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

by Michael Smith

  Lescott turned to see Christina had placed her hands on his friend’s hips. Not so much a mark of affection, nor a precursor to a sexual dalliance, it was simply structural strengthening. She had witnessed the aftermath of several bar brawls. She was unphased. She could see that Harris, in that moment, looked like he could scarcely carry his own weight. “Your place or mine?” she asked.

  Lescott smiled as he watched the encounter. Though it was clouded through concussion and the fog of war, it was sweet, innocent, and it boasted the charms of youthful eagerness.

  “Mine.” Harris polished off his drink. “My medicine is back in my room.”

  “Good. My husband is back in mine.”

  Perhaps Lescott had been mistaken in his assumptions. Perhaps that innocent encounter was actually a little less chaste than he had first guessed. But then, who was he to judge? The answer to the question he had asked the Englishman all those months ago was becoming ever clearer. James Harris wore a black hat.

  With the young adulterers out the door, Lescott turned to the group of locals, many of whom had called it a night and slinked off home to sleep on the sofa so as to not alert their wives to their misdeeds. It was only then that Lescott remembered their initial reason for heading to the pub, “None of you cunts would happen to be Sergeant Hawke, would you? Would you?”

  Chapter 38

  The following morning was characterised by the feeling of sickness. In both James and Fred, there was the same, unsettling sensation in the stomach, rising up through to the oesophagus before puddling in the back of the mouth. That and wobbly, or simply missing teeth. It’s safe to say, when they arrived at the police station, they did so feeling worse for wear. Lescott, in fact, spewed whisky-infused bile all over a potted plant in reception. Harris was going through his own personal hell. He’d attempted to allay the dizzying effects of his unsettled stomach by forcing himself to breakfast on plain French bread on their walk in. Its sharp crust had found itself in the gap left by one of his missing teeth. His gum had been bleeding and his eyes watering ever since.

  The person sitting at the front desk that morning was not the individual they had met the day before. This time it was in fact a police officer. Harris had left Christina in his hotel room, likely barely spent and not at all satisfied. “Jesus Christ! You two look like you tried to move Uluru… With your fucking faces,” the young man said.

  “Is Hawke in?” Harris ignored the remark, having little time for witty banter that morning.

  “He’s late. Emergency doctor’s appointment or something. Should be in shortly, so take a seat in the waiting area. Just don’t bleed anywhere.”

  The bruised and bloody pair turned their attention to the waiting area. It consisted of two flimsy plastic seats that would have been better placed hidden, and forgotten, around the side of a derelict house. They were old and dirty. For some reason they had been strung together with cable ties. Lescott, as he sat down, assumed there must have been something of a market for disposable junk in Alice Springs. Either that or it caused anyone thinking about flinging a chair at a police officer to take a moment’s pause. Harris looked at the cramped space next to Lescott and looked to the door. “If you need me, I’ll be outside, smoking.”

  Lescott laughed, he felt his eagerness to sit down had assured him a small portion of relative comfort. He stopped laughing when he shifted in the chair and a plastic leg snapped clean off, sending him sprawling on the floor in a cursing heap. He didn’t even bother to get up. He would just wait where he was, until he was done with waiting.

  “Big night was it, Sarge?” the Desk Sergeant greeted Senior Sergeant Hawke as he walked through the door.

  “If I wanted to spend the day being laughed at, I’d have stayed at home and asked my wife for sex.”

  The young officer straightened his posture and nodded back past Senior Sergeant Hawke towards Lescott on the floor. When Hawke turned around to take a look at this newest aggravation, Lescott recognised him as the belligerent local who had instigated the fight the night before.

  “I’ve got half a mind to lock you up. Where’s your mate? The fucking handsome one?”

  “The handsome one?” Lescott paused, that wasn’t a road he needed to go down that morning. Instead he pulled out his warrant card. “Apparently you’re the man to speak to about getting into the file room.”

  “Who are you and what are you looking for in my file room?”

  “DS Lescott with New South Wales Police. I’m here on a fact-finding mission. I’m looking into a troubling pattern of missing persons and murder cases back in Sydney which might well be connected to activity in your region.” Lescott stood and offered his hand to Hawke.

  Hawke just looked down at Lescott’s hand, then up at his face, eventually he took the hand and gave it an almighty squeeze as he shook it. Lescott wanted to fall down to his knees. The handshake was like being trapped in a vice. Hawke was a big country bloke; he’d been brought up on a diet of meat pies, hard work in the country air, and disdain for those who came from the cities in the south. Lescott did his best to appear calm while the bones in his hand were squeezed together. The young, diminutive detective almost fell to the floor when the brute finally let go.

  “Senior Sergeant Lester Hawke…”

  “There’s a town in England called Leicester,” Harris said as he walked back into the building offering his own hand. The pair flashed each other fake smiles as they grasped each other’s hands. At first, Hawke beamed from ear to ear and he squeezed Harris’ large hand in his own. Then his smile faltered. Hawke realised his apelike hands were having little effect on Harris and he attempted to pull away; only he couldn’t. Harris began to squeeze right back. Now, it was Hawke who wanted to drop to his knees. “It’s a fucking shithole.”

  “If you two are quite done, maybe we can get on with some police work?” Lescott interrupted.

  Harris smirked his sideways smirk as he let go of Hawke’s hand, “There’s nothing worse than a limp handshake. Shows a man’s not to be trusted.”

  Hawke ignored the jibe and turned to Lescott. “This is a good honest town, full of true, blue Australian folk. We look out for each other around here. We don’t have murders. We don’t have people conveniently going missing.”

  “Such as the case may be, we would still like to look in your file room.”

  Hawke stared the men down for a moment. He wasn’t feeling inclined to do them any favours. He’d been later that morning because the local doctor was resetting his nose after the night before. Something about the Englishman told him that his trip to the doctor’s might have been wasted if he didn’t comply. “The files are this way.” Hawke turned and led the men through the station. Rather, he led Harris.

  Lescott, still standing in the reception area, was quite preoccupied. He rubbed his right hand while he remembered a sensation he had long forgotten. Something that Harris had said has stuck with him. He thought back over all the handshakes he’d shared with various people over the years. Something, somewhere in his mind had dislodged itself, some dark and unpleasant feeling that he had disregarded at the time.

  Chapter 39

  Filing rooms in the 1960s were something of a sweet spot smack bang in the middle of the sickening endeavour that is bureaucracy. Admittedly, there was less paperwork involved in policing than there would be in years to come. But this was before computers were really a thing. Back then, all they had to do paperwork was actual paper. I’m not sure at what point in human history you’re reading this, but for those who don’t know what paper was, it’s basically a thin white sheet used as a blank canvas for information that warrants remembering beyond a human’s capability for memory. It was made, I believe, by pulping and resetting tree matter. Once you had your sheet of paper, you’d take a pen, pencil, or quill, and you’d scribe words, numbers and the odd dirty drawing on it. Once upon a time, you’d have been reading this book, or more likely a different book about a tiresomely earnest and entirely sexless young wiz
ard going to school, on bound paper, in between beautiful, illustrated covers. You’d have felt the texture on your thumbs and the scent in your nostrils as I recall the darkest period in human history. It was great for hack novelists with a fascination for fisting businessmen and a propensity for pouting vampires, but it was fucking bad for the police.

  Maybe Senior Sergeant Hawke was right. Maybe after millions of years of human history, the utopia, or “place that cannot exist” had sprung forth in the desert. Maybe there, in Alice Springs, no criminality occurred. Maybe every single local inhabitant spent their days going about their law-abiding business politely doffing their uniformed white hats to each other. But maybe, and more likely, the police force were a bunch of idle bastards.

  The filing room in that rickety little station was an administrator’s hell. It was small, overstocked, and under organised. There was no system to their filing system. Nothing was labelled and they couldn’t locate cases based on location, dates or the nature of crimes. While Lescott began creating some manner of method in their madness, Harris read a recipe for a moist Victoria sponge, torn from a magazine, and annotated “ATTENTION: MRS HAWKE.” Somehow it had found its way into the 1962 Missing Persons box. There it lived a solitary existence.

  While Harris and Lescott’s anger became a stifling heat that filled the room, Lester Hawke was blissfully unaware. Whether it was curious nature, stubborn foolishness, or an actual death wish that made him sit there in the filing room, I’m not sure. As he spun a languid spin in a desk chair, he inspected the dirt under his fingernails. It was a poor idea. He refused to give them the time and space they needed to make sense of anything they were looking at. He couldn’t have been less co-operative if he’d tried.

  Every so often, a figure passed by the open door. The young light skinned Aboriginal janitor who had been mopping the station the day before was back. Lescott was too busy to notice. Hawke was too oblivious to care. But Harris watched as the young man, barely in his twenties, mopped the spot in the doorway, over and over. Each time he walked past and cleaned it again, he took a quick glance at the outsiders.

  “Tiddalik… Get me a coffee. I think the floor in front of the door is clean now.” Hawke looked up when he realised the janitor’s intrusion.

  “Palya bruz, need cleaning in there?” the janitor asked hopefully.

  “Just a coffee, Tiddalik.” Hawke looked over at Harris and Lescott. “Can the boy get you two a coffee?” Harris stared back angrily. Lescott swigged from a hip flask while looking around in silent despair. “Just mine then, sunshine. Milk and sugar please. Spit spot.”

  Harris watched as the janitor walked away in disappointment. It wasn’t clear why, but it was clear he wanted the ear of the men. The poor thing was a beanpole in ragged clothes clearly been worn to death by another man before him. “What’s his deal?” Harris asked.

  “Charlie? He comes in and helps out every so often. Just does the cleaning. The bogs and whatnot. He’s not very good. But he’s fucking cheap.” Hawke shook his head and laughed. “We don’t even have to pay him in currency. Just throw him some fags, booze and a bit of out of date food and he’s happy as a pig in shit.”

  “DC Harris… Go get some fresh air.” Lescott insisted as he saw the blood begin to boil away under his companion’s skin. Lescott had spotted the problem before it had manifested as a catastrophe. Just as well, since Harris stared murderously at Hawke as he walked out.

  “What’s his fucking problem?” Hawke misread the room and attempted to form a bond with Lescott in mutual disdain for Harris’ aggression.

  “Well. He’s a cunt. But he’s something of a progressive. And in matters pertaining to indentured servitude…” Lescott drifted off mid-sentence as he looked past Hawke, out the door, and at the young Aboriginal walking back with a cup of coffee. That was not necessarily an altogether disruptive sight, but when you added in the string of spittle dropping from the lad’s mouth and into the cup, well, that made Lescott chuckle. “Back in Sydney, we’re always hearing about people going missing out here in the desert… Why am I seeing nothing in these boxes?”

  “That sounds like city talk… I’ve already told you. People don’t go missing out here. It’s a nice town.” Hawke was frustrated. He didn’t like questions, he certainly didn’t like the name of his town being tarnished, and especially not by a city boy like Lescott. “The desert is vast. We’ve got backyards bigger than your entire state. One patch looks much like the next. And the weather can be disorienting. So yeah. People get lost but they always turn up after a couple of days. They wander back into town half starved, dehydrated and delirious. But they’re right as rain after a couple of days. Often, they don’t have a bloody clue how they got out there. It’s the heat, you see. It wipes your memory.”

  “Can you put a number on it?” Lescott asked the question again, worded differently in the hope that it came with a different answer.

  Hawke let out a low guttural growl from his throat as he considered the question. “Maybe a dozen a year. Depends on tourism.”

  “Ratio of white to black?”

  “Oh.” Hawke had misunderstood the conversation. “That’s just whites. The blacks aren’t my business. I only deal with Australian citizens.”

  Lescott winced; it wasn’t a matter he wanted to get into with the Senior Sergeant. To suggest that the White Australian population who first stepped foot on these in 1788 had more claim to citizenship of the nation than those who’ve walked its lands for thousands of years, it was troubling. Somehow it was an idea shared by much of the Australian institution at the time.

  Hawke turned to see the janitor standing in the doorway with his coffee, “Come in, you fucking pickaninny. The coffee isn’t going to walk itself over here.” Lescott cringed at the slur, but noted it had little impact on the young man. In fact, as the lad watched Hawke take a gulp from the soiled drink, he allowed himself a little smirk before walking back out.

  “Sorry, are we talking about Abos here?” Hawke asked as he took another gulp. Lescott smiled as lowered the cup, and a thick globule of phlegmy spit stuck to his thick moustache. “If you want to know more about them, you’d have to speak to them. I try to avoid their community. But… You’ve got a fucking job on your hands there.”

  “Why?”

  “Well they’re just not civilised like you or I. They drink, they fight, they take drugs, they swear if they speak the language at all. They’re rude. And they’re turning more and more towards crime.” Hawke answered. “Last time I was on the Old Eastside, an Aboriginal girl of no older than twelve offered to suck my cock for ten shillings. When I said no, she sent over her little brother, who offered to do it for half a fucking crown.”

  “Why?” Lescott asked.

  “What do you mean, ‘why?’”

  “Why are they increasingly turning to that kind of behaviour?”

  “How should I fucking know?”

  “How should the local chief of police know why locals are turning to crime?”

  Hawke was becoming more and more offended. “They’re not locals. I’m a local. They’re damaging a perfectly good life out here in one of the most beautiful places under the heavens.”

  “I think it’s more likely this perfectly good life of yours is damaging them. Anyway… Why do we have a big job on our hands?”

  “Well, they go missing all the fucking time.”

  “What?” The casualness of Hawke’s manner caught Lescott quite off guard.

  “Every so often an order comes down from above. So, someone goes out and takes the child from their home. They’re then resettled by the institution to err…” Hawke sensed he was treading on thin ice.

  “Re-educate them?” Lescott diplomatically finished Hawke’s sentence for him.

  “It’s nothing like it was years ago, it doesn’t happen half as often but yeah. They’re re-educated and integrated into Australian life.

  Harris had returned to the doorway at precisely the wrong moment. “Som
e clever bastard, years ago, decided it would be a good idea to…” He paused. “…to breed the black out of Aborigines. Every time a half-caste kid was born, they were taken from their family and sent off to an institute by a man with the ironic title, Protector of Aborigines…”

  “They do it with the child’s best interests in mind. It mightn’t be the most sensitive or proper way of doing things, but it’s going to help them in the long term.” Hawke shrugged.

  “How exactly does taking a child away from their family, their home and stripping them of their identity, their understanding of their culture, and their language help them?” Harris asked.

  “They’re primitive people. They need help adjusting to the world.”

  “I reckon you need to start thinking before you open your mouth again, Sergeant Hawke,” Lescott warned.

  Harris ignored him. “Primitive, you say?”

  “Well, they’re unevolved. They’re not ready to live in our world. We need to finish them off. You know, like finishing school.” Hawke had no filter and no understanding of how close he was to taking a beating.

  “And why should they have to evolve to live in our world? They’re perfectly evolved to live in their world. They’ve done it for thousands of years. I couldn’t survive the way they do out there, could you? Would you know how to find sustenance in the dry? Who are we to say they have to live in our world?”

  “Listen mate…” Hawke was offended. “This is Australia…”

  “What you’re talking about is genocide. The destruction of peoples and cultures.”

  “I don’t think that is what I’m talking about.” Hawke would argue until he was blue in the face, he was indoctrinated into the cult of progress, but the ideas and methodologies that he was advocating weren’t his own. He didn’t have a firm enough grasp of their logic to win an argument. He wouldn’t fight for them, but he hadn’t fought to change the way things were done either. It made his job a little easier to protect the status quo.