’

  He was giving her the full force of his personality now, wide eyes and big smile, his freckled face engaging. She felt flattered by the attention, wanted very much for him to respect her. Later her mind would start to work again, she knew, but traces of this seduction would still be there, like embers.

/>   He said, ‘Let me check it out, okay? I’ll talk to Marsden. You know what the defence would do with this, drive a truck through the case. We don’t want this piece of shit back on the streets, do we, just because of a tiny mistake in the paperwork? If it is a mistake.’

  ‘No.’ She didn’t want that.

  ‘Let me deal with it. Lot on your plate.’

  More than he knew. Leanne Walton had called about Baby Bethane. Turned out there had indeed been some details of Gary Stern’s psychiatric history on the system. Tony Morrow was saying it had been Bec’s job to check and she’d missed them.

  ‘It was his op,’ Bec told the inspector.

  ‘It was indeed. And he’s saying he asked you to do the check and you told him Stern was clear.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘It’s not a big deal, Bec, for you. For Tony it might be a major issue, heading into civilian life with a finding like that.’

  Beck had always thought Walton terse but straight. That changed now.

  ‘It’s what happened, ma’am. That to me is the pertinent fact.’

  ‘You don’t think it might be pertinent to assist a fellow officer here?’

  She’d never been shot, but it might feel something like this. She said, ‘Are you and Tony married?’

  ‘Not appreciated, Officer. And for the record, not true.’

  Ferguson had asked for the jury to be sent out so they could have a voir dire. He was arguing with the judge over something a witness had said, just bread and butter stuff to impress his clients. Andrew lacked panache, but he had persistence. Karen disagreed and sat down, the judge sighed and consulted his books, and people in the public gallery began to murmur to each other. Leaning towards her, Ferguson whispered, ‘You’re still hopeless on the law of evidence, aren’t you Kar? Jesus you’re a waste of space, it’s a fucking disgrace you got silk.’

  ‘You’re still dickless, Andrew,’ she murmured. It was the first time she’d sledged in years. ‘Some of the girls who worked in your chambers, word gets around. Ever see other barristers looking at your cock in the toilets?’

  He smiled companionably. ‘Case is falling over, lost your OIC. That girl doesn’t have a clue.’

  The judge said, ‘If you’re both ready?’

  Actually Karen liked Bec Ralston, she didn’t quite know why. The young detective was smart and conscientious, even if not a strategic thinker. She had an odd way of speaking, slightly formal and with some unusual vocabulary. Referred to people as citizens, used big words—pertinacity, translucent—not always accurately, although she knew the difference between a colonnade and a loggia. Karen liked people who were a bit different.

  Mainly they talked about the trial, Karen explaining what had gone on inside the court each time she came out. Ralston was still incensed the judge had ruled that Imad’s phone call, the one where he told Farid that Jason Teller had to die, could not be presented.

  ‘It shows he’s guilty!’

  ‘Maybe, or not. It’s what is known as probative but also prejudicial. A lot of jurors, if they heard the recording, they’d convict on the spot. Would that be fair?’

  ‘These guys are friggin’ gangsters.’

  ‘Language, Detective. On the bright side, I’d say we can rely on the jury knowing that already.’

  ‘Yeah, but it’s . . . absurd.’

  Karen smiled with the superiority of one who has long ago accepted the necessary compromises. ‘There is no law against absurdity.’

  Later, Ralston came back to it, to the language. It touched Karen’s heart that the young cop cared about the words.

  ‘Voir dire. Voir means to see, doesn’t it? So why’s it called that when you folk argue about what the jury can hear, to see, to say?’

  ‘You did French at school?’

  ‘We had French in Dubbo.’

  ‘You went to school in Dubbo?’

  ‘Well, folk called it a school.’

  ‘This voir is from Anglo-Norman French, it means truth.’

  You go to university, you learn things.

  Ralston said, ‘So let me get this right—of all the names in the world lawyers could have picked to describe what happens when the jury’s out, they chose to call it to speak the truth?’

  ‘Correct.’

  ‘So what do they speak when the jury’s in?’

  Another time they talked about the bar, Karen showing off just a little. ‘Crown prosecutors resent defence counsel, because Crowns only earn three times the average wage, even if we do have tenure. A good defence barrister will earn several times that, you might think they’d be happy. But they resent the judges. The judges don’t have to scramble for work and they have pensions. Plus, they control the courtroom, and a man on a million a year doesn’t like anyone telling him what to do.’

  ‘The judges should be happy?’ Bec said.

  ‘They’re the worst. They’ve all taken a big pay cut to go to the bench, they resent the fact they have to get by on four hundred a year. Do you have any idea what it costs to keep a good cellar these days?’

  ‘Sounds like one big happy family.’

  ‘One big dysfunctional family,’ Karen said, nodding. ‘Dysfunctional families are interesting because despite their differences, what unites them is stronger than what keeps them apart. The law’s like that.’

  ‘Money, you mean.’

  ‘Do you always reduce everything to the lowest common denominator?’

  ‘Usually it works.’

  After a while Karen could no longer restrain herself. ‘I wonder if I might ask you a favour?’ It was morning tea and they were standing in a patch of shade in Queens Square, near the large statue of the late monarch.

  ‘Yes.’

  She would never have asked Knight. He would have used it in some way later, even if just to imply he knew her better than he did. Which would have been intolerable.

  ‘I have a son from a previous marriage, his name is Ian Hirst. A few months ago, he was shot in the leg in a park at Bankstown. Rouse Park.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  Ralston stood staring at her politely, holding her cardboard cup. Must be wondering what this was all about, but there was no change in her expression at all. She would be about thirty, only seven years older than Ian.

  ‘The local police told me it was a random shooting from a car.’

  ‘That would make your son very unlucky.’

  ‘Yes. He is.’ She felt her face warming. ‘Ian’s twenty-three and he’s used drugs.’ Ralston nodded, drank some more coffee. ‘It was eleven at night.’

  Got the stare from Ralston, the cop stare. ‘I assume he doesn’t live out there?’

  She rushed on. ‘Too many drugs. He also does graffiti. Art. He’d arranged to meet someone to talk about a project, a wall I suppose, something they were going to do together. He mentioned a building site, maybe near the railway line.’

  ‘Is he okay?’

  ‘Fleshy part of the thigh, they say it’ll be a full recovery.’

  ‘So—’

  ‘He won’t talk about it. He left home a long time ago, dropped out of uni. We, ah, we don’t talk that much.’

  For a moment she felt herself slipping. Ralston reached out and squeezed her arm. It was a most inappropriate action and this brought her back. She stared at the hand dumbly, until Ralston withdrew it and said, ‘How can I help?’

  Like she was a servant, a faithful servant. Trustworthy. ‘I want to know what happened.’

  ‘Why?’

  A good question. The right question. She was glad Ralston was intelligent. ‘He used to take heroin, we tried to help him, thought he was clean. If he’s back on drugs, maybe we can help him again. But we never see him now, so we just don’t know. Don’t know where he lives.’

  ‘The local—’

  ‘The crime manager at Bankstown’s a man named Larry Moss. He treated me like an idiot.’

  ‘I don’t know that he’d lie though, not to the wife of the attorney—’
>
  ‘I didn’t tell him that. We can’t—Ian can’t be linked to Stephen. There’s politics between him and Chris Byrne.’ Ralston looked blank and Karen saw she had no idea of the government’s power relationships. Probably didn’t even read the paper. ‘Your minister. But I thought from what I knew of you, you’re not political.’ She saw the detective was flattered. ‘If you could keep it quiet, please, and not tell anyone . . .’ She didn’t want to appear needy; already the conversation was causing her considerable pain. How much better Stephen would have handled something like this.

  Ralston was staring at the old law school building down the road, lost in thought. That was the other thing that attracted Karen to her: she was someone who would take responsibility for things. Eventually she looked back.

  ‘Okay.’

  Actually Karen would have liked more, more words. But that was one of the things with all this, the silence. Hardly anyone spoke about what was happening to Ian, not even Stephen or her friends. Her life was still filled with talk, but increasingly it lacked meaning. It was as though the proportion of oxygen in the air she breathed was diminishing.

  Drug Squad, Police Headquarters, Parramatta

  After ten days, Beldin moved to the Police Centre in Surry Hills. On the first morning Bec walked around the block, in awe of its concrete ugliness. It was a building that would withstand riots, but provoke them too. When she reached her desk, Knight called her into his office, said they were going to visit Harris: ‘Fresh air. Do you good. Plus, I hate driving.’

  She’d settled into the database job. There’d been hope, after she found the money in Teller’s flat, that she’d be given a more interesting role. Hope had died.

  The sergeant listened to the radio as they drove, shock jock talkback, people finding comfort in anger. She wondered what he took from this but he did not comment. Only when the towers of Parramatta appeared through the haze did he begin to speak. Said he’d worked with Harris in the 1980s as a junior detective, they’d been close. Harris had been a fine officer, straight as an arrow. ‘Brown-bagger.’