The Life and Crimes of Harry Lavender

by Marele Day

  And dropped it off somewhere.

  IT was 11 pm and the movies were just coming out. A group of pasty-faced boys entered the games arcade. The doorman stepped aside for them. It wasn’t the Maori.

  But I wasn’t interested in the games or the Maori, just the arcade. Especially the exterior.

  The facade was new but the building was old. There were security signs on the window. If I tried to enter by the ground floor doors or windows I’d be walking through a minefield.

  But nobody ever thought of securing the roof. No-one ever thought of roofs at all. In this city all anyone thought of was facades.

  The arcade had probably been a warehouse at some stage. It had an upper storey whose only illumination was the street light. The interior looked as dead as a doornail. But appearances can be deceiving—many an illegal casino was housed in boarded-up top floors. Even in gentrified Balmain, to say nothing of the city.

  On top of this was a tiled roof. Hopefully some of those tiles would be in need of repair. Cracked, broken, easy to prise off.

  All the buildings adjoined one another. You could probably go the whole block roof-hopping. And never be seen, not even in daylight. People in the city never look up.

  The night was perfect, not a cloud in the sky. No stars either but the city makes it own. It was the sort of night when people would stay out late, damn it. It could have been worse. It could have been raining with all the surfaces wet and slippery. Nasty things, slippery tiles.

  Though the big cinema complexes were closing there was a small one across the road that showed late night cult movies for the diehards. The session finished at 3.10 am. I paid my money and went in.

  I’d seen the movie six times already. The seventh time I was looking but not really listening. I was thinking about Harry Lavender and Mark Bannister, about Ronny O’Toole and Robbie Macmillan, about Sally Villos and . . .? About Steve Angell and . . .? About Claudia Valentine and all of them.

  I went into the ‘Ladies’. My entry startled a young woman rolling a joint.

  ‘Someone just laid some really great Queensland heads on me . . . they’re amazing . . . far out . . .’

  She was trying to manoeuvre what looked like a piece of cow cud onto the four papers she’d stuck together.

  ‘Why don’t you try rolling it in one of the cubicles? Then you won’t be disturbed.’ And neither would I.

  ‘Oh, right . . .’ she sang, stumbling into a cubicle.

  ‘Hey, what about this?’ I said, indicating the dope still sitting on the handbasin.

  ‘Oh yeah,’ she said, hitting her forehead with the flat of her hand, ‘I’m really out of it.’

  Her eyes were swimming and she couldn’t wipe the grin off her face. At this rate it would take her all night. If she didn’t pass out first.

  I did front kicks, side kicks, back kicks. Punches to the head, the solar plexus and the groin.

  I was just about to chop the soap in half when I heard: ‘Hey, that’s amazing. Can you really do that?’

  I walked out of the ‘Ladies’ and into the darkness, thinking about the strange things you see in midnight cinemas.

  THINGS were considerably quieter in the streets this time round. Soon the street cleaners would be along, swishing the streets with water. The sound of the dead of night.

  The arcade was closed now with just a night light, the cinemas and shops the same. Dimly lit interiors behind closed doors. Hardly inviting. But sometimes you had to invite yourself.

  I drove the hire car into the dark alley just right for a mugging, behind the games arcade. Several of the buildings, including the arcade, had big double doors on the upper storey. On the arcade doors hung a heavy chain with a hook. Standing on the roof of the car I could probably swing myself up there. The timber of the doors looked weathered. With luck I wouldn’t have to go on the roof at all. With luck.

  I stuck my hair up into a beanie and pulled on a pair of silent joggers with good traction. And a pair of gloves. Then I took the tool-bag from the boot and slung it over my shoulder.

  There were lights either end of the alley but no people. No people at all.

  I climbed onto the roof of the car and reached for the hook, grabbed hold of it and scaled the crumbly brick wall, going all the way up to the ledge.

  The doors were padlocked but looked like they would splinter at the first impact. Still holding onto the chain, I kicked. But they were more solid than they looked. My eyes scaled the wall right up to the roof. It was a long way up with few footholds. I took out the crowbar and kicked again. There was a soft tearing sound. But not enough. Mind, body and soul, the concentration of these to a point of bright light. Intense and cutting as a laser. I breathed deeply and on the exhalation tried again. This time a section splintered off the bottom. Enough to crawl through. I would like to have gone in head first but up here on the ledge I didn’t have a lot of choice. I had to move quickly, to get in and out of sight. What I was doing halfway up a building with a crowbar would take some explaining should anyone start asking questions. Assuming that they would ask questions before pulling the trigger.

  With my weight on the hook chain, I slid my legs in through the opening.

  ‘Show me the way to go home, I’m tired and I wanna go to bed. Well I had a little drink . . .’

  I froze. Remained motionless, hoping the pounding of my heart wasn’t making the whole street vibrate. I wasn’t so worried about the drunk as about a passing patrol car that might come to investigate the noise.

  Then the singing stopped. He was directly below me, patting the car. He collapsed against it and 10 and behold, the only person in Sydney to do it, he looked up.

  I didn’t blink.

  ‘Hey!’ he said, waving the bottle dangerously above him. ‘Hey! Wife won’t let you in? Same here mate, same here.’

  I did not turn a hair. I sat staring at what was once the grain in the timber, waiting for the cops to come and slam him in the cooler for the night and me for much longer. Seconds lasted an eternity. I could hear the blood pumping through my veins, feel my hands sweating in the gloves, the cold metal of the chain, the night air on my back.

  He was still there and what’s worse, he’d started singing again.

  I turned my head as far as it would go.

  ‘Psst!’ To no avail.

  ‘Psst!’ It was so loud and long this time it sounded like a pressure cooker blowing its top.

  The singing stopped and he looked up as if the clouds had parted and he’d just seen God.

  I put my finger to my lips in a sh! gesture and pointed to the doors, like a drunk myself trying to avoid the clichéd wife with the clichéd rolling pin behind the clichéd door.

  He grinned broadly in recognition and put his own finger to his lips, patted the car one last time, then moved on.

  A sigh of relief. A last look down the lane. Then I was in.

  THE place looked like a morgue for dead games machines. They sat in rows like an assembled army of tanks, the metal edges gleaming ominously in the street light. In one corner was a pile of cartons. Empty.

  I started with the machines in the darkest part of the room. I unscrewed the back panel of one and shone the torch. Onto microchips and a network of coloured wires. I wished I knew more about what I was looking at, wished I knew more about computers. I could see the way the world was turning and it was turning into a gigantic computer network. If you weren’t electronically literate you might as well go and live in a hollow log.

  The first few machines revealed nothing. I didn’t have all night. I flashed the torch around machines that didn’t look so dead.

  Eventually I found something. No little packets of pure white and deadly but marks where adhesive tape had been.

  Also, no computers.

  It was time to try the ‘office’.

  The top step creaked when I stepped onto it. I drew back so far into the wall I was part of it, then pressed in doubly hard because downstairs was the dull thud of a door clos
ing. I heard the sound of games machines being dragged along the floor. And voices.

  ‘Don’t bother unpacking. We’ve got business in the office.’

  The other voice was indistinct, but there was the intonation of a question.

  There was a chuckle.

  A chuckle I’d heard before.

  ‘Seems you’ve been drawing attention to yourself, taking things into your own hands. Now Harry doesn’t like that. He likes things to be nice and quiet. Especially you.’

  The other voice now came out in spurts of fear.

  ‘Into the office, whitey, and none of your tricks. I can see in the dark.’

  There was no mistaking that sliding voice. It was the Maori.

  A thin shaft of light appeared from under the ‘office’ door but everything was as quiet as a nun. I couldn’t risk any more creaking steps and stood there, unable to move.

  After an eternity the door opened and the Maori came out. I waited for the other guy to come out. Waited and waited.

  Silently, swiftly I made the descent.

  Downstairs had the chill of a cemetery at midnight. If someone was still in that office they were either awfully quiet or awfully dead.

  I slid along the wall and with one swift long kick opened the door fully.

  The body was lying face down but I recognised the leather jacket, even with its intricate pattern of bullet holes.

  It was O’Toole. Johnny the Jumper.

  He was holding something in his hand, something pink and fleshy. I stared at it for quite a while before I could make out what it was.

  And then I wished I hadn’t.

  I had to turn away before I vomited. O’Toole was holding his tongue.

  When I opened my eyes again I saw a gun. It was lying on the floor a metre away from the body. I picked it up, carefully avoiding looking at the body and that thing in its hand. It wasn’t this gun that had fired those bullets. It was still fully loaded, no spent cartridges. I put it down again in exactly the same position.

  In front of the body was a huge desk. With a piece of wire from my tool-bag, I coaxed the drawers open. And struck a goldmine. There were shipping timetables, computer manuals, lists of figures. There were company titles — Lavender Blue Enterprises and Terminal Investments sprang out like attacking panthers. There was more. Property titles. And more. A finger in every pie. Hartronics, pacemaker manufacturers. Sydney Girl, modelling agency.

  And there was more. There was a glossy magazine, face down. I turned it over and drew my breath. Staring back at me in black and white with red glossed lips was Sally.

  A picture of Sally among Harry Lavender’s titles. An odd juxtaposition. A coincidence. No, not odd. Not a coincidence. Perfectly in keeping, to find Sally among Harry Lavender’s titles of ownership. I stared at the photo, willing it to life, willing it to tell me what it was doing there. In the silence of the frame in which the camera never lies the slightly parted lips seemed to murmur. Then shout, louder and louder:

  I am Harry Lavender’s daughter.

  It was time to call the Law in. I dialled Carol’s home number.

  Then the lights went out.

  I WAS VAGUELY aware of a steady drone, the same sort of sound I heard every morning—the city revving up for the day. But I didn’t feel like waking up. Images of police cars and ambulances floated in the shimmering light.

  I was dead.

  No. Not dead. You don’t feel pain like this when you’re dead. Don’t feel your head’s been split open like a ripe watermelon. In my mouth was the sour taste of alcohol. If this was a hangover it should go down in the Guinness Book Of Records.

  I was cold and my feet were wet. My nose felt very negroid. It was rammed against the steering wheel of the hire car.

  The shimmering light turned blue. Muddy blue. I hadn’t seen it from quite this close before but the view looked familiar. I was off the edge of the park where I’d walked with Steve—out in the lapping waters of the harbour. The tide was out. Way way out.

  I was putting one and one together and it wasn’t coming out two.

  Why did I smell like a brewery when I hadn’t touched a drop of alcohol all night?

  The last thing I remembered was dialling Carol’s number.

  ‘YOU DON’T LOOK VERY WELL!’

  Why did he have to use a megaphone?

  I wasn’t well, at least I hoped I wasn’t. I wouldn’t want to be well and feel like this.

  The ambulance people hoisted me back up to the park. I refused the stretcher. I wasn’t going to take this lying down.

  For some strange reason I assured them I was all right.

  They drifted into the background and the blue uniforms came to the fore. They made me breathe into a bag. I must have passed with flying colours because they made me get into the car and ‘accompany them to the police station’. There were two of them—one nice, one tough. They didn’t look like they needed accompanying.

  After the preliminary name, address and identification they made me blow into the bag again. This time the reading was way below the limit. The nice cop and the tough cop exchanged glances.

  ‘Perhaps you’d like to give us your account of the events of last night,’ said the nice one.

  ‘Perhaps I would. But not to you. I’ll speak to Detective Carol Rawlins.’

  ‘Don’t make things difficult for yourself, lady.’

  It seemed to me they couldn’t be very much more difficult than they already were.

  ‘Call Detective Rawlins.’

  The nice one narrowed his eyes and looked at me steadily. Underneath, even the nice ones are tough.

  ‘You’re only making things difficult for yourself.’

  ‘Call Detective Rawlins!’ I screamed.

  The nice one dialled the number. The last thing they wanted was an hysterical female screaming police abuse.

  All I had to do now was figure out what to say to Carol.

  ‘Carol? Claudia here.’ . . . ‘Yes, well I’d like to know what I’m doing here, too. I’ve got a statement but I want to give it to you. In person.’

  There was silence on the other end of the line. I could tell Carol didn’t like it but finally she agreed to see me.

  ‘Great! Would you like to tell them?’

  I handed the phone to the nice one. ‘It’s for you.’

  He looked at me like I was a leper but eventually he took the phone.

  ‘About ten minutes. Yes, leaving now.’

  He hung up and ushered me out of the station.

  ‘What about my car?’

  ‘What about your car?’

  ‘It doesn’t swim very well. Maybe we should call a tow truck.’

  ‘You’ll need more than a tow truck, lady. C’mon.’

  CAROL’S desk sergeant was drinking coffee. I needed one badly but not badly enough to drink that government muck.

  ‘Detective Rawlins is expecting us.’

  ‘Go right in,’ said the desk sergeant.

  Carol didn’t look pleased to see me, especially flanked as I was by two of her colleagues, though I wasn’t sure she’d call two suburban constables her ‘colleagues’.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said.

  My bodyguards didn’t budge.

  ‘You needn’t stand on ceremony, boys, there are chairs outside.’

  They backed out like they were leaving royalty. Or maybe they just didn’t trust her. After all, she was a cop.

  ‘OK . . .’ she said wearily, though it was only eight o’clock in the morning.

  ‘Those boys give you the rundown?’

  ‘Yes. Drunk driving.’

  ‘Did they also tell you about the discrepancy between the two readings?’

  ‘Yes.’ She frowned.

  ‘I was set up.’

  ‘Indeed. You hadn’t been drinking at all?’

  ‘I know you may find it hard to believe, but no.’

  ‘Blackouts? That sort of thing?’

  ‘No. Well yes, there was one. Induced by a
heavy object applied to the back of the head. I dialled your number and the next thing I knew I was paddling in the harbour.’

  ‘What time was that?’ Once a cop always a cop.

  “Bout four in the morning. Now you know I wouldn’t call you at that time of day without a good excuse.’

  ‘Which was . . .?’

  ‘A body. A very dead body.’

  Her finely pencilled eyebrows shot up under her thick bang of hair.

  ‘Anyone we know?’

  ‘Ronny O’Toole. Otherwise known as Johnny the Jumper.’

  Her face went through the gamut of emotions, the predominant one being dismay.

  ‘Well that saves the police a lot of trouble, doesn’t it? But it may bring us more. He’s one of Harry Lavender’s thugs.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘I hope you also know it doesn’t look very good for you. You phone telling me, no, ordering me to get him and the next day he’s dead. Now what’s the dead boy got to do with the dead man?’

  ‘The boy talked to someone. About heroin.’

  ‘Well that fits. Heroin was found in Macmillan’s home.’

  Now it was my turn to run the emotional gamut. My brain refused to accept this new bit of information. ‘No,’ I said, my heart down around my ankles, ‘Robbie wasn’t involved . . . it must have been a plant.’

  A Lavender plant.

  ‘All right, Claudia, start at the beginning and don’t leave out the details. I want everything. Everything.’

  My head was hurting like hell. Even thinking made it feel like any minute now it was going to break open like a soft boiled egg. With a similar gooey mess oozing out.

  ‘Could I have a cup of coffee?’ I was desperate but I needed the caffeine.

  She sighed heavily but ordered the coffee. I gulped half of it down and tried not to screw up my face. It felt pretty screwed up anyway.

  I started at the beginning and gave Carol details. Not all of them, but enough to give her good reasons for my presence at the scene of the crime.

  ‘You realise breaking and entering is a criminal offence.’