He unclenched his jaw, put another cigarette in his mouth and lit it, taking a long draw. He felt leached of everything good he had ever done. During the daytime, he was still more or less himself, optimistic by nature, in spite of everything, a man who generally liked people and was liked in turn. People spoke to him, looked him in the eye, shook his hand, told him to keep it up, keep going. And he needed that support in order to go on, needed the encouragement of strangers, ordinary people who knew what he was up against.
It was four o’clock and soon the sun would be up, and Swann was glad of it. At this hour he felt even more out of place in his scuffed leather shoes and suit trousers. He wasn’t much older than the people around him but he looked like he belonged in another century. It was all big hair and earrings and platform shoes now, and that was just for the men. The drugs had changed everything, the drugs and the music.
Right now in the bar an AC/DC track was spinning, something he recognised because of his daughters. All the kids were into the band. It was the kind of thing he’d have been into at their age too – it had that blue-collar rock’n’roll spirit that he loved. He’d grown up on Johnny O and Jerry-Lee and Johnny Cash, but he didn’t mind the Negro music that Sarah, his middle daughter, was tuned into. Blonny, the youngest, was more into the charts, KC and the Sunshine Band, Skyhooks, the Bay City Rollers, which she listened to on his old footy transistor when she couldn’t get past her sisters to the record player.
The image of his daughters squabbling over the turntable made him wince. Louise, being the eldest, usually won out over the other two, leaving them resentful and brooding. But now, just like their mother and father, they were missing her, not understanding why she wasn’t there. At fifteen and thirteen, Sarah and Blonny had taken their sister’s disappearance hard. They were struggling at school, having been uprooted from Albany to return to Fremantle, to their old home by the biscuit factory, closer to where Louise was last seen alive. Both girls wanted Swann to move back home, but no matter how much he explained that he needed to be away to search for Louise, Sarah and Blonny didn’t get it. The truth was that he didn’t want to put them at risk, that it was safer for them if he lived elsewhere, something he couldn’t tell them because it would only make them worry more.
Swann tried to avoid downing the last of his beer. He had a bad headache and his chest was thick from smoking too much. If he paced himself he’d be sober enough to manage a plate of something at Roy’s.
Turning on his stool he saw Donovan Andrews in the doorway, dirty silk shirt open to the waist. Catching sight of Swann, the man hesitated, but his momentum carried him over the threshold and into the bar.
For such a good snitch, Andrews was a pretty average actor. He continued with his ritual of blowing kisses to a pair of Pat Chesson’s girls snuggled in the corner, but the light had gone out of his eyes. He faked a smile for Swann, accepted a shot of gin from the barman and necked it, making a show of not being able to find his lighter as a pretext for bolting. Swann leaned across and flicked his zippo.
Andrews sucked in the smoke without meeting his eyes. He stank of marijuana.
‘There you go, mate,’ said Swann in his most reassuring tone.
‘Thanks. Some bitch jus’ stole my lighter.’
‘True love, was it?’
Andrews laughed a little too loudly, anxious to humour him. ‘Eh? Oh, yair. You got me.’
As soon as Swann had gone public he lost his stable of snitches, except for the few who he owned, would always own. And he owned Andrews; that is, he thought he had until Andrews failed to keep their last few appointments.
But Andrews wouldn’t leave now unless he was dismissed. He squirmed and fidgeted but kept playing the easygoing bludger with a laugh like a concussion grenade, the raconteur of stupid jokes and criminal capers, someone you didn’t take seriously. The whole time Swann had known him, Andrews’ rep was as a drug hoover and ageing cocksman, whose dick was like a faulty compass needle that pointed him from one disaster to another.
All of this was to Swann’s advantage. As long as Andrews was a party boy he was welcome in any circle, from the upper-crust crowd in their riverside mansions to the rough-arsed hoons in the outer suburbs. Andrews had given Swann some crucial information over the years, things he’d overheard in nightclubs and alleys, sharing a joint or taking a piss, pretending to be passed out on the back seat of a speeding V8 headed to another bikie clubhouse.
Swann leaned towards him to stub out his cigarette. ‘See you at Roy’s in fifteen,’ he muttered, before standing to go. As he left he eyed the barman, who was seining ice from the bathtub with blue fingers and even colder eyes.
Roy Pickett had been an army cook until he was wounded in Tobruk and shipped home. Instead of opening another greasy spoon or milk bar or offal pit like those on the Terrace, he set up a barbeque joint on Riverside Drive, modelled on a New Orleans clam shack he’d seen in a magazine. It was still there thirty-five years later, and so was Roy, at all hours, grilling steaks and split chickens on the range, blackened steel tongs hanging on the wall like implements of torture.
The sun was ripping up over the blue mountains and flooding the diner, reflecting off the orange formica and shining steel. Roy stood at his post in a pillar of light. He raised his eyebrows to Swann as he entered and nodded towards the booths out the back, hidden from the street.
Andrews was already there, slumped with his back to the wall, looking miserable. He started up even before Swann sat down. ‘Mate, I’m sorry about last week —’
‘Last month, last fortnight and last week.’
‘I couldn’t come. I’ve done what you said finally. Got myself a job. Full-time pearl diver. Washing dishes down in Freo, getting trained up as a kitchenhand. My nerves have been bad, I’m just holding on as it is. Trying to get a stake together, me and this girl …’
Swann watched as the words came pouring out, felt them on his face like the steam from a pot boiling over. Andrews’ hands were fluttering and his eyes were wide and mad. Swann waited for the silence that he knew would follow – so big and empty he could walk right in.
Swann owned Andrews because he’d broken him. When it happened in an interrogation, neither party was ever the same. Swann learned things about Andrews that the man hadn’t known himself until that day.
He had arrested him for bringing in a Filipino girl to work in a Kalgoorlie brothel. He caught him at the airport with the eighteen-year-old, who couldn’t speak English and whose visa didn’t hold up. As soon as he got Andrews’ to the interview room he knew his story wasn’t going to hold up either.
He was familiar with Andrews from previous charges, but this new scam was way out of his league. It didn’t take much to work out he was just a charmer paid to grease the wheels and deliver the product. But it was a dirty business, as Andrews had learned, and Swann quickly identified something he could work with – a sense of shame. Some kind of bond had formed between Andrews and the girl during their journey. All the money in the world couldn’t hide the fact that she had been tricked, didn’t know what she was in for.
But Andrews wouldn’t say who’d set the game up. He baulked at that. It was late at night when Swann interviewed him. He wanted Andrews alone so he sent the uniforms away. Seated across the table, he worked on Andrews with his open hand, the way he’d been trained, the way it had always been done. Every time Andrews lied he slapped him hard; he must have slapped him a hundred times. Swann could see in his eyes that they were heading into strange territory. Andrews was afraid, on the verge of breaking, but wouldn’t give the name – his life depended on it.
It wasn’t hard to figure out. A Kalgoorlie brothel full of imported sex slaves would never go ahead without at least a nod from Kalgoorlie CIB. The desert city was too small. Nobody would be that stupid. And Swann, now a Perth Consorting detective, knew the okay would have to have come from Casey, Swann’s counterpart in Kal. They had once been partners there but no longer talked, ever since Swann had r
equested a transfer back to Perth so that he could be honest in peace.
Andrews wouldn’t give Casey’s name because Casey would kill him.
By the time Swann eased off on Andrews he’d already gone too far. The man was calling for his mother, his eyes gone somewhere else. Back to when. His fingers gripped the edge of the table, his neck was rigid. He ground his teeth. He didn’t stop howling until he was asleep like a snotty-nosed child, face down on the desk, while Swann paced the room, sick at himself.
Knocking around career crims was standard procedure. You couldn’t get them to speak without a bit of violence, something Swann had always been told was the difference between justice and the law, although there was a line he never crossed – you never forced a confession out of an innocent man.
Andrews wasn’t innocent, but knocking him about filled Swann with shame. He was just the sort of kid who shouldn’t be in the game, who wasn’t made for it, and Swann had gone and broken him. What made it worse was the pleasure he’d felt, the kind he’d seen on the face of his stepfather when he was laying into his mother. Or into him.
Swann felt so bad afterwards that instead of putting Andrews in a cell or dumping him on the street, he took him to Roy’s for breakfast. At the very booth they were in now. The interrogation had had a curious effect on Andrews; it hadn’t made him angry. Swann gave him the lecture, trying to guide him away from the life, and to his surprise the kid responded.
Swann got him a job as a mechanic’s apprentice, which lasted until Swann moved to Albany, when Andrews had gone back to his old ways.
Their breakfast arrived to break the silence. Bacon and egg roll for Andrews. Steak, egg and chips for Swann. Two cups of strong, sweet tea. Roy not looking at either of them as he put the plates down.
Andrews was spent from his rant. Relieved to be spent. More calmly, he confessed, ‘I saw Jacky. Two days ago.’
Swann took a sip of his tea as though this news was nothing, but his heart was racing. ‘You sure it was her? Where did you see her?’
‘Bus station. Coming off a bus.’
‘Did she see you?’
‘Nah, hid myself. Want nothing to do with Jacky. I knew you’d want me to follow her, but like I said, I’ve got this new girl and —’
‘Was she alone?’
‘Far as I could tell. Nobody met her or anything. She had on dark glasses and a truckie’s cap but it was her all right.’
Swann nodded his permission towards the bacon and egg roll. Andrews swooped on it, began to unwrap the wax paper and spread it over the table. The sun was well up now and traffic was beginning to drone. Swann was sober and hungry, just as he’d hoped. His plate lay steaming in the brightness. But first he drank his tea, sweet and hot in his throat and belly. Best cup of tea he’d ever had.
It had been a long walk from the airport but now he could sleep. A pity his hotel room smelt musty. He had a keen sense of smell and could tell that the previous occupant had been a smoker and a dog owner. A woman. The shooter wouldn’t be making the same mistake. He’d handle as little in the room as possible.
He had one pair of shoes, with featureless rubber soles, a suit and a hat and sunglasses. A change of shirt and underwear. He kept a 9mm pistol in a holster under his suit and a folded knife in the pocket of his trousers. He’d left a pair of swimming trunks and a towel in the car he’d stolen on the way into town, a Valiant that he’d torch on the day he left for Dongara.
He stripped off his clothes and laid them on top of his army bag. Got under the shower and let the cold water run over him. He didn’t use soap or shampoo, and his hair was buzz-cut and easy to manage. He didn’t go in for disguises on operations like this – there was a certain level of protection that could be taken for granted.
He had left the stolen Valiant a block from his hotel and walked to Kings Park, for old time’s sake. An easterly was gusting as he climbed the path that rose above the Swan River, announcing his slogging steps and giving eerie voice to the stands of zamia palm that grew into the limestone bluff of Mount Eliza.
When he reached the terraces of the botanical gardens, he turned along the cliff that followed the river, silky under the moonlight and vast across the southern plains. Its banks glowed with the phosphorescence of jellyfish stranded by the tide. It smelt of rotting seaweed, sour mud and blowfish carcasses.
He found himself paused on the edge of the cliff, crouched over the ribbons of light that flowed in every direction. From there he could see right to the Indian Ocean, lying beneath a blanket of mist, an arc of horizon under the cartwheeling stars.
Below him on the foreshore a magpie clan began the pre-dawn chorus, soon joined by wattlebirds and honeyeaters and the studied cadence of a mopoke owl. He was only a foot from the cliff edge. At its base spread the concrete apron that followed Riverside Drive and the old brewery. He closed his eyes and felt the downward pull of the earth …
Out of the shower, he lay on the bed without towelling himself and closed his eyes. He felt the water dry on his skin, listened to the metronomic ticking of the clock beside him. Taking his flaccid penis in hand he meditated upon the face of his target.
He was about to kill a cop. Nobody knew better than he did how serious that was, but it didn’t disturb him. He was a professional.
The prisons were full of people who had killed but who weren’t really killers. They were ordinary men and women who never saw it coming. They controlled themselves, buried themselves, until suddenly they snapped.
Nor did he have any time for people who enjoyed killing. He’d met plenty of those in the force and the army and the underworld. That was why he always worked alone. He didn’t like to be around psychopaths – they took too many risks. They needed to take risks, because they needed the rush. Such people didn’t understand killing in the way he did. He suspected they were no clearer on the subject than those who were afraid to kill. Both had bought the lie, as far as he was concerned. Killing could be right, and killing could be wrong, but it should never feel bad or good.
He felt neither one way nor the other. He felt nothing at all, and that was the dark secret that only he and a few others held. Those who knew didn’t tell anyone. It was a magical secret, because it made you stronger to know it and weaker not to know it.
His method was always the same. No cruelty, no delay, no risks. Most of them never knew what had hit them. One second they were alive, the next they were dead.
And then he would walk away.
Detective Inspector Donald Casey was listed to appear on day two of the royal commission. He was, as Partridge had been informed by Wallace, the first witness who’d served directly alongside Superintendent Swann.
Swann was already seated when Casey’s name was called. The DI strode to the stand with an expression of mild amusement, buttoning his suit jacket as he went. His shoes squeaked on the parquet floor.
He took the oath without taking his eyes off Swann, who returned the stare with a look of cold indifference. The DI shot the cuffs of his sleeves and leant towards the microphone. He spoke with authority, identifying his position and history of service, the expression of amusement returning to his mouth as he stared past Wallace at Swann.
The journalists were alert now, unlike during the testimonies given by Swann’s superiors.
The precise nature of Superintendent Swann and DI Casey’s relationship was something that Wallace should have briefed him on, Partridge reflected, especially the possibility of any bad blood between them. That the two had served together was barely the surface of it, even Partridge could see that.
He tapped his microphone to attract Wallace’s attention, called the QC over to his bench. ‘Mr Wallace, before you continue I would like to hear more about Detective Inspector Casey’s history with Superintendent Swann.’
‘Of course, your Honour.’
Wallace returned to face the DI in the witness box, pretended to read off his page of notes. ‘Detective Inspector, I would like you to outline the history o
f your service alongside Superintendent Swann, specifically —’
‘Our years together in the CIB, in Kalgoorlie? Certainly. And the reason I’ve been called here.’
It was just a glance in Partridge’s direction, but enough to make clear Casey’s resentment at being asked the question. A couple of journalists in the gallery noticed this too, and scribbled notes. Obviously DI Casey was not a man used to being put on the spot.
‘Superintendent Swann and I served for two years alongside one another in Kalgoorlie, as detectives. This period ended when Superintendent Swann, then a detective sergeant, transferred back to the city for some time.’
Between the lines, Mr Wallace, Partridge urged silently. Requested a transfer, or was forcibly transferred?
But Wallace surprised him by proceeding directly to the heart of the matter. ‘And what was the reason for this transfer, Detective Inspector? As it relates to the reason you are here today?’
‘It’s no secret that Superintendent Swann and myself are no longer friends, if that’s what you’re referring to.’
‘Can you please be more specific?’
But there was no heat in Wallace’s question. Instead, Partridge was left with the feeling that Swann and Casey weren’t the only ones on familiar terms.
‘Let me get this over and done with, Mr Wallace. The reason Superintendent Swann and I ceased working together was because I no longer trusted him. Partners need to trust one another, and during our partnership in Kalgoorlie it was made known to me that Swann was putting about rumours. Rumours that cast me in a very negative light. Just like he’s been doing over the past few months. And I’ve had a gutful of it. The man’s a hypocrite.’
Wallace did not even pretend to be taken aback, Partridge noticed, even though the journalists were scribbling madly and the detective inspector’s face was flushed with anger. ‘Why is Superintendent Swann a hypocrite, if you please?’
Line of Sight Page 4