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

by Michael Smith

  He hadn’t cried in decades. But he was close to tears at that point. “Look after yourself Ma.” Before he left, Ronnie pulled out a handgun and placed it down the side of Emily’s armchair.

  Chapter 33

  Having flown back to Sydney on the night of Howard Frost’s hanging, Livingstone spent the evening stewing in his Darlinghurst Road office. As it happened, there was still some semblance of humanity within that vile force for darkness. He was contemplating the consequences of his actions. Did it have to happen that way? There was a situation that needed handling. He handled it. But he could have done it differently? No.

  Livingstone was no idiot. He knew that the way he acted was self-serving. He knew that he favoured good PR over actual justice. He reasoned that both had positive effects on the common man. Every time he participated in an exercise like this, an unlawful cover-up, the framing of an innocent scapegoat, or the misappropriation of police funds, he did it without questioning his actions prior to the event. When it had played out, he would then consider what it was that he had done. He would decide whether he could live with his behaviour. He considered the upsides and the downsides. He objectively decided whether it was worth behaving in such a manner for the sake of his career, his wealth, and his influence. This repression of his conscience made him a force of unnature.

  On this night, he thought about the man who had hung. A simple man. A petty criminal who hadn’t been able to hold down a job or maintain personal relationships. He’d been in and out of prison for theft his entire adult life.

  Frost had fallen onto Livingstone’s radar during the war. The DCI, then a lowly Detective Constable, had coerced him into taking the fall on a child molestation charge. His family would receive a lump sum, he would do time the way he had his entire life. Only the lump sum was never paid. And time spent in jail on a child molestation charge was different than one for burglary or theft. Livingstone had orchestrated the injustice as the actual perpetrator, a high-ranking civil servant, was too important to go down.

  Yes, he had planned the demise of an innocent man. But his considerations were dual edged. The next thing he considered was the fact that he had allowed the real perpetrator of the crimes to walk free. Three humans were dead. The killer who had shown a compulsion to, and an enjoyment in, playing God. But then… They were only Aboriginals. A sub-race that likely wouldn’t even exist in years to come. All he was doing was turning a blind eye to a relatively small event in a genocide that had lasted two centuries.

  It’s often stated that Aboriginals were categorised as animals under a Fauna and Flora act written in Australian law. That’s been debated in recent times. Whether it’s true or not doesn’t really matter. What is unmistakable is that they were treated as second class citizens, if they were treated as citizens at all.

  This improved somewhat in 1967. The government decided to hold a referendum in which they posed a couple of important questions. Should Australia’s first people be counted as Australian people in the census. And should Australia’s first peoples be subject to and protected by the laws of the country? How these were questions we were asking of ourselves as late as the 1960’s is troubling. To whom we were asking the questions was downright scandalous. The government decided they didn’t need to hear the opinion of the peoples in question, and as such the Indigenous population didn’t get a say. They were more interested in the opinion of the city folk and backwater bumpkins, many of whom had never come across an Indigenous person in their life. Thankfully the vote passed by a landslide. But half a million people voted against it. A stomach-turning, heart-breaking figure. That’s my understanding of it anyway.

  But this was 1964. Livingstone was happy to live under the belief that they were somehow lower than white Australians. A heinous belief that his actions only served to perpetuate.

  Chapter 34

  The hot summer sun had long since faded behind the horizon. A huge moon loomed in the sky. The stars had come out. I can’t begin to describe the sight of the Milky Way over Australia’s red centre. It’s so very clear. A white and blue smear across a plain filled with bright twinkling lights that tell a thousand stories should you care enough to look for them.

  It was cool enough to drive with windows down, which was a welcome reprieve for Lescott. What had begun as a gentle tickle in his throat was now a painful scratch, mainly due to having spent two days in a car with James Harris, human smoke machine.

  The journey had been long, but in that time, they had grown quite comfortable in each other’s company. By the time the Tjoritja, or the MacDonnell Ranges as you might know them, came into view, the two men were sitting in relaxed silence. They wanted to peel their sweaty bodies from the sticky leather interior. They wanted to stretch their legs, to enjoy a cold drink before getting into a comfortable bed. For now, they would make do with the cool breeze on their face.

  When Tjoritja did rise up over the horizon, both men breathed a sigh of contented relief. That dot that rose up in the distance never grew much bigger than a dot. This was a small outback town. There were no skyscrapers. No sea of bright lights. The biggest buildings were the town hall and the tall barns that were littered around town.

  The pair stopped at the first place they saw with a “Vacancies” sign. It didn’t look like much, but they were done with driving. Lucky really, if they’d looked for a more appealing alternative, they’d have spent all night driving. Stuart Arms Hotel, on the corner of the main street was the only hotel in town.

  It was after midnight and reception wasn’t manned. That meant a soul-destroying wait. Lescott rang the bell over and over and over. I don’t know if you’re a smoker, but imagine making it all the way through a long-haul flight looking forward to a cigarette. You rush into the Arrivals terminal, excited about that first suck on your toxic saviour. Then you see the queues at immigration and your heart falls straight out of your arsehole. This moment was much like that.

  Eventually, a sleepy old fellow wandered down the stairs. When he saw them, he began cursing under his breath. “What do you want?”

  Harris slid a couple of notes onto the counter and watched the anger melt from the man’s face, “We need somewhere to stay. The sign said Vacancies.”

  “Will a double do? I’ve only got linen laid out on a double.” The man shrugged.

  Harris slid another note onto the counter. “Put linen on a second double please.”

  “I don’t do linen. I work in the kitchen. My wife does rooms and she’s asleep.”

  Harris broke off another note and placed it down on the counter, this time he added a little force, “Wake her up please.”

  The man looked at the note and laughed. “You’ve never been married, have you?”

  This time Harris broke off a couple of notes and he slammed them down on the counter. “Kindly point me in the direction of your linen closet. Then, if it’s not too much trouble, go into the kitchen and make us some food, open a couple of beers, and then you can go back to bed.” Harris’ tone was unmistakably cold.

  The man mirrored it, “Bit late for that, isn’t it?”

  Harris slammed his fist on the counter. It was a strange sort of sight. It wasn’t aggressive, it was born of frustration. “Please.”

  “Calm down young man. All will be well.” The man looked at Harris, he could see he had a devil in him struggling to get out. He held out a set of keys. “Upstairs. On the landing.”

  Lescott reached out to take the keys. Harris didn’t have much left in him. Making a bed is a bastard of a task at the best of times. He wasn’t going to let the ailing addict go through that.

  Moments later, Lescott and Harris had dropped their things in their rooms and returned to the reception area to eat. The landlord had been generous. Two plates filled with piping hot leftovers. Soft chicken breast, tender roast beef, crunchy fried potatoes and two, roughly torn hunks of buttered wholemeal bread. All of it swimming in a thick, rich gravy. It was delicious. But Harris barely touched his food, he d
idn’t touch his beer. After a couple of minutes, he excused himself and left.

  “Your mate… He’s not from round here, is he?” The landlord listened to Harris’ footsteps on the landing and then the sound of the door closing overhead.

  Lescott laughed. “You can tell?”

  “Is he from Tasmania or something?” the man asked, clearly struggling to place Harris’ peculiar Mancunian accent. You have to remember; the world was a bigger place back then.

  “Definitely something.” Having finished his own plate, Lescott began to make light work of Harris’. “You couldn’t grab me a couple more beers, could you?”

  The landlord looked crestfallen. It was the wee hours of the night and he was standing there in his pyjamas, serving this young man with a seemingly endless appetite for booze.

  “Actually, make it a bottle of vodka. No, gin. A bottle of gin.”

  XI

  When Harris awoke, he did so in something of a state of confusion. It had been a deep sleep, after days without his eyes being shut for longer than a blink. But it was still dark outside. As he lay there, he wondered if he’d lost a day. He felt refreshed, he had that feeling that told him it had been a long sleep he’d enjoyed. Lescott, standing over his bed, told him it had been too long a sleep. Harris sat up in bed and reached over for his cigarettes.

  “There’s no time,” Lescott spoke in a quiet rushed whisper.

  Harris looked out of the window at the view across the empty vastness of the Simpson Desert. “There’s no rush. The moon’s still in the sky.” He went ahead and lit his cigarette before offering one to Lescott.

  “No, it’s not. Look again.” Lescott danced up and down on the spot like a madman needing a piss. As he hopped from one foot to the other, he pointed out of the window.

  Harris laughed but obliged him all the same. Once more he looked out of the window, that night there was a huge, unnatural blood moon. It was vividly claret in colour. “Oh. You’re quite right,” Harris said, when he saw that the moon had in fact fallen out of the sky. It had landed somewhere off in the distance. By the looks of it, it had nestled snugly into the crown of an imposing sand dune. There’s the blood moon bled, filling the desert with the sea of burgundy.

  “Out on the wastes of the Never Never - That’s where the dead men lie! - Out there where men are lost forever - That’s where the dead men lie!” Harris turned to Lescott, who was still madly gesturing for him to get out of bed. “Is that normal?”

  “How should I fucking know? It’s your dream,” Lescott answered. “Come on, let’s go…”

  Harris took one last deep drag on his cigarette and rolled it between the fingernail of his index finger and the fleshy part of his thumb. He spent a moment lining it up and then flicked the cigarette. It flew out of the open window, across the desert, and hit the blood moon with a satisfying hiss as it extinguished on the wet surface.

  They left the room, walked down the stairs and out the front door. “I don’t understand. Who left this here?” Harris asked when he looked around.

  They weren’t standing on Todd Street as they expected. They were standing at the beginning of a pier. The granite block construction ran from their feet way out to the middle of the sunless sea ahead of them. “We should walk to the end.” Lescott said, and he began walking, taking great pains not to step on the cracks of the blocks.

  Harris was hesitant. There was no moon or stars in the sky. Howling wind and lashing rain had extinguished the gas street lights that lay on the pier. The pier was bathed in darkness. It was dangerous, doubly so given the inclement weather and the slipperiness of the granite. Harris knew the pier. This was Roker. A seaside suburb of Sunderland, in the north east of England. His aunt had lived in the area when he was a child. He’d spent his summers learning to fish in the unforgiving North Sea. Once he had witnessed a man and his child washed over the edge by a rolling wave. They never made it back out of the swirling depths.

  Harris turned back to return the way he came, but the door slammed shut before him. There was no going back. In this journey, the only direction was forwards. And so, Harris walked against the oncoming storm and moved down the pier.

  At the end of a cold, wet walk full of twists and turns, Harris came to the end of the pier where Lescott awaited him. Though the black void hanging overhead was still notably lacking the light of stars and the moon, visibility was somewhat better here. A pale shimmering light illuminated Lescott’s face. Against all known logic and knowledge of the universe, this light seemed to shine from below, from over the edge of the pier wall.

  The end of the pier captured the very struggle of light over dark, there the squirming silver brightness battled with the blackness. Neither fully besting the other. From unknown origins, a beam slipped and slid across the soaked wooden surface and eradicated the darkness. Only for darkness to take its place where the light had just been. It was a tumbling kaleidoscope filled with the spirit of yin and yang.

  Lescott pointed towards a bench that lay nearby. Sitting there silently were three shadowy figures. A man and two children. They held fishing rods over the railings, but their lines had blown clear out of the water. Harris recognised two of them. They were the children he had looked upon in the back seat of the Death Car, all those months ago. The third he wasn’t as familiar with, he presumed it to be the Old Man on the bench. Their three faces were filled with sad resignation. To Harris’ surprise, the Old Man stood up and grabbed the girl before tossing her over the railings. Harris went to scream, he could not. Lescott held a firm hand over his mouth. Next the old man tossed the boy over the edge. And then finally, he clambered over the slippery cast iron railings himself. When he had, Lescott removed his hand from Harris’ mouth and spoke: “Come see.”

  The pair walked over to the railings together. As they moved closer, the waves that had bombarded the pier wall a moment earlier subsided, almost like they had been crying out for attention. Now they had it, they stopped their anguished crying, leaving the moonless sea quite still. Harris, peering over the railings, came to understand the source of the silver light. Floating there beneath the surface of the blackness were faces. Glowing forms suspended in that inky solution. Millions of souls, many of whom Harris recognised. They looked quite lost and quite trapped. These were the faces of those hopeless men, women and children that the world had left behind. The sea of faces encapsulated the entire spectrum of humanity, every age, race, religion and inclination imaginable was represented there. The masses had one thing in common. They looked poor, without power, as if they had been doomed to remain in their jet-black mass grave for all eternity.

  When Lescott walked down the steps of the pier, Harris obliged by following his guide. Only, the pier steps did not, as you might have thought, lead to the sea. The only thing you drowned in was tawdry opulence. Harris knew this room. This was the reception area of one of Tilly Devine’s Palmer Street establishments. It was a brothel.

  Harris’ gaze moved to a chaise longue. There, bathing in the sunlight that streamed in from a window above, lay Elsa Markle. Her jet-black hair cascaded over her delicate shoulders. Her soft white skin was covered by silken black lingerie. Stockings, suspenders, bra and knickers. At another time, in another place, Harris would have cherished the sight before him. Not now, not here.

  As she lay there, she knitted. A strange sight, as Elsa Markle was known for just about anything other her knitting and general domestic prowess. Stranger again: what she knitted. It appeared to be some manner of snug-fitting sleeping bag. Only it was too tight for her to be comfortable inside. Stitch by stitch, row by row, she constructed this strange black sack that slowly enveloped her perfect form.

  As she knitted, men came in and used her. She lay there, disinterested in their writhing bodies as they climaxed on top of her, one after the other. Still she knitted. Men had queued to see her. A line led out of the door, down the stairs and onto the street. From the window, Harris witnessed a queue ending somewhere over the horizon.
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  As she continued to knit, consuming an endless ball of yarn, she covered the parts of her that the men had come to enjoy. As they stepped up, they became angered. Still, an opportunity for depravity is an opportunity for depravity. Their temporary anger was overcome by their permanent perversion. They undid themselves and simply pleasured themselves on her, rather than in her.

  And still she sewed. Stitch by stitch.

  Harris couldn’t believe his eyes, nor could he look away. He went to stop a man as he approached Elsa, but the man brushed past him with ease. In the face of their unbridled lechery, he was impotent. All he could do was sit there on the floor and watch as she stitched her final stitches. She was entirely covered when Harris realised her design was nothing like a sleeping bag. Once the woollen stitching had mixed with the organic matter of the line of men left behind, it was something like a cocoon. Having laid still and lifeless for a moment, the slick sack began to bulge. Like a bairn in the bully, Elsa punched and kicked, having outgrown her gestational bag.

  Her feet and hands were in a race with her teeth to break free of her putrid confines. It was her feet that broke free first, as they emerged, they came out greyish-black and rotten. Her toenails were knotted and green, with a mossy wood-like appearance. Harris could smell them from where he sat upon the floor. Her hands, they came out snow-white and perfectly manicured. The more she wrestled with her shackles, the more progress she made, until finally, after much struggle she was free.

  Or rather, she was reborn. Like the goddess of old, from the waist down she was dead and putrefied. A blight upon man and mankind alike. From the waist up, though, her porcelain skin remained unblemished, her eyes dark, and her lips ruby red. A sure-fire trap that would lure any close enough to feel the wrath of her true nature.

  This was not the Elsa whom Harris had left behind. She had become death, and hell followed in her wake.