Drive By

by Michael Duffy

  ‘Bastards! Judge has to give us an adjournment, previously undisclosed alibi.’

  Mabey had just talked her through this. ‘Crown decided not to request that. Thinks the judge would reject it anyway, because the story’s not really an alibi. Habib admits he was there, just about. Plus, if we got a few days and couldn’t disprove it, bad look for the jury.’

  ‘Down to you then. You’ll have to work over the weekend.’

  Of course. But she’d hoped he’d have some ideas of his own. ‘Nat—’

  ‘I’m sorry but that’s the way it is. With Homicide we don’t keep regular hours. You’re not in a police station now.’

  Vella was a moron. You assumed people would be smarter the higher up the hierarchy they were, but apparently not.

  ‘Sir.’

  ‘Knight should have been here. He told me there was a drama in Adelaide, but that’s not what I’ve heard. I intend getting to the bottom of this.’

  ‘I thought it was a crisis with—’

  ‘Don’t you worry, mate. Let me handle that side of it, it’s what they pay me for. You just concentrate on the trial. Had any more thoughts about that Baby Bethane business?’

  She hung up.

  Harris was down the other end of the loggia, muttering into a phone. When Mabey finally emerged she said, ‘Drink.’ Bec looked at her watch. ‘Not a question.’

  Harris was still on his call as they walked, a few steps behind them.

  Bec said, ‘Fuck—’

  ‘Not so much anger on display. Unladylike.’

  ‘But still—’

  ‘Test of character, Bec.’

  At the bar Mabey ordered, explained they’d asked Soufi for a copy of the medical certificate, been refused. On his client’s instructions. Thomson was back at the office, seeing if anything could be done to force the Habibs to provide the certificate now, or at least reveal Aunt Dalia’s full name and contact details.

  ‘What about the mother’s location?’ said Bec.

  ‘That too.’

  ‘We’ve got their phones off, if they call her we might get lucky.’

  ‘They won’t.’

  ‘How’s the cold?’

  Mabey smiled modestly, drank and grew serious. ‘Aunt Dalia’s a good story, the jury’s half-convinced. Up to you now.’ They looked at Harris, who had his back to them, still on the phone. ‘He likes to win.’

  ‘I like to win.’

  ‘They like it more than us, dear. Most of us.’

  ‘You like it too.’

  Mabey prodded at a piece of lemon floating in her drink; she had long fingernails. ‘I was a state champion tennis player at school, university.’

  Bec said, ‘Regional runners-up, netball. Not bad for Dubbo High. Plus, black belt taekwondo.’

  Mabey nodded politely. It had been the same after Bec had told her about meeting Ian last weekend: she used politeness to disconnect. ‘So, here we are.’

  ‘How’s Ian?’

  ‘No developments.’ She emptied her glass. ‘Your shout.’

  When Bec got back with the drinks, mineral water for herself, Harris was off the phone. ‘Edi’s interview at the Commission confirms what Habib said in the box.’

  ‘Don’t tell me,’ said Mabey. ‘He admits to everything he needs to in order to back up Rafiq’s story, but not one thing more.’

  ‘The calibration is perfect.’ His face was red, the freckles almost invisible. The extent of his emotion, like his presence here now, was unexpected. He had always been in elliptical orbit around this case, sometimes veering in close.

  Bec wanted him to go. She said, ‘I guess you’ll be getting back. Must have a lot of other stuff to do.’

  ‘A raid up the coast on the weekend, it’s my son’s birthday.’ Shook his head sorrowfully at the pressures of command.

  ‘We need to know what he was really up to with Teller, talk with his friends.’

  Harris scowled. ‘The case is still strong.’

  ‘You reckon?’

  Mabey said nothing, watching them with private amusement. Bec felt herself growing warm, pushed it down. Test of character.

  Harris said, ‘Don’t try to be clever. Just keep steady and we’ll pull this off. Knight’s got it right on track, do not be rattled by this bullshit story.’

  ‘Okay. I’ll go over it on the weekend. See if—’ ‘Beric’s gone. Zames has disappeared. Don’t worry about them.’

  Bec said nothing: she didn’t think they’d worried enough about Zames a year ago. Knight had said after they took her statement, ‘Gym bunny. Not one of nature’s thinkers.’

  Bec had liked her anyway, saw innocent recklessness held under control. Thought she was vulnerable, worth working on. Knight hadn’t agreed.

  Harris said, ‘The jury aren’t stupid. Like everyone, they’re sick of all the shootings in this city. They must realise whatever the reason Habib was there, it had to be him that did the murder. No one else had motive.’

  Mabey finished her drink and put the glass on the table with an air of finality. She said, ‘A prosecution case is like a glass of water you want the jury to drink at the end of the trial. The defence doesn’t have to make it go away—all they have to do is muddy it.’ To Bec: ‘Good luck.’

  Harris watched her retreating back with fury. Bec saw he thought Mabey wasn’t taking the trial seriously enough. To a large extent she agreed, and suddenly felt close to Harris, saw the gap between the silk and themselves. Big distance in education, income, even humour. Barristers laughed at things that weren’t funny. Still, Harris shouldn’t be so angry. Not good for the heart.

  ‘She’s preparing herself for defeat,’ he said.

  Bec hadn’t thought of that. She wondered whether to tell him about Ian, decided he wouldn’t care and pushed the mineral water away. ‘Got to go.’

  He clapped her on the back. ‘You okay? Not going to give up?’

  ‘Semper fi.’

  She’d doubted Rafiq’s guilt, but with this alibi she was no longer sure. It was so obviously a fabrication. Maybe her instincts had been wrong from the start, and she felt the need to test this, if necessary compensate for it.

  ‘Keep Knight in the loop, okay?’ Harris called as she went to leave. ‘He’s still the boss.’

  But Knight was unhelpful, loop-wise. ‘I do hate drugs,’ he said when she rang. ‘Most homicide cases, you pin things down, one fact after another. With drugs, anything is possible.’ He was wandering again.

  ‘Still, you thought you had enough to charge Rafiq Habib,’ Bec reminded him.

  ‘A useful first step.’

  ‘Can I just mention, often I don’t understand what you’re saying to me.’

  ‘You need to try harder.’

  Again that sense of something just out of reach. Of sight. ‘How’s the crisis down there?’

  ‘Don’t sulk. And stick to the point. This is your chance to do something good. It’s too late for me, maybe you can do it.’

  ‘I don’t have a frigging clue what you’re talking about.’

  ‘You’re more intelligent than you allow yourself to accept. Unusual, that. Any luck with the plastics?’

  ‘But—’

  ‘The case, Bec. Let’s talk about the case.’

  She wanted to understand him but her inexperience and ignorance prevented this. Allied to his own strange behaviour. She could walk away, of course, but there was something that kept her engaged with him. He sensed that and was using it.

  They ran over the Feds and the Beirut angle. He said, ‘One thing I can do is put some pressure on them in Beirut. That’s got to be worth something.’

  ‘Why can’t—’

  ‘It’s going to be a long weekend for you, isn’t it? I guess you’ll be going over the details of the case.’

  Bec pushed her confusion about Knight into a mental cupboard and closed the door. ‘I wouldn’t be surprised.’

  After she hung up she walked through Hyde Park, seeking ideas, but her mind was cloudy.
The previous night the man from Dubbo had come back. It wasn’t a dream; it came as she lay awake around midnight, listening to the screams of a woman somewhere outside, wondering if she should get up and go out, or call the locals. But there were often noises in the distance here, and these ones soon stopped.

  She drifted in and out of sleep. The man came with her, he was lying in the lounge room of their house and he was alive, alive but dying, choking on something and unable to move. A bottle lay nearby and Bec knew it was a vodka bottle and it was empty, although she did not know how she knew this. Perhaps it was a story, and she could shape it. Tentatively she tried to reject the picture but it refused to leave, and the man continued to choke on the floor in the semi-darkness, a surge of vomit sliding out of his mouth now. His nostrils too.

  It was like a film and she expected her young self to go call her mother; already she was wondering where Chevon was, and figured she must be in her room, drunk, perhaps with a man, or maybe this was the man and they’d become separated during their long night’s alcoholic journey. But it was all right because Bec was not drunk and could be relied on, was relied on all the time by the family, and now here she was, able to act. But nothing happened, she just sat and watched, and now she tried to see why, but all she could see was his face. At that point the image went away. She sat up in bed and wondered why she hadn’t acted, at least called her mother.

  Sometimes you have to be humble, forget about finding the answer. You need to accept that you’re still searching for the right question. It came to her that this is where folk often go wrong, without knowing it.

  A test of character.

  part 3

  going underground

  Bec left Hyde Park where it hit Liverpool Street and headed downhill to the Police Centre. Thomson called to say Mabey would be back in court at three, to ask the judge to direct the Habibs to hand over the medical certificate. Bec’s presence would not be required.

  ‘Sounds good,’ she said.

  ‘Karen said to say we’re still relying on you.’

  But she could see no way forward—which was exactly how Andrew Ferguson and the Habibs had designed it. This she resented deeply.

  Inside the building, she got on to a computer and checked for Steve Beric. There was no new trace of him. Called the number they had for Sharon Zames in Melbourne and then her mobile: both disconnected. Tried the White Pages for Zames in Victoria, got nothing. Leaned back in the chair and checked her mobile for missed calls from Beirut, or at least Canberra, but the screen was empty. Breathed deep and rang Jackson’s, the gym at Bondi Beach where Zames had been working when Teller was killed; the place Harris said she’d left almost a year ago. The woman who answered said, ‘Hang on, I’ll get her for you.’

  It was a short conversation. Bec recognised the voice, slightly breathy, and the tone of expectancy: one of those women who spend their lives waiting for something to happen. Like Chevon. Over this lay caution, and a lack of enthusiasm for the meeting Bec was proposing. But she pushed and Zames gave in. This was curious. After the call, Bec went on to e@gle.i and read Zames’s statement, looked to see what follow-up work had been done.

  All this took time. Mabey called at four to say the judge had refused to make the order she’d requested. She asked Bec what she was doing over the weekend, and when Bec told her she’d be reviewing the case said, ‘Sounds like you don’t have any ideas.’

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘You’ve talked to Knight?’

  ‘He has no ideas either.’

  ‘The sergeant speaks highly of you. He said—implied—you were an original thinker.’

  ‘In our job that’s not a compliment. Necessarily.’

  ‘Follow your heart, Bec.’

  Bec wondered if she was calling from a bar. You can be old, and successful, without knowing a great deal about the world.

  That evening she waited on the broad footpath along Campbell Parade, standing back from the flood of people arriving for a Friday night drink or three. The meeting would be futile, almost certainly, but she had no other ideas. The evening air was hot and salty, and she thought about ice, not the drug but frozen water, what Sydney had been like before it was invented. Often you had a sea breeze at night on the coast, but not now.

  The entrance to Jackson’s was nondescript, suggesting they didn’t need passing trade. Bec watched the occasional traffic with interest, young men with big necks, determined young women with bounce. None of them looked like they needed to go to the gym. Blonde hair was popular with both genders, not a great deal of ethnicity on display. It was a place an upwardly mobile Leb like Sam Deeb might enjoy, and the other clients would welcome his presence among them, something to mention on the trading floor the next day. Naughty but nice.

  Zames emerged forcefully, almost pushing her way through the heavy air, lugging a big sports bag. Her face, illuminated briefly by the strong light over the door, looked a little worn. She was still attractive—a tight grey sleeveless top helped with that, as did the lycra shorts. She saw Bec immediately and cut through the crowd, they exchanged greetings. There was a perfunctory warmth in Zames’s voice that went with the professional smile.

  She started to walk, led Bec to a crossing where they went over to the ocean side of the road, headed north. She didn’t look happy, the lines on her face hadn’t come just from too much sun. Bec wondered how close she’d been to Teller, how badly his death had affected her. She’d looked better last year, at the interview.

  ‘How’s the trial going?’ Zames said.

  ‘You ever thought about coming along?’

  ‘I’ve just got my life together again. It’d bring it all back.’

  Bec described Rafiq’s story about Beirut.

  ‘So the little shit might get off?’

  ‘How long were Jason and you together?’

  ‘Do I need a lawyer?’

  Zames stopped and put her bag down, leaned back against the low concrete wall. The two women stared at each other for a while, Zames’s jaws moving on some gum.

  Bec said, ‘I need to ask you about Jason’s relationship with Rafiq Habib, that’s all. You decide if you need a lawyer.’

  ‘It’s just, I’ve heard the police sometimes try to trick witnesses into not calling a lawyer, when really they ought to.’

  ‘Is that what they do?’

  They smiled just a little at the same time. Zames pushed hair over one ear. ‘I didn’t know anything about Habib, Jason didn’t tell me about business.’

  ‘Did you ever stop working at Jackson’s?’ asked Bec.

  ‘A few weeks, went back to Melbourne after I saw you last. I was terrified.’

  ‘What of?’

  ‘Ah, gee. Nothing in particular. I just needed some time to myself, try to work out what had happened. Not that I did. I had a few weeks off, came back. They were good about it.’

  ‘Were you—’

  ‘I don’t want to talk to you, Mrs Policeman. Like I said on the phone, I’ve moved on and it’s not going to help me get over this. I know absolutely nothing about Jason’s business or why he was killed.’

  But she didn’t move, leaned back further, looked up and down the road.

  Bec thought about the trial and felt the panic again. Fucking Knight. It was as though the Crown case was a plane and it had exploded, bodies and pieces of luggage, food trays, flying through the air. She gripped the concrete wall and took a deep breath of salt air.

  ‘Are you all right, Mrs Policeman?’

  ‘It’s Ms.’

  ‘I figured that.’

  ‘And it should be Policewoman, strictly speaking.’

  ‘I’ll try to remember.’

  Zames’s grin was constant now, and it was an attractive grin.

  ‘Last year you said you were told Jason was dead by a friend, Sally-Anne someone. What’s her surname?’ Zames kept chewing. ‘If you won’t tell me, we’ll subpoena you. At the time you went up to Jason’s flat and took the safe, there’d been
no media, no witnesses to the shooting, no one knew—’

  ‘Except the cops.’

  ‘So how did you know? That’s the question.’

  ‘It’s a good question.’

  ‘What’s the answer?’

  ‘Sally-Anne Simpson had a boyfriend in the job, someone Barnes. I think you already know that, so why are you pretending you don’t?’

  According to e@gle.i, the Drug Squad had told them about Sergeant Bob Barnes. Beldin had taken a statement from him. Bec had called him this afternoon, and he agreed he’d told Simpson the information. But as she had gone over the rest of his statement with him, he was wrong about several important details. They were pretty important details: he said he first met Simpson six months earlier, and at a twenty-first instead of a wedding. Men were not good on such matters, Bec knew. But still, it was not reassuring.

  She thought about the case tumbling through the sky. Perhaps it was necessary to pull the thing to pieces and reconstruct it, see if it still flew. She didn’t like the conversation she’d had with Barnes, or the fact the druggies had fed him to Beldin in the first place. And that made her think more about Harris’s interest in the case. Didn’t like the fact Zames had used the cop phrase ‘the job’.

  For about a minute she looked at the beach and thought about that. She said, ‘Can I ask you a personal question?’

  ‘You can always ask.’

  ‘Was Jason on witness protection?’

  Zames stepped back, as though struck. Bec watched closely to see what would happen next. Push people, it was what cops did.

  ‘Get fucked.’

  There’d been a pause, though. Bec said, ‘Just a thought . . .’

  Zames picked up her bag and jabbed her forefinger at Bec, saying what she could do with her filthy and dangerous suspicions.

  Bec said, ‘It’s just us—’

  One jab made contact and the force of it was surprising, like being tapped by an angry man.

  ‘Take my card,’ she said quickly, pulling one out. ‘If you think of anything else—’

  Zames slapped her hand hard, and the card flew. ‘I hope you’ll be fucking careful what you say to other people, Detective Constable. You could get a girl into a shitload of trouble spreading rumours. Or is that the idea?’