by Graham Guy
He possessed no musical ability or aptitude for a trade, but despite all his failings he began to realise that he had a brain. John James was quick to pick up on things and was soon to turn ridicule into reward. By the time he was seventeen he was stealing the hub caps off expensive cars then selling them back to their owners. He got a job in the local railway yards. But being small and not physically strong he found the going tough. Even so, he stuck to it, mainly because he was given his chores first thing in the morning and was permitted to work all day unsupervised. Which meant he didn’t have to mix with anyone or talk to anyone, but mostly it freed him from the ridicule which plagued his very existence.
The job was boring, repetitive and menial. Pulling weeds, moving freight from one shed to another, loading and unloading railway trucks. He hated it. But he knew that at the the end of the fortnight there’d be a pay packet. Slowly he began to question what he wanted in his life. All his young years he had known nothing but hurt, bullying, violence and rejection. Gradually, he started seeing people as no more than objects to further his own ends.
Try to get close to them and they’ll hurt you, he’d say to himself. He discovered that he liked to read. So much of his wages went on books and magazines. And as he buried himself in the written word, he found stories on cops and crime and murder to have a bizarre, if not morbid, fascination.
But what he couldn’t understand was, if the crooks thought they were so smart, why did they always end up in jail?
Other things began to take his fancy as well. Like clothes and jewellery and cars. And guns. He would look at the price tags, look at his wage packet, then close the book or magazine.
A turning point in his young life came as he scanned the social pages of a national newspaper. Before him was a photograph of a middle-aged man with a very pretty young wife on his arm. John James looked at the picture for a long time. Underneath, the caption read, ‘Wealthy furniture design manufacturer, Cyril Beadmore…’
“That bugger’s as ugly as me, and yet look at him! How does someone like him, grab onto something like that?”
Again he read the caption. Then it hit him like a tonne of bricks. The key word was ‘wealthy’. At that moment, John James McGregor-McWeasely made up his mind: he was going to acquire money. And as much of it as he could get his hands on. He went back to the photograph. The caption went on to say how Cyril Beadmore would be entertaining a hundred guests at his Toorak mansion as a second wedding anniversary present to his wife. He closed the newspaper.
“Cyril Beadmore. It looks like you’re my man.”
Having already acquired his first rifle, the books and magazines he purchased all-too-readily explained how to cut a rifle down—making it more accessible and easy to carry.
He underwent the task with great gusto. Because he was employed in the railyards he was thoroughly versed in the timetables of the passenger and goods trains. He worked out he could jump the midnight goods train to Melbourne, then nineteen hours later jump back on it and be home again in time to start work on Monday morning.
* * *
John James couldn’t believe his luck. It was just 7.30 in the morning on the Monday, an hour before he was due at work.
And sitting on his bed in front of him was eleven grand in cold, hard notes. “Thank you Mr Beadmore,” he laughed.
John James McGregor-McWeasely was on his way. By now he had just turned twenty. He had also read enough to learn the smartest thing to do after pulling a heist was to go to ground. See no-one. Socialise with no-one, keep your mouth shut and don’t spend the money. He socked it away inside shoe boxes, which he stashed beneath the floor-boards of his ground-floor flat. But there wasn’t a day that went by when he didn’t retrieve the money for no other reason than to sit and hold it—and smell it. For some reason, the smell of money turned him on. Everytime he buried his face in the stuff, he got a erection. Then he’d fossick around for a girlie magazine and fill his mind with dreams and masturbate.
Subconsciously, he always waited for the knock on the front door. But it never came. As each day went by he became more confident that pulling a heist such as the one in Melbourne was a cinch. He continued to scan the social pages of the national newspapers, but finding another Cyril Beadmore wasn’t easy. He was also faced with the prospect of maybe having to kill to save his own neck.
Not a problem, he told himself. People don’t mean more than shit to me!
For the next seven years, John James remained in his job at the rail yards. And during that time he pulled another four jobs. Always the same routine: the midnight goods train to Melbourne and back in time to start work Monday.
He was careful how he chose his victims. He was careful about the time he decided to strike. John James always mounted his attack on the sleeping wealthy at ten to four in the morning. The streets were deserted. More so than at three a.m. At ten to four the night was dead. He was also to learn very quickly that a sawn-off rifle jammed into the mouth of a pretty young wife made a middle-aged man of wealth open his safe in double-quick time.
Yet John James began to get restless. He hated the town where he lived. He hated the people in it and he despised his job. By now he had $93,000 crammed into shoe boxes. He also felt that after seven years it would be safe to start spending the original $11,000 he stole from Cyril Beadmore. But to be on the safe side, he boarded a bus to Sydney and systematically cashed the larger notes for smaller ones at a myriad of outlets.
As he made his way around the harbour city, something about the place grabbed his imagination. He crossed the harbour bridge several times. He paid several cab drivers to show him the sights. He paid others to take him to the best night spots.
On the day he was due to return to his home he stood in Martin Place, cast his eyes to the sky and said out loud, “Just one more job in Melbourne then I reckon I might call Sydney home.”
After meticulously creating a false identity, John James paid three months’ rent in advance for a flat in the Melbourne suburb of Elsternwick. It was a ground-floor, fully furnished one-bedroom unit of solid brick in a cul de sac.
Perfect, he thought. That will restrict traffic no end and I’ll be able to see who comes and goes.
Shops close-by. Half a block to a cab rank. Only three other flats in the complex. All rented by young folk with day jobs. He couldn’t believe his good fortune.
Upon settling himself in, he carefully rolled up the carpet in the bedroom and laid out a plastic sheet on the floor. On top of the sheet, he placed plain-coloured butchers’ paper. On top of that he laid out all the stolen money. Another layer of butchers’ paper and he then replaced the carpet. He checked and double-checked that there was no evidence the carpet had been lifted. Even to the point of crawling on his hands and knees and inspecting the three-quarter round on the edging for any giveaway signs of carpet strands.
After three days of staring at the walls and preparing himself for the next heist, John James began seeing images in his mind of previous hold-up victims. He’d just drop off to sleep then find himself sitting bolt upright, bathed in perspiration, a terrified face before his eyes. Try as he might to shake it loose it wouldn’t go away. Then he’d begin to shake as he heard the pleading, the sobs, the hysteria and the terror-filled muffled screams of his victims.
This particular night it was most vivid. It was the young woman who was the victim of his first robbery. The wife of Cyril Beadmore. He had forced a rear door of their Toorak mansion and made his way upstairs to where the middle-aged man and his young wife slept. Wearing a balaclava and a hat with a miner’s lamp attached, he walked round the side of the bed, grabbed the young woman by the hair, shone the light directly into her eyes and jammed the barrel of his sawn-off rifle into her mouth. The woman woke with a start, terrified.
The whites of her eyes were those of a crazy person. Her attempt to scream was muffled by the rifle barrel plunged deep in her mouth. Instantly her husband was awake. His sleepiness turned to terror as he attempted to
go for the bedside light.
“Don’t touch the light,” John James commanded.
“What the bloody hell…?”
“You shut your mouth, old man!”
But Cyril wasn’t convinced. John James withdrew the barrel from the woman’s mouth and smacked him on the head with it. Hard. Immediately the barrel went back into the woman’s mouth.
“The safe, old man. Open the safe.”
Trying to wipe the sleep from his eyes, Cyril fought to work out the situation. John James knew the bright glare from the miner’s lamp and the balaclava destroyed any hope the old man had of seeing who the attacker was. Blood began to run down his face from a deep gash under his eye. His wife was still blurting muffled screams. He told her calmly, “Keep that up lady, and I’ll blow your bloody brains out.”
Suddenly the woman was still. The whites of her eyes becoming even larger.
“The safe, old man. You’ve got five seconds to decide. If you want to be a smart arse, the bitch is dead. And so will you be. Three seconds!” Cyril was frozen to the spot. Somehow he began to move. “Jesus Christ, I haven’t got a safe!”
By now the woman was beginning to gag from the rifle barrel.
“Two seconds.”
“All right! All right! Jesus Christ!”
Cyril Beadmore found his feet and was quickly inside the walk-in wardrobe. He thrust aside a rack of clothes, stumbled back to the bedside cupboard and reefed open a drawer. Finally his fingers found a key. Moments later, he flung open the door to a wall safe and collapsed in a heap on the floor.
John James pulled the rifle barrel from the woman’s mouth then landed a vicious blow to her head with the butt. Her eyes rolled back and he heard her gurgle. Pulling a cotton bag from a pocket, he entered the wardrobe and shone the lamp inside the safe. It was jammed full of notes, mainly of large denominations. He emptied the contents into his bag, checked that Cyril Beadmore had really passed out and made his escape.
News reports on the radio later that morning told of the robbery and of Cyril Beadmore suffering a heart attack. He was expected to survive along with his wife, who was in a serious but stable condition after being bashed.
Upon returning home, John James gave the couple little further thought. He was much too excited at having just pulled off a successful heist. The welfare and healing of his victims were the least of his concerns.
No-one ever cared a bugger about me. To hell with them. This is payback time.
But as the years went on it was the terror-stricken face of the young woman which began to haunt him. For some reason he kept seeing the whites of her eyes, large and stricken with fear. On this particular night her image was particularly vivid. He decided to go out. It was late, but he didn’t care. He needed to get out and, for the first time in his life, was desperate to be in the company of a woman. He walked up the block to the cab rank.
“Something that’s open, mate. A wine bar, a club. Some place where there might be a nice piece of arse,” he told the driver. A few minutes later the cab pulled up outside the Pussy Galore Wine Bar in St Kilda.
The driver turned to John James. “There you go, mate. Bit of a mixture in there, but you’ll probably find what you’re looking for.”
There were about thirty people in the wine bar. Some at the bar. Some sitting alone at tables. Others sharing private moments as couples. He pulled up a stool and ordered a beer.
As John James sat quietly, trying to shake the image of the terrified woman from his mind, a voice came over his shoulder. It was low-pitched, husky and female.
“A mineral water’s fine.”
He looked at the woman. He figured her for maybe late thirties. Hair that looked to be red, but almost certainly out of a bottle. Too much makeup covering a rounded and formerly attractive face. Heavy eyeliner, bright red lipstick. The long, red fingernails and decorative rings adorning most fingers put him off a little. But it was the odour she exuded which he found most offensive, cheap perfume and cigarettes. But there was something about the woman which he liked. He decided he’d try to ignore her aroma.
“Why would you want to drink with me?”
“I’m a hostess. I get paid to mix with the customers.”
“What else?”
“What do you mean, what else? There’s no what else. You wanna get your dick wet, then tell me and I’ll arrange it. But that’s not me. I just talk to people.”
John James seemed happy with the explanation.
“I’m Julie,” she said, holding out her hand. John James accepted it.
“Peter,” he lied. “And I’m not here to get me dick wet.”
“Well, nice to meet you, Peter. Does your wife know you’re out?”
“Yeah, that’s a good line,” he scoffed. “But it might surprise you somewhat if I told you I not only don’t have a wife, I don’t even know any women.”
“Likely story; but you know, somehow I believe you.”
“Do you think I’m ugly?” he blurted.
He could tell she was taken aback by the question and was trying to formulate an appropriate response.
“Good god, Peter, I’ve only just met you!” she exclaimed in a low voice. “Why would you ask me something like that?”
“Do you think I’m ugly?” he asked her again.
“No,” she lied. “I don’t think you’re ugly. Is that the reason why you say you don’t know any women? Because you think they would all think you’re ugly?”
“Oh, forget it,” he replied, regaining his composure and turning on his stool to stare into space.
“You live around here?” Julie asked, attempting to lighten the mood.
John James continued to stare straight ahead and shrugged. “Sort of.”
Julie continued to make small talk, but her words were falling on deaf ears. Then, for some strange impulse, John James turned to her, reached into his pocket and pulled out a wad of notes. With a tear in his eye, he pressed the notes into her hand.
“Believe this, or don’t believe this. You are the first woman I have ever had a conversation with in my life. All women ever do is ridicule me and call me a fucking Weasel. The money’s yours if you’ll just sit and talk to me for an hour.”
Julie looked at the wad of notes, then flashed a glance over to a young woman sitting alone at the end of the bar. “You’d get a couple of all-nighters with Angie with that sort of dough,” she told him.
“Cheaper to have a wank. Besides, I told you, I’m not here for that. Do you just want to talk?”
Julie put the money back into John James hand. “I don’t want your money.”
“There’s five hundred bucks there… “
But the woman interrupted his protest. “I’m only too happy to sit and talk to you,” she told him.
John James couldn’t believe Julie had given him back the money, but he pocketed it anyway.
* * *
Three hours later, the wine bar had emptied to a handful of people. He and Julie had made their way to a corner table, and all during that time, he just drank and drank… and talked.
At around 3 a.m., Julie helped him into a cab after giving him her phone number and address and inviting him round for dinner at her house in two days’ time. As she watched the cab drive off, her knees began to tremble. Something in her instincts prodded her intuition, sort of warning that all wasn’t right.
What the hell could it be? All I did was talk to him. Maybe it’s what he told me.
Julie convinced herself that it was the information he’d passed on that scared her. She tried to dismiss her anxieties. Then she wondered why she had been so generous with her invitation.
Christ, I never do things like that. I don’t even know him. Feel sorry for the Only Eagles Fly poor bastard, I guess. Doesn’t know anyone. All people do is take the piss out of him. Besides, I reckon the coppers will have him in custody by then. It’s probably all bullshit what he told me, but how the hell would you know?
He hadn’t told her
a great deal, but enough to raise her suspicions to the point where she felt she had to pass the information on to police. Then she felt fear overtake her body. Suddenly he frightened the hell out of her. Suddenly Julie had become very much a target. Her gut instincts told her so.
However, in a decision which would ultimately be to her detriment, she chose to ignore them.
* * *
John James barely made it to the toilet before he threw up.
He was as sick as a dog and had never known himself to vomit like it. His head was spinning. He peed his pants and excrement ran down his legs. He just wanted to die.
“Fuck the booze!” he groaned, moments before collapsing onto the bathroom floor and passing out.
He awoke six hours later to find himself lying in vomit, excrement and urine. The stench was unbearable. He cursed and swore as he found his feet. His head was splitting from the pounding and throbbing going on inside his brain. He staggered his way to the laundry, tore off his clothes, jammed them into a plastic bag, opened the back door, and threw the bag as far as he could. He slammed the door. He filled a bucket with hot water and detergent and grabbed a mop on his way back to the bathroom.
“Jesus, I don’t believe I did this!”
Having cleaned up his mess, he turned on the shower and stood under it for what seemed an eternity. Slowly he regained his senses and the headache began to fade. Then, with a start, it hit him.
“Jesus, what did I tell that woman?”
He panicked. Stepping out of the shower, he rushed out the back door and ripped open the plastic bag containing his clothes. He fumbled through the pockets of his pants.
“Thank Christ for that!” he groaned, locating the piece of paper with Julie’s name, address and phone number on it.
As he made his way inside, he suddenly came to the full realisation that he may have told the woman too much. But he couldn’t remember.
‘What the hell did I tell her?’
What the hell did I tell her?
But nothing would come. But he did recall mentioning something about robbing rich people. “Jesus, now I’ve got a loose end!”