The Midnight Promise: A Detective's Story in Ten Cases

by Zane Lovitt

  ‘Yes, I know this,’ Father Orhan says. Anna isn’t translating what I’m saying, so Miresha just watches me, unmoved. ‘But he was a good boy, Osman. Not criminal. Never make trouble.’

  All three of them have crucifixes hung from their necks, the big silver ones that ward off vampires, including Anna, the victim liaison officer, who didn’t know Father Safak or Miresha before Miresha’s son was killed. What a victim liaison usually does is drink tea with the family, help them manage the media, the police. It is, I’m guessing, the element of shared faith that has Anna going beyond her job description, showing up to the office of some unknown hustler in a cheap suit with gum stuck to his shoe.

  And it doesn’t look as though I’m going to be too helpful.

  ‘I understand. But there are lots of stupid reasons to attack a person. Ethnicity is only one of them.’

  ‘The motivation for the crime isn’t why we’re here,’ Anna says. I’ve sensed her shifting in her seat, unhappy with the priest’s approach. She appears to me like one of those unshockable nurses you get in city hospitals, and I find myself choosing my words carefully because of her most of all. When people come to see me and they bring along a friend, it’s usually the friend who questions my experience, who haggles and doubts me. They consider that to be their role: the pitbull.

  ‘The reason we’re here is that the police have failed. They’ve simply given up.’

  And she plays the role to perfection. If I were Miresha, this is exactly who I’d want the government to send me.

  When this trio arrived, Miresha was introduced as not only speaking very little English, but also as mostly deaf. There are bushfires burning to the northeast this week and people have died and all of Melbourne reeks like a crematorium. Miresha, dressed in an old black dress and flesh-coloured stockings that bunch around her ankles, she’s well suited to the crematorium theme. Father Safak leads a parish in Springvale and every Sunday he takes a mass there in Turkish for the old guard of immigrants like Miresha. Osman used to drive her there from Cranbourne. These days Miresha catches a taxi. Going to church, Father Safak says, costs her more than fifty dollars a week.

  And now, though she can’t understand what Anna says, Miresha nods and points to the photograph in my hand, because the chubby teenage face smiling back at me—with a vulnerability in his eyes that makes him, at least in this photo, handsome—is all the information she came to impart: her son is dead.

  I nod gravely at her, give it a theatricality I instantly regret.

  ‘The police don’t care as much for Turkish boy,’ Father Safak says.

  I shake my head in defence of the friends on the police force I don’t have. ‘Father Safak, I promise you, the police work on a system of statistics. Every unsolved murder affects who gets paid what, who gets promoted, who gets a medal. They don’t care if Osman was Turkish or Greek or Chinese. If they have given up, it was only after they did everything they could to figure out what happened.’

  ‘Not everything,’ says Father Safak.

  ‘Not everything,’ says Anna.

  Their alignment brings a silence. Father Safak, sporting about as good-natured a moustache as any you’d find, nods meaningfully to Anna. She goes searching in her enormous black leather handbag. I show Father Safak my palms, inviting him to explain, but he waits for Anna to finish rummaging.

  Anna says, ‘I’m not supposed to have this. And you can’t tell anyone how you got it.’

  It’s a brown A4 envelope she pulls from her bag.

  She says, ‘It’s nothing illegal. But the detective who was working on the case, Detective Burke, technically he wasn’t supposed to give it to me. Do you know him?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Detective Dennis Burke.’

  ‘Never heard of him.’

  ‘He came clean to me one day and told me he’d had to close the case, that they couldn’t direct more resources to it. When he told me that…it made me upset.’

  I can imagine someone like Anna upset with me. I can imagine myself giving her things, just to calm her down.

  ‘He said this demonstrated how difficult it would be to find Osman’s killer.’

  She holds it out now. I take the envelope and dutifully prise it open. Inside is a single photograph. I frown at it.

  ‘It’s from a red light camera in Carrum Downs,’ says Anna.

  Electronically burned into the bottom right of the picture is the date and time: November fourth of last year, two thirty-seven a.m. Printed below it are street names and a speed gauge: one hundred and fifty-one kilometres per hour. The image itself is out of focus; it’s black and white and it’s been digitally resized, blurring the detail even more. It is, to my eyes, a picture of a car travelling through an intersection. It appears to be a white car, and it appears to be nighttime, but even that much is hard to tell.

  ‘This is the night it happened?’ I ask.

  ‘The night and the place,’ says Anna.

  ‘Before or after Osman was killed?’

  ‘We don’t know. The time of death can’t be that precise. We think it’s after, because the car is moving so fast.’

  I nod, breathe in deep.

  ‘Is there anything to connect the car to Osman’s death?’

  Anna holds my eyes, knows the answer but doesn’t want to say it. Father Safak leans in, tries to reach the photo, then stands up and takes it from me.

  ‘This is same time…’ He points to the bottom right of the picture. ‘It is same time.’

  ‘But anybody could have been driving there at that time.’

  ‘No,’ he says, impatient. ‘Is nighttime. No cars. There is no cars here for nighttime.’ He sits down on the front edge of his chair, holding the picture to my face.

  I can’t see the licence plate, the camera angle is too high.

  I ask Anna, ‘Isn’t there another photo, one with a plate number? Don’t they use two cameras?’

  She shakes her head. ‘This was the only camera working that night.’

  ‘So even if this is our guy, no one can identify the car?’

  Her face is as glum as mine. ‘That’s what Detective Burke says. Except…’

  Father Safak heads her off, waving the picture at me. ‘There is one to identify,’ he says. ‘There is one. There is dent.’

  I squint at the image. What might be a defect in the image or a bad paint job could also be a dent in its bumper bar, like the car’s been rear-ended by a motorcycle.

  ‘You think the dent was made when Osman was killed?’

  ‘No,’ he says, rising partly to his feet again. ‘But is…to identify.’

  I don’t want to look at Father Safak, see how obvious he thinks it all is. I wait for Anna to say something. She must have seen enough stories like this to know this one is a lost cause. But it doesn’t show. Her hands rest quietly on her lap, waiting for me to offer something the police couldn’t.

  ‘Would you translate for me?’ I ask, indicating Miresha.

  Anna nods, eager.

  ‘Mrs Yusedich,’ I say, leaning in, adopting the most sympathetic posture I’ve got. ‘I’m very sorry for what happened to your boy.’ Anna translates in a wholly different voice, speaking directly into Miresha’s ear. Miresha makes no reaction.

  ‘You have to understand…This is just a car. It probably doesn’t have anything to do with what happened to Osman. There’s no licence plate. There’s no way of identifying the driver. I’m concerned…’ My eyes shoot across to Father Safak and back again. ‘I’m concerned that you’re concentrating on an aspect of the police investigation that isn’t going to be fruitful in the long run.’

  Miresha doesn’t move, but Father Safak can’t contain his umbrage.

  ‘You can tell from this picture vehicle type. Make. Model.’

  ‘There could still be thousands of these cars in Melbourne, Father. And that’s just Melbourne.’

  He says, ‘But you are detective.’

  ‘I’m no better than the police.’ />
  ‘You talk to VicRoads, eh? You can maybe—’

  ‘And tell them what? That I’m looking for a white car with a dent in it?’

  Anna’s translations go up in pitch as she finishes that Turkish sentence and starts an indignant one in English. ‘But you can narrow down the search. Location, ethnicity…’ She tries to think of more.

  ‘I don’t think you realise…And I say this to the three of you… What you’re talking about here is an awful amount of work. It’s massive. It could take months. And let me be blunt—you can’t afford to pay me for the amount of work that this will entail. And I can’t afford to do it free of charge.’

  From a pile on my desk I hold up an unopened letter stamped with Drew James Real Estate.

  ‘Inside this envelope is a notice to vacate. It’s not the first one I’ve received. It means I’m going to get kicked out of my home unless I come up with a lot of money very soon. So I have to be making a living, and what you’re talking about…It’s a process of elimination the police wouldn’t enter into—’

  ‘The police think it is nothing. They treat it like is nothing!’ Father Safak spits.

  Then Miresha raises a hand, and the novelty of it is enough to silence us all.

  She speaks in Turkish, and her words come out in a soft, fluent stream, despite how difficult it seems to be for her. It’s a sharp croaking noise, feminine but pitched deep. It’s how she’d speak if now was the first time she’d stopped crying since her son was killed.

  Anna isn’t stunned like I am that Miresha can talk. She scowls, translates: ‘She says, Sir, I am poor. I can afford to pay you very little.’

  Miresha pauses to swallow, her old woman’s jowls trembling. We all watch her, awaiting judgment.

  ‘Before we speak of money, tell me, sir, do you want to live in a world where a man is killed in cold blood and left to die like a dog in the street? Do you want to live in a world such as this?’

  Anna finishes these words and looks at me, wanting an answer. They all seem to want an answer.

  I say, ‘Of course not.’

  Anna starts to translate my response, but Miresha speaks over her and Anna stops to translate: ‘My son was murdered. For no reason they did this. He was my only son. I have no children. No grandchildren. All I can hope for is that I might one day have justice. And justice might keep me warm the way my son used to do. Do you understand?’

  I nod.

  She reaches out across my desk with both hands, straining for mine. I offer them. She grasps me with a sad strength. One of the tears pooling in her eyes breaks free, swims down the cracks in her face.

  From Father Safak and from Anna, I sense not tension but relief. This is what we’re talking about, don’t you see? This is why we’re so angry.

  Miresha’s dry croak comes out a whisper. Anna interprets: ‘She says she believes you are Kahraman. That is a Turkish word that doesn’t have a ready translation into English. It is like a champion, or hero. But also compassionate.’

  Anna smiles softly.

  I lean towards Miresha, lock on to her eyes, try to seem heroic and also compassionate. But I can’t hold back a small splatter of a laugh. I smile, embarrassed.

  ‘Well…How can I say no?’

  COMEDY IS DEAD

  THE FRONT ENTRANCE is wallpapered with government warnings and disclaimers and it’s hard to find the sheet of paper with Comedy’s name that’s required to be on display where the customers enter the store.

  SHANE AMIEL JOHNSON, PROPRIETOR.

  I’m glad I find it, but only for my curiosity. He’s been known as Comedy for so long I’d forgotten his real name, lost somewhere in the whirlwind of bullshit that surrounds him. These days he’s insisting people call him Comedy, so I’ve heard. Like he’s proud of it. Or maybe he’s forgotten his real name too.

  Right inside the doorway is a life-size blow-up doll wearing a blonde wig and an apron. Her hands are glued to her cheeks and her big round mouth is frozen in dismay; she looks like a housewife watching her stove catch fire. The handwritten placard above her reads:

  SHOPLIFTERS! IF YOU ARE CAUGHT STEALING FROM US, WE PROMISE TO TELL YOUR FAMILY EXACTLY WHAT YOU TOOK AND WHAT IT IS USED FOR.

  Beyond the doll is the store itself, a warehouse of toys and literature arranged in confrontational order—softcore postcards this end, mechanical hamster dildos the other. I pass an array of appliances and foreign comic books and those ultraviolet lights they use in strip clubs. I pass mannequins in costumes and chocolates shaped like penises and CDs featuring ‘real-life’ sexual encounters recorded during police interrogations. The tattooed punk behind the desk is counting bills from the register, handfuls at a time. I pass all of this, headed for the mirrors at the back of the store, the small door set between them.

  When I knock I catch my reflection. It’s been a while since I looked this bad; you’d have to go back six or seven hangovers to the Spiros Angelis case. Waking up that day was like walking head-first into a shard of glass. I rub at my eyes like that will somehow clear them up.

  And these are two-way mirrors, which means someone’s looking out and seeing what I’m seeing—me, scrubbing at my sagging face in a land of proud breasts and arses, the name of the store flashing on the wall behind me in pink neon squiggle.

  THE RAUNCH RANCH.

  Over the sound system is a tired dance beat and a girl singing about sunshine.

  Darryl opens the door with his good hand. The other hand was crushed by a car about twelve years ago and after that he had trouble finding work. You need two good hands to intimidate people for a living. He landed a job here because of his enormous size, driving Comedy to places where Comedy wants to be seen to have a gorilla working for him. They travel in Comedy’s silver GT Falcon with orange go-faster stripes, and once I saw Darryl get out of the driver’s seat and waddle all the way around the car and open the back passenger door for his boss. Like in the movies. I guess he still does that.

  ‘Yeah?’

  Nobody here has ever met me. Maybe they’ve heard of me. I doubt it.

  ‘My name is John Dorn. I’m here to see Mister Johnson.’

  ‘What for?’ Only one of Darryl’s eyes looks at me. The other looks past me at all the porn. Another legacy of the car accident.

  ‘You should tell him it’s urgent. It’s about Joel Kelso.’

  He raises his eyebrows and holds them there, processing. Then he says, ‘Hang on,’ and closes the door.

  While I wait, the sunshine song is replaced by a group of men who sing about how they each, individually, intend to get laid tonight.

  Darryl opens the door again, this time making room with his rounded frame to let me past and into the outer office, which is mostly open cardboard boxes full of the same stuff that lines the store shelves. I glimpse DVD titles like The Three Assketeers and World’s Greatest Gangbang. Also there’s a desk, a surprisingly wholesome wall calendar and a swivel chair with one leg taped in place. Darryl closes the door and makes a rolling gesture with his finger.

  ‘I’m supposed to pat you down.’

  I nod, cooperative, but I don’t know what to do—I’ve never had a pat-down before. I raise my arms awkwardly and flinch at the first touch, but Darryl’s not passionate about it and gets it done quickly, doesn’t go within two feet of my crotch. He has to bend over to pat my ankles and just this much exertion breaks him into a sweat that he wipes away on his sleeve as he makes for another door.

  What we can hear when he opens it you’d guess is a pornographic movie, if you’re the type to hear the moans of a fake orgasm and leap to that conclusion. Darryl and I enter a much larger and more thoroughly furnished office where Comedy is sitting on his desk and there’s a woman sitting behind it in the heavy desk chair.

  They don’t look at me. Their blank faces watch a small television set on a table against the wall.

  What’s on the TV is not pornography.

  It’s a woman, fully dressed, young and pretty. She faces the
camera, vocalising an orgasm as thrillingly as she can, and that’s all she’s doing. There’s no one else in the frame, and behind her is the neutral backdrop of a photographer’s studio.

  Comedy and his companion watch the screen for a few more moments, then Comedy picks up a remote control and presses a button that prompts the aged and dusty VCR beneath the television to wind forward through what remains of the girl’s performance.

  His angular face is betrayed by a round, jovial nose and ruddy cheeks and his pot belly looks like an advanced pregnancy as he slouches there on the desk. Last time I saw him his sandy grey hair was long and straight but failed to conceal his hairline like it was supposed to. So now it’s cut short, military-style, giving him an appearance of toughness that would otherwise be entirely absent. He’s got on a brown and white striped polo shirt and blue jeans—it’s mufti day at the Raunch Ranch. The woman behind the desk is about Comedy’s age, though she’s made up like she’s twenty years younger and she’s showing a lot of skin that’s been turned orange by a tanning bed.

  Comedy glances at me for the shortest moment, then his eyes return to the TV.

  ‘Who are you, fella?’ he says to the screen.

  ‘My name’s John.’

  He presses play. There’s another girl onscreen now, older than the last. The same neutral backdrop. She’s doing her own version of a sexual climax.

  ‘Oh yes. Oh please. Oh right there. Right there.’

  I have to raise my voice over hers. ‘I was hoping to have a word…’

  The woman in the chair must be Comedy’s wife. She says, ‘Bit frumpy.’

  Comedy says, ‘Bit fucking ugleeeee…’ and he winds forward again.

  Darryl lopes towards the TV to get a better view, leaving me alone by the door. Comedy waves me forward.

  ‘These are auditions,’ he gestures. ‘For our new website. We need a girl to be the new online host, yeah? Tell people about our products and so forth. Bring some personality to it.’

  I stay where I am, nod.

  Watching the TV, he says, ‘And what’s beautiful is, she doesn’t have to take her gear off. So we can get a real actress. Someone sexy but who’s…you know. Actually talented.’