Line of Sight

by David Whish-Wilson

  When he’d put down the phone he drank a glass of water. He hadn’t mentioned it to Margaret, hoping he was wrong, but it didn’t look like the commission would last much longer. Just hours ago, in the office attached to the cafeteria that now served as his chamber, he’d been informed by Wallace that Swann was about to be accused of improper conduct by the young policewoman with whom he’d allegedly had an affair, the same woman that DI Casey had introduced in his testimony a few days earlier. This young woman had subsequently quit the police force, according to Wallace, who had been contacted by her legal representative, and she was demanding to speak at the commission.

  There it was, the fait accompli Partridge had been waiting for, the final nail in the coffin of not only Swann’s credibility but also his reliability as a witness, as a man of good character. And yet Wallace had relayed the news apologetically, not at all as Partridge might have expected.

  ‘Why haven’t the police pressed charges against Swann, if indeed it was a case of assault?’ he asked the QC. ‘Are they intending to?’

  ‘Not to my knowledge, your Honour. At least, her barrister didn’t mention any such thing.’

  But Wallace wouldn’t meet his eyes, and stared instead at the unpolished boards at his feet. One of his shoelaces was partially undone.

  ‘Because,’ Partridge pressed, ‘you can imagine how it looks to me. The young lady prepared to make such an accusation in open court and yet the police force for whom she worked not pressing charges.’

  ‘I can imagine how it looks, yes.’

  ‘No doubt the official reason for not charging Superintendent Swann would be that there’s no evidence to support the woman’s claims. That it’s a case of her word against his, and she understandably wishes to avoid the trauma of a public trial – and yet she’s prepared to destroy Superintendent Swann’s reputation, very publicly, in my courtroom.’

  ‘That might well be the thinking – all of those things.’

  ‘What else aren’t you telling me?’

  Wallace shuffled. ‘It will be in the papers tomorrow.’

  As good as an admission, thought Partridge. As good as an admission of guilt.

  He dismissed Wallace with a peremptory flick of his wrist, not bothering to hide his disappointment and anger.

  As he waited for the PI to call, Partridge rinsed his glass and placed it back in the minibar. The PI was punctual to the minute, but his voice was laden with fatigue and he sounded wheezy.

  ‘It’s been productive. More than I thought. I’ve been talking to both sides of the street. There’re links even I didn’t know about.’

  Partridge waited for a coughing fit to cease. He heard the hiss of an asthma inhaler, a long draw and some throat clearing.

  ‘That’s better. God, I can breathe again. I asked around the business community, and your story about the Minister for Police checks out. Famous for extorting kickbacks. Had a couple of unlikely wins on the jiji’s too, apparently. It’s the wild bloody west out there, is what I keep hearing, and he’s not the only one. Got a pen?’

  ‘Go ahead.’

  It took a while, and when it was done the PI said, ‘And like you suggested, I contacted a friend in Canberra, a taxation guy – he’s more than happy to conduct an audit into the assets of the detectives you mentioned.’

  ‘We’ll see.’

  ‘He also told me that he’s just been assigned an investigation into a tax agent in Perth, a suspected heroin trafficker by the name of Solomon Sands. Now, get this – Mr Sands has links to members of the Liberal cabinet. In fact, eight of the eleven MPs on the Liberal Party Finance Committee, along with the president of the party, have been dealing with this bloke – some new dodgy tax scam. But Crown Law over there, who are supposed to be collecting evidence as part of my mate’s test case, well, they aren’t. Been dragging their feet apparently. The whole Crown Law office is being – what did my mate say? – wilfully obstructive. So there’s another thing you might want to look at.’

  If only that were possible, thought Partridge. But his suspicions had been justified. ‘How does it work, this scheme?’ he asked.

  ‘They’re calling it the Bottom of the Harbour tax scheme. Sounds sinister, doesn’t it? Reads like old-school asset stripping to me: you strip a company of its assets and profits before tax comes due, on-sell the shell to some dope who claims not to know the history, then make sure you lose all the books so the ATO gets nothing – send them to the bottom of the harbour. The tax agent pays tax only on his commission, which in turn is only a proportion of the price of sale. Meanwhile the assets are transferred to a new company and it’s business as usual. For my mate to get so excited means there must be lots of brownie points in it for him, lots of garlanded heads to roll – pollies, bankers, businessmen. He reckons there are potentially tens of millions of dollars wrapped up in this scam, and it’s something that started in Perth. Now it’s taken off around the country. Maybe Ruby Devine got mixed up in it, or knew something about it, threatened to use it as leverage in her negotiations with the tax office.’

  Partridge thanked the PI and hung up. His head was swimming. When he thought of the possible scale of the corruption, the farce that had been made of the royal commission – his royal commission – and what he might have done with it had he been given the chance, his old ambition turned into a terrible frustration, a bitterness of a kind he hadn’t felt for many years.

  The coroner’s office, buried beneath five storeys of the Royal Perth Hospital, was nicknamed the bunker. The hospital windows cast a sepia light over the new macadam around the service entrance. Despite the reek of burnt tar, Swann could already smell the formaldehyde and ammonia.

  Behind him in the waste-disposal site, a steel grate clanked and a blast of red from the hospital furnace threw his shadow across the brickwork. Body parts, garbage and infected linen joined the cremation flames, making the narrow black chimney rumble like a steam train building up a head.

  Swann descended the stairwell to the coroner’s office and knocked on the dented wooden door. It swung open to reveal a coronial assistant standing under dazzling fluoro and framed by white tiles and white walls. He was wearing white dungarees tucked into white gumboots, and rubber gloves. A face mask was pushed down his stubbled chin.

  ‘Jesus, that was quick.’ Darren Plant was barely out of his teens and hadn’t yet learnt to conceal his enthusiasm. He seemed genuinely pleased to see Swann.

  ‘Come again?’

  ‘You’re bloody quick. Spooky voodoo quick. Just hung up a minute ago, now here you are. Beam me up, Scotty!’

  Perhaps it was the fumes, but Darren could never get a message across without the signal breaking up.

  ‘What are you on about, Darren? You looking to get fired? Let me in, for Chrissake.’

  ‘Not to worry, Superintendent. There’s only old Abraham over there at the furnace. Biblical name, biblical job.’ He laughed and stood back, ushering Swann past with a bow. ‘The dungeons await your inspection, sire.’

  ‘Cut the Addams Family shit. Where is she?’

  Plant led him through the chilled steel doors of the autopsy room. ‘Homicide dropped her off about thirty minutes ago. She’s laid out till next week, when the Prof gets back from a conference in Montreal.’

  It was Tracey, Michelle’s roommate, Swann was sure of it, going by Donovan Andrews’ description of her as a city black, pale-skinned, half Irish.

  A month or so before, Plant had called Swann to tell him that the corpse of a young woman had been retrieved from the bush near Pinjarra. All he could say was that she was a brunette in black lingerie and that it was a definite homicide. Her face was so bashed she was unrecognisable. The photo Swann had given him of Louise was no use. But she was a brunette, like Louise, and Swann rushed to the morgue, heart pounding.

  The murdered girl had been cut open. Her stomach was sprawled over a set of scales; her heart and liver sat in shining steel bowls. The top of her skull had been sawn off and her brain
removed. A plaster-of-paris cast of her teeth was drying on the bench beside her organs. Swann had stared at the smears of black blood running across the grey skin of her chest and stomach, at her horrifically beaten face, and the sickening relief that it wasn’t Louise made him weak at the knees.

  ‘Media got this yet?’ he asked Plant, nodding at Tracey.

  ‘Nope. Probably won’t either, they rarely do. Didn’t seem to be much fuss. Another accidental drowning is what one of the homicide Ds said. Waste of bloody time, he reckoned. Amazing what some blokes’ll pay for, he also said. You know her?’

  ‘Why did you say another drowning?’

  Plant looked surprised. ‘She’s the third in a year. I never told you because none of them was your daughter. Look, I’ve still got the photo of her.’

  ‘Don’t worry about that. Explain.’

  ‘Like I said, first one about a year ago, another just after. Deaths by misadventure, the coroner ruled. Soon as the cops looked at them they walked away.’

  Nothing suspicious about their deaths: the reason Terry hadn’t been able to find a record of them at Central.

  ‘Were they ever claimed? They have any ID?’

  ‘Sadly, no. We cremated one of them a couple of weeks ago. The other one’s due to be cremated tomorrow. It’s been a year and nobody’s claimed her.’

  ‘Is it possible to hold off the cremation? I don’t think their deaths were accidental.’

  ‘Not unless the police open an investigation. And the coroner didn’t find anything suspicious.’

  ‘I want to get a tox done on her blood, for opiates.’

  ‘Too late for that. She’s been drained. Twelve months in the cold room won’t help either. I do remember that the coroner found a high concentration of alcohol in both of them, which is why he figured they’d gone swimming drunk and drowned.’

  Swann turned back to Tracey’s body on the slab. ‘She look roughed up to you?’

  Darren Plant leaned over and lifted back some of her matted hair. There was beach sand in it, and in her scalp. Her eyes were closed, her mouth was open. She still smelt of the ocean.

  ‘Some bruising – see there? Up the neck.’

  ‘You mind?’ Swann asked.

  ‘Nope.’

  Swann peeled back the canvas tarp and dropped it to the floor. Tracey was wearing a bikini; there was seaweed caught in her toes. ‘Where’d they find her?’

  ‘Off a northern beach. That’s all I heard. Some blokes trolling for tailor saw her near a reef.’

  ‘But she’s covered in sand.’

  ‘They couldn’t get her into the boat. Didn’t want to gaff her or leave her there, so they towed her to the beach.’

  Gently Swann lifted her arms, peering close. Finally he found what he was looking for, on a vein over her ankle. The smudge of a bruise. A lifted red spot, like a mozzie bite, where the needle had gone in. He took a polaroid of it to show Reggie, and another of her face.

  ‘Don’t care how you do it but make sure the coroner tests for heroin on this one, and has a close look at the bruising. Let me know if she was already dead when she hit the water.’

  ‘Roger that.’

  ‘And I’ll get you an ID by tonight. She’ll be from over east, just like the other two. I want you to take that to the media.’

  ‘But the police have said it’s not suspicious. The autopsy hasn’t been done.’

  ‘Say what you like, but make it good. Point out that this is the third drowning in a year, in roughly the same area. And that a full-spectrum tox and autopsy will be carried out to determine whether or not she was dead before she went into the water.’

  ‘The coroner will know it came from me. I’m the only one here.’

  ‘Say one of the homicide Ds mentioned it. Asked specifically for the testing.’

  ‘The bastards’ll come back on me.’

  ‘Look at her – she’s your age. She was done in and dumped like garbage.’

  ‘But —’

  ‘If they come back on you, tell them I made you do it. They’ll believe that. Tell them I threatened you. Because I’m about to, if you don’t.’

  Plant looked at Tracey and the still-wet sand in her sightless eyes. ‘Okay,’ he agreed.

  The two of them placed the canvas shroud back over her corpse. It was icy-cold in the refrigerated room, three degrees Celsius according to a red dial by the gurney. Swann had goosebumps on his forearms but even so he was sweating – he could smell himself over the chemicals in the room.

  ‘Now,’ he said, ‘where’s Michelle?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The OD who came in yesterday. The one in the news.’

  ‘This way.’

  The autopsy hadn’t been started on Michelle yet either, something to be thankful for. Plant guided Swann down the corridor, his gumboots squeaking on the tiled floor. He pulled a drawer out of the wall and unzipped the body bag. Michelle was naked inside it. There was bruising on one arm where the needle had been forced in. Her fists were clenched.

  Swann took another photo, the flash burning her image into his eyes. When he opened them it was dark again. The polaroid popped from the camera and he shook it dry in the frozen air.

  He passed Darren Plant the fifty he owed him for the information, for the access. ‘I’ll get that name to you. You give it to the media.’

  ‘All right. But it won’t stop the other cremation going ahead.’

  The Fremantle doctor was still gusting but even the salt wind couldn’t clear away the stench of the morgue. Swann could taste the formaldehyde in his mouth, feel it on his skin.

  Ruby Devine’s next-door neighbour lived in a Californian bungalow across the foreshore from the dark river, a humble house in comparison to those alongside it. He parked on the street and walked up the path to the front door. Merle Shannon was an old woman but despite the lateness of the hour she answered the door without asking first. She was dressed in a beige cardigan and a tartan skirt and tartan slippers. Swann could smell mutton fat and pipe tobacco in the lounge room, where classical music wafted from a transistor.

  He’d already interviewed Merle twice but he needed to make sure. Merle had described to the case detectives and the media and then to Swann and Reggie how, on the evening Ruby was murdered, she had been weeding among her roses. It was mild then, but turned rainy later on. Concealed at first by the side fence, Merle had stood up to see Ruby, dressed in one of her glamorous numbers, pressing the front doorbell and peering into her handbag. Her Dodge Phoenix was parked in the driveway, partially obscured by shrubs. Merle wasn’t able to see whether anyone was in it, but she did see a young girl open the door and then stare strangely across at the car. None of this being unusual, Merle had gone back inside.

  Swann apologised to Merle for bothering her again, declined her offer of a cup of tea. He took out the polaroid of Michelle and passed it to Merle, who grimaced at the death mask blasted with white light. She peered down her bifocals at the black eyes and dark hair and red lips that together made a face. She nodded tentatively.

  ‘Like I said last time, my eyes aren’t so good. But this could be her. Yes, I think it could be her. My God, so young! Is this the one in the papers?’

  Swann squeezed Merle’s forearm and put the polaroid away. He felt her eyes follow him down the path through her roses, but when he reached the car and looked back she was gone.

  Next door, Ruby’s house was dark and silent.

  Donovan Andrews didn’t look as frightened tonight. In the grey light cast by the old cenotaph, Swann could even see a grin on his face, and he didn’t drop it when he saw Swann. Instead he shifted over on the park bench and jerked an arm behind him. Parked near the closest of the trees was a motorbike, polished and gleaming.

  ‘BSA Gold Flash,’ Swann observed. ‘That a ’61? I used to have one of those.’

  Andrews’ grin widened. ‘I know. That’s why I bought it. You always talked it up.’

  ‘Common as a buggered back in my day, th
e BSA. Don’t see them much any more. A bloody good bike, that one. Mancuso lend it to you?’

  ‘Nah. That mug rides a Moto Guzzi. I bought this myself, with my hard-earned. That’s my touring bike right there.’

  ‘Jesus, Don, you don’t muck around.’

  ‘Gotta good missus finally, like I said. This one’s a stayer, I reckon. I like her more than anyone yet.’

  Swann sat down and spread his long legs over the grass. The city lights were reflected in the low cloud, the still river, the white trunks of the lemon-scented gums around them.

  ‘That blood on you, Don? You done something I should know about?’

  Andrews chuckled and looked down at the black stain across the front of his jeans, along the arms of his jacket. ‘Nah, that’s squid ink, mate, bits that missed my apron. Beyond caring about all that guts and stuff, I am. Even getting used to the smell of sardines. Might be something I could do up north too. Nick Mancuso’s always goin’ on about how the north’s opening up. Maybe I could work on the boats, or do some drilling.’

  ‘Where’d you get the money? That what you wanted to talk about?’

  Andrews lit a cigarette, and for a moment his smile was dented by worry.

  ‘Come on, Don. I’ve got to get to jail before lockdown.’

  ‘And I’ve got to get back to work. How about I race ya; see who gets to Freo first?’

  ‘How about you get on with it? Just come out and tell me.’

  ‘Well, I didn’t steal it, but that lawyer bloke workin’ for Nick I told you about the other night? The one with that crazy D? He came back this afternoon looking for me. Said he’d give me a thousand bucks just to sign my name on a piece of paper. Wait, don’t look like that. Nick was there, said it was all right, nothing dodgy brothers about it. Said he’d put in a thou to match the lawyer’s.’

  ‘Everything about Nick Mancuso is dodgy, Don. He’s a heroin dealer for a start. Before that he sold stolen cars. Before that marijuana, in weight. Before that —’

  ‘So he can afford it, right? All it was, Nick’s buying some gear off old Franchino, some trucks and restaurant stuff – ovens and ranges, like I told you. They just wanted me to sign on as one of the directors of the old company. Nothin’ can come back on me. I’m like a silent partner, don’t have to do anything.’