Line of Sight

by David Whish-Wilson

He took Marion by the arm and led her out, downstairs into the wind and dusk.

  He opened the afternoon paper and reread the unremarkable article on page thirteen relating that morning’s events at the royal commission, through which he had sat for a few hours. The single column was wedged between a piece on a new land release at a place called Koondoola and a larger article about another arrival of boatpeople from Vietnam.

  On the opposite page, right above an item about the premier’s proposed tour of the north-west, was a large advert for a local car yard featuring expensive imports, American models mostly. It carried a photo of the owner, one friendly, honest, smiling Leo Ajello. His moustached face was plastered above every new-model Corvette and Cadillac and Mustang crowded into the ad. It made the shooter laugh out loud. Marko had told him Ajello was Perth’s biggest green-lit drug dealer.

  He took a sip of wine to check himself. It was a burgundy, very young, tasting of plum and berries and tannin. Here he was, in one of Perth’s finest restaurants, and he was surprised to find that the wine wasn’t at all bad. Things seemed to have changed since he’d gone east.

  The menu, however, was no surprise. For entrée a choice of avocado prawns, lemon salmon crêpes or crab quiche, and for mains Hawaiian chicken, langouste mornay, steak diane, beef wellington, steak veronique, crown roast of pork.

  As a vegetarian who ate seafood, he was limited. He didn’t rate crayfish, even when it was called langouste, and not only because his grandfather had used it for garden fertiliser, acquired for nothing and buried whole beneath his citrus trees. He decided on two entrées, the avocado prawns and the crêpes, and hoped the salmon was fresh. Experience had taught him that if it wasn’t, the belly fat tasted rancid. There was no salmon fishery within four thousand kilometres of Perth that he was aware of, and that it was even on the menu seemed odd. But it was a favourite of his and he ordered it anyway.

  He spoke to a young waiter whose hair reeked of the medicinal scent of pine needles – Norsca shampoo – and whose armpits gave off an aroma of damp Johnson’s baby powder. The restaurant had begun to fill up. Mostly older couples in evening wear, no doubt headed after dinner to the philharmonic concert a ferry ride across the river. A large group of men took their seats at a reserved table nearby. It had a good view of the city lights shining over the water, although none of them seemed interested in the view.

  There’d been a few Ajellos living in the foothills when he was growing up there, tough Sicilian kids who’d outgrown their peasant parents by the time they reached their teens. He watched the old couple at the table across from him and wondered what they would make of Leo Ajello and his secret life. They were both eating the crown roast of pork, and he wondered too if they’d ever seen the slaughter of a pig, the cutting of its throat, the bleeding out onto the dirt.

  Growing up with Italians meant that he’d seen this often as a kid. He had even learnt to pity the animal as it was fattened in the yard before being led up to the shed. The couple eating their pork had the same dim look as those pigs. You held an animal down and slit its throat, and you held a human down and slit its throat, and there was no difference at all. Neither wanted to die.

  His avocado prawns arrived. He tasted one with his eyes closed. Room-temperature, firm texture, a good citrus dressing with strong flavours. It occurred to him that he killed with his eyes open.

  The large table of men had warmed up over a few drinks and were now laughing like boys at a birthday party. Their waiter was passing out plates of steak tartare, the raw egg wobbling on top of the raw mince. It wasn’t on the menu but that was the whole point. A champagne cork popped, and another.

  He wasn’t like these men, who had come together to celebrate but who were all rivals. He wasn’t like them and yet he was in the life. He considered the lairy suits they wore, the fashionably longish hair. The alcoholic flush on their faces was accompanied on some by cocaine grins. They sweated, despite the air conditioning. One of them looked to be politician material, or maybe a journalist. Like the others, he had a strong voice and a charming smile. Like the others, his smile slipped when he thought no one was looking. What was left on the man’s face when he stopped smiling wasn’t pretty.

  In the shooter’s line of work there weren’t more than one or two jobs a year, and he had plenty of time on his hands. He read psychology texts and sat in on lectures at the university. He’d always assumed he was different because his father had been a detective, because he himself had been a policeman, but there were other differences too. Ever since he was a child he’d wanted to understand what he was capable of. What his limits were. What he couldn’t, or wouldn’t, do. He wanted to see behind the stage. Behind the masks. Who held the real power? He wanted to know these things because without knowing them he was just another mug. Another pig in the paddock.

  One of the men was talking loudly now about hiring a private jet. He was shouted down by another who claimed he was in the process of buying one second-hand from President Suharto. Their flash suits and the silver service didn’t hide the fact that there was something numb and stupid in their eyes. They were no smarter than the average criminal, just better actors.

  It was his father who’d lamented there were no real criminals left. He lamented it because he believed that real criminals made for real cops. Whatever these men were celebrating, it wasn’t to be discussed. They would all be in legitimate business as well, but it was black money they were flashing about. Drug money, no doubt. The drug trade was a business. It took managers to run it, not everyday criminals. His father had seen this coming but he still wouldn’t believe it if he were alive today. He belonged to a generation in which working-class men didn’t get to be this rich this easy.

  His crêpes arrived. He lifted the edge of one and, as he feared, the flaked salmon smelt fatty and rancid. He pushed the plate aside.

  The waiter attending the large table returned with a trolley. Laid out on a silver platter was a whole suckling pig. Instead of a carving knife, the waiter took up a dessert plate. So tender was the flesh that he pared it away from the spine with the plate, before placing it with a spoon on a silver serving dish. The men toasted themselves and drank and ate and laughed. The remaining pig sat there on the trolley, and the man closest to it wrenched off its head and held it up next to his face. He stood up and addressed the table with it, as if with a ventriloquist’s dummy.

  ‘Oink oink. I’m watching you, Moncrieff. I’m watching you, Bartlett. I’m watching you, Dodd.’

  The men hooted and jeered. One laughed so hard he had to spit out his food.

  ‘I’m watching you, Dyson. Watching you, Strachan. I’m watching you …’

  Partridge adjusted his position on the bed, curled into the crisp white sheet. On the bedside table was the bottle of nitroglycerine tablets prescribed for him by the GP, to be taken every two hours or at the first sign of pain. Next to them was the luminous face of an alarm clock turned towards him, although he didn’t remember setting it there. The clock told him it was a mere three hours since he’d entered the doctor’s surgery complaining of chest pain.

  Lying on the trolley bed in the doctor’s rooms, he had been short of breath, the pain spreading to his jaw. The doctor squirted something bitter onto Partridge’s tongue, then held an oxygen mask over his mouth and nostrils and took his pulse with a stethoscope, giving gentle commands to his receptionist to bring a blanket, increase the oxygen, adjust the pillows.

  All the while, Partridge stared up at the doctor’s eyes, listened to his calm voice, tried not to be afraid, although the pain made him wince. Then he saw Margaret and the house they had built in Lorne. He saw her face in the doorway, the dog scampering at her feet, the sound of the grandchildren behind her, the smells of the kitchen, and then the word ambulance had pulled him out of his reverie, the pain abating now.

  They had fed him oxygen through the mask until the nitroglycerine spray dilated the blood vessels around his heart, he learnt. With his pulse stabilised and the
pain gone completely, the doctor asked him a series of yes or no questions. Had he suffered from influenza recently? Had the pain built steadily or erupted suddenly? Had it come in moments of quiet or of stress, or both? Did he have a family history of heart disease?

  By the time the two medics arrived, Partridge was sitting upright, drinking a glass of water, the blood-pressure balloon still affixed to his arm, the oxygen cylinder beside him no longer necessary. He had suffered what appeared to be the onset of angina pectoris, according to the doctor. One of the medics shone a light in his eyes, took his blood pressure again, and was apparently satisfied with the diagnosis. The fact that Partridge had responded so well to the nitroglycerine suggested it was unlikely to have been a more serious cardiac event.

  Angina indicated possible coronary disease, but it was manageable with the right medication, changes to diet and improved fitness. Indeed, the doctor confessed, he had suffered from angina himself for close to a decade, and it was all too common.

  At that point Partridge made it clear that he did not wish to accompany the medics to hospital, despite the doctor’s advice that it would be best for him to spend the night there under observation.

  But Partridge was insistent. He felt fine. All the pain had gone. He would call the hospital during the night at the first sign of trouble, he assured the GP, who conceded there was no immediate danger as long as Partridge continued to take the nitroglycerine. But until tests were done there could be no guarantees, the doctor cautioned, and he advised visiting a specialist at the first opportunity.

  The tests would be taken care of on his return to Melbourne, if not before, Partridge promised. A specialist friend of his was a big name in heart surgery, and the mention of his name convinced the GP. Partridge gave his word that he would get plenty of rest and have his blood pressure monitored daily by the hotel doctor. The ambulance medics were dismissed and Partridge accepted the GP’s offer of a lift, desiring nothing more at that point than to take to his bed and sleep.

  But he was unable to sleep. The doctor had warned him against taking his regular sleeping pills, or anything else that might act as a depressant, including alcohol, at least until an X-ray was taken.

  So Partridge had got up, showered, and now stood barefoot in the breakfast nook, dressed in blue silk pyjamas, stirring sugar into a mug of black tea. His fingers were still cold but he felt no concern now. His father had suffered angina from early middle age, before his final heart attack at the age of eighty. But his father had also smoked forty cigarettes a day, on top of his pipe smoking, and dealt with his chest pain by ignoring it. Partridge, on the other hand, had always looked after himself physically, and Margaret made sure that he ate well.

  He could see how his father had been able to dismiss the symptoms for so long. For Partridge, it was almost as though the afternoon’s events had happened to someone else. The only residue of the episode at the doctor’s was the peculiar fascination with which he now found himself regarding things, the heightened intensity of his senses. The teaspoon caught the light in a band of diamonds, the steam from the mug seemed to curl onto his fingers as though it were animate, and the smell of the tea struck his nostrils like an elixir, almost making him swoon. Every little thing seemed alive and significant.

  To break the spell he placed the hot spoon on the back of his hand, a trick his wife used to startle him back into her presence. From outside came the distant sound of traffic on the Narrows Bridge, the chop of gear changes and whining decelerations. He heard the padding of footsteps in the room above.

  He was carrying his tea out onto the balcony when he was surprised by the phone ringing. He had asked the receptionist to hold his calls so he could rest, and to forward any that were urgent on to Carol. He hoisted the receiver.

  ‘I’m sorry to disturb you, your Honour,’ said Carol. ‘I know it’s late but I’ve just received a call from the premier’s office. A staffer. Wallace is already aware.’

  ‘Aware of what?’

  ‘We’re being moved out. I’m calling from your office in the supreme court. There are men here packing boxes now.’

  He blinked, closed his eyes, but he could already feel his temples start to pound again. What on earth?

  ‘And has the reason for this been explained to you?’ he asked, forcing himself to stay in control.

  ‘I was told that a very serious trial needs the courtroom, starting tomorrow.’

  ‘But this is ridiculous. And moved where? We’re in the middle of a royal commission, for God’s sake. What could be more serious than that?’

  ‘Please don’t come down here, your Honour. Please just rest. Leave it to me. I’ll pick you up in the morning. Then you can decide.’

  ‘Decide what?’

  She didn’t want to say it, didn’t need to say it.

  ‘You can tell Wallace, or anyone else who asks,’ he said, ‘that I will not be retiring from this commission.’

  ‘Very well,’ she finished, and hung up.

  He found himself unable to do likewise. One hand was clenched around the receiver, the other was formed in a fist in front of him. His chest was beginning to hurt again as his blood pressure rose.

  Swann retrieved his car from the beach and headed south across the river. To the east the rising moon was so bright it looked like an arc welder at work against the seam of sky and land. There were bushfires down near Pinjarra, the smoke blown along the coast by the southerly.

  He pulled up at Jacky’s motel and parked next to the office. There were kids in the pool spear-diving through a truck’s inner tube. He could smell seared chops and fried onions, hear a speedway race call on the radio in one of the rooms above. He slid his hand into his jacket and cocked the revolver’s hammer, slowing as he neared Jacky’s room, aiming into the open doorway.

  As in Michelle’s room, all the lights were on – desk lamp, galley light in the kitchenette, the light in the open fridge, the main light overhead.

  Then a toilet flushed and he took his eyes off the blood-spattered walls to crouch. The short corridor to the bathroom was even worse, blood-sprayed, and looked like a crazed painting. Swann trained his gun on the bathroom door, stepping around a puddle of blood that contained scraps of hair.

  As he moved to the door he heard a sigh. A woman’s sigh. And then the sloshing of a mop. The clang of a bucket.

  He peered through the doorway and saw her bent over the bathtub wearing a plastic raincoat and rubber gloves. Thongs. A hibiscus-patterned shower cap. He eased down the hammer on his gun, holstered it as she straightened up. She turned and saw Swann and sighed again.

  ‘You the husband or the lover? Or the father? Either way, yer a bit fucken late.’

  Pink froth all over her ankles. Her mop heavy with blood. ‘My fucken cleaner took one look an’ quit,’ she complained. ‘Interviewed all right, said she’d seen a thing or two. Didn’t believe me when I said you ain’t seen nothing yet, sweetheart. Full moon in the animals bar at the Roebourne pub’s nothin’ to what people do every night in motel rooms. Anyway, the ambulance took her away. She was still breathin’. Got the full send-off.’

  The woman turned back to her bucket. ‘Listen to those kids, eh? You’d think it was Christmas.’

  ‘Anybody see who did this?’

  She shrugged and squeezed her mop. ‘No. And none of the usual effin’ an’ ceein’ either. Them kids was right there too. I saw one of the ambos pull panties out of her mouth. Whoever did it took a shower after,’ she added. ‘Wet towel on the floor. Mirror still steamed up. But the girl was all dressed.’

  ‘Anybody tell you to leave this alone? Not touch a thing?’

  ‘Them Ds? Nope.’

  ‘You call them in?’

  ‘Dunno who called them. They was just here when I got here. But it was them who called the ambos.’

  ‘Any uniformed turn up?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘The Ds, one of them have wet hair?’

  The woman thought about it, blinked wh
en she understood. ‘The blond bloke did. Ah … okay, I get it. Time to shut me mouth. You won’t have to tell me again.’

  ‘No, it’s not like that.’ Something in his voice made the woman stare at him strangely.

  ‘Oh gawd. You’re that copper in the papers. Who was she? Not yer daughter? Oh gawd …’

  Swann shook his head but the woman’s sudsy hand was on his arm already, tears in her eyes.

  ‘The fucken bastards. Oh son, you shouldn’t see this. You shouldn’t —’

  But he wasn’t listening. First Michelle murdered in Louise’s old room, and now Jacky had copped a brutal bashing. Both were messages for him.

  In the corridor the blood on the light bulb was starting to dry. It smelled sweet, like toasted marshmallow. By morning it would smell like pig iron.

  Swann parked on Beaufort Street in Mount Lawley and walked back to the boarding house. The house that Pat Chesson had paid for with cash, according to Donovan Andrews, to house her girls. The gutters and footpath in the street were still covered with dried leaves but the branches of the Chinese tallow were green and alive with the racket of cicadas.

  Most of the houses were dark and silent. Many were derelict and boarded up. On the porch of the terrace next door, an old couple sat drinking wine and peeling apples. They stared at him as he stepped over the rusting gate.

  The front of the boarding house was an enclosed balcony tacked onto a gold-rush weatherboard, its painted flanks long since peeled away. A broken weathervane hung off the chimney, replaced by a cheap television antenna. From the gutters dangled Christmas lights that had fallen into the dense branches of a climbing rose.

  The last time Swann had come here he was looking for Louise. The front rooms were loud with laughter and music then, the air rich with the smells of Irish stew and apple sponge. A cloud of steam hung in the air beneath the stairs, where the single shower was never empty. The house had twenty rooms, which Pat had filled with bunk beds to multiply the number she could accommodate. The boards creaked and the walls vibrated with a water hammer that beat through the pipes from the shower. Most of the girls had been getting ready for the night shift, towels around their heads, cigarettes in their mouths, while those who’d just returned were playing cards at the kitchen table, sharing bottles of moselle, waiting for their turn in the shower.