Inlet Boys

by Chris Krupa

  ***

  I spent the rest of Saturday compiling information I’d gathered on my outstanding insurance matters—one involved a hit and run, and the other was a potential false claim for injuries in the workplace, not unlike the Frank Brodie matter. I decided to go out for lunch, and bought a box of beer-battered flathead fillets and a white wine at Levendi, a trendy pop-up takeaway joint situated by the shores of Belmore Basin. A handful of swimmers lulled the afternoon away before the crisp autumn winds hit.

  A young couple played with their infant son on the sand, speaking in another language—perhaps Syrian.

  I wondered how much devastation they’d seen, how much death, how much despair.

  When I’d scraped out the box with the last morsel of fish and washed it down with the wine, I took a walk along the cycle track to the continental pools. The yellow kiosk and bathers pavilion reminded me of my teen years lying on the hot concrete after a swim. The adjacent natural rock pool sparkled luxuriously. I climbed the stairs to my street, which runs along a cliff offering views over North Beach, and had to regain my breath at the top. I hadn’t been to the gym in two weeks and could feel it. I looked out over the ocean, where, on any given day, I could see no less than three ships perched on the horizon, their lights like lonely beacons.

  I checked my watch and couldn’t believe it was after four o’clock. Lunch had become an early dinner. The road had cleared of traffic, unlike January weekends when tourists flocked south from Sydney, lined the street, and enjoyed the local seafood and ice cream vans, both major draws for families of all ethnicities. I crossed the road to my strata complex, an early eighties industrial minimalist eyesore, radical at the time but not winning any awards today. I accessed the internal stairs, climbed the landing to the second storey and went into my flat. When people see where I live, they wonder how I did it. I say I worked sixteen-hour days across two jobs, went for an apartment with no views, and didn’t waste my money on fads, excessive takeaway food, or women.

  That came later.

  My flat was in its usual state of disarray—notebooks, magazines, and novels laye scattered across shelves and low tables, and cases of wine sat stacked in the corner of the living room. I noticed a new message on my answering machine and hit play.

  ‘Matthew, hello. This is Carmine Demich. Fausto, my brother, he tell me to ring you. If you can please you call me back.’ He left a return number and rang off.

  The voice was definitely European, the vocal chords scarred by whiskey, cigarettes, and sorrow—I had vague recollections of it from my youth.

  I made sure to save the message to guard against any future repercussions, then went to the freezer, cracked some ice cubes into a glass, and poured three fingers of scotch into it. After a strong pull on it, I sat down and called the number Carmine had given me.

  He answered after two rings and I introduced myself.

  Carmine said, ‘You remember me?’

  ‘I do. I remember meeting you when you lived at Appin. It might have been over twenty years ago.’

  ‘Long time. Long time. Did my brother talk to you?’

  I hesitated.

  ‘Is okay,’ he said. ‘I send him the paper from last week.’

  ‘Zio told me what happened. I didn’t know Rob very well, but I understand this must be a hard time for you, and I offer my condolences.’

  ‘Thank you. You are very kind.’ He sighed and cleared his throat. ‘Matthew, listen, my son, Roberto... you know what these bastards do to him?’ His voice broke and I heard a sharp intake of breath. ‘He died alone, Matthew, in the open, like a dog.’

  He started sobbing, and I could do nothing but listen. He blew his nose, apologised, then regained his composure. When he spoke again, his voice had a harder edge.

  ‘The police don’t give a shit. The detectives don’t give a shit. Nobody sees anything, nobody knows anything. Who do this to my son? A fucking animal. I don’t know what I do, Matthew. Maybe I kill this man. I don’t know. I waste five thousand dollars—five thousand dollars—on private investigator. Mooregold. You know this man?’

  That was a shock. Zio didn’t tell me about this. Maybe he didn’t know.

  I said I didn’t know anyone named Mooregold, and couldn’t help feeling a little disconcerted at having been second banana in the matter.

  ‘He come, take my money, walk around in fucking circle. After two days, he tells me nothing he can do.’

  The line went silent, which I took to be a signal to provide some professional reassurance.

  ‘Mr. Demich—...’

  ‘Call me Carmine. Please.’

  ‘Okay, Carmine. I can investigate Rob’s murder for you, and I won’t ask for five thousand dollars. I have a consistent record for finding people and closing outstanding matters.’

  ‘How many people you catch?’

  The question came across as more of an accusation, but I ignored it.

  No skin on this one.

  ‘Out of a hundred and sixty fraud cases, I’ve managed to bring charges against all one hundred and sixty offenders.’

  The line went silent. Maybe he wasn’t entirely convinced that I was telling the truth. I didn’t blame him after his less than satisfactory experience with this Mooregold fellow. He might be desperate for help, which provided leverage in my favour, not a hindrance. I tried hard not to convey my eagerness across the phone, or any sense of obligation. I’d made a promise to Zio Fausto and, much to my personal chagrin, the pull of a murder case became more and more enticing as time went on. I felt confident in my skills, but less assured of my ability to provide reconciliation between Carmine and Zio Fausto.

  Carmine asked if I could see him Monday morning at nine.

  I told him I could, and that I’d bring a copy of my contract so we could discuss the financials on the day.

  He sounded satisfied with the arrangement and, before hanging up, reminded me once again how much he’d paid for the other investigator.

  I took some cheese out of the fridge and a box of salted crackers, sliced the cheese and piled the crackers onto a plate, then moved to my laptop. After some minor searching, I found Rob’s Facebook page. His wall had been filled with angel poems and expressions of grief—messages along the likes of ‘RIP Rob’ and ‘Will miss you brutha’ appeared under photographs of him in better days. His personal info said he was twenty-three, single, and worked for Homestead. I also found an ‘in memorial’ Facebook page with an album of photos showing Rob’s casket. I never understood why anyone would create one; it only reminded everyone left behind that Rob wasn’t coming back. What do you do with a memorial Facebook page? Update it with weekly graveside photos? I hated feeling so jaded, but I couldn’t help it.

  I clicked on the album, and six rows of about twenty photos of the service appeared in neat thumbnails. Wreaths and flowers adorned the coffin, alongside a framed photograph of Rob around the age of eighteen or nineteen. In contrast to the crime scene photos, this one gave me a better look at my unfamiliar distant cousin. He’d possessed an angular, tanned and healthy face. His dark eyes squinted slightly against the sun, and he smiled tightly. His hair had been cropped close, and it swirled on his scalp in a unique pattern that hinted at triple crowns.

  I also came across a photo of a thin old man in a dark suit and tie. He had dark wavy hair, slightly greyer at the sides. His back slouched, and his triangular face showed more lines on it, the smile now a downturned frown. Definitely Carmine Demich.

  I searched the Caselaw website for criminal listings under Rob’s name, and found numerous convictions: drug possession, possession of illegal firearms, and an eighteen-month gaol conviction three months prior, which he avoided thanks to a court bond. The charges went on: supplying a prohibited drug, possessing a prohibited drug, having goods in custody suspected of being stolen, and dealing with the proceeds of crime. I scrolled the list and, to my surprise, came across two completely unrelated common assault charges against Carmine Demich from twenty years
ago. I succumbed to my curiosity and opened the court transcript.

  The testimony referred to a Saturday night in Nowra, where Carmine punched a man to the ground for ‘making threatening gestures,’ and to a Friday night a month later, when Carmine assaulted an Asian man.

  Not exactly the innocent wallflower, then.

  I went through more of the Caselaw matters and noticed a name, Andy Coates. He’d pressed charges on Rob the previous month for assault, and when I made a quick Google search, his name appeared in a news article from four years ago as a bit player in the Hell Spawn bikie gang, and one of the participants in a bashing at Melbourne’s Tullamarine airport. On top of the conviction for affray, police had linked him to the importing of illegal firearms, which cost him a short stint in gaol. I looked in other places and found a link to the online local rag, The Advertiser, where an article detailed the purchase of the Sussex Inlet Tavern by three locals, and their plans to renovate it. One of the names mentioned was Andy Coates, no doubt turning over a new leaf in his life after completing his sentence. Another article reported the tavern was allegedly linked to money laundering schemes, but no proof had been found, and the story died.

  I printed the court matters, took a folder out of my tiny desk drawer, slid the printouts into it, and wrote ‘Robert Demich’ with a thick Artline texta on the cover. A search of ‘Homestead’ brought up a home site development on the south coast. I viewed it on Google maps—a large area of swamp on the southeastern side of Sussex near St. Georges Basin. According to the paraphernalia, the first stage of home sites had been completed as part of a three hundred million dollar proposal for the development of four hundred homes.

  The website boasted the construction of eighty-eight homes, each with golf course frontage, a retirement village, a lifestyle village, a commercial site, and a clubhouse. There had already been a lot of development in the village since the local member broke soil, including the canal development, and the completion of a couple of townhouse projects. The local mayor, Hugh O’Loughlin, wasn’t averse to spruiking the amazing advancements the development would bring to Sussex, despite the opposition’s views on the subject.

  I had no time for politicians. In recent years, I’d observed, not without some amusement, the Coalition’s policies homogenising with those of Labor.

  I checked my emails and, as a last resort, decided to search YouTube for anything Rob might have posted—it seems every man and his dog has a YouTube channel these days. After some extensive cross searching, I found a YouTube channel Rob created called ‘burnout_boyz’. The thumbnails featured muscle cars dragging each other through suburban streets at night, various cars spouting plumes of white smoke, spinning their rear tyres at maximum revs, or footage of cars filmed at Summernats in Canberra. The footage appeared amateurish, shot with mobile phones.

  I found no less than forty videos on the channel, and clicked on one called, ‘dog date get it up ya.’ The handheld mobile phone footage showed a dimly lit lounge room. A blonde girl in her twenties sat on a couch, holding a bong, and attempted to get away from a German Shepherd latched to her leg, much to the merriment of the cameraman who egged the dog on. The girl screeched, and squirmed, and tried to light up the bong.

  Chapter 4

  I pulled out my airport luggage case and laid out some clothes on the bed—a pile of tee shirts, two collared shirts, jeans, cargos, gym gear, deodorant, razor, socks, and underwear. I threw in two chargers, my Nikon DSLR, three copies of my contract, a bottle of soft merlot, and two bottles of pinot noir. I unplugged my laptop from the charger and packed it into a laptop case. Any other necessary items I could get down the coast.

  An online search for accommodations in Sussex Inlet showed that, due to the summer season coming to a close, cheap hotels were available. I booked a room for a week. I spent the rest of Sunday catching up on season two of The Returned on Netflix, trying to lull my brain into inactivity, and hit the sack early.

  My phone alarm went off at five to five, and I stirred. A dull throbbing pain in my crotch hit me at full swing, and I breathed through my teeth. I’d noticed the pain four months earlier, and it came and went on a whim. I told myself for the umpteenth time to get it checked. I got up, showered, and downed a quick coffee. After I’d washed up and tidied the kitchen, I made my final checks, locked up, and went down to my ute.

  I drove to the nearest Shell, filled up, checked the tyres, and headed south on the Princes Highway. The drive was pleasant enough. I alternated between humming and singing to music on my iPod, and when I was bored of that, I put on a CD audio book of Reckoning: A Biography by Magda Szubanski. As one of Australia’s best-known comediennes, and someone I grew up watching on TV and loving, it was like having a friend, a very funny friend, sitting right next to me telling me her life story.

  The coast road offered sporadic ocean views, with abandoned diggers and the odd steamroller offering proof of ongoing road widening projects in some places. The highway wove past green fields and dairy farms. The speed limit slowed to fifty through Berry, a quant town full of antique stores vying for the trendy Sydney crowd.

  I stopped at a pub in Nowra for a toilet break, and twenty minutes later, I spotted the turnoff to Sussex Inlet. The inlet was a natural barrier of sand to the southeast of St George’s Basin behind Bherwerre Beach, restricting the ocean connection. The basin itself was a shelter and food source for pelicans, ibis, kingfishers, and sea eagles. A holiday website described it as a charming and quiet coastal resort.

  The village of Sussex consisted of small residential houses built from the sixties onwards. River Road was the main street where all the civic centres and small arcades had sprung. Ocean winds provided a coolness, white sand lay in the footpaths, and some of the side streets had no kerbing—a real summer holiday locale. A half-filled bottle of soft drink lay abandoned in the sun on some council reserve, and tall gumtrees caught the coastal wind in their higher branches, against cloudy blue skies that always carried the threat of thunderstorms.

  The cheap hotel I found online was easy enough to find in real life. It stood prominently on a corner on the main road, a two-storey, pale-bricked, early eighties affair adorned with a flat metal roof, a semi-detached drive-through carport, and a car park. I pulled in, parked, and noted the time.

  Seven twenty-three. Not bad going at all.

  I got out and stretched, causing my lower back to crack in a couple of places, then locked up and went into the air-conditioned cool of the reception area. They hadn’t updated the decorating in thirty years, with dark, unwashed curtains, a chipped laminated reception desk, and thirsty-looking pot plants. The sound of a TV emanated from a back room.

  Soon a woman in her fifties shuffled out, matronly and genial. ‘You must be Mr. Matt Kowalski.’

  I nodded.

  She introduced herself as Noelene, otherwise known as ‘Miss Cootamundra 1970’, as she told me. She straightened her hair and lifted her chin.

  I could definitely see traces of her beauty in her cheekbones and strong jawline. ‘It’s an honour. I’ve never met a Miss Cootamundra, or any ‘Miss’ for that matter.’

  She cackled with laughter and won a handful of points in my eyes. She gave me the key and told me to go to the top of the tiled stairs, first room on the right.

  It took some jiggling to get the door open, and when I stepped in, the sweet odour of cheap carpet shampoo hit me, no doubt to cover the less desirable smells that haunted the room. Tiny with exposed brick walls, it offered just enough room to step between the bed and the built-in wardrobe, itself a relic. I cringed at the outdated pink and mauve bedspread and an ancient TV hung on an old bracket against the wall, and thanked the gods I wasn’t the luxurious type. An alcove by the bed held a teacup, half a dozen earl grey teabags, and a stained plastic kettle with the cord loosely wrapped around it. The limp and tarnished showerhead in the bathroom screamed absent husband or, barring that, no onsite handyman. The blackened grout between the tiles screamed indifference.
The window didn’t open properly, and I didn’t see an extractor grille in the ceiling.

  In need of a good coffee and a hearty breakfast, I dumped my things, and went back downstairs and out through the foyer.

  Noelene had retreated out of sight.

  I explored the various shops nearby—a charcoal chicken, a bottle shop, a Scandinavian supermarket franchise. They were closed at such an early hour, so I ventured into an unassuming arcade and discovered a hole in the wall café open for early trade. I found a table and ordered the big breakfast—eggs benedict, bacon, mushrooms cooked in garlic and butter, baked beans, sourdough toast, and a coffee. When the food came, I brought up Google maps on my phone, searched for Carmine’s automotive business, and memorised the various roads and series of turns. I savoured the food, and the coffee gave me the spark I needed to face the potentially awkward family reunion.

  Italians have the propensity to be over-emotional and guilt-ridden, particularly when some time had passed between visits, with each party trying to out-guilt the other.

  I went back to my room, collected my folder and my notebook, got in the ute and drove back towards Nowra. A few kilometres west, I reached the edge of an undeveloped industrial estate. I drove past acres of vacant land parcels, many of them with faded ‘for lease’ signs advertising missed business opportunities. I spotted a blue sign on the right and recognised Demich’s logo from the net, a spanner on a blue background, and turned into the gravel drive that led to a large industrial shed surrounded by a high fence. Stacks of crushed cars rose in columns above the fence line. I parked next to an old nineteen seventy-nine Ford Escort.

  The building was a single storey workshop, with a mezzanine office. Three large roller doors stood open, and three car hoists sat side-by-side. I picked up my pad and pen and got out. The strong pungent smell of engine grease hit me as I followed a sign to the front office. A small waiting area contained a few padded chairs, a large tropical fish tank that desperately needed a clean, and stacks of Motoring Australia magazines. The sounds of talkback radio came from the workshop.