Babylon South

by Jon Cleary

  “Sir, do you carry a gun?”

  Leeds stared at him. “You’re really grilling me, aren’t you? No, I don’t. I have an issue Smith & Wesson at home, but I don’t carry it around with me.”

  “We don’t know what she was shot with, not yet. The bullets are still in the body.” A spark glowed in his memory. “You were a friend of Sir Walter’s. You used to go shooting with him—”

  “Just the once. On that trip in the photo, up to the Roper River.”

  “Did you ever see his collection of guns?”

  “Yes. He lent me a couple of guns for that trip—I can’t remember what they were.”

  “Can you remember the hand-guns?”

  “No. Why?”

  “The collection is still there in Lady Springfellow’s home. Two hand-pieces are missing. One’s been missing for years—we think it might’ve been a Colt .45. The other’s been gone only a couple of weeks. It’s a smaller piece, maybe a Walther.”

  Leeds didn’t flinch. “It was a valuable collection—Walter would have had it insured. Lady Springfellow may not have kept up the insurance, but there’d be an inventory in the files somewhere. I hope you’re not suggesting she killed Emma?”

  “I’m not suggesting anyone at the moment, sir. Were you a friend of hers as well as Sir Walter’s?” How did I get into this situation? Did Corporal Kafoops ask Napoleon why he’d lost the battle of Waterloo?

  Again Leeds’s voice and gaze were steady. “Yes.”

  “A close friend?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s what you meant, wasn’t it? The past catching up with us.”

  Leeds picked up the brass ruler again; for a moment he looked as if he was trying to snap it in half. “It was something I’d rather not talk about. I’m not proud of it.”

  “Will it come out if I continue with the investigation on him?”

  “It may. I hope not.”

  Malone was silent once more; then he stood up. It was dark outside and dark in here, too: the Commissioner had turned on no lights. “May I go, sir? I think I’m getting a headache.”

  Leeds put down the ruler, managed to rake up a smile. “I’m sorry I’ve got you into this bind, Scobie. Yet I’m glad. I’d rather you investigated me than some of the others in the Department.”

  “I don’t mean to be rude, sir—but thanks for nothing. You wouldn’t care to transfer me to Tibooburra?”

  “I may be there before you.”

  III

  Chilla Dural was getting ready to hold up a bank.

  Life on the outside, he had decided, was too complicated. He had once been as self-reliant as any man in Sydney: “I can always trust you to look after yourself,” Heinie Odets had told him. But it hadn’t turned out that way, not these past few weeks.

  In gaol he had been able to look after himself. There had been problems when he had first gone in; the screws had been at pains to let him know who were the bosses. Those were the days when a pick-handle had been an accepted form of persuasion. He had made the mistake of trying to fight them; it had taken him quite a while to realize that that wouldn’t work. The system would always beat you unless you joined it. After a year he had joined it, had acknowledged who were the bosses and taken his own place in the pecking order. He had never acknowledged any other con as a boss in the yards and that had resulted in a couple of running wars; in the end he had been recognized as his own boss, except for the screws, and he had been left alone. There had been a certain code in those days, but it wasn’t like that any longer. Drugs ran the gaols these days: he who had the supply ran the system and a code was only something that gave you a runny nose in winter. He had never taken any drugs and he had knocked down several dealers who had tried to sell them to him.

  Two or three queers had tried to mate up with him, seeing him as a protector, but he had had, and still had, an almost religious priggishness towards homosexuality. When he had gone into Parramatta there had been some, but not much, of it; now, it seemed, it was as common as masturbation had once been. Once, as an act of revenge, a yard boss had organized four homos to gang-bang him; they had made the mistake of trying to take him while he was dressed and not stripped in the shower-block. He had had a knife and he had used it effectively; nothing deflates an erection so quickly as its being chopped off at the base by a sharp knife. From then on he had been left alone.

  In time he had become friendly with some of the screws, though he had never let them turn him into an informer. He got to know of their families, though he never met any of them; in the carpentry shop, where he had become head of the shop, he made toys for their kids. One of the screws had, like himself, a fondness for jazz; he brought in records for Dural, old classics by Beiderbecke and Bechet and Art Tatum. Life had settled into a pattern and, though he had dreamed of freedom and what he would do when his time was served, he had never fretted about it. He had nowhere to go, but he had felt he was getting somewhere, even if standing still.

  Now he was getting nowhere and still had nowhere to go. He had bought himself some new clothes and gone looking for a job; but no one wanted a 58-year-old ex-con, not even the new nightclub owners, his last resort. He had hoped at first for a decent, honest job; he had worked for one day as a carpenter on a building site. Then the union rep had come round, asked for his ticket, refused to let him join the union when he said he had no ticket and had told him to get lost. He had king-hit the union rep and walked off the job. So much for rehabilitation. He had, unenthusiastically, gone to a half-way house run by ex-cons, but half an hour there had been enough: he had listened to more politics in twenty minutes than in twenty years in Parramatta.

  He had talked it over with his parole officer, Les Glizzard. Because he had been serving a life sentence, he had not been released on parole but on licence. Once a fortnight he had to report to Glizzard and he was not allowed out of the State. He was not to apply for a passport, to consort with known criminals or to break the law in even the slightest way.

  “I could throw a brick through a window,” he had said. “You’d have to pull me in for that.”

  Glizzard had shaken his young curly head. He had a broken nose but he still looked like a cherub, one who had been vandalized but not knocked off his feet. “You’re wasting your time, Chilla, thinking like that. The coppers bring you in here for that, I’d just tell „em to forget it. We don’t want you back, Chilla. The gaols are chock-a-block, we want your space. You’ve done your time, we can’t go on providing you with a home.”

  “Mr. Glizzard—”

  “Call me Les.” That was his trouble: he was everybody’s friend, a mate of all and sundry, especially the sundry. He should have been a nun, he saw too much good in too many of the world’s worst.

  “Les, I don’t like it out here. There’s real shit in gaol, I know that—they had a better class of con when I first went in.” He was not given to many jokes, but he grinned now. “But I can handle that shit. Out here—” He shook his head.

  “You’ve got to be patient, Chilla. You’re still in an institutional mode. Once we’ve got you into a work mode—”

  “A what?”

  “What?” There was a language barrier, even though they were both speaking in their native tongue. “Oh. Well, once we’ve got you working. Once we’ve got you in that mode, out there at the cutting edge of getting you on your feet, you’ll be okay, it’ll be a different scene.”

  “I don’t think so. I think I’ll be back here in a coupla months at the outside, with the cops telling you I’ve knocked down some young punk or I been consorting with some of the old crims I used to know—”

  Glizzard was not to be denied his role as guardian angel. “Not a chance, Chilla. I’m going to give you every opportunity. This is the cutting edge of our new policy, the rehabilitation mode. We’ve got to take risks and I’m betting you’re a good risk.”

  “I’m gunna disappoint you, Les.”

  He had been out of gaol, had left home, only a month; but a
lready he knew where he belonged. Or anyway didn’t belong. He had given up looking for a job, trying to get into a work mode, and gone looking for means of getting back to prison. It would have to be something so serious that Glizzard, for all his bleeding heart and good intentions, could not brush it aside.

  He spent a week doing a reconnaissance, looking for an old bank where there was no newfangled technology. The world was being taken over by bloody technology; he had become so reactionary, he longed for the horse-and-buggy days that only his grandfather had known. He found what he wanted out in Leichhardt, a bank built before the First World War and soon to be replaced by a new building close by. There was no sky-rocketing steel shield mounted in the counter; there were remote-controlled cameras in the corners of the ceiling, but they would be a help, not a hindrance. They would help him to be identified, if he should walk away with the hold-up money.

  He bought a gun, knowing where to go from the old days: a Walther PPK .380, a formidable-looking gun that would frighten the pants off any sensible bank teller. He did not, however, buy any ammunition; he was not looking to get into a shooting match. The object of the exercise was to fail, not to succeed; bullets were not necessary for failure, unless you were going to commit suicide. So far, he was not that depressed.

  He put the gun in the cheap briefcase he had bought, put on his new straw hat, debated whether to wear a jacket and decided against it, and went out into the hallway, locking his door behind him. Jerry Killeen, as always, was waiting in his own doorway.

  “G’day, you going out? It’s bloody hot, I can tell you. I just been up the road and I was bloody glad to get back for a cuppa, I can tell you. You want one before you go out?”

  A few nights ago he had spent the evening with Killeen. On the spur of the moment, feeling sorry for the little bugger, he had asked him to go with him to the jazz club up the street. Killeen had been bored by the music and Dural had been embarrassed at his boredom and remarks. He had decided that from now on he would keep the little man at arm’s length.

  “I can’t, mate. I got an appointment with my parole bloke.” He had found it best to be frank with Killeen, up to a point; otherwise the old coot would just keep asking questions. “We’re gunna rob a bank together.”

  “Well, good luck. On the way back, knock on the door. I’m always here.” He sniffed the air. “You notice anything? The Viet Cong have stopped frying rice. They must be trying to become more like us Aussies. They’re gunna take over the bloody country, I can tell you. Definitely.”

  Dural left him, the little Aussie battler besieged by slant-eyed invaders, and went out into the heat of the morning. He hailed a cab and got into the back seat, not wanting to have to belt himself into the front seat; he wondered if breaking the seat-belt law could result in his being sent back to prison. The driver was an Aussie, a change from the bloody foreigners who had been picking him up for the past month. This one was a real Aussie.

  “You don’t like riding in the front?” Meaning: you too good to sit up here beside me?

  “I’m nervous.”

  “You afraid I’m not a good driver? Listen, sport, I been driving a cab for twenty-five years, never had an accident, not so much as a scratch. This is me own cab, I own it, paid a hundred and fifty grand for the plate and don’t owe a penny on it. I’m as good as the next man, I always say.”

  “As good as your passengers, that what you mean?”

  “Every time, no matter who they are. No offence.”

  “Not bloody much.” Dural took the Walther out of the briefcase; it was a spur of the moment decision. “I’m not gunna shoot you, sport, nothing like that. But I don’t like uppity cab drivers, you know what I mean? Now shut up and just drive.”

  “Jesus, I told you—no offence, mate.”

  Dural put away the gun and the driver drove in silence for the rest of the journey, keeping a watchful, fearful eye on his passenger in the rear-view mirror. Dural caught the glance and grinned at him.

  “Relax, sport, I’m not gunna hurt you. I just like cab drivers who know when to shut up.”

  The driver kept his silence, but Dural knew that once he had got out of the cab, the man would be on his radio to report a gun-toting crazy he had just had as a fare. Within minutes the police would have a patrol car cruising the area looking for him.

  “Here will do,” said Dural abruptly and the cab driver swung into the kerb so sharply he almost mounted it.

  “Forget the fare, sport—”

  “No,” said Dural. “I never take charity. Keep the change and learn to keep your mouth shut.”

  He walked away, knowing that before he had turned the corner the driver was already on his radio. It was a ten-minute walk to the bank; halfway there he wondered why he had not just remained beside the cab while the driver called the police. But that would have been too obvious: Les Glizzard, the angel’s advocate, would have pleaded for him and, who knows, some bleeding-hearted magistrate or judge might have listened to him. No, it had to be the bank: the police could pick him up there.

  The bank was in a side-street off Parramatta Road: twelve miles up the road was home. Or nineteen kilometres, if you wanted to be modern: that was another thing he could not get used to, metric measure. The bank was an old building, built of stone, the sort of institution where you expected pounds, shillings and pence still to be the currency across the counter. Dural went into the bank and took his place in the roped-off queue. Queueing for a hold-up; even he, without much sense of humour, had to grin at the thought. Though it was a nervous grin, more a tic of reaction. He was suddenly uptight, afraid that things would go wrong, that he might be carried out of here feet first.

  He had decided on the quiet approach to the teller, just presenting a note and a sight of the pistol. He had listened to discussions in gaol about bank hold-ups. The mode (one con had actually used that word) these days was to threaten violence, to go in shouting with all the violent language you could think of, waving your gun and looking ready for murder. The psychology of fear, the cons had said: the mode was to frighten the shit out of everyone in the bank. But that wasn’t for Dural. Walk softly, speak softly, Heinie Odets had advised in the only hold-up he had master-minded, and you’ll be gone before they get over the shock.

  “Move along,” said the woman who stood behind him. “We no can stand around all day.”

  The district, a working-class one, had been named after the German explorer Ludwig Leichhardt; but there had been few German settlers in Sydney and it had never resounded to Wagner or even to the music of a glockenspiel. It had, with post-Second World War immigration, become almost a Little Italy. When he had been scouting here a couple of days ago he had gone looking for somewhere to lunch on steak and chips and grilled tomatoes, but every café and restaurant he had passed seemed to offer only pizza and pasta. The names above the doorways of the shops were straight out of the Rome or Naples phone directories: there was even a P. Mussolini, Fruit and Veg. Dural now became aware of the fact that he was standing in a queue of Italian women. When he drew the gun there was going to be a panic that they would hear at the top end of Italy.

  “I no seen you here before,” said the woman who had spoken to him. She was young but already middle-aged plump, an Italian momma years ahead of schedule. She had a friendly, pretty face and a voice that suggested she might be able to carry a song. “You new around here? Is a nice place to live, you know? Lots of life, things always going on.”

  She had no sooner said that than things started going on. The front door of the bank burst open and three men came in with stocking masks over their heads. They were waving sawn-off shotguns and they were shouting at the tops of their voices, their language as violent as their behaviour.

  “Okay, okay, on the fucking floor—everybody! On the fucking floor or we’ll blast the shit outa you! On the floor! Fuck you—move!”

  One man kept yelling, waving his gun back and forth as the other two rushed at the counter and leapt at it. There wa
s a shriek from the woman behind Dural; she fell into him, carrying him to the floor with her. Christ, he thought, this ain’t happening! These bloody cowboys, drug-drunk, are spoiling everything for me! His straw hat had been knocked off as he went down, he had dropped his briefcase as he grabbed at the woman. He lay flat on his back under the shaking jelly of her; it was like being underneath a vibrating bed. He turned his head and saw the briefcase had burst open and the butt of the Walther was sticking out. Oh Jesus! He turned his head and looked up past the woman’s tangled hair and distorted face and saw the gunman standing over him.

  “Quit that fucking row!” The gunman kicked the woman in her well-padded behind; she lurched forward on Dural as if trying to rape him; he was smothered by her big bosom, could see nothing but black satin. “Shut up, you bitch, or I’ll kill you!”

  The woman suddenly went limp, as if the language itself had shot her. Dural lay beneath her, waiting for the gunman to see the butt of the Walther, pull it out of the briefcase and then start in on him. The crazy junkie might even kill him.

  Then out of the corner of his eye, through a curtain of the woman’s black hair, he saw the gunman’s feet turn away. He lay still, the unconscious woman still covering him, heard more violent swearing; the gunmen were shouting at each other now. All around him people were stretched out on the floor, faces against the cold tiles; some had fainted, like the woman on top of him, others were weeping in sobbing gasps. An old man just lay and stared across the floor at Dural with a sort of resignation, as if he felt no surprise that his time had come at last and like this.

  Then: “Okay, don’t fucking move for five minutes—no one, understand! Move and you’re fucking dead!”

  The two men who had been behind the counter jumped over it again, encumbered by the two airline bags each of them carried. A canvas bank bag spilled out of an airline bag and fell with a clunk right beside Dural’s head; but the gunman who had dropped it didn’t stop to retrieve it.

  Dural, with one eye, saw the robbers go. They went on the run out of the front door, straight into the patrol car as it pulled up outside the bank looking for the gun-toting taxi passenger. The two policemen in the car reacted at once; the driver swung the car up on to the footpath and drove it straight at the three gunmen. The leader let fly a round, but the shot went high, bouncing off the roof of the patrol car. The car hit him, kept going and collected the other two robbers. It was like something out of Dirty Harry and if Chilla Dural had seen it he would have remarked how different things were from the old days.