Line of Sight

by David Whish-Wilson

  Swann retrieved his cigarettes from his jacket pocket and lit one up. At last, something new. ‘Who for?’

  ‘Well, she was working for Pat Chesson. Though it was a bloke in a suit who talked her through it. Came into Pat’s dog kennels and dressed her right. Packed her suitcase for her. Fixed her up with cash. Gave her tickets, told her where she’d be staying, who’d be meeting her. How to go through customs, everything.’

  ‘She know who it was?’

  ‘She’d seen him before – one of the Ds who came in for regular freebies. Undercover-looking bloke. Tall, with longish blond hair. Who does that sound like?’

  ‘Did Pat know what was going on?’

  ‘Not sure. You’d reckon so.’

  Swann shook his head. He didn’t buy it. ‘You telling me they’re getting working girls to carry? Very unlikely.’

  ‘They aren’t stupid, you know. Anyway, this girl said she got showed a photo of what would happen to her if she lost the suitcase or bolted. Not a pretty picture. Girl sitting on a loo, face all slashed up. Blood all over the place.’

  ‘But you’re a user – why didn’t you know about this? And what about Ruby? She know girls were being worked like that?’

  ‘Ruby was the one got me off the gear – the whole time I was with her. She might have known about the smack runs, but not that Ds were involved. I mean, coppers actually going out and getting into the biz themselves?’ It was Jacky’s turn to shake her head. ‘Ruby would have told me. But that’s not all. This girl in the Cross reckoned the reason she bolted was two of her mates were murdered over it. Girls who’d been on a run but never came back to work.’

  He frowned. ‘I haven’t heard about any missing girls turning up dead. And I’ve been looking, believe me.’

  ‘She knew both of them. Reckons they probably blabbed about it or saw something they weren’t meant to.’

  ‘When was this supposed to have happened?’

  ‘Late last year.’

  ‘Were they locals?’

  ‘Both Sydney girls, from what I heard. Pat’s been bringing in plenty. She’s still got a direct line to Abe Saffron in Sydney. Word is he’s wholesaling smack now too.’

  Swann considered. ‘This Michelle, has she been asked to do a run?’

  ‘No, but we’re thinking the same thing.’

  ‘That runaway in Sydney, would she talk to me?’

  ‘Not a chance. And as for Michelle, I don’t like the girl but I’m going to keep her talking. See what else she hears.’

  It was getting close to knock-off time and soon the pub would be full. Jacky stood with Swann and pulled her truckie’s cap low over her eyes, lifted her collar and set her shoulders square. Not much of a disguise.

  ‘Don’t say a fucken word,’ she said, but managed a smile.

  The afternoon glare was still hot through the windscreen of the Valiant as he cruised along the clanging dockyards into downtown Fremantle. He slowed to park behind a smallgoods van on High Street and had to pump the brakes a few times – low on fluid. The car was old but otherwise fast and reliable. He knew how to pick them, could tell by how they were tricked out whether they’d run all right.

  This one was a ’62S series with a faded blue paintjob. He’d always loved Valiants, had owned every model from the S series on. Now he had a ’72 E49 Charger. When he bought it he knew he would keep it for life. There was nothing to beat it for a tear in the country. The Charger was the last of the supercars, in his opinion, the best car ever built in Australia.

  Out on the footpath the Fremantle doctor was gusting hard from the south, blowing rubbish along the gutters. There were pubs on every corner but he was headed up off the street. He turned down a laneway and skirted a derro with swollen bare feet sitting on the pavement rolling a cigarette. Through a double doorway he climbed a flight of stairs up to the working men’s club on the second floor. Dartboards, pool tables, a radio tuned to the jijis. The kind of place an SP bookie could work in peace, where police weren’t welcome. A place where people could be trusted.

  There were a few dockworkers leaning on the horseshoe, and a pair of old-timers in cocked trilbies seated beneath the dartboard. Unlike the pubs on the street, which smelt of stale beer and mildewed plaster, the club was spotless and airy, with the doctor cutting through the windows. The barmaid lifted her head from a chopping board where she’d been gouging pips out of a lemon. She didn’t look him in the face as he ordered an orange squash and a bag of peanuts.

  The two old men began arguing in Portuguese, but then just as suddenly were laughing. He felt someone behind him and when he turned he saw Marko Babich with his hands in the air.

  ‘Know better than to tap you on the shoulder, mate,’ Marko said.

  He shook Marko’s hand and patted his back. Marko had put on weight and grown a goatee since he’d seen him but he looked better for it.

  ‘Last time I saw you,’ said Marko, ‘you had a knife in your hand.’

  ‘That’s not what you told the coppers. Everything set?’

  ‘What mates are for, mate. But yeah, everything’s set, pretty much. Getting the inboard tuned up, extra diesel in case we want to go out to the continental shelf. Looking to get scuba tanks too, case we want to dive some of those old wrecks. Still got to get some good maps. Those Abrolhos reefs are bastards with the wrong tides.’

  Marko had been a drummer in the ‘50s, and had played on tour for a while with the Satin Satan, Johnny Devlin, before his amphetamine habit ruined his work and his health. He returned to Perth and when the shooter had known him was working as a slaughterman by day and a session drummer by night. Now he was a Coffin Cheater who went by the name of Kickstand. He lived in their Beaconsfield clubhouse and was carded up with the Maritime Union.

  Marko grinned and the shooter saw that his front teeth were missing. ‘You buyin’?’

  The barmaid had already poured Marko’s pony of draught. As soon as he took it she started pouring his second.

  ‘Here’s to Ringo, eh?’

  He raised his glass and tapped with Marko’s. The last time they’d gone fishing together, off the Quobba cliffs north of Carnarvon, a king wave had swept Marko’s staffy terrier over the edge into the deep blue water. Ringo had paddled bravely while they tried to gaff him but a tiger shark had cruised up and taken him away.

  ‘How’s it working out on the docks?’

  ‘Yeah, on the docks,’ Marko said. ‘Today I had to get off my arse three times to lift a boom gate. Getting some time on the tugs, though, gonna get my skipper’s ticket, I reckon. Yer lookin’ fit, you fucker. Army grub?’

  He waved away the question. He’d told Marko he just quit the army. There would be time to talk later, out on the ocean. Marko pulled out a packet of Winstons from his shirt pocket, flicked the cap and lit one. Drained his beer, then reached for the second pony on the drip tray.

  Outside, the doctor was making a racket in the tin signs nailed to the colonnades downstairs.

  Marko scratched his gut beneath the blue singlet, looked at him speculatively.

  ‘So Marko,’ he said, ‘what’s on?’

  Another toothless grin, and the two shared a knowing look.

  ‘Who’s who in the zoo, eh? That depends, mate. Whaddya wanna know?’

  Reggie sat on the vinyl couch in Swann’s hotel room, smoking a cigarillo and watching the blue smoke coil around his hand. He’d spent the day at the Land Corporation, collecting the final titles that Swann would tender as evidence. He placed the file on the coffee table, beside a stack of flyers on which the word MISSING was prominent, above a photograph of Louise taken at the beach earlier that year, her dark eyes smiling behind a curtain of hair.

  Thumbtacked onto the plasterboard wall behind the couch was a map of Australia, blue pins designating the cities and towns where Swann had sent the flyers – to police stations, service stations, pubs, council offices – red pins the ones he was yet to contact. The blue pins punched the towns along the nation’s coastline. T
here were hundreds of them, each cross-referenced to an exercise book containing names, addresses and phone numbers of contacts. The majority of the red pins were in the vast interior and the Northern Territory, small settlements and mining towns and truck stops in the main, but Swann would get to them eventually.

  He’d received countless letters of support over the past months, from all over the state, and more correspondence from people in the towns to which he’d sent the flyers – managers of pubs and roadhouses, tourists, Rotary Club members, secretaries of footy clubs, country cops who felt for him. And mothers, so many of them mothers, but all of them people who’d been touched in some way by the photo of Louise, a self-portrait she’d taken with the ocean at her back. She looked happy, untroubled, her dark hair wild in the wind.

  But none of them had seen her, none of them could help beyond promising to keep an eye out, buoying him up, offering a place to stay if he was ever in the area.

  Swann brought Reggie up to date on his meeting with Jacky. On hearing the story of Pat’s runaway in Sydney, Reggie grunted. ‘Hard to credit, but then again …’

  ‘Ten grand to buy, a hundred to sell. Say it enough times, it’s going to start sounding good.’

  ‘Especially if you’re above the law.’

  ‘Casey wouldn’t think twice. All those years of grafting, and now finally the big time. He knows all the players in distribution. Knows all the dirt around town, in case he slips up and needs to call in favours.’

  Reggie stood and began pacing the carpet. ‘The Mancuso brothers would want to be part of it. Dom Franchino too, probably. Definitely Leo Ajello. All got links to the Mob in the east.’

  ‘So does Casey. I heard he personally picks up Abe Saffron from the airport when he’s in town. He’s good mates with all the bent Sydney Ds too. He was always going over there on swim-throughs when I worked with him, still pissed when he got back here.’

  ‘If we could get some evidence, the Commonwealth police might —’

  ‘Bad idea. The blokes I know who went federal were sent there to get rid of them. Like a posting to the Land of Nod. They’ll only take something if it’s sliced and diced and put on a plate, and even then they’re likely to sniff at it. Best they’ll do with what we’ve got is make a few calls, which we don’t want.’

  Smoke from Reggie’s cigarillo had filled the room. Swann got up to open a window and let in the sea breeze. ‘What do you make of the story about Cooper cooking the books?’ he asked.

  ‘It fits with what we’re looking at. It would account for why he’s been so chary of us.’

  Swann put his .38 revolver on the coffee table. He lit a cigarette and clapped his zippo shut, took a thoughtful draw, feeling no need to speak on the matter of Cooper just yet. Reggie and Swann always worked like this, circling around an idea before falling in, bringing the pieces together.

  It was Reggie who broke the silence. ‘But would Gin Blossom be channelling money into a fund managed by Ruby? You’d think there’d be offshore tax havens, Swiss bank accounts and whatnot. And why would he be holding money for the Northbridge dons? They can easily turn bad money into good at their gaming tables.’

  ‘And everybody knows Cooper’s got a gambling problem. Stands to reason he’d be dipping into any trust accounts he’s set up.’

  Reggie sucked on his teeth, rubbed his gout-swollen wrists and eyed the bottle of Jameson on the kitchenette bench. Medicine, but definitely not the cure.

  ‘Let’s just say the rumour about Cooper filching off Ruby is correct,’ Swann said. ‘Robbing Peter to pay Paulo.’

  ‘Wouldn’t that leave a paper trail, the kind of thing the taxman might follow?’ Reggie asked. ‘And if he’s done it to Ruby, maybe he’s done it to some of the heavier types he holds accounts for?’

  Swann broke into a wide grin. Right there was what he’d been looking for, the cold chisel in his diminished box of tools. It would probably come to nothing, like so many of the other angles they’d tried, and yet for someone like Cooper the only thing more terrifying than doing time was being taken for the long drive, and if it was true he’d been dipping into some big man’s money…

  Swann shunted the door closed, yanking the handle to settle the lock. He led Reggie downstairs and into the street of blaring light and traffic. An acrid cloud of dust and exhaust sat high in the treetops of the deserted park.

  Reggie hobbled on his sore ankles, balancing on his pain. Swann knew he’d be feeling nervous about the distance between them and the bank of lights ahead, behind which were the pubs and clubs and restaurants of Little Italy, but it was quicker to walk across the park than drive.

  ‘Got a call from a staffer friend this morning,’ Reggie said. ‘Fuck me, feels like I’ve got broken glass in my legs.’ But he didn’t slow down, just kept stepping like he was walking the highwire. ‘In the Melville office. His boss is the Minister for Housing and Public Works, bit of a blabbermouth when he’s stressed. Reckons there’s some more shit going on between Sullivan and the premier. Appears Premier Barth is going against the deal they made before the last election.’

  Reggie had learnt from a Liberal insider that when it looked like Sullivan had the numbers for a leadership spill prior to the election, Barth had coerced him into holding off with some dirt relating to Sullivan’s friendship and business dealings with Ruby Devine. But Sullivan had allegedly counter-blackmailed, forcing the premier to promise he’d serve only one term then hand over power. Reggie wasn’t able to discover exactly what the Minister for Police had over the premier, but Sullivan was the party bagman, and he knew a thing or two about his colleagues’ financial arrangements.

  ‘Could be a putsch on, my man reckons,’ Reggie added. ‘Even though the next election’s years away.’

  ‘Sullivan doesn’t have the numbers. Barth’s still polling through the roof. What’s Sullivan’s real game?’

  ‘Apparently he’s demanding the mining portfolio.’

  ‘That’d make sense, in the short term. Good source of income for him and the party until he takes the reins himself.’

  ‘Kickback Sullivan in a hard hat, eh? Feel sorry for the miners if he does get it.’

  ‘He’ll get it. Whatever he’s got on the premier, Barth won’t risk it seeing the light of day.’

  They were off the grass now and on the narrow cobblestone rise of London Court. On St Georges Terrace they stopped, the echoes of their boots catching them up.

  ‘That look like Cooper’s ride to you?’ Swann asked.

  ‘New England-green de Ville. Right where you said it’d be. The Grosvenor. Good work, detective.’

  The two men shook hands. Reggie was headed out on a trawl through the better clubs to try to find some of his old lawyer mates who still had an ear to the ground.

  ‘I look the part? Not too gone to seed?’ He ran his fingers over his untameable red hair, wiped the corners of his mouth for spit, straightened his dicky bow and patted down his starched shirt, all in the one movement.

  Swann nodded. He didn’t have the heart. He watched Reggie negotiate the breaks in the traffic, limping towards the watering hole by the courthouse where the silks wet their beaks.

  Cooper’s de Ville was parked between a Nissan Cedric and a Morris sedan. It was a year old and fastidiously maintained, all nutmeg wood and maroon leather, glistening with wax, the floorpans spotless. Cooper had added a personal touch – a small black statue of a woman with a golden crown mounted on the dashboard. Our Lady of Loreto: Cooper’s father had served as a bomber pilot over Germany.

  There weren’t any files or papers visible on the seats. Cooper spent a lot of time away from the office, Swann knew, and had the kind of clients who didn’t like making appointments or putting things on the record, so there was no point fantasising about what might be slid under a seat, hidden in the trunk.

  The Grosvenor was one of the last old colonial hotels on St Georges Terrace; it still had the jarrah duckboard laid out from when the street was mud, still had th
e pressed-tin ceiling beneath the balcony, and the black iron cupola, now sprouting weeds. Wedged between the concrete Friendly Building Society and the five-storey Bridal House Salon, the Grosvenor looked like a shaky drunk under escort.

  Despite the pub’s shabby external appearance, its interior had retained its grandeur, and its clientele was up-market. Swann had little trouble finding the flamboyant Cooper among the crush of dark suits and clouds of smoke. The lawyer stood giddy and flush-faced, one hand on the bar, the other gesticulating with his glass. He wore a cream silk shirt and maroon trousers, gold rings on his fingers and a single gold earring in his right ear. His spray-canned hair had been built around his balding scalp like a traffic cone. His green eyes were bright with a vicious humour that sharpened when he saw Swann.

  The young man he was talking to had sideburns the same strawberry blond as his topiaried moustache. The kid wore a ruffled white shirt under a double-breasted purple suit, cowboy boots beneath his tight trousers. He had the same educated accent as Cooper, Australian but English, all rounded vowels and open-mouthed enunciation. The same class as Cooper too, no doubt, western suburbs all the way. A consideration in the speaking; a pleasure in the hearing of your own voice, the impression it made. The younger man had the look of a stockbroker, or what they were calling these days an entrepreneur.

  Cooper himself came from an old settler family, whose generations had increased their wealth and power despite bouts of bankruptcy and madness and the occasional imprisonment for fraud. He was only the latest in a line of sons schooled in exactly what could be got away with in the web of institutions and allegiances the family had created.

  ‘Superintendent Swann,’ he said without enthusiasm as Swann reached the bar. ‘We’re drinking cocktails, working through the book, A to Z. I’m on a brandy alexander. You?’

  Swann shook his head but accepted Cooper’s small moist hand. ‘Celebrating, eh?’

  ‘Every day’s a celebration, Swann. This is Derek.’

  The young man blinked at Swann and pushed his hair back over his ears. He smelled like cream and brandy frosted with an airy cologne. He knew Cooper well enough to squeeze his arm and leave them alone, having read the look in his eye.