Winter Traffic

by Stephen Greenall

  —You met him through work I take it.

  —Straits Times. He covered Beirut, Damascus. Wild colonial boy.

  —Sounds like a goer.

  —That he was. But the world kept taking him away.

  —And there was never anyone else?

  —There was not. How bout you, detective—anyone special?

  —Angelus Koestler.

  —God help us…Someone said Caron Daley was in love with you for a while.

  —He’s in love with Caron Daley.

  —True story. They still call him the Silver Wobbler?

  —Yep: the bloke can lure anything.

  —Except Detective Millar.

  —Stuff it; being alone is less lonely. Don’t you reckon?

  They have this conversation in a different dimension, the weight of the words real but detectable only as absence—as negative readings on a specialised scope. ‘Middle Harbour Yacht Club,’ says Lenny. She casts a look at the warm lights of clubhouse. ‘Swish.’

  ‘Wankers.’

  ‘This is your controlled location?’

  ‘Follow me.’

  The marina is a solemn forest of high pale masts. Night birds on the crosstrees observe their advance, predatory outlines but the species not knowable. The water is bad because still / it unnerves the everything else.

  ‘I like boats,’ declares Lenny, then feels like an idiot. She only said it to fill the space where the soundtrack ought to be. Her guide moves with purpose along the boards, knowing the way, mantled by her greatcoat. The gait is familiar but it takes Leonara a moment to name its chanceless grace, fuck-you conviction. Karen walks like a model who doesn’t like fashion.

  The police steps onto a yacht a little smaller, older, wider than average. Lenny lingers at the railed plank to marvel at its gaslight deck, portholes below the long binnacle and neat coils of rope. The exposed wood has a walnut richness from picture books, brass that shines like a metal more precious. The truth of her recent remark washes through her, retroactive but potent.

  ‘Winter Traffic.’

  ‘Welcome aboard,’ says the voice of Karen, descending to the hold.

  —

  ‘This is magic.’

  ‘Bloody cramped is what it is. Could you shine that light over?’

  ‘Whose is it,’ says Lenny.

  ‘Mine.’

  ‘It is not.’

  ‘Yep—Dad’s pride and joy. I don’t sail, but David takes it out.’

  ‘Chestwyn?’

  ‘He pays the mooring fee. And for anything that breaks—which is everything, all the time.’

  ‘Jesus, woman. You own a bloody yacht.’

  ‘She’s just a faded old cruiser. And I’d have to resign if anyone found out.’ Karen on hands and knees in the narrowing prow, going through drawers and lockers to excavate life jackets, flare guns. ‘There’s a bottle of red in one of these. Oh—hang on.’

  ‘It’s fine,’ says Lenny. ‘I reckon I’ll join you.’

  ‘Sure? I don’t want to spark something bad.’

  ‘No fear,’ says the reporter, in need of a stiff drink since the hospital. ‘Wine feels appropriate, pretend we’re at mass.’

  The lady from the paper looks about feeling grand, adoring the tight-packed novelty of its ingenious galley, the low breathing hatches overhead. The bench seats are upholstered in dark-green leather, conforming to the hull’s prohibitive camber. Two bookshelves, the first packed tight with maps, manuals, volumes on the maintenance of diesel engines. The other displays some actual books, Michener and Tom Clancy, Two Gentlemen of Verona.

  ‘Hundred per cent about this? I’m happy to drink juice or something.’

  ‘I’m sure.’

  ‘It’ll be awful plonk.’

  ‘Just cut me off at one, Captain.’

  ‘Deal,’ says Karen. ‘That’s if I can find it.’

  She can: the cop chances on the dim cellar and extracts Queen Adelaide. With improving efficiency she sources glasses, a corkscrew, and after that they travel through an awkward moment: whether or not to toast.

  —He was slightly younger. His name was Brendan and he came from Belfast. We met on the road and that’s all I want to say about it.

  —Copy that, detective.

  —My feet were sore and he married someone else. That’s it.

  —Gottit.

  —In my heart we had children. I gave them names and star signs, minor health hiccups. People live this way. It’s possible to.

  ‘I don’t have anything to celebrate,’ Karen tells them in the actual, wine glass poised in mutinous air. ‘You?’

  ‘You’re letting me read Koestler’s book. That feels like a win to me.’

  ‘I’ll go upstairs, let you get on with it.’

  —

  The girls at high school always wanted her friendship more than she wanted theirs. They looked to her for approval because she frightened them. Violent loss of parents: Karen had survived the ultimate adult experience, bore now some invisible adult mark. An outrider returned with terrible intelligence, an update that children cannot really comprehend / it’s possible to fucking die.

  She walks the length of Winter Traffic and carries that news forever. On her third visit to the bow she sits and puts legs across the side. As a kid she perched here often, but the boat was always in motion. At high speed it would transmit a subtle hum into her flesh, its fast vibration a surplus of constituent energies. Now there is none, no system in process. The boat is sleeping / just a thing. Karen takes a sip of the plonk and recoils.

  Fuck—she hoists the glass in the air for examination and looks closely at the bottle, the label. Jesus.

  From below the sound of Lenny clearing her throat, Karen eavesdropping to hear the turn of pages. It was difficult to part with Koestler’s parting gift / that perfume belongs to her.

  The air up top is cold and for maybe the first time ever her greatcoat doesn’t meet the challenge. The cubicle below will give her a hundred seconds of hot shower but the logistics put her off. She’d have to undress in front of the guest, and intimacy is like Slane’s crew or Jamie bloody Sutton: not symmetric. Lenny and Karen are intimate in Koestler—in Bercovitch and Rawson—but after dark, on a boat, Karen knows the different orders they represent. Lenny is come-up-hard-through-the-ranks-with-no-favours-asked. She wears flat sandals and long skirts, floral-print blouses matched with handbags that don’t match anything. Karen is new school, corporate-grade business suits in Black Hawk grey and Foreign Legion blue, Colombian Rebel cobalt and Mausoleum shale. The ghostly word that floats to Karen when she thinks of Lenny is goer.

  More wine. More Lenny clearing her throat. Karen pulls her phone out and calls the Brendan immediate, the Brendan in her life, the one she can actually reach out and touch.

  ‘Karen Carpenter.’

  ‘Sorry, I know it’s late.’

  ‘All good. All good?’

  ‘Fine. Any progress on that thing we talked about?’

  ‘Ask and you shall receive.’

  ‘Serious?’

  The sound of Tavish departing a lounge room in Ashfield, late-night TV droning in his wake. Enjoys a beer at day’s end, BT—calls the set his electric fireplace. ‘I asked LAC to yellow flag him, talked to Morrison at Myrmidon. I didn’t play the Samo card, just asked him to put out feelers. Stuff me mushies if he didn’t actually do it.’

  Karen tense: she doesn’t want to know the mechanics. ‘And?’

  ‘South coast, a caravan farm at the bottom end of Jervis.’

  ‘Solo?’

  ‘That’s the mail. Gotta pen?’

  ‘Sure do,’ lies Karen. She is always to be found committing this sin, telling the other end of the line that she has a pen. It’s easier than saying No, but I have a good memory…Less forgivable is the way she repeats the data in elongated syllables to suggest the pace of alleged writing. Rawson is holed up at Adventure Point Leisure Park.

  ‘Nice work, Mr Tavish.’

  ‘Wh
at’s the go—driving down to see him?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  ‘Say g’day from me.’

  ‘Will do, cobber. Talk tomoz.’

  —

  Lenny climbs the ladder, clumsily emergent, a leaf-eating marsupial far from mountain home. She stands on deck behind Karen holding a cable to steady herself. It’s a while before she says it.

  ‘None of them come out well.’

  ‘No,’ says Karen. ‘But one of them comes out bad.’

  ‘The Pardoner’s sin.’

  ‘What was it you said? Paspaley was the one they used when they didn’t like somebody.’

  ‘Meath wasn’t the guy,’ says Lenny. ‘Didn’t snatch the girl, didn’t land his boat on Cobbler’s Beach.’

  Karen shakes her head and gazes at water. ‘The case was bullshit. When you take a hard look at the forensics—’

  ‘Didn’t dump the body.’

  ‘Didn’t see the body, didn’t touch the body. Nil by sea. The jury was never told about the breakwater.’

  ‘Rancid,’ says Lenny. ‘But what does it change?’

  ‘Koestler was fingering Paspaley as crooked. He was talking to witnesses, putting it down on paper. The most senior justice on the bench at the time of his retirement—he wasn’t just going to sit on it.’

  ‘Did Paspaley know the judge was playing sleuth?’

  ‘Not sure. He was vanished by then. But it’s motive.’

  ‘If you can’t prove he knew what Koestler was doing—’

  ‘Koestler gave the report to Slane for safekeeping. Insurance policy. He knew he was under the gun.’

  ‘So why not ask for protection? The premier returned his calls, was in that habit.’ Karen says nothing. Half of her is over the edge, suspended above dark water. The primal current in every human brain that readily imagines crocs, sharks, giant squid below the surface, plotting a grab for your chook-like flesh. Lenny says, ‘Paspaley is probably in a fishing boat off Weipa, oblivious to the whole affair…I’m devil’s advocate here.’

  ‘I doubt he’s oblivious. I sent him a copy.’

  ‘Of what?’

  ‘Of the thing you just read.’

  ‘Frig.’

  ‘Care of his sister. Margaret; Ipswich. He hasn’t called me yet.’

  Lenny’s shake of the head is morose, inflected with knowledge. ‘He’s not the kind of bloke who picks up the phone.’

  ‘Framing the wrong man; do you know how far back you have to bend it? Takes genuine effort. And the whole fucking time—’

  ‘The one who killed the child is out there.’

  ‘The really fucked thing is the others knew.’

  ‘It is fucked,’ says Lenny, ‘no question. But blokes like Holden, Rawson, Rexy Faulkner—they don’t just walk away if they don’t get the bloke. Not a case like Beowulf.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘I don’t want to see you run over.’

  ‘By who—the Pardoner?’

  ‘By Bercovitch. He talks a good game on corruption, but crooked cops won’t do him any favours. Men like him pass shit down the line, Karen. Always.’

  The cop appears to audit the theory, her glaze of eye like a microfiche disciple worshipping late-night at the altar. ‘I think it’s time we talked about the elephant in the room.’

  ‘And what would that be?’

  ‘The shiraz.’

  The serious snaps / they laugh in unison. ‘You stuffed up,’ says Lenny. ‘Didn’t you.’

  ‘Big time.’

  ‘I took a sip and thought, Shit—she’s got a funny definition of plonk.’

  ‘I’ve only gone and opened David’s bottle of ’79 Grange. I’m screwed.’

  ‘Tip it back in?’

  ‘I don’t think it works like that…Fuck it—let’s have another glass.’

  ‘I believe we must,’ says Lenny. ‘It’s goddamn bloody sensational.’

  ‘Park yourself. Let’s do this right.’

  19

  Bobby Cobra sits in the local watching screens, nibbling for value at Richmond, Warrnambool, Wentworth bloody Park. He sighs and tears up tickets as two-to-one chance after two-to-one chance comes roaring to salute. In time he gets the message, goes massive on a dollar-sixty favourite at Geelong that dies in the arse two hundred from home. ‘The horses, yes,’ he thunders with plain murder in his voice. ‘The dogs, yes / the chariots fucking never.’ A couple of punters smile in knowing but the balance seem not to hear, transfixed by the play of high-intensity silks under floodlit night-skies very far away.

  Sutton is late and then later, Rawson monitoring the magnitude via the start times of races. It is easy to while away an hour, an evening, an entire existence. He backs donkeys and then placegetters and then finally a winner, Thank Christ for night gallops in Toowoomba. The payout covers the cost of a gristle-rich schnitter and he almost wins the badge, eats crunchless salad to the sounds of silver-haired retirees filing in and out for takeaways. Last orders for food at nine-thirty sharp and the lighting mostly fluorescent.

  He chucks it in at ten and thanks the girls behind the bar, cursing them for despoilers of his rich and native luck. His final image walking out is of the diehards he abandons, three wayward brothers picking through the entrails of Carrington form. Fuck me dead, the midweek dogs from regional West Australia. The Big Ship is grateful for the blessing they impart / he unmoors from that place a moderate.

  A figurine shape on the darkened rink of the bowls club that adjoins. It belongs to a motionless Sutton, his back turned from light / his face inclined to sky. He flickers around the edge as though a special effect, a hologram beset with white St Elmo’s Fire.

  The Incremental roars with counterfeit authority, You’re not allowed on there. Nil response, not a sausage. He wanders untidily across.

  ‘Nice night for it.’

  ‘I’m in,’ says Sutton. ‘I’ll do it.’

  It brings the giant up short, the pair of them three feet apart but Jamie less substantial now than from fifty yards. He is a velvety projection of light on light and Rawson wonders if he is okay.

  ‘Fine.’

  The transit of his Venus stare, the exquisite starfield that lives outside of cities. ‘You’re thinking about Suze.’

  ‘No,’ says Sutton. ‘But I do.’

  ‘Did it ever seem to you that she is Veronica, and Kristy is Betty, and you are Archie, and I am fucken Jughead.’

  ‘Never.’

  ‘Good. What’s happened?’

  ‘The day you sorted out the beers. Remember that?’

  ‘Course. I rang old—’

  ‘Don’t. I don’t want to know how you did it.’

  ‘It wasn’t a big deal, china.’

  ‘You’re wrong.’

  ‘God but I hear that a lot.’

  —

  They leave the rink and walk to the caravan park, Bloke tied up near Pintara / the Minotaur guards a mule. He observes their approach in dignified silence, reposing on his belly with carriage erect, paws crossed like some reigning intellectual of the canine left. He cocks his head in conundrum they should be so quiet.

  ‘Drink?’

  ‘Alright.’

  Cosy inside the caravan, the interplay of lamplight and barlight a miracle no one notices. Rawson puts the radio on in the background, a bit of ABC, and a pair of Darwin stubbies are seized, inaugurated. Rawson keeps Sutton under tight peripheral surveillance, waiting for the carpenter to speak.

  ‘Conditions.’

  ‘Hit me.’

  ‘You take the lot.’

  ‘What—egg and beetroot. Slice of pineapple?’

  ‘I’m serious. I don’t want a cut. Think of it as a going-away present.’

  ‘Some present.’

  ‘You’ll need every cent.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘The job itself we do my way.’

  ‘Any way you like.’

  ‘You said Bopper Dean was a bus driver?’

  ‘That’s right.
’

  ‘Good one?’

  ‘Don’t know,’ says Rawson evenly. A solemn candour: he has renounced his gift for suasion / all the wickedness it sowed.

  Sutton stares at the badge on his bottle, less readable now than in daylight behind his shades. ‘You’ll miss it.’

  ‘Reschs?’

  ‘Sydney.’

  Rawson guzzles to gird, a cast of Darlington neon in his eye. ‘God no. I’ll walk the canals of Florence, my son—stroll the galleries of Venice. I’ll live like a king on my filthy lucre and only the most beautiful Roman whores will know my name.’

  ‘Your name.’

  ‘You’re in a queer mood, Jem. You sure about this?’

  ‘Afterwards. Where will you go.’

  ‘You know where.’

  ‘Don’t.’

  ‘Why not? The magazines reckon Whit is running round in Soho. She won’t be far.’

  ‘You’re a mug.’

  ‘Always.’

  ‘Forget her. Forget her or you’ll never have another happy day.’

  ‘She gives me indigestion, mate.’ Gives me acid fucken reflex / puts me helpless on the floor.

  ‘You and Kristy. It was crook from the start.’

  ‘It was great at the start.’

  ‘When she was with you she was on the needle. It was only with Chris that she got clean.’

  Rawson looks at his longneck, a brown-glass pisshead that will shatter once empty. ‘You’re harsh tonight, brother.’

  ‘If I thought there was one chance in a hundred, I wouldn’t say it. But there isn’t.’

  Rawson ashes his cigarette and goes to the fridge, genuinely enormous in the caravan interior. He brings out vodka from the freezer and pours a pair. ‘Friday,’ he says, colder than the spirit. ‘You good with that?’

  ‘When I was fifteen,’ says Sutton, ‘I changed my name.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I changed my name to Jamie Sutton.’

  Rawson straightens, turns. ‘Are you fucken serious?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He returns to his chair, sitting down heavily and muttering to himself, shaking his head. ‘Was it, like, something to do with your dad.’

  ‘It was after he died…You gonna ask me what it is?’

  Rawson assumes the Smirnoff in a single go. Then drinks Sutton’s. He coughs a couple of times but it isn’t the little water that sticks in his throat. ‘Why you spilling this on me now? You’ve only had twenty fucken years.’