A young Immigration Officer brought in the first of the crew, small, in loose-fitting pants and thongs. The skin on his cheeks was dark and tough from sun and salt. I wrote the date and time at the top of the interview form. Lars explained the process, started recording and began with the basics. 'What's your name?'
'Ramelan.'
'Identification?'
He shook his head.
'But you're master of the ship? Captain?'
He shrugged, as if he didn't understand.
Lars said something in Indonesian. Now he shook his head vigorously. 'No. Not skipper.'
'Come off it. You had the GPS in your pants, mate.' Now Lars pulled out the tracking charts, showing the boat crossing into our waters. He tapped his thick fingers on the spot.
'You were inside the Australian Fishing Zone. Do you have an Australian fishing licence?' Again Ramelan shrugged and looked down at the floor.
Lars tapped the charts again, harder this time, so that the table shook. 'You were fishing illegally. Forty tonnes of shark fin! Do you understand that you will be charged? Locked up. If you tell us who owns the boat, it will go better for you.'
No response. Lars ended the interview and stopped the tapes. Again he spoke in Indonesian, lots of repeating and rhyming sounds. Whatever he said got Ramelan's attention; he was looking right at us now, and starting to sweat.
Lars waited, letting the silence draw him out. I watched the second hand of the clock on the wall move around for the third time. Then two short sentences in Indonesian. Lars's face registered no expression but I saw something in his eyes I didn't like. Anger?
I turned up the air-con and wound down my window to let the hot air out. Lars shifted his cap off his forehead. 'See what I mean. Eight interviews and not one bit of useful information.'
'You speak Indo',' I said.
He smiled. 'Secret weapon. Lived up there for a while, when I was younger and dumber.'
'What happens to them now?'
'The crew will be deported and flown back home. Captain will get a fine. We'll send him down to Baxter till he's charged. Boat'll be scuppered.' He sighed as we turned into the office car park. 'And there's thousands more out there just like it.'
'What would you do?'
'You gotta wonder, all the money we spend on compliance. Maybe it'd be better spent on aid.'
I stared at him. 'You see it as a poverty problem?'
'Hell, yeah. There's no traditional fishing anymore. The people on these boats are desperate. Just trying to support their families.' He locked the ute. 'The boat owners … now that's a different story.'
I crunched on an apple as I typed, tapping my foot to the radio. It was almost time to head home for the day. And make a decision about that job, I prodded myself. Lars appeared over the partition. 'I'm just taking a quick run back down to the Coonawarra. Some intel came in that I want to try and use on our friend the captain before they fly him out tomorrow.' He looked down at my screen. 'Might be better if you keep working on the report. Won't be long.'
I watched his back, a red manila folder sticking out from under his arm, till he slipped around the corner. Why was I being excluded? The report was nearly finished. And why wasn't he taking the triple-deck?
I walked past the media setting up a circus in the car park. Instead of the usual slow and easy chatter around the coffee machine, more people than I'd ever seen here at one time were rushing around with files, and phones rang all around the office. Lars was nowhere to be seen. Mr Brandt's door was closed. Was I the only one who didn't know what had happened? I turned on my PC, left it to warm up and headed to the water fountain. On the way back, I stopped at the assistant's desk.
Carol barely looked up from the screen as she typed. 'Lars was looking for you before.'
'What's happened?'
Her pencilled eyebrows shot up into her leathery forehead. 'Don't you listen to the news, love? One of the foreign fishermen hung himself overnight. They turned up to take him to the airport and he was dead! It's hitting the fan everywhere.'
'Shit.' My head started buzzing. Which one? I rushed back to my desk and logged on. The emails came dropping in, too slow, too slow. There was an announcement about not speaking to the press unless authorised. No names, no details. No other reference to the death. The media websites were all over it, even the NT News. Human rights advocates were dragging up past events and making the inevitable links to Aboriginal deaths in custody. After all the progress on illegal fishing, the funding we'd fought for; this was a disaster. I scanned every article. The Herald had managed to find out the name of the boat. It was Ramelan's.
I stared out at the oil-rig squatting in the harbour, sucking the life out of the ocean bed and spewing out waste like an alien parasite. My head was light with turning images of Lars putting his hand in his pocket at the marina that morning, the bits and pieces in Indonesian I hadn't understood, the second visit. The tip-offs the boats were getting.
I heard raised voices and, with everyone else, craned my neck to stare as Brandt's office door flung open. Lars stormed out, red in the face. He didn't look at me as he passed and before I could say anything he was gone.
I stood up to follow him, but found Mr Brandt between me and the door. 'Can I speak with you in my office, Meg?'
'Coffee?' He offered.
'No thanks.' I sat in the too-comfy chair opposite him.
'I'm sure you've figured out by now that your Indonesian captain has turned up dead this morning. There's an investigation underway, obviously the AFP and the Coroner are looking into it. So I expect you to keep this to yourself.' He paused.
Was it a question? 'Of course.'
He twirled a fat pen in his left hand. 'I'd like to ask you a few questions about the Ramelan interview.'
Great. I tried to relax into the chair, but it was swallowing me up. I nodded.
'You took notes?'
'Yes.'
'I've listened to the tape. We're waiting on the transcription.' He smiled and gave me a direct look that started to draw sweat. 'Was there anything that wasn't recorded?'
I waited until I had each of my words chosen. 'Ramelan answered one of the questions after the tape was turned off. I didn't understand him.'
'You don't speak Bahasa?' He watched me shake my head. 'It's okay. Me neither.'
Darwin wasn't the easiest place to follow someone. Too many open spaces and not enough people. I'd tailed Lars down to the Ski Club but wasn't about to follow him in there on my own. It was just a bunch of once-white plastic chairs and tables on the lawn, like a mate's picnic. You couldn't exactly blend into the crowd. I needed a drinking buddy.
I slid down into my seat to make the call. 'Sara? Feel like a beer? I've found myself down at the club, and you know what they say about drinking alone.'
'Excellent idea. See you in ten.'
I watched Lars through my binoculars while I waited. He was sitting with a man I didn't know, who'd seen too much sun and had tattoos on his forearms.
I got out of the car and wandered towards the bar as soon as I saw Sara's Cortina rumble over the hill. Beers in hand, I chose a table over the other side from Lars, putting his back to me.
Sara raised her Melbourne Bitter. 'How's this for a view?'
I looked out at the sun setting over the water, the play of colour on the clouds shifting above us. 'Anywhere else in the world, you'd be paying ten dollars a drink to sit here.'
'And you wouldn't get a little esky to put it in.' She turned her grimy polystyrene stubby holder around to show me. It had cigarette burns in the shape of a smiley face. Lars got up while we laughed, shook hands with the guy, and headed out. 'So, Meglet. What are you going to do about the job at the other end of the world?'
'Not sure. It's a bit more money, and would build on my research. Probably a good step, career-wise. My fish is so topical at the moment.'
'But, you wouldn't get to go out hunting for illegal fishermen, would you? And, tell me you wouldn't miss this.' I lo
oked over her outstretched arms to the tattooed man. He'd been joined by a younger man with hair so short and back so straight he had to be military. I watched as he drank from his beer, looked out to sea, and took the yellow envelope that slid across the table. Sara turned around to see what I was looking at. 'Hello? Since when have you been into Navy boys?'
I was at work before anyone else. Except Carol. No one got in before her; she probably slept here. The secure drive was organised by user and project. I accessed Lars's folders, searching for anything that might give me a clue. People were just starting to arrive when I found it. A minute to Canberra covering an intelligence report that suggested someone from our office was providing information to boat owners about the patrols in exchange for drugs brought in from Thailand through Indonesia. It was dated the day Ramelan died. Why didn't he go through Brandt? My chest felt tight. I shut the document down before anyone could walk past.
By the time Federal Agents Green and Lawler arrived to interview me, I was calm again. They were young and polite. Also stupid. When they asked me what time we conducted the interview, they checked off my answer against the logbook. I had only to read a few lines down to see Lars's name again, arriving 1600, departing 1700. There was another name after his. William Brandt, 1745.
I waited until my corner was clear before logging onto the database. A search for Ramelan brought up three hits. We'd picked him up before, in 2003 and 2004. He'd been let off and flown home in both cases. There wasn't enough detail recorded to properly explain why. Probably he hadn't been the captain then, just a crew member. I tabbed down to the case officer. Lars Sorrenson.
It was the last night to make a decision. I went for a run up the beach; despite the gauge telling me humidity was at eighty-six percent.
At the cliffs I stopped and stared out at the sun melting into the shallow Arafura that separated us from our neighbours to the north. Once there had been a lot of traffic between us, in boats far more flimsy that the ones we hauled in. Traditional fishing rites now superseded by border control, legislation and bureaucracy.
A group of Aboriginal boys on bikes sped past me on the footbridge, laughing and swearing. I cut through the streets to pick up a few things from the shops, checking out the homes on the way. It was almost dark now, the lights inside glowing magically orange among the foliage. One day, I'd live in a house. It started to rain, large drops far apart that soaked into my singlet.
I stopped. Lars's jeep was parked on the street. What was he doing here? Around the corner, I thought I saw someone duck under a sail that served as a carport in front of a rambling old weatherboard.
I crouched in the shadows, wishing for the cover of a hedge, or something more dense than the gingers and old mango between me and the house. The rain was coming down heavily now. I felt movement behind me as a big hand clamped down on my shoulder. I froze, the wet night turning white in front of me in my panic. 'Looking for someone?' I turned to face Lars, smiling in the dark. 'C'mon, Kindred. We need to get in a bit closer if we're going to see anything.'
We peered through a dirty window into a cluttered studio under the house with a single bed in the corner. Four men were sitting around an old wooden table. One of them was a middle-aged Indonesian, smoking a hand-rolled cigarette. There was the young Navy guy from the club and an old fishing boat owner I recognised from the wharves. And Brandt, sucking on a tin of Fosters and counting neat piles of hundred dollar notes. Lars nodded at me, encouraging me to believe it. His eyes were bright. Too bright. As if he hadn't slept for days.
Lars held a camera up to the window. I held my breath while he took the shots and tried to catch the conversation inside. The rain on the tin roof above us drowned out everything but Brandt's familiar deep voice.
'I've taken care of that. He's on leave until they complete the investigation.'
The tone from the Indonesian was angry.
'Relax, he won't be back.' Brandt slapped his hands on the table. 'I've made sure of it.'
Lars's greying hair was flat on his head and dripping down his face. He gestured that we should move away. We stayed low until we were out on the street and ran for his jeep.
'What the hell is going on?'
'What do you reckon? You've been following me around.'
I tried to put it in a logical order while he started the engine and moved off towards Casuarina Drive.
'Brandt has been giving information to fishing boat owners. Ramelan was one of his contacts; he's been picked up twice before and let off. The young officer from the base is in on it but his older Navy buddy from the Ski Club, a friend of yours, has been playing it both ways, and tipped you off.
'When Brandt realised you'd figured it out, he paid Ramelan a visit. Next thing, he's dead. Now he's trying to set you up, make it look like you're the one who's bent.' I stopped, trying to read his face. 'But I'm not sure how he got the guy to kill himself.'
He nodded, a smile shifting his jaw back and down. 'Me either. If he did.' He pulled up outside my apartment block. 'Close, kiddo. Very close. For the rest, I need a drink and something to eat. Are you going to invite me in?'
I opened beers while Lars phoned for Chinese.
'Your surveillance techniques could use some work,' he said.
'Why didn't you say something?'
'Figured it couldn't hurt to have some back-up.' He sculled the rest of his beer. I got him another and waited. 'Brandt asked you about the interview?'
I nodded. 'And your second visit. He was worried by your Bahasa conversation. So was I. Thought it was you on the take.'
'Thought so.'
I pushed my empty bottle around in wet circles on the glass-topped table. 'You didn't think it was worth clearing up?'
He shrugged. 'It was better you didn't know anything.' I waited for the rest. 'Ramelan works for us. That's why we let him go last time. It's dodgy; he still does what he does, but we get the information we need. He made it clear that we should look inside. Told me to check his phone. I had a mate from the AFP do a check and he found Brandt's mobile number. I went back to try to get more information from Ramelan about who the big bosses were. Someone must've tipped Brandt off and he panicked.'
I tried to take it all in. 'What happened when he went down there?'
'I can only imagine. Maybe threatened his family. Or told him he'd be locked up in a detention centre indefinitely. We'll have to see if the inquest turns anything up.'
'But he's going to try and pin it on you.' I got up to answer the door. Our food was here. 'We've got to do something.'
'I intend to.'
The tone of my second interview was far more friendly. Lars had tried to keep me out of it, but I knew it all had a better chance of sticking if he had a witness to back him up.
Federal Agent Green pushed over the photos Lars had taken. 'Have you seen any of these men before?'
'I was there when this was taken.' I explained the context and my other sighting of the Naval officer.
'Did you hear anything that was said?'
'Mr Brandt made it clear he was going to make sure it looked like Lars, Mr Sorrenson, was the last one to see Ramelan alive. And corrupt.'
'You'd be willing to testify at the hearing?'
I watched the tapes whirring around. In the list of career-limiting moves, this had to be in the top three. 'Yes.'
I walked out past Brandt's office. Two more AFP officers were packing up his hard drive. It was not yet four but I figured my work day was over.
Lars was waiting at the bar. I ordered us two beers and slid onto the stool next to him.
'How'd it go?'
I raised my bottle. 'I said I'd testify.'
'Cheers. To the two snitches.'
'To corruption caught out,' I corrected.
'It's going to be ugly. Must go deeper than Brandt.' He drank from his beer, a fleck of foam sticking in the corner of his mouth.
We watched a group of middle-aged women out on the deck who, judging by their volume, had been her
e all afternoon. The one at the head of the table lurched forward, holding up her glass. I looked at the soggy strawberry inside, bleached pale by too many champagnes. 'Next time I leave, I don't think I'm coming back. I really have to get out,' she announced to her audience. They nodded, as if they understood.
There was one question left unanswered. 'What about down at the marina?'
'What about it?'
'I saw you take money from Ben.'
He grinned. 'Been doing it for years.' I tried to keep the shock from my face. 'It's his own fault. He keeps backing that useless team of his.'
Ah, footy bets. 'Sorry, I thought…'
'Don't worry about it. Usually it pays to be suspicious.'
Flames took hold of the rotten timber, and smoke swirled out above us, stinking of diesel fuel. They'd flown in the minister to make a show of lighting the boats; like some sort of festival. As if we didn't have enough of those up here.
There were cheers and clapping from the crowd gathered on the wharf. Did we really have the right to burn their property for trying to survive? But, our fish stocks and natural habitats have to survive, too, I told myself. The boats carried all the quarantine nasties; lice, rats, and that rampant striped mussel.
They were all ablaze now, the heat pushing us a shuffling step back. Embers split off, hissing into the water. Cameras whirred and beeped, capturing the occasion. For me, it marked the end of my time in the Territory. I'd be back for the inquest, but my life in the field was over for now. I began the long walk back up to town. It would be hours till the boats burned away, leaving a few twisted scraps of metal behind for salvage.
AFTER AZARIA
Ann Penhallurick
There aren't too many choices when you try to second-guess a serial killer. Particularly one whose choice of victims appears to be random, even after you've trawled through so much evidence and background information that you're more at home in the victims' lives than your own.
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