Something Fishy

by Shane Maloney

  ‘We already had our eye on Martyn,’ explained patrol leader Crowden.

  ‘Tip from the federal money monitors,’ said Sutherland. ‘Questionable transfers. Period of time, we pegged him as a mover of illegal abalone and crayfish. Selling it to other restaurants and certain seafood exporters.’

  ‘Such as Tony Melina,’ I said.

  Sutherland nodded. ‘Been looking for a chance to bust him. Big time possession. But he’s cagey. Doesn’t shop around for product. Supplier unknown. Then he’s spotted with this Mick character.’

  Crowden dropped off the edge of the desk and turned to a map pinned to the wall. ‘We finally managed to tail him to a sector of the state forest designated as a reference area.’ He pointed to the spot, like a student teacher launching into a geography lesson. ‘Pristine bushland. Kept that way for long-term study purposes. No forestry. No tourism.’

  Bottom line, as Sutherland put it, several months of intermittent surveillance and a quick look-see of the man’s camp confirmed that he was operating a makeshift abalone processing plant.

  ‘He was cooking them up, vacuum-sealing them,’ said Sutherland. ‘Large quantities, buyer unknown. Martyn suspected. But no firm evidence. We were getting ready to bust him, see if we couldn’t get him to roll over on his buyer. Then, week before Christmas, bingo.’

  Crowden explained. ‘Our phone scanner started to pick up calls to Jake Martyn’s mobile. Our man Mick, calling from a payphone up the coast. Coded references, something about a guest. We cranked the surveillance back up. Martyn made two visits to the camp.’

  ‘Late at night,’ said Sutherland. ‘Thing is, no warning. No chance for us to act. Then, last night, a flurry of activity.’

  Crowden put his clipboard on the table in front of me and ran his finger down the log entries.

  Hilux to Gusto. Hilux to camp. Magna enters area. Jake Martyn’s Range Rover enters area. Range Rover returns to Gusto. Hilux emerges, towing a boat. Hilux returns, no boat. Hilux leaves area, towing Magna. Hilux returns. Surveillance ends, 3 a.m.

  Surveillance recommences, 6 a.m. Police vehicle from the local station enters area. Appears to be searching for something. Police officer and civilian.

  ‘We’d checked the registration of the Magna, identified you as the owner,’ said Crowden. ‘Thought that you must’ve strayed into the area, got bogged or had a breakdown, walked out and left your car behind. Figured our man had found it, decided to move it further from the camp. That was our thinking when we approached you after you left the police station.’

  Which brought us back to square one.

  ‘Better escort you back there pronto,’ said Sutherland. ‘Get the ball rolling.’

  As we got to our feet, the door swung open. A figure stepped into the frame, side on, backlit by the glare of the sun. Coiled tight, he scrutinised us through rimless sunglasses. The jacket of his lightweight suit was drawn back at the hip and his right hand rested on the butt of a holstered pistol.

  ‘Who the hell are you?’ demanded Sutherland.

  ‘Allow me,’ I said, ‘to introduce Detective Sergeant Meakes of the Victoria Police.’

  Within an hour, I was surplus to requirements.

  I’d been conveyed back to the station house, pumped dry, offered tea and trauma counselling, then left to cool my heels in an interview room while assorted components of the law-enforcement community got their ducks in a row.

  Everybody was lining up for a suck of the Syce sausage. Two other members of the task force had arrived with Meakes. Homicide turned up soon after. The Special Operations Group was on its way with kevlar vests, shin-high combat boots and surface-to-surface missiles. The fish dogs were having a field day, the drug squad was sniffing around, the local cops had been conscripted and, for all I knew, the Man from Snowy River was galloping Lorneward with a detachment of alpine cavalry.

  ‘You should’ve informed the sergeant of your intentions,’ Meakes reprimanded me as we drove back to the police station. ‘Naturally we were concerned about your safety when we arrived to find that you were missing. Particularly when one of the local officers reported seeing you with a unidentified person.’

  ‘I appreciate the way you came to my rescue,’ I said. ‘But until that point I was under the impression you lot didn’t believe me.’

  ‘Why would you think that?’ he asked.

  Back at the police station, Meakes loosened up. I had, after all, delivered Syce to him. Done his job for him. Once Syce was back in custody, DS Meakes would be the man of the moment, his mug on the box, his pic in the paper, his tailoring the envy of the aspirational classes. So he rapidly recast himself as my confidant and collaborator.

  As we worked our way through the details, he brought me up to speed on the background investigation.

  For starters, I was wrong to assume that the moving of the Magna had scuppered my story. It was irrelevant. Meakes and his crew were half-way to Lorne by the time the car was found. Their scramble button had been pushed by two names that appeared in my statement to the Lorne coppers.

  Persons already of considerable interest to them.

  One was Jake Martyn. The other was Phillip Ferrier, who was a Melbourne solicitor, Meakes informed me. And one of Ferrier’s clients was Adrian Parish, the hold-up man who masterminded the motorbike escape. It was Ferrier who briefed Parish’s barristers. He also assisted Parish with financial matters. Investments and the like.

  After Parish’s untimely death, his estate went to probate. It came to light that his goods and chattels included a shelf company whose sole asset was a half share in Gusto. It further emerged that Parish had assigned his share in Gusto to his lawyer as security against any outstanding fees, should he find himself unable to pay.

  ‘Because he was doing fifteen years in prison, for example,’ explained Meakes.

  Adrian Parish died owing his lawyer money and so, in due course, Phillip Ferrier became half-owner of Gusto.

  In the meantime, Meakes and his merry men were putting Jake Martyn under the microscope.

  When interviewed, the restaurateur denied all knowledge of Parish. As far as he knew, the equity in his restaurant was owned by a trust fund operated by a reputable solicitor named Phillip Ferrier, a man he had met several years earlier when seeking investors for Gusto. Solicitors’ trust funds are not an unusual source of capital for enterprises such as restaurants, he pointed out, and his dealings had been exclusively with Ferrier, an arm’s-length investor who took his share of the profits but played no role in the business. Martyn was shocked to discover that the actual investor had been a notorious criminal. So he claimed.

  Ferrier backed Martyn’s account. Parish had wished to remain anonymous, he explained. Client confidentiality, blah, blah.

  As to Rodney Syce, Martyn claimed to know only what he’d read in the newspapers.

  Lacking hard evidence to link either Martyn or Ferrier directly to Syce, the police had no option but to bide their time. And when I was washed ashore with their names on my lips, lights flashed and buzzers buzzed.

  ‘You hit the trifecta,’ said Meakes.

  My eye-witness account of the previous night’s events, combined with the investigative work done by the cops and the fish dogs’ surveillance, produced a working hypothesis to explain the connection between Jake Martyn and Rodney Syce.

  It ran like this. When Parish escaped from the Remand Centre, he planned to rendezvous with Jake Martyn, his bent business associate. After Parish was shot, Syce connected with Martyn, who hid him, then put him to work. First in the illegal seafood racket, then as an extortionist and killer.

  Had I not spotted Syce, the two of them would probably have got away with it. As Meakes generously conceded, I’d been a very real help to the investigation.

  Once the big picture came into focus, police attention moved to operational issues, the tactical implementation of Operation Snaffle Syce.

  Surveillance was upped on the bush camp and Jake Martyn was kept under observatio
n at Gusto, where he was choreographing preparations for New Year’s Day brunch. And, presumably, preparing for his assignation with Syce at the bush camp.

  No contact had been detected between the two men since Martyn’s trip into the hills the previous night. This indicated that Syce was now playing a lone hand, the cops concluded. That he was keeping quiet about the complications that had arisen during the disposal of Tony Melina’s body. That he was waiting for Martyn to arrive with the blood money, Tony’s passport and the airline ticket out of the country.

  Martyn had told Syce he’d bring the dough and the getaway kit to the camp during the afternoon. The moment he got there, the police trap would spring shut.

  By eleven-thirty, I was out of the loop and growing bored with sitting around waiting for my underpants to dry. Besides, if I didn’t do something I would fall into a coma. My request for a lift to the holiday house for a change of clothes was denied—it would be better to wait until the dust settled. Just in case. Likewise, pending forensics, the Magna was to remain at the Cumberland River caravan park.

  Meakes had taken over the sergeant’s office as a field headquarters. Busy, busy. I waited until he finished a phone call, something about a helicopter landing area.

  ‘I have to pick up my son and his friend from the Falls music festival,’ I reminded the detective.

  He beckoned over my shoulder to the muster room, a minor hive. ‘One of the boys will drive you.’

  But I didn’t want a free trip in a police car. What I wanted was an hour’s respite from the thump and grind of the previous twelve. A chance to feel normal again. Not a victim, not a witness, not a man possessed. Just a father doing his fatherly thing. Meeting his boy, asking him about his big night out. Not a man with a police escort and awful things to explain. In time I’d have to explain them, of course. But not yet.

  ‘Thanks,’ I said, ‘but I’ll take the shuttle-bus.’

  ‘It’s no problem,’ insisted Meakes.

  ‘It is for me,’ I said. ‘I need a bit of breathing space.’

  ‘Not a good idea. We don’t want a repetition of that earlier business, do we?’

  ‘You think I’m in danger? Think you might have to rescue me again?’

  ‘No, it’s just better this way.’

  Better for him, he meant. Better to keep me filed away until after his moment of triumph. We batted it back and forth for a couple of minutes, but short of arresting me, he couldn’t detain me against my will.

  ‘I’ll keep my head low,’ I said. ‘And I’ll be back in an hour with two teenage boys.’

  ‘Suit yourself,’ he said. ‘But you’re acting contrary to my advice.’

  Outside the copshop, I found the weather turning, the heat dissipating before it reached its threatened peak. Concrete-coloured clouds scuttled across the sky. A gusty onshore breeze was raising whitecaps and rattling the treetops. Frankly, I was more than a little rattled myself. Rats-arsed, anyway. It had been a big night, what with one thing and another, and I was fuzzy-headed and heavy-limbed.

  I was also not in a fit state to been seen on the main drag of a fashionable resort in the middle of a public holiday. The Labor Party’s reputation was already at an all-time low. Sticking to residential side-streets, I steered an inconspicuous course to Erskine Falls Road and hailed the mini-bus as it returned up the hill.

  I was the only passenger. Picking my way towards the back, I found a yellow terry-towelling hat on the floor. I sprawled across the back seat and laid it over my face, resting my weary bones and red-rimmed eyes.

  Fifteen minutes later, the bus jerked to a halt at the festival gate. Yesterday’s pasture was now a mosh-trampled cow-paddock littered with abandoned tents, wayward groundsheets and half-dismantled vegan-burger stalls. A bunk-chukka-bunk beat was washing up the slope from the direction of the circus bigtop that housed the main stage. Youthful punters were straggling from the scene of the all-night beano, their duds crumpled and flecked with grass. Here, at least, I was dressed for the occasion.

  I found Tarquin on the grassy verge beside the pick-up area. He was dozing, mouth open, his back against a big grey-gum. His dress shirt was scrunched and sweat-stained, the wing collar gone entirely. He was buttressed on one side by two backpacks, his and Red’s, and on the other by a girl in a black knee-length slip. She had black, magenta-streaked hair, purple lipstick, flour-white make-up and Cleopatra eyeliner. Around her neck was a black velvet ribbon. She was about fourteen years old. She, too, was slumbering, slack-jawed.

  I looked around, but saw no sign of Red.

  ‘Wakey, wakey,’ I croaked, nudging Tark’s prostrate form with a rubber sandal.

  He came upright. He looked at me, looked around, looked at his watch and looked around again. His little friend from the Addams family came awake and stretched fetchingly.

  ‘This is Ronnie,’ explained Tark.

  Veronica gave me a watery smile. Then she stood, flapped her wrist in Tark’s general direction, mumbled something about seeing him later, and wandered away.

  ‘No need to ask if you had a good time, then,’ I said.

  ‘Likewise,’ said Tark. ‘Love the hat. It’s very you.’

  ‘Get fucked,’ I said. ‘Where’s Red?’

  Tark clambered to his feet, smacking the dust off his backside. Shading his eyes, he took a long look around. No result. He scratched his scalp-tuft and shrugged. His put-upon air suggested that he’d been left to guard the baggage while Red amused himself elsewhere. ‘Not back yet,’ he said.

  ‘Back from where?’

  ‘Nature ramble.’ He said it with disdain. ‘Red, Jodie, Matt Prentice, bunch of them. Been gone a while. Supposed to be back by now.’

  I sighed and slumped down onto the backpacks. They were very comfortable, stuffed with tent and sleeping bags. So Red was a bit late. No big deal. Busy enjoying himself, he’d probably lost track of time. He’d turn up. I settled back to wait, shoulders against the grey-gum, my new head-wear pulled down against the glare.

  ‘Good, was it?’ I yawned in Tark’s general direction. ‘I hear Hunters and Collectors stole the show.’

  ‘If you like that sort of thing,’ he allowed. ‘Think I’ll get a drink. Want one?’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  I dozed, lulled by the swish of the leaves above my head. Images from the previous night flashed past. Barbara Prentice at Gusto. The pursuit into the ranges, tail-lights dancing ahead. Bafflement at the discovery of Tony Melina. Dark and horrible things. White knuckles, severed ears. The immensity of the ocean.

  ‘Mineral water.’

  ‘Huh.’

  ‘Mineral water,’ repeated Tarquin. ‘It’s all they had left.’

  He lifted the towelling hat and dangled the bottle in front of my face. Deep Spring.

  Deep mouthfuls, then a glance at my watch. A half hour had slipped past. I eased myself upright and scanned the scene. Vehicles were coming and going in the pick-up area, parents collecting offspring. Red was still nowhere to be seen. Nor Jodie or her big brother.

  ‘Still not back?’ I said.

  Tarquin prodded the ground with a steel-capped toe, a man on the horns of a dilemma.

  ‘Better tell me what’s going on,’ I said.

  Tark heaved a sigh. He’d talk, but only because I’d beaten it out of him. ‘They went to get some plants.’

  ‘Plants?’ I said, ‘What do you mean plants?’

  Tark shrugged. Not tomato plants. Not hardy perennials. Not specimens of endangered native vegetation.

  ‘Little bastard,’ I said. ‘I’ll wring his fucking neck.’

  Tarquin shook his head furiously. ‘It wasn’t Red’s idea. He doesn’t even smoke, honest. Okay, maybe a puff now and then. But he doesn’t inhale. Only reason he went was because Jodie went. And she only went because Matt was going and she wanted to make sure he didn’t get into any trouble. The whole thing’s down to this dickhead eco-warrior called Mongoose. He’s the one found the plants, talked Matt and the others int
o going with him. Reckoned they were just sitting there for the taking.’

  Great timing, I thought. Today of all days, rope-a-dope Red decides to join a band of bhang-burglars.

  Then came an even more disturbing thought. I stared past the fences to the featureless bush. There’s bound to be more than one clump of hemp out there, I reassured myself. And the one I happened to know about was at least two hours solid hiking to the west.

  ‘And where exactly are these plants?’ I said.

  Tark shrugged. ‘Mongoose was pretty vague. They left about eight. Mongoose said they’d be back by midday.’

  ‘Which way did they go?’

  He looked around, settled on a direction and tossed his mohawk west-ish.

  ‘On foot?’ I said.

  Tark nodded. ‘You think they might have got lost or something?’

  I wasn’t sure what I thought. I was fully occupied trying to calculate the chances that the target of the half-baked dope raid was Rodney Syce’s camp.

  ‘Who is this Mongoose guy anyway?’ I said. ‘Friend of Matt Prentice, is he?’

  Tarquin shrugged again. ‘Friend of a friend of a friend sort of thing,’ he said. ‘He’s a feral. Walked here cross-country from a logging protest camp with a bunch of tree-huggers.’

  ‘I want to know exactly where they went,’ I said.

  Tark caught my antsy tone. ‘I dunno,’ he pleaded. ‘Honest. But that lot over there might.’

  A pod of ferals was moving towards the exit, a half-dozen soap-shy, low-tech, bush-dwelling hippies. Crusty chicks in shaman chic, fabric-swathed and spider-legged. Bedraggled boys in scrofulous face-hair and army-surplus pants, matted dreadlocks stuffed into tea-cosy tam-o’-shanters.

  ‘They’re the ones Mongoose came with,’ explained Tark. ‘Want me to ask if they know anything?’