Winter Traffic

by Stephen Greenall

  ‘Anything?’

  It takes a long time for Rawson to answer. ‘She said I must have taken down the wrong plate. She reckons it doesn’t exist.’ Sutton nods and takes the keys, locks the car. Rawson wonders, ‘What now.’

  ‘We drive up to Manly, pay cash at the Novotel.’

  ‘Okay. Why would we do that.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  The detective appraises the sky for light. One of those evening firmaments in which nothing is visible, not stars / not anything. A low cloud mass that conspires to conceal. Assembly behind of armadas in the dark.

  ‘How long were you lying there.’

  ‘A while,’ says Sutton.

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘It’s okay. I had time to think.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘They had keys. Knew the layout.’

  Rawson interrogates his shoes. ‘It would be easier if I thought they came looking for you. If I thought they were blokes sent by Slane.’

  ‘Sure,’ says Sutton. ‘But you’d have to be retarded to think that.’

  ‘Well? Don’t you want to know who they are.’

  ‘Not tonight, Josephine. Come on—clock’s tickin.’

  —

  The place is spic and the only thing distinguishing from the maisonettes of neighbours is the presence of twin deceased, stacked neatly in the corner like designated luggage. Grievous wounds have been patched and drained, stitched and tightly bandaged.

  ‘Don’t spose you saw the Ginger Ninja in your travels.’

  Sutton shakes his head. ‘Don’t worry. People like this kill the dog on sight, but they never touch the cat.’

  ‘It’s alright, he’s a smart cookie.’ Rawson motions at the suitcases, the people-like-this. ‘What’s the go.’

  ‘Let ’em sleep it off in the beamer.’

  ‘Sleep it off.’

  ‘Make it look that way, act pissed when you load them.’

  ‘Pissed, you say. I’ll give it a crack.’

  ‘Come on. I’ll tie you at the wrist.’

  Rawson suffers it to be done, the living and dead bound by fishing line. He worries about witnesses. ‘If anyone comes,’ says Sutton cutting the wire, ‘just belt out some Chisel.’

  ‘You know me, hit every bar.’

  ‘Got everything? When we’re done in here, you can’t ever come back.’

  ‘I know,’ says Rawson. ‘It sorta works out.’

  ‘How so.’

  ‘Bastards evicted me.’ Rawson glares at the corpses like they sit on the board. ‘Reckon I’m not a model tenant.’

  02

  Cursory rain sheets the raised plateau, paddocks maintained by the old and venerable school. Splendid hectares, newer parents stomping in confusion between the unmarked fields, travailed refugees in Country Road. A late-model Pintara in forgettable colour prowls a space where the Under Fifteens take issue with Newington.

  Sutton puts the small sedan in park. Rawson sits in the passenger seat, wears the pork-pie hat of a bookie. He says it clarifies thought, wards off headache, good when you’re coming off a largey. In the back of what he deems an unsuitable vehicle, Bloke fidgets and whines like an agitated toddler.

  —

  ‘The lad playing stand-off.’

  ‘Stand-off,’ says Sutton. ‘That’s five-eighth, right.’

  ‘Yeah—the ten. See him?’

  This is the lad that Sutton is looking at already. The boy just naturally demands the eye. It is more than relative size; he has an aura, a mop of unruly hair that must surely contravene standing orders at so prestigious a school. Gordian hair, fast Tibers of sweat…

  ‘Jesus,’ says Sutton.

  They watch as he receives the ball from an attacking scrum and advances with dangerous conviction, gets quickly outside his marker and forces the inside-centre to commit. Mistake. He’s not an inside-centre / he’s a speed bump.

  The kid could go all the way. Instead he passes. Before the try is scored he is jogging back, sporting a dopey grin. Then he jerks, remembering that he is the one who takes the conversions. He throws his head back and laughs at himself.

  ‘Jesus,’ says Sutton.

  —

  Fat Trevor Rawson has been allowed to come. He reclines in Rawson’s lap like Nero, weighing the car, grinning mildly in spite of it all.

  Cats don’t care / don’t understand.

  —

  I went out with her a couple of times. Bonecrusher days, running with the boys from the club and getting into mischief. Everyone had three or four girls on the go, but she wasn’t part of that set.

  Bonecrusher.

  Stupid bloody name / I lost money on that bastard.

  —

  Twice it was. An Italian and an Indian. Nineteen seventy-three.

  Indian was this big novelty back then.

  But we didn’t click. We weren’t each other’s type.

  —

  Two years later I run into her. I was working a rob-bash in Erko and had to go over to RPA, interview the witness. She was the attending nurse.

  I said, I never knew you were a nurse. And she tells me, Yeah, I was in my final year when we went for a meal that time. And I was embarrassed because there’s no way she wouldn’t have told me that. I had this image of her sitting across the table, telling me about herself—but there’s me the bloody footy star checking my hair in the friggin spoon.

  —

  It feels like we were together a long time. But it was only a couple of months.

  Maybe it doesn’t matter how long you’re with a person—what matters is how much of yourself you let that person see.

  It worked.

  It was good.

  —

  Sutton sits in silence until it becomes plain the words will not continue without aid. ‘So what happened.’

  —

  Nothing. Something stupid. I didn’t sleep around, but I still flirted. The girls behind the bar, the secs about the station…I don’t know why I did that. I mean, I had the girl I wanted.

  We had a fight and she walked out. I thought she’d be back but she wasn’t the kind to do that.

  The others were, but she wasn’t.

  —

  It was another year until I saw her. It was work again, like the first time. I asked and she told me she was basically engaged, some Euro bloke, German or Dutch or some bloody thing. I pretended not to care but I asked to see her and she said no / no / no / alright then.

  It was just the once. I thought it would be great, but it was awful. We knew we shouldn’t have been there.

  Afterwards she said I had to let her go, so that is what I did.

  —

  ‘Doesn’t sound like you.’

  No—it doesn’t. But it was going to hurt like Christ if I chased her and I didn’t need the pain, not just then.

  ‘And it was just the once.’

  Yeah.

  Sutton nods and looks at rain. ‘But once can be enough.’

  —

  Seven years ago she calls me up. She’s in the country / wants to have lunch. I went and met her at this swish joint on the harbour.

  She had this glow about her. Money. It was hard to picture her as the quiet little nurse in Prince Alfred triage. She’d gone away and done a million things and there was this distance, like I’d been left behind. Like she should feel sorry for me.

  ‘She told you about the boy.’

  Yeah, had to. Needed full medical history because of some gene. News to me. She’d crossed her fingers and hoped the kid was his, but then the little bloke turned into a big clumsy bastard and she knew it hadn’t gone her way.

  She gave me a photo, let me keep it. I kept it in my pocket for weeks feeling guilty, waiting for Heather to find it. Maybe wanting her to, maybe needing her to.

  He’s twenty months older than Zo.

  —

  They lived in Europe. I never knew what the husband did for a crust, never knew the slightest thing about him. But then last year she
wrote.

  She was back. They all were. She was sick and all the Swiss clinics on earth weren’t going to save her.

  —

  ‘You saw her.’

  Wish I hadn’t. You could see how hard she fought it.

  ‘What did she say.’

  That she cared for me, hoped I was alright. And that she was really sorry but the husband knew the score.

  —

  Some things will out no matter how you play it. She thought it might help him with the grief, make him hate her. I said no one could ever hate a person like her.

  Then she told me about him, said I needed to be afraid.

  ‘This was when.’

  December. You and Suzie were up the coast. She died on New Year’s Day.

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  You will be. When I tell you who he is, what he does for a living.

  —

  All this while they watch the protagonist of Rawson’s story, the boy not more than thirty yards from where they sit. Neither man takes his eyes away, not even for long periods when he is obscured in backplay or up the other end of the field, planted at the bottom of an unforgiving ruck. He is leading a procession against the kids from Newy, crossing for tries and setting up others. He scores, in fact, while Rawson is saying what he knows about the husband.

  The boy converts his handiwork.

  Sutton puts his face into his hands.

  01

  We stand at the Gap and stare featureless at the sea. It is not suicide but it is something like a death. Rawson arrives second and draws his sedan next to ours, almost five full hours since last we met.

  —

  His rent-a-car is better. The place he went to had better ones to choose from—ones better than despicable Pintara. He takes out Benson & Hedges and offers wordlessly to Sutton, the men leaning on bonnet to speak the fractal sky.

  —

  ‘You’re saying they took the guns in because they knew it was you inside.’

  ‘Yeah,’ says Sutton. ‘You they would have just touched up.’

  ‘Why not give the touch-up to you?’

  Sutton changes his mind and takes one. B&H is not his brand but it will do. ‘The man has paid money to be the one who owns you.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Maybe the plan was kill your mate, call it in.’

  ‘Doesn’t bother me,’ says Rawson. ‘I’ve got an alibi.’

  ‘Yeah, rock solid—you were having a drink with the third-biggest heroin dealer in the state. After that you went to a shooting gallery and added to your tab.’

  Rawson grave: ‘They probably would have stripped you, tied you naked to the bed. Made it look like we were lovers.’

  ‘Settle down.’

  ‘I know how these sick bastards work, Jamie.’

  ‘What do you owe?’

  The new sigh is plangent, hard to dismiss. ‘Two hundred and plenty. But it’s not about the coin, is it? I mean they paid Glen four.’

  ‘True.’

  ‘And as soon as I do shell out they move to something else. Start pulling my career apart, whatever’s left.’

  ‘The Teflon Kid.’

  In another dimension it makes Rawse smile; the version here and now refuses the challenge. ‘Maybe this isn’t the time to mention it, but that whole Koestler thing is firing up. The lass they tried to pair me with, she’s tip of the spear.’

  Sutton’s nod is calm. ‘You said it would. Picked the date.’

  ‘Oh, they love an anniversary in Macquarie. If only the nags were so predictable.’ Rawson’s cigarette has its entire life ahead of it, but a callous flick sends it over the edge. He lights a new one / the first drag is king. ‘Listen, DPP got burnt pretty hard. They won’t come again.’

  ‘Maybe,’ says Sutton. ‘But five gets you ten they put me in a box, ask the same two hundred questions.’

  ‘Try answering for a change.’

  ‘If they go for Slane, they come for me. Nothing surer.’

  ‘Stop sookin. You enjoyed it last time—best eight months of your life.’

  Sutton does not acknowledge. He looks at the terminal water / he likes this place. ‘The money,’ he says. ‘Can you pay?’

  ‘No chance.’

  ‘I’ll clear about five from the house.’

  ‘Get stuffed. It’s like I said—this bloke’ll put the squeeze on regardless.’ ‘I know. But it’s debt.’

  ‘Honour among thieves, Jamie Sutton—not degenerate fucken gamblers. If he’s gonna fucken roll me, I’d prefer not to pay him for the privilege.’

  Sutton stamps out his smoke. He had a while to go but sometimes it’s important to cut a pleasure short. ‘Not talking about honour. We find the cash, it’s one less stick he beats you with. What’s the most you can put together?’

  ‘Forty.’

  ‘That it?’

  ‘I got sixty put away for the girls, for when they hit eighteen.’

  ‘Okay. So a hundred all up.’

  ‘No, mate. Forty.’

  Sutton looks at Rawson and Rawson looks back. He has grit in his eye, a residue of high competitive winds. ‘I won’t leave them nothing,’ he whispers. ‘He got a son out of me, and if he takes that sixty—’

  ‘Forty it is.’

  Rawson wipes the tears that the breeze made happen. ‘What are you thinking? Find ourselves another decent horse?’

  —

  All the yachts are wandering home, threading the heads like sheep overhearing the bell. It is the moment when sun and moon are out together, each of them eyeing alternative realms. One is just the other’s copy, fainter every day.

  ‘What did you do with Trev.’

  ‘Hirsty’s gonna take him.’ Rawson coughs. ‘She loves the little bastard, been feeding him for months.’

  ‘I thought she had a dog.’

  ‘She’s got a rat-sized terrier called Ivo who’s half blind and totally deaf…I reckon Trev’ll be happy. She’s on the ground floor, gotta courtyard garden for him to mooch around in.’

  ‘Sweet.’

  ‘I mean she’s gonna give him the snip, but what the hell am I supposed—’

  ‘Sounds good, mate. He’ll mooch around.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘When you heading down?’

  Bobby Cobra stares at water making feline shapes, gets a jolt when Sutton repeats it. ‘I’ll sail down tonight,’ says the Big Ship resolved. ‘You?’

  ‘Tomorrow. Said I’d visit Michele.’

  ‘To say nothing of her daughter.’

  Sutton shakes his head. ‘Parkes. She went on Thursday.’

  ‘Jesus. Did she bloody really.’

  Again they shake. Maybe this will be their practice from here on out. Rawson stands and the bonnet snaps back but it does no good / he’s left a massive imprint.

  ‘Sorry.’

  Sutton whistles and Bloke is stowed unhappy in the back. At least he winds both windows down / the dog is ambidextrous. Rawson says, ‘Slane told me some things last night.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Gary’s out for blood. But I guess you know that.’

  ‘What else.’

  ‘You’ve been busy,’ says Rawson. ‘Bison, Shark. Why didn’t you tell me?’

  Sutton shrugs. ‘That it.’

  ‘No—it isn’t. We need to talk about Kris.’

  Sutton looks at the ground. A single heartbeat, passing two. ‘Yeah.’

  ‘He wants her back in the country. He says she…isn’t well.’

  ‘See you at the place,’ says Sutton. He does not look at Rawson / he looks at the Pintara. It is suddenly the darling muse, the target of sage advice. ‘Keep your head down, copper. Don’t wake up dead.’

  —

  Together we run the Vaucluse Heights and soak the sweet of dusk. Cleansing the day of what could have been is every night’s first task. When shadows merge towards Camp Cove our flow is pure sympathy. Sun bleeds out as we cross the shore and rinse in blackened memory.

  Whe
n strong again we sprint uphill / gaze east upon the water. A night plane dusts the crop of sea beyond the lights of tanker. Rhythm exerts our steady force, we are six legs beating hammer. We always race the lighthouse till the dog is named the winner.

  Except here and now. Sutton is channelling limitless grunt, deriving from holy ocean. His sadness is an energy, a wish to be alone now. He strives to sprint against himself and grieve his gift of dreaming. It sharps Bloke in his mighty chest but he drops back in the gloaming.

  BETA

  13

  It’s not impressive, the Coroner’s Court. You see it nightly on the news, facing the eyeless walls of uni. Every day, people having the shittiest moment of their life inside it.

  It is likely that your wife was—

  It seems probable that your son met with—

  On the balance of probability, I find that your sister—

  They attend in hope, seeking answer. What they get is bad coffee, red tape, their pain all freshly coloured in.

  13

  Karen is the woman who crosses the lot, black heels stepping into a vehicle that is more than a car, less than a truck. Once upon a time a divvy van. It idles and runs rough, exhaust fumes turning to unsavoury mist. ‘Miss Millar,’ says the man behind the wheel.

  ‘It’s Ms. Get with the times.’

  ‘You look good. Different.’

  ‘You too.’

  ‘Good?’

  ‘Different.’

  He rubs his beard, the one component of his appearance that is new, that she wouldn’t have seen. It came out greyer than he wanted. ‘Do this here?’

  Karen indifferent. ‘Smell doesn’t bother me if that’s what you’re worried about.’

  ‘What smell would that be?’

  ‘There’s more than one, Cookie.’

  He shrugs and yawns, looking dreamy, a middle-aged man turning into the next thing. But not paltry: Brian remains concrete, hunched in a jacket that fashion has outlawed. A trait of men once they reach a certain age, to regard their wardrobe as indefatigable, as fit for any epoch that yet may come.