‘With respect,’ said Sutherland. ‘For forty years officers of this department carried guns. Never once fired a shot.’
‘So you’re not going to miss them,’ said Wilson.
‘Good theory,’ said Sutherland. ‘Try standing on a rock platform, facing off some desperado with several grand of illegal ab in one hand and a diving knife in the other, nobody around for miles. Mere fact he knows you’re armed can be a big help.’
Bunting took a deep breath and lurched into the conversation, obliged to support the decision of the minister, a fellow Nat. ‘But you can call in the police, right?’
‘True,’ said Sutherland. ‘Subject to operational availability.’
San Remo was far behind us, long vanished over the horizon. The next settlement on the coast, Inverloch, was fifty kilometres to the east. Five hundred metres away, the southern edge of the Australian continent was a line of abraded bluffs, sandstone cliffs rising to a wind-swept hinterland.
‘And where exactly are the nearest police?’ I asked.
‘Wonthaggi,’ said Sutherland.
Wonthaggi was somewhere inland. A three-cop town. Definitely no helicopter.
‘Main strategy, deterrence. Patrolling. Maintaining a presence. Surveillance. Avoid confrontation until we’ve got full control of the situation.’
Sutherland resumed control of the helm and steered the launch closer inshore. The tide washed across a platform of pitted rock that extended outwards from the base of the cliffs, rising and falling like the breathing of some vast living creature.
We rounded a stubby headland and Sutherland dropped the motor into neutral, letting us drift across the mouth of a sheltered cove with a half-moon beach of crushed shells.
A boat was moored in the cove, a chunky beige-coloured craft, a box sitting on two fibreglass hulls. A wiry type in shorts, tennis shoes and a woollen sweater was emptying a bucket over the side. Fiftyish, grizzled, a short ponytail sticking out the back of his peaked cap. As soon as he saw us, he grabbed a hose that was running into the water and gave it a solid jerk.
‘Shark-cat, twin 200-horsepower Yamaha outboards.’ Sutherland raised binoculars. ‘Registration number concealed with duct tape.’
It was about a hundred metres away. Bunting craned for a view. Wilson firmed his jaw, a representative of law and order. I wondered what the hell I was doing there.
A figure in a hooded wetsuit surfaced beside the shark-cat. He hurried aboard, hauling the hose up behind him. Ponytail was firing up the Yamahas.
As the shark-cat began to move, Sutherland opened the throttle.
As it gathered momentum, the shark-cat rose on hydroplanes, skimming the water. It raced for the far side of the cove, a Formula One shoebox.
The hooded diver ducked under the canopy, his shoulders hunched, no more than a black shape. Ponytail glanced back over his shoulder, his lugubrious weather-seamed face clearly visible. When the young DNR crewman emerged from the cabin with a video camera, he pulled down the bill of his hat and flipped us the bird.
We gave chase, heading to intercept. The shark-cat hugged the shore, taking advantage of its shallow draft. Sutherland swung the launch into deeper water, steering a curved course. As we chopped at the swell, the launch tilted and rocked. So did my stomach.
Whoah, I thought. Pass. Not today, thanks. Enough already. A surge of nausea lapped at my Plimsoll line, tasting of curdled mayonnaise and masticated crustacean. I wished I was anywhere else, as long as it wasn’t moving.
Lunch wanted out. And it got what it wanted. A fountain of hot lava, it hurtled upwards. I lunged for the side and barfed into the briny. I retched again. Sour milk and corn flakes, this time.
Then, without warning, a stream of berley erupted from Dudley Wilson’s mouth and hit Alan Bunting in the face. This was not how the Nats usually spoke to each other, except at woolshed dances. Aghast, Bunting staggered backwards, gagging. At that moment, the deck tilted as the launch banked, turning to intercept the shark-cat. Bunting, struggling to find his footing, skidded on Wilson’s mess and toppled overboard.
He hit the water with a splash, then vanished in the churn of our wake. Wilson leaned over the side and finished parking the tiger. Bunting bobbed to the surface and raised an arm, as if attempting to hail a cab.
Sutherland was already on the case. The launch slewed around, circling back. My head throbbed and a bilious taste filled my mouth. Wilson wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, squared his jaw and resumed his Captain Queeg stance, as though nothing had happened. The deckie reached with a gaff and hooked Bunting as we came around. In short order, he was being manhandled up the stern ladder like a disconsolate dugong.
Wilson tried to help, but Bunting wasn’t having it. ‘B-back off,’ he hyperventilated, snatching back his arm. His teeth were chattering and torrents streamed from his ruined suit and pooled around his sodden brogues. Unbuckling his life-vest with trembling fingers, he let the crewman lead him down into the cabin. ‘Th-thanks, m-mate,’ he said. ‘Wh-what’s your name?’
‘Ian. Mind the step.’
The shark-cat was rounding the point, running for open water. ‘That’s torn it,’ said Sutherland, his binoculars trained on the mocking V of its wake. ‘Never get near them now.’
‘But can’t you radio…’ started Wilson.
Sutherland lowered the field glasses. ‘No point, pace they’re travelling,’ he said through clenched teeth. ‘Didn’t even get a chance to hail them. So if your stomach is now settled, Mr Wilson, I suggest you wait below while we try to find out what our thieving friends were up to.’ He turned to me. ‘You too.’
I followed Wilson down into the tiny cabin. Alan Bunting was already occupying most of the space. Stripped to his jocks, he towelled his pudgy, goose-pimpled flesh with ill-concealed irritation. The deckie, Ian, handed him a fluorescent orange wetsuit. ‘This’ll keep you warm until we get back.’
Bunting squeezed into it, looking daggers at Wilson. ‘You might as well have pushed me,’ he said.
‘You’ve had a nasty shock,’ said Wilson. ‘But I hope you’re not suggesting it was my fault.’
‘You spewed in my face.’
‘Not deliberately,’ said Wilson. ‘You’re just not used to boats, that’s all. No reason to be embarrassed.’
‘Embarrassed?’ He looked like a giant orange gum-drop.
I wedged myself into a seat and buried my face in my hands. I needed to wash out my mouth, but didn’t dare move for fear of another up-chuck. The vibrations of the engine came up through the seat, compounding the movement of the boat. Bunting and Wilson bickered. Misery enveloped me.
We returned to the place where the shark-cat was parked when we first spotted it. Sutherland cut the engine and dropped anchor. Ian changed into a wetsuit and went over the side, snorkelled and flippered. He made a slow circuit, occasionally disappearing below the surface. When he climbed back aboard, he held up an abalone shell. The light caught its opalescent interior.
He and Sutherland conferred in an undertone at the stern, then Sutherland stuck his head into the cabin. ‘How you feeling?’ he asked Alan Bunting.
Bunting made a brave face. ‘Sorry about this,’ he said.
Sutherland nodded, then handed the crusted shell to Wilson. ‘Hundreds of these down there. They were shucking them on board, probably stashing the meat in hidden compartments. Couple of grand’s worth, just here. At it since dawn, different spots. Day’s take, before we interrupted them, maybe ten thousand dollars.’
Wilson examined the palm-sized shell gravely, as if appraising an antique.
‘Pity we had to abort before we IDed them,’ said Sutherland. ‘Top it off, I’ll be carpeted for letting you lot come along.’
Wilson tried to hand back the shell.
‘Keep it,’ said Sutherland. ‘Souvenir. Best get you back to San Remo ASAP.’
After we’d been under way for ten minutes, sipping sugary instant coffee from the launch thermos, Wilson broke our self-imp
osed silence. ‘When this gets around, we’ll be a laughing stock,’ he said. ‘Throwing up. Falling overboard.’
I slowly raised my head. ‘Stuffing up a fisheries enforcement operation,’ I croaked. ‘The press are going to love it. Given any thought to your resignation letter, Mr Coastal Policy Chairman?’
Wilson narrowed his eyes and looked me over closely. ‘This Sutherland.’ He jerked his thumb upwards. ‘You want him to lose his job?’
‘The cuts you’ve got in mind,’ I said. ‘He’ll probably lose it anyway.’
Wilson leaned forward and stuck his face in mine. For an awful moment, I could see the stream of spew flying from his rubbery gob. Worse, I could smell it. I flinched and turned away. Wilson gave a satisfied grunt and, dipping out of the cabin door, stood at the console talking to Sutherland.
‘I don’t think it’s right,’ whined Alan Bunting. ‘Trying to make political capital out of a situation like this. I’ll have to resign from the panel, too. And it wasn’t my fault. If anyone’s the injured party, I am.’
I didn’t know where to begin to answer that one, so I didn’t try. They mustn’t have offered Politics 101 at agricultural college.
Wilson returned. ‘He wants to talk to you,’ he said.
I found Sutherland seated at the wheel, driving towards the low-slung sun, surveying the way ahead through oversized Sunaroids. ‘Beautiful, isn’t it?’ he said.
I took a deep, stomach-settling breath of air and absorbed the view. It swept across a burnished sea from weathered sandstone cliffs at our starboard to pink-edged billows of cloud on the southern horizon. ‘Magnificent,’ I agreed.
‘Like your job, Mr Whelan?’ said Sutherland. ‘Think it’s worth doing?’
‘Sometimes,’ I said.
Sutherland tilted his head back, master of all he surveyed. ‘Love mine,’ he said. ‘Pretty good at it too I reckon, all things considered. Less than fifty of us fish dogs, you know. More than seventeen hundred kilometres of coastline.’
‘You’ve done a deal with Wilson,’ I said. ‘And I’m the fly in the ointment.’
Sutherland shrugged. ‘What if that Bunting bloke had drowned?’
‘No chance of that,’ I said. ‘Too buoyant. Completely empty head.’
‘Tell that to the committee of enquiry, just before they transfer me to shore patrol ticketing dog owners for crapping on the beach. Thought you might understand. Being Labor.’
I heaved a defeated sigh. ‘Yeah, all right,’ I said. ‘None of this happened. And if it did, I didn’t see it. Just get me back on dry land pronto, okay?’
The light was fading when we cruised into the San Remo boat harbour. Up on the Phillip Island bridge, the coaches were bumper-to-bumper, packed with tourists bound for the twilight parade of penguins waddling ashore at the rookeries.
I hit the dock as soon as we tied up, glad to have something solid beneath my feet. Next time I got on a boat, I promised myself, it would be nothing smaller than the Queen Mary.
It was nearly six o’clock. I walked down the jetty, past the fishermen’s co-operative and into the front bar of the Westernport Hotel. Three blokes in working clobber were nursing beers at the bar, swapping monotones. A bunch of bozos were playing pool, their banter lost in the plink-plink of the poker machines from the gaming lounge. ‘Wheel of Fortune’ was showing on the box above the bar. I parked on a stool and ordered a Jameson’s. ‘Straight up,’ I told the barman, a girl in a Jim Beam tee-shirt. ‘Water on the side.’
I diluted the whiskey and sipped, letting it settle my stomach. When the television news began, I tipped the last of it down my throat and signalled for another.
The inquest story came after the first ad break. The state coroner, the newsreader reported, had found that Lyndal Luscombe, thirty-five, was murdered by convicted felon Rodney Syce during a break-out from the Melbourne Remand Centre.
Of course it was fucking murder. It was murder the instant that the motorbike slammed into Lyndal. You kill somebody while you’re escaping from jail, it’s murder. Not manslaughter. Not involuntary homicide. Not reckless driving. Not oops. Murder, plain and simple.
Lyndal’s picture filled the screen, a full-length shot cropped from a portrait taken at her cousin’s wedding in late ’93. She was laughing, crinkling her nose at the camera like a naughty schoolkid.
‘Despite an extensive search here and interstate, Syce remains at large,’ continued the newsreader’s voice.
The screen filled with a mug-shot. It showed a thick-lipped, round-faced man with a receding brow and dark, surly eyes. He looked like one of those guys who stand at road works, directing traffic with a lollipop sign. The sort of face you see, but don’t register.
‘Police are hopeful that the coroner’s finding will result in new information that may lead them to Syce.’
Vision cut to a sleek, fortyish man in a fashionable suit and rimless glasses standing on the steps of the Coroner’s Court. A caption identified him as Detective Sergeant Damian Meakes. ‘This man Syce is dangerous and absolutely desperate,’ he said, leaning forward into the camera, one hand holding down his tie. ‘Anyone who believes they might have seen him on the day of the escape or any time since, or has any other information, should contact the Syce Task Force or Crime Stoppers. Under no circumstances should members of the public approach him directly.’
And that was it. Sixty seconds, tops. My second whiskey was on the bar. I slammed it down neat and stomped out the door, fire raging in my belly.
The sea was purple with the last shreds of the day and the air was acrid with rotting seaweed and diesel fumes. I put the key in the ignition of the Magna and drove across the bridge to Phillip Island. I went past a tourist information booth and a flower farm, down streets with nautical names, following the road through the sand dunes to the rectangle of asphalt beside the Woolamai lifesaving club.
A half-dozen vehicles were parked overlooking the beach. Sedans, tradesmen’s utilities and a panel van with roof-racks. Solitary men sat in two of the cars, gazing out at the monotonous pounding of the surf. Sad, lonely fucks like me, pining their lives away.
Should I ball my fist and bang on their windows, I wondered? Tear open my shirt and display the scar where my heart had been torn out? Defy them to outdo my wounds? Squat with them in the tufted dunes and howl like a stricken animal at the rising moon?
I lit a cigarette from my emergency pack in the glovebox and sat on the topmost plank of the wooden steps leading down to the sand, shoulders hunched against the deepening chill.
Aeons ago, I’d surfed here at Woolamai. Driven down with friends from university, spent a weekend catching the break that unfurled beyond the sandbank. But tonight the waves of Woolamai were not surfable, not by me anyway. They reared up, menacing black walls, their crests shredded by the wind, their glassy surface bursting open as they smashed against the shore.
The cigarette made my head spin. I gave it the flick and plodded down the steps to the empty beach, hands buried in my pockets. When I reached the edge of the water, I took off my shoes, stuffed my socks inside, hung them around my neck by the laces and rolled my pants to the knee.
Talk about a fucking wasteland. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. We were going to have a daughter. There would be the father, the mother and the children. An affectionate, intelligent, playful, semi-blended family. We would adore each other. The big brother would cherish his little sister. She would worship him. The father would be a competent provider, the beloved butt of his children’s teasing. The mother would outshine him and he would glory in her accomplishments. They would all live happily ever after.
Then had come a man on a Kawasaki racer.
The man of my dreams.
Rodney Syce was a light-fingered chancer with a tendency to lose his grip when things got slippery.
The third child of a Darwin construction worker, he was sent to live with elderly relatives in a one-silo town in Western Australia’s wheat belt in 1974, after his mother was k
illed by flying debris during Cyclone Tracy. At fourteen, he was already in trouble with the law. Illegal use of a motor vehicle was the first entry in a ledger that grew to include breaking and entering, possession of stolen goods and trespass. The juvenile court gave him good behaviour bonds and suspended sentences.
I knew this because I’d made it my business to find out.
The cops had told me a certain amount, of course. In the beginning they were falling over themselves to keep me in the picture. Later, when the search became a long-haul operation, they were much less forthcoming. But by then, I’d started making my own enquiries.
Call it a kind of therapy. Or fuel for speculation in the absence of news. Information is currency, they say. I wasn’t sure what the facts I was gathering could buy me. Not peace of mind, that’s for sure.
I collected newspaper clippings and studied video footage. Read court transcripts. Talked to lawyers, journalists and jailbirds. Pulled what few strings I could still lay my hands on. Assembled a file. Sifted it. Pored over it deep into the night.
Height: 168 cm. Weight: 75 kg. Eyes: dark brown. Distinguishing marks: nil. Criminal history: extensive.
At seventeen, Rodney Syce quit school and headed for Queensland, and a string of short-lived rouseabout and labouring jobs on cattle stations. His first taste of jail came at nineteen, two months for assault and robbery after he rolled a drunk at the Cloncurry races. The magistrate was less exercised by the ninety-seven dollars lifted from the victim’s wallet than the metal fence picket used on the back of his head.
Back on the outside, Syce fluctuated between low-wage jobs and petty crime. He worked in canneries, on a prawn trawler, down the Mt Isa mines where he was dismissed for pilfering from the employees’ changeroom. Then came a two-year stretch in Boggo Road after he pushed a night watchman down a flight of stairs during a bungled factory break-in. On release, he took up with a gang of Brisbane car thieves. That ended when he bashed the employee of a dodgy panel-beater with a steering-wheel lock. She turned out to be the girlfriend of a local heavy. On the wrong side of both the cops and the crims, he hightailed it to Melbourne.
Something Fishy Page 4