by Tim Ayliffe
‘What’s this about?’
‘Australian politics, mate. The sport of cronies. I need to call Gerald.’
Bailey picked up his phone and prepared to piss off his boss.
‘Wait.’ Ronnie tossed his phone on the bed beside Bailey. ‘Use mine.’
Bailey did as he was told and walked outside to the courtyard at the back of his house before typing Gerald’s number into Ronnie’s phone.
He answered after two rings.
‘It’s Bailey. Switch on your TV. That exclusive Davis was promising you is on the ABC right now. Breaking news, apparently. Looks like a town hall function last night.’
‘Duplicitous bastards,’ Gerald grumbled down the line.
‘Don’t tell me you’re surprised?’
‘I need to watch this. Call you back.’
Bailey walked back inside and turned up the volume. The presenter was part way through her commentary on the story.
‘. . . it’s a departure from a thirty-five-year career policing criminals in the state of New South Wales. But Commissioner Davis says he’s ready for a new challenge.’
Davis had an earnest look on his face that made Bailey groan.
‘It’s time for an exciting change,’ he proudly declared to the cameras. ‘I’m just happy that an opportunity to continue to serve the great people of New South Wales, the great people of Australia, has become available.’
‘Become available?’ The words sounded more incredulous when Bailey repeated them.
‘I’ve always been a proud supporter of the Labor Party, the values of fairness and making sure we can grow prosperous, while helping the little guys at the same time.’
‘What a wanker.’
Bailey hit the mute button. He had already reserved a special dislike for David Davis, largely because the man had slept with Dexter. Add a free ride on the political gravy train and he was close to topping Bailey’s shit list.
‘These guys get better at lying by the day.’
‘You’ve got nothing on American politics, bubba.’
‘At least some of your guys do the hard work to get elected.’ Bailey had met enough congressmen to know the difference. ‘Even when someone gets an office on the Hill, they spend twenty hours a week on the phone, speaking to constituents, trying to raise money for re-election. Here it’s a wink and a nod from some union or faction boss and the door swings wide open.’
‘Power and privilege, bubba, same story everywhere.’
‘Yeah. Anyway, the stakes just got higher.’
Bailey was still staring at the two smug faces on the screen when his phone rang. He looked down at the screen expecting it to be Gerald. It was Miranda.
‘Sweetheart.’ He was instantly in a better mood.
‘Dad, are you watching the television?’ Miranda was speaking quickly, like something was wrong.
‘Yeah.’
‘The police commissioner’s on now, talking about resigning and going into politics.’
‘I’m watching. What’s wrong?’
‘He was the bloke I saw with Catherine Chamberlain that night in the city.’
The skin on Bailey’s forehead rippled with concern, his brain trying to process what it meant.
‘You sure?’
‘As sure as I can be. I knew I’d recognised him from somewhere, at the time. Frankly, you see so many familiar faces on television, they all blend in and you forget who’s who.’
‘Sweetheart . . .’ Bailey had walked back out to his courtyard, worried that someone might be listening. ‘Don’t tell anyone what you’ve just told me, okay?’
‘What do you think it means?’
‘Not sure.’ Bailey wanted to get off the phone. ‘I think we should talk in person. Can we meet later?’
‘Dad, you’re scaring me.’
Bailey hated himself for letting Miranda get this far involved. ‘I’m just being cautious. When can we meet?’
‘I’m in court till four.’
‘Call me at the office when you’re finished. I’ll be there. Can you come by?’ If she said no, he’d be waiting outside the courtroom.
‘Sure. It’s a short walk.’
He wanted to respond with something that would make her feel safe, make her smile, but nothing came. ‘Take care, sweetheart.’
Inside, Ronnie was still watching the television. Before Bailey could speak, his phone rang again. It was Gerald.
He answered. ‘I’ll call you back.’ And hung up, feeling ridiculous.
Bailey grabbed Ronnie’s phone and walked back outside for a third time. This time, Ronnie was following him.
Gerald answered before the first ring.
‘Are you there?’
‘Of course I’m here!’
‘I was talking to Miranda.’ Bailey lowered his voice. ‘You’re not going to believe this – she says she saw Davis with Catherine Chamberlain in a city bar a few weeks ago.’
‘He was a client?’
‘It’s possible. Leave it with me. I need to speak to Sharon.’
Bailey hung up the phone for the third time in less than five minutes.
He turned to Ronnie, who was hunched over, his face next to Bailey’s so he could hear both ends of the conversation. ‘Get all that?’
‘Loud and clear, bubba.’
‘I need a shower,’ Bailey said. ‘How’s the head, mate?’
‘Not good.’
‘Big bloke like you, still can’t keep up.’
The newsreader on the television had moved on to another story.
‘Police are still searching for Michael Anderson, the former advisor to Defence Minister Gary Page. Mr Anderson is wanted for questioning over the murder of Sydney woman Catherine Chamberlain.’
‘Here we go,’ Bailey said. ‘What now?’
‘In a dramatic development this morning, police now say he is armed and dangerous.’
‘Armed and dangerous? What on earth are they playing at?’
Bailey picked up his phone and typed a text message to Dexter – brief, and with the usual typos.
Urgent. Cam we meet fpr coffee?
The response arrived within seconds.
Harry’s at Woolloomooloo. Let’s take a walk.
When?
Now.
Bailey turned to Ronnie. ‘I’m going to meet Sharon. I know you like to know where I am.’
‘You’re on your own, bubba. Things to do.’ Ronnie reached into his pocket and pulled out a fresh cigar.
‘Yeah, like what?’
‘The ambassador,’ Ronnie said. ‘He needs me.’
He slapped Bailey on the shoulder and left.
CHAPTER 16
Woolloomooloo epitomised the changing soul of Sydney like no other suburb. With its history of war, poverty, migration, economic development and affluence, it also told a story about the shaping of modern Australia.
Bailey had been coming here on and off for decades, most often for drinking sessions that ended with a footpath dinner at a mobile kitchen called Harry’s Café de Wheels.
Harry Edwards first parked his caravan café next to Woolloomooloo’s naval dockyards in 1938, promising a cheap pie with peas at a time when the Depression was biting hard. It wasn’t open long because war beckoned, and Harry headed off to fight the Germans and Italians in the Middle East. When he came home in 1945, he slid open his kitchen door and Harry’s Café de Wheels reclaimed the mantle as the favourite late-night takeaway for sailors, cops, journalists, drunken partygoers, criminals and anyone working the nightshift needing a cheap, hearty meal when other restaurants were closed.
With the buzz of his Irish coffee diminishing, Bailey approached the counter. ‘Pie and peas, mate. No sauce.’ It was the only thing that Bailey ever ordered at Harry’s.
Dexter wouldn’t be far away, but he was hungry and desperate for something to dull his hangover. He looked down at his stomach, which was pressing slightly on the shirt dangling over his jeans. He really needed to get in shape. Mayb
e, when all this was done, he’d finally go jogging with Miranda like he’d promised. More quality time with his daughter – how bad could it be?
‘Thanks, mate.’ Bailey paid the guy behind the counter and took a bite out of his pie. It was good. If exercising meant he could still eat at Harry’s, maybe he’d buy himself a pair of trainers. That was still a big maybe.
Woolloomooloo was an upmarket part of town these days, where the salted air blowing off the harbour no longer competed with the smell of urine on the footpath. Like most of the city, the place had undergone major cosmetic surgery, but the developers had somehow preserved its history.
The sense of the past was largely due to the imposing arm of the Finger Wharf. The giant shell was twice as old as Bailey and, on the outside at least, it had retained its honest majesty. Inside, the urbane transformation was immense. Magazine restaurants lined the promenade, each with similar décor and nouveau menus set at the same exorbitant prices. Upstairs were the multimillion-dollar condos owned by celebrities and the cashed-up elite, who paced the planks of the wharf oblivious to those who had walked there before them.
If the wharf’s sturdy pylons could speak, they’d describe soldiers farewelling their families for war, lowly paid wharfies loading piles of wool for export, and the arrival of the new Australians – Greeks, Italians and, later, Chinese and Vietnamese – all searching for a better life.
Bailey finished his pie and walked to the corner of the wharf where it would be easy for Dexter to find him.
Whichever way he looked the view was impressive – the matchstick skyscrapers and Sydney Tower, the roof of St Mary’s Cathedral, the Art Gallery of New South Wales and the rolling hills of the Botanic Gardens. He could even see the sails of the Opera House and the busiest bridge on the continent. The navy ships moored near Kings Cross were only a few hundred metres away – an imposing reminder that peacetime hadn’t come without a fight.
Sydney was familiar to Bailey, but it didn’t feel like home. Nowhere did any more.
He looked at his phone. It had been almost thirty minutes since they had exchanged text messages and he was starting to worry.
He sent her another one.
Whre r u?
The fact that Bailey’s home had been ransacked meant that someone had taken more than a casual interest in him. He didn’t like it. Had he been followed? Had they got to Dexter too? He didn’t even know who they were.
He studied the people around him; walking along the wharf, across the road and sitting down for breakfast – or brunch, as they liked to call it at this time of the day. No one seemed to care that it was a work day. The place looked like the pages of a gossip magazine brought to life – fake tans, breast enlargements, white jeans and canvas shoes. One old lady with blue hair had a cluster of diamonds around her neck that looked like a bunch of grapes. And everyone was talking, either to the person sitting opposite or on their phone – so busy, so popular; yet so very lonely. At least they seemed that way to Bailey.
Sydney had become a bullshitter’s paradise and Bailey didn’t like it.
His pocket vibrated. He pulled out his phone – unknown number.
‘Hello.’
‘You’re right about Victor Ho.’
It was Michael Anderson.
‘I was wondering when you might call again.’
‘Yeah, well, now you can stop wondering. Saw your story online –’
‘We shouldn’t talk on the phone,’ Bailey said. ‘Someone could be listening.’
‘How d’you know?’
‘I just know.’
Click.
‘Anderson? Anderson?’
He was gone.
Bailey looked down at the screen on his phone to confirm that the call had ended. It had. But there was a message from Dexter.
Sorry. Be there in 5. Held up. Will explain.
Dexter crossed at the traffic lights just up from Harry’s, walking like someone in a hurry, looking over her shoulder every few steps.
She looked stressed and tired when she arrived beside Bailey.
‘Are you okay?’
‘Not really.’
Bailey took a chance and squeezed her arm. ‘Looks like we have a bit to talk about.’
‘Yeah, we do. Let’s take a walk.’
His natural instinct was to take her arm, only he didn’t. He’d lost the right to do that with Dexter. They walked along the wharf in silence.
‘It wasn’t me,’ Dexter said finally.
Bailey didn’t know what she was talking about. ‘Wasn’t you what?’
‘Armed and dangerous.’ She repeated the line the newsreader had used on television earlier that morning.
‘Never thought it was. Reckon it was Davis?’
She shook her head. ‘Not directly. It’s more likely that that dickhead Rob Lucas has been briefing the media behind my back. And by the media, I obviously don’t mean you.’
‘Obviously.’
‘Davis is into something,’ Dexter said. ‘Something not right. I’m not sure how Catherine Chamberlain’s linked but it’s there, somewhere.’
The last time Bailey had mentioned his theories about Davis to Dexter, it hadn’t gone down well. But this time he had a source who was incapable of lying – his daughter.
‘Davis was a client,’ he said. ‘I’m sure about that now.’
‘How?’
‘Miranda saw them together in the city one night.’
‘Wait a minute.’ Dexter stopped walking and turned so she could see his face. ‘Your Miranda?’
‘Yeah.’
Bailey wanted Dexter to lead the conversation, ask the questions.
‘How on earth does she know Catherine Chamberlain? Did she know what Catherine did in her spare time for cash? Were they friends?’
‘Not really. Miranda teaches a law class at university and turns out Catherine was her student. They knew each other, that’s about it.’
Dexter walked to the edge of the wharf and stopped next to a luxury catamaran quietly bobbing against its mooring.
She lit a cigarette, took a long drag and blew the smoke across the water. ‘Emergencies.’
Bailey couldn’t care less about the cigarette. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘I knew he wasn’t a good guy. I was just . . . I was . . .’
‘It’s okay.’
‘It was just . . . I was just so lonely.’ She took another drag and gazed past the catamaran towards the eastern tip of the harbour. ‘So bloody lonely.’
Bailey didn’t know what to say because he knew that she blamed him. Their relationship had failed because of him – the collateral damage of his dysfunction.
She couldn’t bring herself to look at him. ‘I mean, fuck you – fuck you, Bailey.’
He had to let her get it out. And he deserved it.
‘I was so angry at you.’ She was talking to the water in between long puffs of the white stick in her hand. ‘And I waited. Do you know how long I waited for you, Bailey?’
She let the silence hang, an invitation for him to respond.
‘I didn’t think to –’
‘You didn’t think to what? I think you mean that you just didn’t think, full stop.’
Bailey stopped trying to explain himself and waited for Dexter to say something.
She took a final drag on her cigarette, which had burnt down almost to the little yellow stump, and tossed it onto the wooden planks of the wharf.
‘You didn’t think, unless you count thinking about yourself. That’s something you were damn good at.’
‘I’m here now.’
‘What does that even mean?’
‘I’m not sure.’
‘Well, that’s just great!’
‘I should never have gone back, don’t know why I –’
‘Don’t bullshit me, Bailey.’ She turned back around to face him. ‘You know why you went back. You’re addicted to it – the rush, the feeling of being important. Being in the place where it’s all going
down. You’ve been like that from the moment I met you.’
She turned her back on him, walked a few paces closer to the water’s edge.
‘A lot has happened since then,’ he said.
‘Yeah? Why should I listen to you this time?’
‘I couldn’t come back straight away. Not after Iraq.’
‘What do you mean? You’d been in and out of that place for decades. And you’ve been back here for three fucking years, Bailey!’ She looked like she was pleading with him to give her something that would make sense. ‘And we’d been there before – the nightmares, the faces that kept you awake. Why couldn’t you talk to me?’
‘It was different. And I couldn’t do it to you, not again. I just couldn’t. Had to do it myself –’
‘That wasn’t your decision to make!’
Yeah, but he’d made it anyway. Big boys didn’t cry, especially in front of big girls.
‘You want to know? You really want to fucking know what happened to me in that rat hole?’
‘Yes! Yes, I do!’
‘Excuse me.’ A waiter from one of the restaurants on the wharf was standing behind them with a sheepish look on his face. ‘Do you mind taking your conversation away from this area? You’re interrupting our guests.’
The people in the restaurant had turned their heads away from their al fresco meals to tune in to the sideshow playing out in front of them.
Bailey eyeballed the waiter. ‘Yeah, you can tell the patrons to –’
‘Bailey!’ Dexter said.
‘Okay, mate, we’re going.’ He grabbed Dexter by the hand and led her away.
By the time they reached the end of the wharf they were alone, apart from the birds and more bobbing boats.
‘I was taken.’ The way he said the words made them sound like it wasn’t a big deal, like it could happen to anyone.
‘What?’
‘Mad Islamists. They held me for ten months.’
‘You, you . . . you were kidnapped?’
‘Guess you’d call it that.’
‘What happened?’
Bailey looked away, back up the wharf towards Harry’s.
‘Talk to me – Bailey? I want to know.’
After all this time, she deserved some answers.
‘Gerald and I went to Fallujah with an American military unit. The operation went bad. These guys grabbed me, kept me in a cave – did all kinds of shit.’