THE DEVIL IN THE RED DIRT: DIVIDED IN LIFE. UNIFIED IN MURDER

by Michael Smith

  This rare and rancid ruffian whom the demons named Cooper; he had a scar upon his face that could only have been the result of a good old-fashioned fish-hooking poorly stitched up. It jagged its way from the corner of his mouth all the way to the back of his jaw. He walked over to Harris who was packing his things away. “Oi Pom?” Cooper snarled. Harris didn’t look up as he buttoned up his shirt. “Saw you working the bag… Can you punch that good when you’re punching something that punches back?”

  Harris looked up from tying the laces of his well-polished shoes, and exhaled exasperatedly. “Fuck off Cooper.”

  At Watson’s table, the men began taking bets. This wasn’t lost on Harris, who looked over to witness most of the money going towards Cooper. It made sense: on the surface, he was bigger and uglier than Harris.

  Cooper towered over Harris, who remained sitting. He had no interest in the fight. But after the conversation he’d just had with Gallagher, he decided backing out wasn’t a possibility. He remained seated and stared Cooper dead in the eye. The bigger man had adopted a fighting pose, on the balls of his feet, with his knees bent. He stretched out his neck from side to side in an almost manic fashion whilst quickly inhaling and exhaling repeatedly to prepare himself psychologically. He was as mad as a bag of feral badgers.

  Harris was a seasoned fighter, and as such, he knew that not getting hit was far more important than actually hitting your opponent. There was no benefit to putting on a great show for the gamblers. Harris nodded his head slowly as he formulated a plan, he wasn’t about to brawl. He was about to play a very violent game of chess.

  To Cooper, being the intellectually challenged kind of chap that he was, it looked as though Harris had stopped paying him attention. Harris’ gaze had drifted off to something that lay behind Cooper, so the brute turned to look. As he did, Harris took a deep drag on his cigarette. The glow of the tobacco and the paper binding it intensified into a red-hot cherry. The moment Cooper turned back towards Harris, the Englishman viciously flicked the glowing cigarette in his eyes. As embers bounced from his pockmarked face, Cooper wailed and clutched at his eyes.

  Taking advantage of his debilitated opponent, Harris sprang to his feet and grabbed the big, dumb behemoth by one of his ugly, oversized ears. The ogre was powerless, Harris yanked his head down to waist height and led him hobbling towards the tables - at which the odds had rapidly changed.

  If you had been standing on the street outside the entrance to Fitzpatrick’s Lodge at that very moment, you’d have been showered in broken glass. If you were an inquisitive sort of human, you’d have stepped back and, feeling the glass crunch under your feet, you’d have run your eyes up the building, and you’d have seen a big, ugly head sticking out one of the windows. Cooper’s body remained inside, his bleeding head was outside, and his neck was surrounded by the jagged glass of the window. There was blood everywhere. It streamed from a nasty tear to his ear, from his face, and it poured from his neck. He was losing so much blood it was running down the building, forming a claret puddle on the cobbles.

  Chapter 15

  Harris hit the pavement outside Fitzpatrick’s as casually as a man who had simply had an uneventful workout. He stepped over the pooling blood and onto the broken glass. It made a satisfying crunching sound under his shoes. He made sure to take a second step on it.

  “That could have taken my eye out.” Harris turned to see Lescott leaning on the wall a couple of meters away. “I tried getting upstairs, but it seems the police aren’t welcome up there.”

  “Criminals aren’t known for their hospitality, eh?” Harris was surprised to see Lescott.

  “The consorting squad would have a field day in here.” Lescott seemed a little jittery.

  “Not with the amount they get paid not to.” Harris was being short, he wanted to get to the point of this meeting quickly.

  “I saw the article in the paper. Someone doesn’t like you,” Lescott smiled sympathetically.

  “What are you doing here, DS Lescott?”

  “Can we talk somewhere? Somewhere private?”

  As they got into Harris’ beat-up car, Lescott kept his eyes on the street. “It’s happened again.”

  Harris looked at Lescott dismissively. “What’s that got to do with me?”

  “It’s going to get worse. This time he left it there on purpose. He’s playing some sort of game.” Lescott spoke with a grave look upon his face.

  “I’m not a policeman and I’ve got somewhere I need to be. So, fuck off. I’m done with you rabble of cunts.” Harris gestured for Lescott to leave.

  “I need help.”

  “Then get help.”

  “I went to Major Crimes.”

  “What the fuck did you do that for?” Harris rubbed his brow; the situation was beginning to stress him out. Lescott was clearly desperate, he had nowhere else to turn, there was no one else he trusted.

  “I’m desperate. I’ve got nowhere else to turn. I don’t trust anyone else.” As Lescott spoke the words confirming his suspicions, Harris felt a pang of guilt drive straight through his chest. Lescott sensed his resolve weakening and pushed forward. “This one, it was an elderly fellow. He was reading a Bible on a Hyde Park bench… It was opened on the First Book of Samuel, Chapter 15, Verse 3,” Lescott added, in the hope that it would entice Harris.

  “Sunday school was a long time ago…” Harris said, as he stopped in his tracks.

  “Go and strike Amalek and devote to destruction all that they have. Do not spare them, but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.’” Lescott recited.

  Harris pondered the passage. “That’s Old Testament shit. That’s a God full of wrath. Before he mellowed out and decided to inexplicably overlook the slaughter of his first born.” He thought back to his childhood spent in church. “Genocide… That passage is about God willing the Israelites, his followers, to wipe a race off the face of the Earth.”

  “If you change your mind, I’ll be at this address. I might have a lead.” Lescott handed Harris a note scribbled onto paper.

  Harris was ashen-faced. “If what you’re saying is true. This is only the beginning.” He took a brief glance at the note and tossed it out the window. “Good day officer.”

  Harris watched as Lescott drove off. He was taken aback that the Head of Missing Persons would seek him out. In truth, Lescott concerned him. That scratching sound, that locked door, the way he drank so heavily. He was damaged.

  Harris turned the key in the ignition and drove off.

  Harris wasn’t lying. He had somewhere to be. A client had asked him to head to an address. She was a young woman who believed that her husband had started an affair with his first cousin. What a mess. She’d found evidence that he’d purchased a second home, a townhouse in Woollahra. She suspected that he was using it as some kind of bachelor pad in which he carried out his extra marital activities. There was something strange about the case. It all added up too neatly, he didn’t understand why she needed him, given what she already knew. There was something off about the woman too. Her body language seemed to suggest she knew more than she was letting on. But still, it was a payday, and clearing the debts of Harrington’s brewery had left him short of cash.

  Harris pulled up a few houses down from the address. It looked much like any other Georgian townhouse in a nice part of town. He waited for ten minutes to see if the man turned up, watching the house through his rear-view mirror. He just needed to take a couple of pictures and then he’d be on his merry way. But no one was coming, no one was going.

  He was becoming distracted. The news Lescott had broken weighed on him heavily and it was breaking his concentration. Heroin addicts aren’t known for their patience or their ability to sit still and remain focussed. After chain-smoking his way through several cigarettes, he decided he’d take a closer look.

  As he opened the car door, all the cigarette smoke that had collected in his vehicle billowed out onto the street. He ha
dn’t fully mastered the art of being inconspicuous. Fortunately, it was an affluent area, which meant the local population had better things to do with their day than sit at home.

  An ornate iron gate squeaked a little as he pushed it open. The high-pitched sound cut through the air of the quiet street. If anyone was sitting in their front room nearby, they had most definitely heard the noise. But they were likely at work, lunch, or the golf course. The house was dark. He peered through the front window between cracks in the blinds. There was nothing out of the ordinary there. He looked back at the street to check he had not drawn anybody’s attention.

  Above the front door, there was a small panel of glass. It was large enough to give him an idea of what lay in the hall behind the door but high enough to make it difficult to see through. He placed a foot on the nearby fence and hoisted himself up. The hallway was dark and empty. Perhaps this was going to be a bust.

  He was just about to go back to waiting in the car when he heard something from above. It sounded like a lamp being knocked over in an upstairs room. An oriel window was open on the top floor of the house. Someone was upstairs. Maybe the man had skipped his morning meetings and beaten Harris there. If only he could get onto the balcony, that might mean conclusive evidence. A photograph proving the husband was slipping his cousin a length would mean his job was done and there was no need to chase shadows for the next few weeks.

  Harris placed his head in his hands as he looked at the drainpipe that ran up the house. It was long, and it looked greasy. He gripped as best he could and began to shimmy his way up. The guy was fast approaching forty and wearing a tailored suit, so this was no mean feat. But where junkies are concerned, where there’s a will, there’s a way.

  He reached over and grabbed at the ledge of the protruding oriel window. It was precarious, to say the least. He could feel the smooth souls of his leather shoes slipping. It was only by the grace of his remarkably strong core and upper body that he steadied himself in that unnatural position, at that perilous height.

  His view was partially blocked by thick lace curtains that had been half pulled shut. There was a breeze on the air, if his arms could just hold out, maybe he could catch a glimpse to confirm the woman’s suspicions. But his feet were slipping, his core was burning and forearms were shaking. As the breeze lifted the drapes, he caught a brief glimpse of a pair in bed. It was an unnerving feeling being so close to them, to be invading their privacy so brazenly and voyeuristically.

  His strength was just about to forsake him when the bluster lifted the lace hindrance once more. He noticed the woman first, his stomach dropped. That silken, black hair cascading over her shoulders. A velvet waterfall at midnight. Her pale skin. A fresh layer of untouched snow. He felt nauseous. His heart sank to the bottom of his stomach. Because he’d run his hands through that hair, he’d kissed her snowy white skin. It was Elsa Markle that he was watching, participating in pillow talk with a man. The woman he had been seeing and sharing his addiction with for the past three months. Now she was in front of him with George Watson.

  As he climbed back down the drainpipe, he rued his own stupidity. He’d known there was something wrong with the client, but he’d ignored his instincts to chase easy money. She’d almost seemed to enjoy their appointments. She was in on it. Harris had been turned into the punchline of a sick joke.

  He knew nothing about Elsa. They didn’t do much talking, they never had. She’d turn up, they’d have sex, sometimes it was good, other times it was great. They’d take mind-altering drugs and she would leave. He found himself attached to the situation. His life had been a little less lonely with her in it.

  When Harris jumped into his car, he began pummelling the dashboard in anger. A flying elbow shattered the driver’s-side window. The noise of the broken glass hitting the pavement snapped him out of his tempestuous fit. His anger was replaced by an altogether more worrying feeling. Emptiness. His usual method for dealing with the feeling was to turn to his trustworthy medical kit. But the sun hadn’t yet reached its highest point in the sky. For years Harris has laboured under the misapprehension that he was somehow better than the common junkie because he was able to do a day’s work.

  That day would be no different. What he needed was distraction; he’d thrown away the scrap of paper, but not before he’d looked at the address Lescott had scribbled upon it.

  A trip to Redfern… That was a distraction in anyone’s books.

  Chapter 16

  Lescott was a long way from the leafy suburb of Bellevue Hill. Five whole kilometres, to be precise, but the gap between his home suburb and Redfern was better measured in money than physical distance. Redfern lay on the other end of the social spectrum. It was littered with housing commission buildings and tower blocks. Lescott wound his window down to let some fresh air in. It was hot that day and Redfern stank. The authorities wouldn’t schedule regular rubbish collections to meet the needs of the area’s inhabitants. They weren’t rich. They didn’t include those who made the decisions on how the country was run. If there was money to be spent, it would be spent elsewhere. This was a place that the government liked to pretend didn’t exist. This was a place that time forgot

  As Lescott swigged at his hip flask, he peered over an unruly nature strip, and into the front yard of a rundown terrace house. It sat somewhere in the middle of a row of similar rundown abodes. They made up a sad-and looking street. This particular yard looked like a rag and bone man’s playground. It was full of junk. You have contracted tetanus just by looking at the damn thing. On top of a busted, brown sofa sat an elderly Aboriginal fellow. He was surrounded by the sofa’s foam insides, strands of its shredded upholstery, and the rusty springs that protruded from within. He had a pipe in his mouth, as he chuffed away, it spewed out a cloying, spicy smoke onto the street. Lescott hadn’t spent time in the Narcotics Squad, but he could tell it wasn’t tobacco that the pipe was burning. He didn’t give a shit. That was the Narcotics Squad’s problem. We wouldn’t arrest some poor fella enjoying a touch of hash. The old bloke was watching Lescott closely through a thick plume of smoke.

  Rat-a-tat-tat came the sound of rapping knuckles on his window. Lescott almost jumped out of his skin. He turned to see Harris getting into the passenger side of the car. “No one in Redfern is going to speak to you.”

  “Why not?” Lescott asked.

  “You’re not their people.”

  Lescott was unimpressed. “And you are?” Harris spat out of the open window and shrugged. “Don’t go doing me any favours, James,” Lescott retorted. “If you don’t want to help - leave.”

  “I’m not doing this for you, I’m doing it for the children. Besides… I’ll be invoicing the New South Wales Police Force Missing Persons department for my time.”

  “Fair enough.” Lescott shrugged. He looked around. “Wouldn’t want to live here…”

  “Some people don’t have a choice. Nice houses like yours just aren’t on the cards for some of us.” Harris peered out to see what Lescott was looking at. “That’s why I’m their people.”

  “You’re wearing a suit that looks like it cost more than one of these houses. I somehow doubt you live anywhere like this.”

  “I live in hell,” Harris laughed. It was true. His building was colloquially referred to as Stab Hill. “What are we doing in Redfern?”

  Lescott answered, “Enzo Rosetti of 158 Vere Street says that in the weeks prior to Carla Rosetti’s disappearance, a Rolls Royce was spotted several times around Redfern. She thought it was tailing her. She reported it. No one came out to look into it. Why would they?” Lescott looked down at his notebook. The local man had picked up a pair of clapsticks and, in one hand, began to play them. It was an eerie rhythmic sound. Lescott raised his voice over it. “Carla was his daughter. I believe. But I’m not sure. He didn’t sound all that lucid.”

  The pair stepped out of the car and onto the pavement. As they passed the clapstick playing man, he hopped up from his sofa. He ran straight
over to the low brick wall that separated his yard from the pavement and spat at Lescott who was a little taken aback. Harris, the more experienced of the two where hostile situations were concerned, reached into his pocket and took out a roll of cash. As he approached the angered man, he broke off a couple of notes and held them out. “Alright there, old fella. What can you tell me about Enzo Rosetti, your neighbour at 158?”

  The local snatched the money from Harris. He began haphazardly walking through the trash heap that was his front yard. Then he found what he was looking for. He tore the notes up and dropped them in a rusty fire pit, gently burning away in the yard. Harris watched as the notes burned away to nothing. No one turned down free money in Sydney in 1964. Lescott watched from a distance and willed Harris to move on without further conflict.

  “You people. You think that paper will solve everything. It solves nothing. It creates cruelty and exploitation.” The man clearly didn’t care for the intrusion into his area. “You fellas ain’t welcome here.” The man continued to shout after Harris and Lescott as they walked off. They paid no attention. “I see the black cloud around you. Don’t want none of that here.”

  As Harris and Lescott walked towards 158 Vere St, each man assumed that the disrespected Aboriginal was talking about him, neither realising that he could see the darkness that followed them both. They were as broken as each other.

  They made their way towards the most dilapidated property on the street, 158 Vere Street. The front yard was an overgrown mess. Long grass grew around bags of rubbish and broken furniture. It stank. Harris carefully sifted through a loose pile of rubbish on the floor, using an old newspaper. Amongst the pile he found a brown paper bag filled with used syringes. The pair looked at each other, this was some indication of what they were in for.

  Lescott knocked at the door. The pair waited while looking for signs of life behind the darkened windows which had been lined by newspapers that kept light from getting in or getting out. Though they were there to hunt for information, both men had a growing feeling that they’d like to leave immediately. When they saw a dark eye peering out through a slight crack in the papers, they looked at each other uncomfortably. A moment later the front door creaked open.