Winter Traffic

by Stephen Greenall

  But still capable of surprises: two balls of fur emerge from his pockets, fraternal without being twin. Mewling and gasping, the early lineaments of Doberman and Alsatian. ‘Say g’day to the boys. Gonna call ’em Hector and Achilles.’

  ‘Yeah? Why.’

  ‘I dunno. Because they’re such good mates.’

  Karen moves her head up and down but it isn’t agreement she’s feeling. Poor little buggers; what must they think about these fat primate hands, reaching out to cuddle and molest. ‘How long you had it,’ she wonders, meaning the car.

  ‘Picked it up in March, big police clearance.’

  ‘Nice. Think of all the villains who’ve ridden around inside.’

  ‘There’s a villain up back right now.’

  Millar turns, surprised she didn’t detect the grinning greyhound on the other side of mesh. ‘Villain. Meaning what, slow?’

  His nod is perturbed. ‘Like a French bloody movie.’

  ‘What’s to be done.’

  ‘Some hard bloody trainin, I should think.’

  ‘Fair enough. And if it doesn’t take?’

  ‘Ease up,’ says Brian, raising a hand. ‘All my duds go to a farm in Bowral. There’s a lady down there, rich as Midas. Loves animals, hates people.’

  ‘I like her already. What’s the mutt called?’

  ‘Million Percent.’

  ‘Million Percent. I’ll keep my eye out, win millions.’

  ‘She’s not a city dog yet,’ warns Cookie, thumbing in the direction of nearby Wentworth, the mecca of his yearning. ‘Look for her at Dapto.’

  ‘Dapto. Gottit. How’d you get on?’

  He rolls with her shifting gear, the trainer’s passion leaking as he departs the amateur ranks and goes professional. Brian hands her a flat brown envelope and speaks it neutrally: ‘Yeah—he’s seeing someone.’ Karen nods and rubs her eyebrow, highlighting without meaning to the cut, stitches. ‘You’ve done yourself a mischief.’

  ‘It’s nothing.’

  Photographs slide into her black-and-white view, the married man in private company. The highway motel, the woman not his wife.

  ‘It’s always the same kind of place,’ says Brian after she’s had a while. ‘The neon dive, even when they’re cashed up like he is. I don’t get it.’

  ‘Don’t you?’

  ‘I’d go fancy, best place I could afford.’

  You say that now, but it’s different in the living. You go to places like that because Hollywood trains you. Shitty room service, subbo on reception: observing the genre is all part of the fun. It’s rich as Croesus, not Midas, fuck’s sake.

  ‘What you expected?’

  Karen files the photographs away. ‘I’ll settle up. Any additionals?’

  ‘Listen, about that. We could call it a favour.’

  ‘No, Brian. We couldn’t.’

  Money placed on the seat between them. The potential Doberman frowns at it and the driver looks outward, possibly embarrassed. ‘The coronary,’ he says eventually, his semi-retired gaze taken by the court. ‘Why here?’

  ‘Meeting someone. Don’t pretend you don’t know who.’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean.’

  ‘Come on. You know about me now.’

  Brian shrugs. ‘I know you got a brother who cheats on his missus.’

  ‘Is that it?’

  He summons a face she hasn’t seen before. Resignation, fondness; maybe something else, something she wouldn’t want to know. ‘I reckon you’re about the most secret person I ever met.’

  She smiles tightly and looks at the puppies. They writhe in his lap like a snake in figure-eight, the one that eats its tail for eternity to come. ‘About those names. Have another think.’

  ‘Why?’

  Because destinies entail. Because I don’t want your dogs to grow up and kill each other because you don’t know that Achilles and Hector weren’t fucking mates. ‘Dunno. Just seems a bit pretentious.’

  ‘There. You did it again.’

  ‘Did what?’

  ‘Changed the subject. Look, the reason I don’t want your money is not because I want you in my pocket. It’s because the job was shit. You could have done it yourself, Karen, easy.’

  ‘Oh yeah? What if he’d caught me.’

  ‘You’re not that dumb, girl. And he’s nowhere near that smart.’

  ‘Maybe not. But time, resources—it would have been improper use.’

  ‘Everybody does it.’

  ‘Not everybody.’

  Brian puts the little animals back in his jacket. ‘Why do you tell people you’re thirty-one?’

  ‘Because I am thirty-one.’

  ‘Not until July.’

  ‘Jesus, officer—didn’t know it was a crime.’

  ‘It’s interesting, that’s all.’

  Outside the wind is crossing the barrier that makes it go from silent to hearable and she wonders what’s interesting about it, giving your age as the thing you’re turning, not the thing you are. She’s always done it, probably learned it from her…Or maybe she didn’t learn it. Maybe it is inherent to herself, carried forward from the previous incarnation, the one before that. ‘What can you tell me about Michael Rawson?’

  Brian blinks. ‘Haven’t heard that name in a while. Big specimen.’

  ‘Good bloke?’

  ‘Got his fans. Never had much to do with him. Shit, the gods of Homicide—you wouldn’t bother them without due cause. Why d’you ask?’

  ‘I might have to work with him. Get mixed reports.’

  ‘My word you do. Good man in a dust-up, though. I was there the night him and the Pardoner went fifty rounds at Drummoyne Bowls.’

  ‘The Pardoner.’

  ‘Yeah—Roger Paspaley. It was all we talked about for weeks.’

  ‘Are you serious?’

  Karen knows Drummoyne Bowls. Can’t imagine anything memorable happening there. But Brian’s eyes narrow, transported back upon the ringing plain. ‘No word of a lie, Kaz—that fight went for thirty minutes. Call the Guinness Book, two genuine sluggers going hammer and tongs for half an hour. Rawson the smaller man if you can believe it. And a hundred off-duties just standing there glued…It was Wookie Henson’s going away.’

  ‘Wookie?’

  ‘Hairiest woman I ever saw.’

  ‘Wow.’ Karen shakes her head. ‘Why didn’t someone break it up?’

  ‘Yeah? Like who. I’m talking about some titanic shit here—real forces of nature. They’d still be going if someone hadn’t called the cops.’

  ‘You were the cops.’

  ‘True.’ The dog trainer smiles. ‘You know it’s a party when the fuzz gets called on the fuzz. Couldn’t hardly recognise the bastards by the end of it. The Pardoner looked like Buster McGovern after the Mack Truck, know what I mean?’

  She doesn’t—but it’s impossible to mistake the fire of recollection in his eyes, his relish for the telling. ‘So Rawson won the day.’

  ‘Well,’ he says, ‘it depends who you ask. Joey Calimari ran a book, paid out on a Paspaley win at evens.’

  ‘You’re joking.’

  ‘Nah, two-to-one was about right.’

  ‘I mean about the existence of someone called Joey Calimari.’

  ‘He’s real alright—heads up Fraud at Pittwater…Still and all, plenty of judges said Rawson had the best of it. They reckoned Squid Rings was just scared shitless of old Éamon.’

  ‘Éamon.’

  ‘Yeah. Cavendish.’

  Nostalgia drains like blood from a darkened parking lot, Cookie seeming to realise what he sounds like—a remnant, a man leftover from Flood. It brings him back to the present and he commits to it, won’t go back. ‘Good luck with it, kiddo. The family stuff.’

  ‘Thank you,’ says Karen. ‘For everything.’

  He girds, adjusting himself for the road to come. A long journey of discovery and the discovery is this: there is no end, it all just keeps on going. ‘I want to ask you something,’ says the
private detective. Karen’s hand was gripping the handle but cops aren’t good at getaways.

  ‘Shoot.’

  ‘Why did you change it?’

  —

  At school she was a rower. Now she runs. She’s good, body’s made for it, even more so since she quit. She doesn’t miss cigarettes in winter—only summer, a glass of white in her hand and the sun on her face. A common story, but she’s not a common girl.

  She was running when she did herself the mischief. Yesterday, collision with a low branch. Hardly characteristic, but she was distracted by a memory that cut her to the bone. Nothing immediate to herself, just a nagging deja vu about the track she’d chosen, the secluded park nearby.

  A case before the courts last November. Not hers—colleague’s. But Karen saw photographs, a jogger like herself, the same build and hair colour, frogmarched off the path and raped at knifepoint.

  The least lovely phrase in the language. Or in the running, member of a family providing multiple contenders. It is a living presence inside the station, around the circuit, the language every day of non-consent.

  Karen recalled without wanting to that the rapist was a teenager. That the attack lasted eight to ten minutes. That the victim was twenty-five and engaged to be married but had not stayed that way.

  —

  Why did she change it.

  ‘What’s it to you?’

  ‘Nothing,’ says Brian. He didn’t expect the venom. Or only half expected. ‘Just curious, one person to another.’

  ‘Fellow travellers are we.’

  ‘It caught my attention. It’s—’

  ‘Interesting?’

  ‘Jesus. I wouldn’t have asked if I’d known you’d get pissed off.’

  ‘I’m not pissed off.’

  ‘I know what pissed off looks like, Carla. I’m not a fucken idiot.’

  They glare at one another. Then burst out laughing. Million Percent barks to cheer the armistice.

  She pecks the man goodbye and alights, porting her various burdens across the lot. When Karen closes her jacket she conceals the blouse that was her only relief of colour. She shuts her eyes against the chill and perfects a look inadvertent, the girl in mourning.

  12

  The Coroner’s hair has been battleship grey all the years that you have known him. Even in photographs, the old ones with your parents. When he smiles he smiles with his entire face, the eyes like crescent moons. But when the smile goes away it leaves no trace.

  —

  He is sitting at one of the advocate’s tables, coroning away. You look at his spread of papers and make a rueful expression. He nods and looks resigned and you think in his direction, Please don’t say it.

  —I heard about Koestler. It’s a real vote of confidence.

  —Yeah. Let’s hope I do something with it.

  —Hmm…I just wanted to offer my congratulations.

  —Thanks.

  —And some advice.

  —

  That hmm annoys you, his moons in sudden existence. He thinks you won’t be able to break it. The Coroner is entitled to his predictions, fine—but not the patronising air. He has no right to condescend, not to you. He hasn’t put in the yards.

  —It’s okay, David. I know what I’m doing.

  —I’m sure. But do you know what Tony Bercovitch is doing?

  You smile. You put your hands in your lap and play the sensible lass, the good listener, and even that is not dealing to deceive because you are sensible, you are a good listener.

  —

  What does he see when he looks across the desk? In the job, in life, people always act tougher than they are. But that is something you give yourself, the pride you privately allow. With you it is not acting.

  Possibly it’s the thing you’d change, the stone that lives inside. David isn’t convinced, never was—is forever trying to peer behind the mask. That’s how it goes when you’re a woman coming up: people want to break you down, get at the little girl they take you to be. But if they can’t, and they grasp the truth, they condemn you all over again for being the other thing.

  —

  You ask about Giselle, send your love, start walking out the door like a can of discount spinach. You are trying to outrun the sound of him saying it, your certainty that he will. But he doesn’t. Not now, not ever, Your parents would be proud.

  —Karen.

  —Yes?

  —Who have they given you?

  —

  You turn and confess the name, the Sergeant Incremental. Three times promoted beyond that rank, three times busted down again. The only such man in the history of the force. The Blue Mover, the tangled man, the fellow who stood at the centre of many plots.

  The exception to every rule: poor Davey, look at his face. Finally, after all these years, you have managed to discompose him.

  —Rawson? Good heavens.

  —Is something wrong?

  —This is bad.

  —Why? He knows the case.

  —Yes. And some of the principals.

  —You make it sound like a negative.

  —Don’t be naive. Tony was testing you.

  —And what, I stuffed it up?

  —Go back. Tell him you’ve changed your mind.

  —I can’t. I went through Mike Samo.

  —You what?

  —What’s wrong with Bonecrusher?

  The Coroner shakes his head and does that thing he does: returns to the document, shoulder to the wheel like the one-man workforce he is. David scribbles and speaks his verdict to the pages.

  —You’ve got a bright future, Karen.

  —Cheers.

  —You should have chosen somebody the same.

  12

  Bleak City is earning its money. She hits at break of day and it feels like twilight, like dense infection draped around the mantle of the town. Listless sedge beyond the tarmac and a skidding rain half-hearted. The taxi speeds the Tullamarine and Karen stares through scenery, wondering how it could possibly be the setting of her birth.

  —

  Fresh the coffee, fresh the sky. The Greek runs a glorified milk bar, calls it a cafe, says it’s a deli. A grubby sign tells her More Tables Upstares. As if there could ever be need: all the trade is passing, hardened regulars with no desire to stay. Summer was not kind and the stores of the town are empty.

  She braves the stares to discover a long and shallow room, wooden-floored and therefore freezing. The distinct feel of garret, only the artist is gone—long gone, decades past. No one liked his stuff so he took the hard way out, courtesy of an uncompromising tram. Working theory.

  The front wall is industrial glass, lined by an old-stone counter; this is where Karen sits to overlook the carpark of the next-door hotel. Scant choice: the room is dark and the only relief is the window. Melbourne hovers, offering little of itself, pouring a handful of alms in light across a documented Sydney scandal.

  She takes it everywhere. Not the lot—it’s War and Peace—just the highlight reel and victim’s diary. Karen drinks murderous coffee and looks at pictures of the dead man in colour, in forensic black and white. A tiny creature; maybe death had made him smaller. Angelus Koestler, one of life’s weaklings but armed with a brain like a small moon. And a famous engine, too—worked fourteen-hour days for half a century.

  Tough departure: the hands look crucified, petrified. The face—what face?—it’s a tortured mass. The heavy board rests on his torso like a butcher’s block, like a Biblical tablet no lightning would divide. Brought down hard on the temple, ouch, post-mortem guillotine, stone instead of steel. The killer knelt and used it for a press, for cold Satanic prayer. All the better to squeeze it out, the life of you, the weight of this homicide you suffer to be done.

  No forced entry. It was personal. Exceptionally: eye-to-eye, there would have been an intimacy about it, watching the light inside the other gutter and die, knowing yourself the cause. Bloody hell, mate, with friends like these…

  No
ises behind, Millar breaking off and turning to see an ancient lithograph hanging crooked on the wall. The dead city Smyrna. She arranges the photographs face down in a composed manner and hears the flick of the switch, the wan yellow of the overhead bulb.

  Meek fire. ‘Thank you,’ she says across her shoulder. The child of the owner, sent upstairs to remedy the light, the scarcity.

  —

  She’s early. But then, so is Holden. Karen knows his car and his face because research. He pulls up in the empty yard at the Union but he doesn’t get out.

  In time a van rocks up and the driver steps into Holden’s Ford. They talk for a while, five or six. Van Man alights and takes boxes from Holden’s boot; the van pisses off. Karen memorises the plate without wanting to, without trying.

  What’s all that about.

  —

  The Union was his choice, not hers. It opens at eleven and come five past they’re the only two in there. Guinness, lemon squash. ‘How’s retirement treating you.’

  ‘Nothing to look forward to,’ says Holden. ‘Long way off for you, but. On the phone I thought you were older.’

  ‘Only as old as the case you’re working.’

  ‘Spoken like a vet. You know—with fuck-all to go on. Did you come down here to bitch about my paperwork?’

  ‘There’s a few more abbreviations than I’d like, but she’s legible.’

  ‘Probably lousy.’ Holden shakes his head. ‘I was on my way out, y’know? But a lot of people hated Koestler and I ran down forty of the worst on the villain side. Whereabouts you don’t have to check.’

  ‘Grateful.’

  ‘You should be. Genuine fucken scumbags in that lot. Life’s too short.’

  ‘I didn’t know Koestler was hated.’

  ‘Didn’t you?’

  ‘All I hear about is the intellect, the legal mind of his generation.’

  ‘Well I hated him.’

  ‘Right.’

  Holden tears at the nuts. ‘Sounds like you haven’t spoken to anyone who appeared before him on a regular. He took great delight in making you look stupid, using that silver tongue to take the piss in the one place you couldn’t tell him to shove it. He didn’t have much time for cops.’