It was almost too good to be true. Swann had imagined it would take him months, even years, to get this close, to garner this level of access and trust. He wanted to say yes immediately, but didn’t want to appear too keen. ‘And the seven am sweep of the offices for bugs? Does that continue?’
‘Yes, it does.’
‘Surprised the tenders are in already. Should take months for such a big project.’
‘Don’t be naive, Frank. To get in power, we had to bring along the big end of town. We let them know about this development, off the record, nearly a year ago, warned them to get ready, to get in before the Eastern Staters and overseas mobs got wind. Nothing dubious about it. We got them onside, and some of them, I won’t tell you who, they donated big to our campaign. All the staff you need, Frank. Whatever you need … but complete discretion.’
‘Understood.’
‘And there’s an invitation to a barbie, the premier wanted me to pass on. The weekend – I’m not sure which day, but I’ll let you know.’
‘Don’t usually work on the weekends, Heenan. That’s for something called life. You might remember it, back in the days of short pants.’
Heenan wheezed out a laugh. ‘Not work, Frank. Play.’
‘For you, maybe. I’ll think about it.’
But again, Swann was foxing. The very thing he’d been looking for had landed in his lap.
He hung up and entered through the front gate. The black puppy slinked and wagged her way out of the shadows, began to nip at Swann’s shoes, licking his hands. He knelt and scratched her head, looked up and saw Marion on the porch, already wearing her bikini. She held his faded old footy shorts at arm’s length, and dropped them onto the towel at her feet. But she looked perplexed.
‘What’s wrong?’ he asked.
‘Oh, nothing’s wrong, exactly. I’ve been promoted. Promoted and transferred to a job I didn’t apply for. You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?’
‘Let me guess. To South Metropolitan.’
‘So you do know.’
The premier had gone and moved Marion without running it by her, just so she could minister to Stormie Farrell’s needs. Swann asked hopefully, ‘Is it a good promotion?’
Marion shook her head, although she didn’t look displeased. ‘Administrator. Office-bound. Completely unqualified for it. But the pay’s good.’
‘You going to take it?’
‘Tell me about it first – how it came about.’
*
The beach was crowded for a weekday. Swann and Marion lay at the base of the dunes, Swann in his old footy shorts and Marion in her purple bikini, while their daughter Sarah and her toddler, Jock, nosed around the shallows near the reef, picking up pieces of coral for Jock’s shell garden. In the rock pools where Swann had taught her and his other daughters how to snorkel, a new generation of children, too young for school, were doing the same, tossing seaweed at one another, duck-diving and letting the swell wash over them. Swann elbowed Marion, and she opened her eyes, looked over the top of her sunglasses. Jock was still hunting and gathering, according to Sarah’s precise instructions, but Sarah had struck up a conversation with some of the children, and one of the young mothers at the base of the reef. The woman rubbed her swollen belly in answer to Sarah’s questions, smiling down at Jock. Marion groaned. ‘Grandparents already. God help us.’
Swann rolled over and took her hand, placed it on his hip. He kissed her on the nose, on the lips. ‘Sneak into the dunes with me, Granny?’
Marion kissed him on the nose, tweaked his nipple hard. She climbed to her feet and wandered down to the shoreline, knowing that Swann was watching her, that little lilt in her step. She paddled out beyond the first low waves and turned on her back, watching him. When they were young lovers they’d lacked for places to be alone. Out in the water was one place, at night.
South Beach was on the edge of the port city, but to Swann it felt like any of the thousands of remote beaches up and down the coastline. The sunshine and horizon were good for his nerves, and made the anxiety about the new opportunity fall away. He hadn’t expected the news from Heenan about the tenders, and although the news was good, his guts were a mess of excitement. Marion was the only person who knew about Swann’s role as Accardi’s sniffer dog, and Accardi’s role as forward scout for the Feds. To everyone else, Swann was back working a day job.
Marion didn’t want the job promotion, or the relocation. Marion wanted what he wanted: enough money to live quietly, maybe down the coast. Look after their three kids, the grandchildren coming through. Swann rolled onto his back and closed his eyes to the sun, but he wasn’t able to sleep.
21.
Blake Tracker knelt in the darkness by his father’s Datsun truck. He ran his hands beneath the chassis, where the rear bushes of the suspension locked into the frame. His father always kept a spare key taped to the chassis, but it wasn’t there. So his pops knew, and expected him.
Blake had waited until after midnight to walk the five kilometres from his camp in the banksia scrub near the Beeliar swamps. During the day he slept in the shade of two flowering banksia trees that had become entwined, bent and weighted in their struggle with one another, like two brothers fighting. He made no fire and ate cold food. He waited. He could tolerate being alone in the scrub during the day, but couldn’t bear it at night. The balga trees, with their spears. The banksia nuts, rattling in the wind. The smell of the swamp, like a grave. The moonlight, shimmering around the clouds, dancing on the grey sand. Foxes and cats hunting, their eyes inflamed with dark. The sounds of rabbits caught and screaming. The scent of campfires past, snatches of song on the wind. It was too much, and so at night he walked. The quiet roads through the bush, keeping to the white lines in the middle, ready to run. Entering the bush when a car passed. Walking up into the suburbs, prowling the moonlit yards, afraid of dogs, afraid of guns, afraid of the police.
He took food from the bins out the back of supermarkets: tomatoes, stale bread, bruised fruit. He stole coin from the dash of parked cars. He rested in the playgrounds of suburban schools. The stars wheeled about the sky, marking the time. Before dawn he walked back to his sleeping-bag beneath the banksias. He pulled his shirt over his face, and slept.
On the third night he had gone and dug up the gun. It was still wrapped in the canvas tarp he’d cut from a trailer. It was buried deep, and he’d hoped he wouldn’t find it, that it had been found, handed in. But it was there. A revolver, still loaded. He cracked the chamber and tipped out the two shells. They didn’t appear rusted. He put them back in. The gun was heavier than he remembered. He had to carry it in his hand. It weighed down the elastic in his tracksuit pants, slipped out. He walked through the bush with the gun pointed at the ground. He’d never fired a gun, had never wanted a gun. But there it was, in his hand.
He hadn’t spoken to anyone since leaving the borstal. He talked to himself, in whispers, but even that sounded loud. He sang songs that his mother had sung to him; he couldn’t remember all the words. He hummed, and the pitch of the hum disturbed him, didn’t sound right.
He wanted to speak to his father, then. But he wasn’t ready. Maybe never be ready. When he heard himself humming so high and weird he thought of his father and the humming stopped, but nothing came in its place.
Blake Tracker went down the back of the house, where two of his uncles were sleeping. He took a deep breath and edged the sash window by the back door higher, leaned in and slid out the door bolt. It was dark and quiet inside the house. He could hear his heart beating, sure that his father would hear it in his dreams. He found his father’s wallet on top of the fridge, as always, out of reach of any kids. His keys to the truck, and his business, and his house there too, all on the one ring, splayed out like silver petals. He carefully lifted the keys, helped himself to the cash in the wallet, and left the way he came in.
He sat behind the wheel of the Datsun, the door open. He knew from experience, had been chased enough times,
that it was the sound of a car door shutting that woke people. He slid in the ignition key and turned it one step, saw the dash lights come on, plenty of diesel in the gauge. He waited for the diesel light to switch off, as his father had taught him, then cranked it round. The radio blared a Charlie Pride song but the engine didn’t take, not even the starter motor. He turned his head and saw a man with a gun pointed at him. The man was quiet and moved swiftly to cut the radio, yank out the keys. He looked at Blake strangely, and then Blake recognised him.
The lights on the front porch came on, and his father stood there, axe handle loose in his fingers, long hair over his shoulders. He made a movement with his other hand, and the man whose name Blake remembered now, Des Foley, a name that his father made Blake promise to never mention, took Blake by the wrist and guided him out of the truck. The man saw the S&W revolver that Blake had placed on the bench seat and slipped it into the pocket of his denim jacket.
Blake’s father walked the stubbled lawn and embraced Blake, which took him by surprise. ‘Welcome home, son. But you can’t be here.’
Blake’s father led the way down the side of the house, with Des Foley following Blake, so that he was crowded between them. He could smell his father – port and tobacco – and it was a good smell. The man behind was a silent presence; it was the same feeling as walking before a screw, knowing their eyes were on you. Blake’s dad prised away four jarrah fence palings leading into the next house, and bowed and climbed through, waited for Blake on the other side. The moonlight dappled the sweat on Blake’s arms, glimmered over the age-silvered weatherboards and tin roof of the house next door. Blake stood in the darkness while Des Foley patted back the palings and indicated for Blake to follow his father, who headed quietly over to the house. Two joined weatherboards had been prised off, and Blake noticed the steel handle affixed across them. Blake’s father crawled into the floorspace beneath the house and disappeared. Des Foley indicated with his gun that Blake should follow. The cold dirt and the smell of creosote. The old jarrah bones of the house – giant stumps and the dusty underside of floorboards. Behind him the moonlight disappeared as Foley replaced the cover. Blake’s father turned on a torch and slipped over an embankment, his head bobbing up and showing Blake the way. Blake joined him in the cellar dug out of limestone. The rubble had been used to build up the embankment, so that it’d be invisible to anyone peering under the house. A shovel and pick rested in a corner of the dugout, and a mattress and sleeping bag, kerosene stove and box of canned food, candle in a stubby.
When Blake was a boy, Des Foley had lived with them on occasion, in the sleep-out, and sometimes shared Blake’s room in winter. He wasn’t a friendly man, but was a good mate to his father. They’d met in Fremantle Prison. Blake didn’t know more than this, except that Des Foley was wanted by police, and that Blake could never speak of it, even to his best friends. Blake had visited his pops in prison as a boy. It was a frightening place that stunk. Some of their uncles had died there, and Blake’s dad told him that if Blake ever mentioned it to anyone, Foley would go back inside for life. There was a big reward on Foley’s head, and the world was full of dobbers, fizzes and loudmouths. Blake had seen what an eight-year stretch had done to his father.
Beyond that, the two men always treated it as a bit of a joke. The coppers turning over every rock looking for Foley, never thinking to look at what was under their noses. Didn’t occur to them to look for a white man at a black man’s camp.
So why the hole in the ground, beneath the neighbour’s house? It was Blake’s fault. They were looking for him. And the neighbour was white – old Tom Pickett – a war veteran and ex-prisoner who got along with Pops. He’d hide Foley under his house for the odd carton of beer.
Blake’s dad took him by the upper arms, squeezed hard. ‘You’re staying here, from now on. Till we talk. I’ve gotta get back. The munatj were here about twenty minutes ago, gave the house a tossing. Not good if they come again, and I’m out. See you in the morning, son. Till then, do what Des says.’
Blake let his pops embrace him, his warm and sour smell and the hot blunt force of his hands pressed into Blake’s shoulders. Des Foley followed his pops over to the loose weatherboard while Blake looked around the dugout. There was only one mattress, but enough room for both of them to sleep. He sat down on the rough limestone floor, leaned into the corner, felt sand run down his back and arms. Didn’t matter, tired as he was.
22.
Swann parked at Parliament House beside the peach Commodore, now streaky with dust and purple pulp and bird shit. He looked up into the branches of the jacaranda and saw cockatoos and reversed the Statesman into another park. He lit a cigarette and dialled the payphone at the roadhouse in South Australia, just as his watch ticked over 6.45. Dennis Gould answered on the first ring.
‘Frank, seriously mate, get me out of here. I’m done with baked beans and Chiko Rolls. Last night, I was even dreaming of a pig on the spit. Laying there in my scratchy rags, a lucid dream, watching myself watch the pig as it roasted – the juices, the glaze, the smell. Then I woke up. My neighbour was boiling another pot of King George whiting. That’s how these Croweaters cook their fish – boiled in saltwater. You believe that?’
‘Doesn’t sound too bad. King George is a sweet fish.’
‘Until you start to smell like one. What’s the news?’
‘You wanted me to get you out of there – the news is I need your help. It’s the new job – more work than I can handle. Get into Adelaide, onto the next flight. We’ll keep it quiet. Nobody needs to know you’re back. I’ll pick you up. We’ll get a feed. Call me from the airport.’
Swann watched Heenan, struggling under the weight of two shoulder bags and a couple of boxes, make his way across the concrete apron leading into the building. Swann dialled Terry Accardi at Central, and was put through to the CIB under the pseudonym of Peter Drake.
‘Mr Drake, what can I do to help?’
‘We need to meet. Usual place, in an hour.’
Swann hung up, hefted his Gladstone, climbed out of the Statesman. The time had just ticked past seven and already the sun was brutal, shearing off the glass canyons of the city and catching the thermal heat rising out of the concrete gorge of the freeway. The corridors of power were cool by comparison and the hall echoed to the squeak of his rubber-soled boots over the polished parquet floor. He showed his pass to the guard at the entrance to the ministerial rooms and found the premier pacing the carpet behind his vast bureau desk, smoking while listening to someone on the speakerphone. The voice was Maitland Conlan’s, all bluff and swagger. Swann showed the premier his wireless detector and the premier nodded, took a deep drag on his cigarette and put a shoe up onto the desk. Swann got down to work while he listened to Conlan tell a story about a liquid lunch he’d shared recently with a Japanese company director, involving the best champagne and sushi served on the belly of a hooker named Sal. Conlan lingered on the details and painted the picture of a reluctant investor won over by the power of booze and pussy, the moral of the story being the adage of every man has his price. A quick glance at the premier told Swann that Conlan’s thuggish charm was working its magic, which was a surprise. He could understand how the Conlan brothers might seem a breath of fresh air in boardrooms full of corporate functionaries; how the working-class humour would be useful disarming middle-class businessmen used to politeness and formality, but he couldn’t credit the look of rapt attention on the premier’s face. Surprised because his father was Stormie Farrell. By comparison, Maitland Conlan had lived a shifty life – he had the buccaneer stories, and Swann could see that the premier wanted it for himself. He chuckled and wiped a tear from his eye, rearranged his tackle and didn’t care when his cigarette ashed on the carpet.
Swann worked the wand over the same configurations he followed every morning: the skirts, architraves, light fittings and window frames. He made a desultory pass of the wand over the telephone and was surprised to hear it beep. He caught the prem
ier’s eye and passed the wand over the telephone again. Again it beeped. He laid down the wand and turned over the phone. No sign of any tampering to the plate beneath. Conlan continued to speak, unaware of the look on the premier’s face – somewhere between hurt and fascination. Conlan was building up to his pitch. It was delivered while Swann used a Phillips head to unscrew the plate and peer into the wiring. The bug was spliced into the phone line – a professional job. He gave the premier a look: did he want to hang up the line? The premier shook his head. Conlan was suggesting a play for the Swan River Electric and Gas Company – he knew the director and could get a price. Did the premier want him to proceed?
Swann stood back and waited. The premier replied, ‘Yes, look into it. Gotta go, Maitland.’
Swann killed the call. He heard Heenan’s wheeze behind him and stood away. The sight of the phone’s wiring splayed out on the desk stopped Heenan in his tracks. He looked from the premier to Swann. The premier was about to speak when Swann put up a hand. He reached into his Gladstone and took out some pliers and snipped the wire either side of the bug, the size of a five-cent piece, and dropped it onto the desk. He pointed to the door, and the two men followed him out. He held the door open for them and shut it.
‘There might be fingerprints on it – unlikely but possible. It’s an expensive piece of work, and professionally done.’
The premier had his hands on his hips, looking up at Swann in the cramped corridor. His breath smelt like egg sandwiches and stale tobacco, and his skin was damp with perspiration, despite the chilled air. ‘Leave it with us, Frank. We’ll deal with it.’ His glance at Heenan was fierce enough to keep him quiet.
‘You don’t want to know how it works? What you need to do to find the recorder?’
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