by Graham Guy
You stupid dumb-arsed bastard. Now you’ve got a loose end!
All the stories he’d read over the years about crimes and cops always carried the one distinctive message: Never leave loose ends. It’s the loose ends that do the damage.
John James thought of the dinner in two days’ time.
Too far away. Can’t wait that long.’
He had to move quickly and he knew it. He cleaned himself up and left the flat. On the way to the cab rank, he called in to a shop and bought a box of chocolates. “Gift wrapped please.”
He hurried up the street to the cab rank and was more than a little relieved to see a vacant car at the stand. He told the cab driver Julie’s address, and as the vehicle turned into her street, up ahead, he saw her leave her front gate in the company of two men and get into a vehicle. He told the cabbie to pull over.
“That’s the woman I was going to see. The bitch owes me a month’s rent on her house and I haven’t been able to track her down. Who’s that she’s with, do you reckon?”
The cabbie grinned. “They’re the coppers, mate. Looks like she owes more than just a month’s rent, eh?”
“What do you mean?”
“I can tell you for sure that car she got into is an unmarked police car. Cabbies learn these things. The big giveaway is the hat on the rear parcel shelf. It covers up the radio aerial.”
“I’ll be buggered. Can you follow them?”
“I can. But it’s not going to do you any good. If she owes you a month’s rent, what the hell else has she been up to? They were D’s, mate, so it’s not a parking fine.”
“Where do you reckon they’re going again?”
John James kept his gazes firmly fixed on the vehicle.
“Russell Street. Police headquarters. Nothing surer.”
About fifteen minutes later the unmarked police car pulled into the kerb opposite police headquarters and the three people walked across the street to enter the building.
“Stop here, mate,” John James told the cabbie. “I think I might cool my heels for a while and wait for her to come out.”
“Suit yourself.”
John James paid the driver and made his way through the front entrance of the police building. A young woman on reception, already speaking on the phone, put her hand over the mouthpiece and looked at him inquiringly.
“The three people who just came in. One of them was my wife. Can you tell me where they went?”
“That’s Bourke and McLoughlin from armed robbery… just a moment please,” she said into the phone. “That was your wife with them?”
John James nodded.
“Do you wish to speak with her?”
“Yes, please.”
“Take a seat, sir, I’ll call them in a moment.”
John James’ gut hit the floor. Jesus, I’m too late! I’m too bloody late!
He pretended to take a seat and, when the woman was distracted, he quickly left the building. He noticed he was still holding onto the gift-wrapped box of chocolates. They would be the ticket to getting inside the woman’s house.
John James then caught another cab and returned to his flat. He waited a couple of hours and dialled her number. There was no answer. He waited another two hours and called again. As soon as he heard the receiver lift off the cradle, he hung up.
“She’s home! Thank Christ for that. She’s bloody home!”
* * *
Half an hour, later John James knocked on her door.
Julie had been getting ready for work and was applying her make-up when she answered the knock. “Peter! You’re two days early,” she exclaimed, surprised and scared out of her wits at seeing him standing at the door. Especially after what she’d just told McLoughlin and Bourke from armed robbery.
“Hi Julie,” he responded. “Sorry to barge in.”
“Not at all,” she replied, fighting hard to prevent him from seeing her lips tremble.
“Seems I made a bit of a fool of myself last night and I just wanted to thank you for pouring me into a cab and seeing to it that I got home. I just thought you might like something nice.”
Julie noticed he was holding something behind his back.
“Oh, you shouldn’t have!” she protested meekly, unlatching the door. “Come in. I’m just getting ready for work. Come through. Would you like a coffee? I do have a little time.”
“That’d be nice. Thank you.”
She turned her back on him and went to put the kettle on.
“Close your eyes,” he told her.
She smiled. “Oh, Peter.”
As she did so, it was all over in a microsecond.
John James whipped a pen-gun from his pocket, pressed the end of it to the back of the woman’s head and released the firing pin. Julie died instantly. The bullet passed right through her skull and embedded itself into a wall in the kitchen. John James reached for his pocket knife and dug the lead out of the the plaster. Blood poured from the woman’s head wound and John James had to be careful not to step in it. He glanced at her momentarily.
“Bloody bitch!” he scoffed. “You’re all the same!”
He looked around himself. Satisfied he hadn’t touched anything, he checked out the front, then the rear, and bolted.
He had only been back at his flat for twenty minutes when there was knock a on the door. He was still coming down from his hit. His hands were trembling. His gut was still tied in a knot from having killed. Cautiously he went to the door and spoke through it.
“Who is it?”
“Senior Constable Bourke and Senior Sergeant McLoughlin from the CIB. Mind if we have a word?”
John James opened the door. He was petrified.
“Are you Peter?”
John James knew immediately. Julie had talked. So had the cabbie. “Yes.”
“May we come in?”
“Of course,” he replied, unlatching the door. “What the hell have I done?”
“Just routine sir. A few questions, if you don’t mind.”
“Sure… have a seat.”
McLoughlin and Bourke cast their eyes around the sparsely furnished flat.
“Lived here long?”
“A few weeks.”
“Where are you from?”
“Melbourne now. Left school at fifteen. Got a job. Saved me dough. Thought I’d like to live over here.”
“What sort of work did you do?”
“Just labourin’.”
McLoughlin’s eyes flashed to John James’ hands. He could tell they weren’t the hands of an office worker.
“Mind if I have a look around?” McLoughlin asked.
“Not much to see.”
“Got a job?” asked McLoughlin.
“Not yet. I’m just being a tourist for a while. But I’ll start looking soon.”
“Got any money?”
“A bit?”
“What’s a bit?”
John James went to a kitchen drawer and took out a passbook. He handed it to Bourke.
“Peter Lewis Heatherington. That’s you?”
John James nodded.
“Two grand. Not gonna last long is it? Got a car?”
“No.”
“How do you get around?”
“Cabs… trams.”
“The rent will soon swallow that up,” Bourke said, handing John James back his passbook.
“But I’ve paid three months up front on this place. I’ll get a job.”
“Been home all night?”
“Yes.”
“Ever been to Melbourne before?”
“No.”
“Not even overnight?”
John James knew exactly what the cop meant. How bloody much did I tell that woman?’ he bemoaned to himself. “No.”
“There’s been a few robberies over a period, Mr Heatherington. We’re just trying to clear them up. Sorry to take up your time.”
With those words, the two police officers left John James’ flat.
John James watc
hed the two detectives drive away then raced in to the toilet and vomited until all he could do was dry retch. He had never been so scared. He wondered what the two policemen thought of him. Whether they believed his story. He felt himself begin to shake uncontrollably. When he walked into the kitchen, perspiration drenched his entire body. It got even worse when he came to the realisation of just how close he had come to being caught. Within a hair’s breadth of where Bourke had sat were the sawn-off rifle, pen-gun, miner’s lamp and balaclava. He had actually hollowed out the leg of the table Bourke had rested his arms on and used it as a hiding place for his ‘tools of trade’.
Still trying to come to terms with how much he’d told the woman, he vowed to never ever indulge in a repeat performance of too much booze and loose lips.
* * *
Three hours later there came another knock to John James’ door. It was Bourke and McLoughlin again.
John James froze. ‘Shit!’
It was Bourke who spoke. “Just a few more questions, Mr Heatherington?”
John James opened the door to let them in.
Bourke produced a photograph. “You know this woman?”
It was Julie. “Uh-huh.”
“How well?”
“I was with her last night at the Pussy Galore Wine Bar in St Kilda.”
“And?”
“And… er… nothing. What do you mean ‘and’?
“When was the last time you saw her?”
“I think about 3 a.m. She helped me into a cab. I was more pissed than I’d ever been in my life. Got home here and chucked me guts up. Flaked out. Woke up about six hours later. Why? She reckon I raped her or something?”
“Did you?”
“Shit man! We just sat and talked and I got very drunk. That’s it.”
“We have a cab driver who’ll place you in her street today.”
“So?”
“So what were you doing there?”
“Why all the questions? Why don’t you ask her?”
“We feel you can probably answer that one,” Bourke shot back.
“Whaddaya mean?”
“We mean she’s fucking dead, arsehole!” Bourke cut in.
John James knew that he was required to look stunned. Shocked. He played the part. “When?” he asked.
“Earlier today.” “How?”
“You tell us, arsehole?” Bourke barked.
“How the hell would I know?”
“Why did you go to her street, then follow us into town?”
John James feigned embarrassment. “Because I had something for her.”
“Like what?”
He went to a cupboard and opened the door. “Like this.”
McLoughlin tore off the gift wrapping.
“Chocolates! You wanted to give her chocolates?”
John James nodded.
“Why?”
“’Cause I fucked up last night.”
“How?”
“I dunno,” he said. “I just thought I might have. So I wanted to apologise. Is there anything wrong with that? And you say she’s dead?”
Bourke and McLoughlin didn’t answer. Instead they fixed their gaze upon him to try and stare him down. But John James didn’t flinch. Inside, his gut was in turmoil. But he gave nothing away.
Whn the cops left, John James sat glued to the gap in the curtains at his front window. He couldn’t stop himself from shaking. As he peered through the smallest of slits, he saw a car swing into the cul de sac, cut its lights and park next to the kerb.
Got to be a cop car. Got to be! Shit! They didn’t believe me. They didn’t bloody believe me!
His mind was racing. He went to a drawer and took out a pair of binoculars. He moved the curtain back a fraction, enough to put one lens up to the window. As the image was drawn closer, John James could make out two figures in the front seat.
The bastards are staking me out. Shit! Now what? He paced the floor. Nothing. The bastards have got nothing. OKyou guys! Two can play your game. I’ll just stay put. I’ll wait you out. I have enough tucker in this joint for a week. We’ll see who gets sick of it first.
John James hardly left his seat by the window for the first week. He ate there. He slept there. The only times he moved were to get food or go to the toilet. The shifts on the stakeout changed every six to eight hours. John James had read enough over the years to know that would be the ploy. To ‘smoke him out’. It was a shakedown. It was intimidation. It was the stand-off harassment. He also knew it was a tactic employed by the police when they had nothing to go on except suspicion. But he knew they knew he did the woman. It would become a war of nerves. He also had an inkling that his flat would be bugged or targeted with a directional microphone. All engaged with the one purpose of intimidating him. Making him cave in to the pressure. Having him make a phone call to a friend or associate and confiding his guilt. Evidence not admissible in court, but enough for the police to go on to pursue a line of questioning and investigation.
At the beginning of the second week his food supplies were getting low. So he took to ordering takeaway by phone.
He continued to sit at the window and peer out. Sometimes he’d see a pair of binoculars focussed on his flat. But mostly, two police officers sat watch twenty-four hours a day. He felt himself getting to breaking point, so he took cold showers to harden his resolve.
Into the third week and the situation hadn’t changed. The garbage was mounting up inside his flat, but he refused to give up.
I’ll see you bastards off if it’s the last thing I do!
* * *
On the last day of the third week, John James noticed the stakeout car was in a slightly different position. It had moved up the road just far enough that a street light showed a touch more clearly the two men in the front seat. At around 3 a.m. he was watching them through his binoculars and he could’ve sworn they were both starting to nod off. He dialled a takeaway and instructed them to make the delivery at the beginning of the cul de sac. He would be waiting for them.
John James checked the car’s occupants again. He felt sure they had nodded off. He quickly and quietly left his flat via the back door and scooted down the street. He hid until the takeaway van came into view. He hurriedly paid the driver and waited for him to disappear. He then walked over to the stakeout car and banged on the roof. Its two occupants woke with a start. The one behind the wheel wound down the window.
“Mornin’ boys,” John James said, smiling. “It’s now been three weeks. Thought you might be getting a little peckish. I’ll just leave this here for you,” he told them, placing a small plastic tray carrying burgers and coffee on the bonnet of their vehicle.
The two police on stakeout were too stunned to speak.
John James knew he’d made a fool of them. A victory for him right now, but most likely a defeat the police would never forget. John James would be a marked man and he knew it.
The stakeout was abandoned within the hour.
* * *
“I see that was a big success,” Bourke said to McLoughlin when he arrived for work on the Monday morning.
McLoughlin knew immediately what he was referring to.
“I still say he did it,” Dave offered.
“Yeah, well we just put in three weeks to smoke him out and he never gave an inch. Either he’s a whole lot smarter than we give him credit for or he’s clean. My hunch is he’s clean.”
“Come on boss, he never left the joint. He never made any phone calls except for takeaway. He just bloody sat there.”
“He never left the joint?” McLoughlin asked.
“Never left the joint,” Bourke reiterated.
“So who brought the boys the hamburgers and coffee?”
“Yeah, well, shit, hang on… !”
“No, you hang on. If he slipped out then, what’s to say he didn’t at other times as well?”
“He didn’t.”
“We don’t know that. Just continue a normal line of inquiry on the
woman. We’ve wasted enough time on the little prick. Blokes like him don’t stop at one. Once they get a taste they keep going. We’ll have our day. Might take a while, but he’ll make a mistake. They always make a mistake,” McLoughlin said.
Bourke offered a wry grin. “Yes, they do, don’t they?”
* * *
John James McGregor-McWeasely was so terrified by the police shake-down that it was another week before he even dared to venture outside his flat. He ordered in what food he needed and stayed put. But with two weeks to go on the lease of his flat, he decided on one more job before making a permanent move to Sydney.
The social pages described Ernst and Barbra Cohen as a wealthy retired Jewish couple who lived in suburban Elwood. He had an idea that being wealthy, retired and Jewish, they probably had an inkling for gold.
John James struck at ten to four in the morning. The old man struggled until being struck down with the rifle butt. It was only when John James threatened to shoot his wife that he opened his safe. A small amount of cash, and as he’d suspected, a large quantity of gold ingots in various weights. He decided it would be smart to grab only the smaller ones for easier disposal and stuffed three handfuls into each of two bags.
Twenty hours later he’d jumped a goods train and was on his way to Sydney.
News of the attack on Ernst and Barbra Cohen spread through the media like wildfire. Mr Cohen was something of a philanthropist and a well-regarded member of the community.
The first person who came to mind to Ken McLoughlin was Peter Lewis Heatherington. He banged on the door of his flat, but soon realised the place was deserted.
“Just as I bloody thought,” he cursed.
Later that day he came upon Dave Bourke. “You remember that little fucking prick, Heatherington?”
“You mean ugly features?” Dave asked.
“Yeah, the prick with the funny walk. No such person.”
“Bullshit!”
“I’ve had records do a search. Peter Lewis Heatherington drowned in the Murray River at Renmark two years ago.”
“So what are you saying?”
“I’m saying this is the prick that knocked the woman off. This is the prick that’s pulled all those robberies, and this is the prick that knocked over the Cohens as well.”