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

by Michael Smith

  Charlie slipped away from the edge of the circle and walked alone and forlorn into the desert. After a moment, he stood there in the stretch of red dirt that lay between his tribe’s encampment and the lights of the town in the distance. Before, he felt like he had a foot in both worlds. At that point, he felt like he belonged in neither.

  Chapter 52

  George Watson had stewed for days thinking he was down and out. Control of Sydney’s underworld had been splintered by the presence of the out of towners who had come to stake their claim. Calyute had moved in on the docks. Though Watson’s men had fought, they had lost quite resoundingly. His army of muscle, many of whom still harboured a grudge over his killing of their beloved ex-boss, had scattered. He had tried to keep everything, and had spread himself too thin, he was in danger of losing everything. Zambrotta had taken the racetracks. Mason and the bikers were flooding the streets with their drugs. Devine and Elsa had retaken much of Sydney’s carnal pleasuredome.

  But Watson was a street kid, born in the fires of adversity. He was down. He wasn’t out. It would take more than a sullied reputation to break him. Besides, he had an ace up his sleeve. The biggest, meanest gang in town had pledged themselves to him, if he paid them what they felt they were due. The New South Wales Police would welcome the opportunity to purge the city of its criminal interlopers and get the well-greased wheel of corruption back on track.

  But that meant capital. And Watson had little. Unless he could find Ronnie Prince’s stash. That would fix all of his woes.

  “You should never have had Ned killed,” Stan grumbled as he, Lenny and Watson jostled for space on the backseat of a car. Each of them had a shotgun on his lap. The driver, in the front, was sitting next to enough explosives to level the Harbour Bridge. Every time they went over a pothole they ran the very real risk of blowing themselves to bits.

  “Did you say that before I did it, Stanley?” Watson answered scornfully.

  “Yeah. Actually. I did.”

  “Well you should have fucking said it louder. Shouldn’t you, Stanley?”

  “I wish you’d stop using my name as an insult.”

  “What are we doing going to a brewery anyway?” Lenny asked.

  The reason they were travelling through Woolloomooloo in this incendiary device on wheels, was that George had decided the next person, after the deceased Ned, who might best lead him to Prince’s money, was James Harris.

  “You ever hunted goanna, Len?” Watson asked, with a sinister smile upon his face.

  “It’s Joana, George. With a J.”

  “No, you fucking idiot. The lizard. It lives in a hole in the ground. You set fire at the entrance and wait for the smoke to fill the tunnels. Then it comes scarpering out. And you club it to death.”

  “Ok. So… Why are we going to the brewery?”

  Watson despaired. “We’re smoking out the Pom, Lenny.”

  Watson’s car pulled up outside Harrington’s. It was followed by several others. It was a threatening precession to be sure. Men flooded from the cars with weapons and explosives. They meant business. They weren’t there to mess around.

  The destruction started outside as they began smashing the building’s windows and red brick facade. This was for show. They wanted to gain the attention of the street, while sending the workers outside into a frightful panic.

  The racket on the street caught the attention of residents in several nearby terrace houses. They shut their blinds and turned off their lights. People had learned that witnesses’ lives weren’t worth much back then, so it was better to witness nothing at all. Once Watson was sure he had the attention of those peeking from behind their blinds, his cronies began tossing petrol on every inch of the building. That was where the real damage would be done.

  The marauders made their way inside the brewery where the staff of the night shift stood in stunned silence. The mobsters descended and handed out beatings to anyone in their path. Those unlucky enough to cross paths with the raiding party were beaten unconscious. The lucky ones managed to barricade themselves in store rooms and offices. That would prove to be a tragic mistake.

  When the floor was clear of any staff who might get in their way, the goons went about destroying all the expensive brewing equipment. Nothing was to be salvageable by the time they left. They were as thorough as they were vicious. Once the raiding party had grabbed anything they deemed valuable and portable enough to make off with, they set fire to the place and disappeared.

  The fire brigade would come but it would be too little, too late. Watson and his crew killed seven men that night. Seven innocent men who’d done nothing but provide the world with beer.

  Chapter 53

  Days passed after the tragic turn of events in the Old Eastside of Alice Springs and the men had heard nothing of Charlie or the tribe. They stuck around hoping they would bump into Charlie around town, but it seemed he had given up on the town. Harris was quite convinced that they would simply leave their camp in the night. Still they waited.

  They were in something of a purgatory. Their trip to Alice Springs had come to a disappointing conclusion, and they were no closer to new avenues of investigation into the Body Collector. Their next step was to head down to Melbourne to bring Hoskins to justice. Lescott had contacts in the force down there, he would them straight to that demon wearing a human suit.

  But Hoskins was not the man they were looking for. The signature of his crime was all wrong. Though both madmen showed an unhealthy affiliation for the life a corpse can have after its death, Hoskins had little skill, and no style. He was finger painting while the Body Collector was decorating the Sistine Chapel.

  Still, they wanted to get into a room with him. Over the course of linguistic history, one of the more troubling proverbs known to man is “Birds of a feather flock together.” It’s barely comprehensible, but vile people capable of the most heinous crimes seem to recognise that ghastly quality in each other. It’s how paedophile rings come about. Sickos manage to find sickos without making themselves known to decent people who might bring the whole thing down.

  Then, one day at breakfast, the landlady came over to pour the men coffee, “Listen boys. I like you. You pay your board in advance. That’s why I’ve turned a blind eye to your… Activities…” The piece of toast Harris was chewing on suddenly felt very dry, his humiliation had turned it to ash in his mouth.

  “But this morning a black fella banged down the door looking for you. If you’re going to bring that element here, and the trouble they bring with them, I’m going to need you to leave.”

  Lescott sighed. The woman had seemed so decent. It just goes to show, racism and its trappings aren’t confined to those one would label a substandard person. It’s a disease that spreads through us all, rich and poor, young and old, male and female. “Was it a light skinned chap?”

  “He was as black as midnight.”

  “What did he want?”

  “They…” The woman paused, as though she was deciding whether to withhold the information out of some misguided sense of protecting the men from themselves, “They want you to go to their camp at sundown. Tonight.”

  When the men arrived at the Anangu camp, they were unsurprised to see it had been levelled. Their shelters had been deconstructed and the materials burned upon the campfire which was, at this point, the only indicator that the tribe had called this spot home for years. They were leaving.

  They had stumbled upon something of a ceremony and as such, they remained a respectable distance away from the proceedings. The tribe had discarded modern clothing and were now wearing traditional dress of crudely constructed loin cloth. To a man, woman and child, they were covered in ceremonial body paint. Dots and stripes represented sacred places, journeys, creators, and their ancestors.

  Men were scattered amongst the trees playing clapsticks and didgeridoos. The sounds came together to create a solemn song that echoed through the vast desert. If you’ve never heard such music, in such a place
, you must. It’s eerie how the music moves through the air, across the ground and into your skin and bones. It leaves you feeling the need to move. Not to dance, but to move forwards. It’s a startling sensation, and quite unique.

  In the clearing near the fire, several members of the tribe danced. As they did, they kicked up that blood red dirt until the air was thick with it. That red dirt caught on the smoke that was pouring through the trees, some from the campfire, but mainly from members of the tribe scattered through the trees lighting small spot fires in the undergrowth.

  Harris and Lescott were quite mesmerized and they simply stood there watching as the dance continued and the flames spread through the dry landscape. They almost didn’t notice when Mowan emerged from the dark beside them and stood with them watching on. It was only a painful cough which did announce his arrival. He placed his hand on Harris’ shoulder and smiled weakly at the men.

  “Sorry Mowan, we got word we were supposed to come. But now we’re here. This feels wrong. Voyeuristic almost.” Harris apologised.

  “Is this the funeral?” Lescott asked without taking his eyes off the event.

  Mowan simply waved his misplaced contrition away. “Sorry Business was this morning. You’ll forgive us for keeping that a private matter. This is a separate inma altogether. But…” Mowan looked the men up and down with a smile “… Thank you for wearing your best suits. You’re adding a touch of modern class… Unrequested, but most welcome.”

  Harris and Lescott, having assumed they had been invited to the funeral, had come in their best black suits, with polished shoes, pressed shirts and black ties. Lescott began removing his tie as soon as he realised their blunder. “I feel fucking ridiculous.”

  “You look it,” Harris added.

  “Says you, you fucking… Penguin.” It was one of Lescott’s worse retorts.

  “What’s an inma, Mowan?”

  “A sacred ceremony, of which there are many. This particular inma is a cultural burning. We do it for the health of the land, and all things small and large. In the heat of the fire, the land is reborn and will flourish for years to come. We’re leaving, so we’re leaving this corner of the earth cleansed and ready for those who come next, Anangu, Arrernte or otherwise.” Mowan looked to the skies, thunder clouds were gathering overhead. “The rains are favourable. If we leave now, they’ll be on our backs all the way to the rock.” He finished talking with a bloody cough.

  “Will you make it?” Harris asked.

  “None of us make it, James. There’s no leaving this place alive. But we do all we can, with what time we do have. And we leave the world in as good a state as we can for the next in line. This is my last journey. I’m taking my people home to reclaim our land. To reclaim our rock. Whether I live to see it through or not, is unimportant. What is important is like Ngintaka before us, we travel to the rock, burning the land as we go. But unlike Ngintaka , who meant to take what was not his, we will retake our lands.”

  Harris and Lescott were silent. It was difficult to follow that kind of speech.

  “Tell me…” Mowan asked. “Did Charlie explain Tjukurpa to you? Did he explain the duty that comes with it?”

  The men shook their heads.

  “Tjukurpa is the learning about all things, past, present and future. The more you know, the more responsibility you have to look after the land. The people. The trees. The animals. I know it was rocky at first. But this tribe welcomed you. We would have liked to have taught you more, but we taught you a little, as you taught us. That means you will always have a duty of care to this land and all peoples who walk it. If you leave this place with nothing else, please know that.”

  “Jesus Christ, Mowan. You’re going to make Fred cry.” Harris made light of a sermon which would stick with the men as long as they lived.

  “Where’s Charlie?” Lescott asked, realising he hadn’t caught sight of the young man.

  “He’s waiting at your car, you’re going to take him with you. Our walkabout isn’t his walkabout. Maybe one day he will come back, but he has much to learn. And the only way he will do it, is away from us, and away from the person he became within the tribe. Do you agree?”

  Neither man was fully comfortable with the idea. The treatment of Aboriginals in the cities wasn’t much better than it was in the desert. But it didn’t feel like Mowan had left them much room to argue. Nor did he even give them a chance, he began walking through the gently burning undergrowth, to join the rest of his tribe in a journey he would likely not complete. “Goodbye my friends. I will see you again.”

  “Fucking hell. What a man.”

  Charlie was indeed waiting by the car. Clearly in the days gone by, his grief had subsided somewhat. Or at very least, it had left his surface and had come to rest in a spot within him; where it would linger for the years that lay ahead. Much of his boyishness had disappeared, he seemed somewhat more hardened than before. “Hazza. Lezza. Bruzzas.”

  “Nah.” Lescott protested. “Not having that. I’m not having one bit of it.”

  “What’s wrong with Lezza?” Charlie was stumped.

  “It means lesbian.” Harris explained, but still Charlie was stumped. “A woman who sleeps with women?”

  Charlie’s eyes widened, he’d led a sheltered life. “What the fuck would she want to do that for?”

  “Same reason you would, I guess.”

  Chapter 54

  Dodgy old Alan Livingstone hadn’t had anything to do in days. That’s not to say there was no police work outstanding, given the war brewing on Sydney’s streets. He simply wouldn’t do it until he was paid. A Policeman’s salary, even at his senior level, wasn’t enough to motivate him. Besides, clearing Zambrotta’s, Calyute’s, and Mason’s armies would simply hand control of the city over to Watson or Devine, and neither party had crossed his palm with gold just yet.

  His detectives were busy, they were keeping an eye on the turf war. They were controlling it to some extent, reeling in any gang that made too much headway. This kept the war raging. It kept the bidding war for NSWPOL’s support wide open. That was just fine for Livingstone. That would set him and his colleagues up, quite nicely. It needed to, the envelopes hitting his desk had been light in weight and irregular in frequency since Prince’s demise.

  He kept himself busy, that day, by trawling through the paper for opportunities. He flicked past a double page spread on the fire at Harrington’s, that was a burden if ever he’d seen one. Arson could deal with that. He stopped when his eyes came upon an advert selling bullion in bulk. Gold was always a good investment for cash-rich policemen who had no way of explaining their wealth to the taxman. Gold? That was a family heirloom.

  He was ripping the advert out of the newspaper when his door swung open. He didn’t look up, he was sick of looking at the plebs who worked for him. “Does no one knock anymore? Leave the envelope and don’t let your arse mark your door on the way out.”

  But the door didn’t shut, instead a man sat across from him. He looked up and found him face to face with an individual several times more important than himself. The Commissioner, who said, “What envelope?”

  Livingstone looked down at the newspaper and saw a patron cutting the ribbon outside a new library. “We’ve been fundraising… A bit of a whip around for the Beaumont Institute, because of all they’ve done for us recently.”

  “You’re a fool, Alan. I didn’t come down here to this dump to hear your lies.” The Commissioner was a plain-spoken man who’d grown up in the slums and worked his way out. He had no time for pretenders who did their best to forget their roots. And so, he had no time for DCI Livingstone. But he was aging and nearing retirement.

  Livingstone wasn’t worried about his career. It was in hand. “How can I help?”

  “Have you seen the provisional figures for the last month?”

  “It was a blue-ribbon month for New South Wales Police. You can’t be annoyed that there’s too little crime?” Livingstone’s smugness was ill-founded.
He was in danger of becoming a victim of his own over-confidence.

  “I know you’re manipulating the numbers to make yourself look like a champion of good. I want you to stop it right now. The Premier is talking about cutting our budgets because crime is dropping so quickly. He says we don’t need the money. I need you to give him, and the public, a scare. I need you to accurately report crimes. And I need you to solve them.” It’s not clear whether the Commissioner was corrupt or not: he was a politician playing a political game. He was certainly grubby, but I’m not sure he was filthy. “What about that Bible fellow? The Aboriginal?”

  “We’ve got our best men collaborating with the Murder Squad. But to be perfectly honest…” Livingstone prepared to lie. “We haven’t ruled out old age. We’re waiting for autopsy reports. You may be looking in the wrong place.”

  “Then put an end to people talking about it…” The Commissioner looked down at the newspaper, “What about this fire?”

  “We’ve got our best men collaborating with the Arson Squad. We haven’t ruled it out as accidental. The building had very old wiring.”

  Hours later, Livingstone was in his element standing in the lobby at Darlinghurst Road. He preened in every reflective surface, like a bloody dandy. He combed his greasy, black hair back. He waxed and shaped his dark moustache.

  “Excuse me sir?” A NSWPOL staff member nervously approached. “Half of Sydney’s press are outside waiting for you.

  “Why don’t you go ahead and tell me when the other half gets here.” Livingstone bathed in his own self-importance.

  The humour was lost on the woman who silently pleaded with him to not make her life more difficult than it needed to be.

  As Livingstone walked out the doors of the station, bulbs flashed in a crash of smashing white light. Over recent months, the man’s stock had risen considerably. Word was, a young ambitious television producer had bumped into Livingstone at the country club, having heard his reputation, and had pitched Livingstone’s own life story back to him. “Sydney: City of Sin” was supposedly in the early stages of development, with the handsome, yet manly, Rod Taylor slated to take the lead role. I couldn’t see it myself. Rod was a pint of beer and a bar brawl. Alan Livingstone was a martini and a conversation about nothing whatsoever. These film and TV people… They’re a strange bunch.