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

by Zane Lovitt

  ‘Don’t bother,’ he said. ‘Nathan’s been arrested.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘I’m not sure yet, but the whole thing sounds too unbelievable to be true. He’s up on false imprisonment and aggravated assault, but I expect the plod are just trying to scare him a little.’

  ‘Who did he imprison?’

  ‘Some girl. I don’t know. I don’t believe a word of it. The way it was told to me over the phone…You’d think Nathan was the devil himself.’

  noindent-space2

  Something in my brain fired, crystallised. I sat up on the couch.

  ‘When was this supposed to have happened?’

  ‘Just this week. Nathan was only charged this morning.’

  ‘Did it happen at his grandma’s house?’

  ‘I don’t know. I haven’t got any details. Listen, the last thing you need is another job to freak out about. I’m just calling to say you’re off the hook. This cannabis business that was supposed to be next week has been adjourned, so the summons you’ve got is void. Don’t worry, you’ll get a cancellation fee.’

  ‘Are you staying on as Nathan’s solicitor?’

  ‘Yeah, for now.’

  ‘Do me a favour?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Find an excuse and dump him.’

  ‘Why?’

  I didn’t want to say why. Didn’t want to freak out. ‘I just think he’s a waste of your talents.’

  ‘I’ve got that Chapel Street thing coming up anyway, so I probably will have to give it a pass. Not that I like to leave clients in the lurch.’

  ‘Good,’ I said. Then I changed the subject.

  I went along to the plea. The one for false imprisonment and aggravated assault. I sat there with a pounding headache and took notes on a notepad and made small mental calculations and listened to Joanna tell her stories. Like how she was literally kicked out the door to the laneway behind Nathan’s home, wearing burnt clothes and no shoes.

  She didn’t go home. She went to the police.

  Nathan’s Legal Aid lawyer hammered away at Nathan’s psychiatric evaluation because it was the only card she had to play. From the bar table she reminded the court a good half-dozen times that Nathan as a six-year-old was abused by his father with a vacuum cleaner pipe and, according to Nathan, live spiders. But none of that mattered to the judge. You could see it in the way he slouched at the bench, in the way he never looked at Nathan or Dale. No one who heard Joanna’s stories could possibly think that Nathan’s problems were fixable. The court wasn’t going to show mercy in the hope that Nathan could somehow be redeemed. He couldn’t. Neither could Dale.

  I didn’t see Nathan’s grandmother at the court. I suppose she was at home with the ordinary news playing at a perfectly reasonable volume.

  According to the timeline in my notepad, if I’d listened to my instinct on the day I visited, if I’d gone to the back lane to see if there was another entry to the basement, if I’d insisted on going to Nathan’s room, if I’d asked Elizabeth Money what it was she couldn’t hear over the television, then Joanna might not have had Nathan’s urine injected into her arm.

  So that’s the thing I don’t stop thinking about.

  All during the plea I wanted to stand up and scream at them all and tell them that I was there. That it was my fault. That I’d heard the Japanese news playing too loud.

  What I did instead is I went home, closed the blinds and drank a bottle. But my head still ached. And my dreams were still vivid.

  LEAVING THE FOUNTAINHEAD

  THE RAIN HAS kept people away. I’m planted on a stool at the end of the bar and I’m halfway drunk on bourbon that burns in my lungs and in my throat, but it’s cheap and this place is across the street from my office, so checkmate.

  My office which is also my residence.

  Or my residence which was once my office.

  For all the nights I’ve slept there, and all the days I just sat around there before that, I must have come to the Fountainhead Hotel on only half a dozen occasions. It’s always so peopled. I’m usually peopled enough.

  But tonight the rain has kept them away. The stools stand empty and the barman has nothing to do but polish glasses, slowly, taking pride. Most nights there’d be seven or eight men seated here, lungs burning, flushing the day away. Tonight it’s just me.

  Way off in the lounge there’s a couple of kids, barely old enough to drink, talking in hushed voices, ignoring their beers. Breaking up maybe. Or getting back together.

  But that’s it. I’ve been easing into the quiet for about half an hour, keeping my weight on the points of my elbows, looking up only to watch the water cascade down the front windows like there’s an actual fountain on the roof of this place, true to its name.

  I’m doing this, watching the water, when the barman speaks.

  I say, ‘What?’

  Tiny pineapples and bananas decorate his shirt, which is easily the happiest thing in the room. The pores on his big friendly nose look like they’ve been drawn on, and his big friendly face smiles at me with an openness that must earn him a nice tip from anyone who comes in here alone and lonely. He’s got the kind of moustache you don’t see much anymore and beneath it there’s a whiff of smugness, like he’s immune to what affects his moping clients and he knows it. Or just thinks it. Or maybe I just think it. I can’t read people the way I used to.

  He says again, louder, ‘Why the long face?’

  And I force a grin. Bartender humour.

  He snorts pleasantly, puts the glass he’s been wiping on the shelf behind him, draws another from the dishwasher.

  ‘You okay, bloke?’ he asks, polishing again.

  ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘You don’t look fine.’ With an elegant swoop of his arm he pours a shot of bourbon into that freshly shined tumbler and puts it on the mat in front of me. ‘This one’s on the house.’

  It’s a throaty voice, comforting, like a lawnmower when you finally get it to start. I don’t say, ‘Thanks.’ I say, ‘Thank you.’

  His shoulders push back against my gratitude. ‘I can tell when someone’s having a bad day.’

  I neck the bourbon I’ve already got and clutch at the new drink, feel the glass still warm from the dishwasher, just as friendly as the man who poured it. It makes me turn back to the window, the rain outside.

  He follows my gaze. ‘It’s a wet one, hey.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘My word,’ he says. ‘What do you do, bloke?’

  I look back at my glass. ‘I’m a delivery boy.’

  ‘What do you deliver?’

  ‘Legal papers, mostly. Financial records.’

  ‘You enjoy it?’

  Maybe the answer is inside my drink somewhere. I peer in. ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Yeah…’ He pulls another glass from the dishwasher and says, ‘What are you going to do?’ Only it’s rhetorical, so it comes out: ‘Waddayagunnadoo.’ And I’m hoping this is his way of ending the conversation.

  But then he shelves that glass and says, ‘Where you from?’

  ‘You’re used to a lot of people sitting here, talking to you… right?’

  ‘My word.’

  The way he keeps saying that, it’s like his catchphrase. He delivers it with stern conviction.

  I say, ‘Well, I guess I don’t really feel like talking.’

  The barman nods, arches his mouth like a Chinese businessman agreeing on a price, turns his big round body away to the stack of ashtrays behind him and puts one on top with just enough delicacy to give me a rush of guilt.

  I say, ‘But thanks for the drink…’

  He goes back to the dishwasher, pulls out another glass without looking at me, and I sigh at the awkwardness. There’s a distant rumble of thunder. Beyond the window, headlights and neon signs flash at each other, and I don’t want to go out there, so I figure it’s good when a silhouette crosses the window and comes into the bar, ringing the bell above the door, splashing
water from his umbrella onto the linoleum and giving the barman something to think about apart from how I’m an arsehole.

  But seeing who it is gives me something to think about too.

  Our contact was so brief and so long ago that he won’t recognise me, which I’m thankful for. I almost didn’t recognise him in that well-cut suit and those polished black shoes, his grey beard and hair trimmed to imply someone corporate. The last time I saw him he didn’t imply someone bathed. As he approaches the bar, glancing at me with those fat black eyes and looking around the place to see how empty it is, I’m thinking it’s like his face has been cut-and-pasted onto the body of an effete city executive, complete with a strawberry-red umbrella. Also, I’m thinking he could come in here dressed as an air hostess and anyone in Melbourne who isn’t brain-damaged would still recognise Kevin Tomlinson.

  But then the barman says, ‘What can I do you for?’ with that same good-natured smile and there’s no hesitation in his voice or eyes. So what do I know.

  ‘I’m looking for the Boatswain’s Club,’ says Tomlinson. ‘Isn’t it around here?’

  The barman scratches his nose. ‘The what, sorry?’

  ‘The Boatswain’s Club. Do you know where it is?’ It’s a voice like he was raised by foghorns.

  ‘My word,’ says the barman. ‘You’re on foot, are you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘No problem.’ He points emphatically, stretching his hand as far back and away from his body as it will go and waving a finger out there. ‘You go six blocks along Russell Street until you hit Victoria Parade. You go two streets west along that until you come to Locust Lane, where you take a right. Go all the way to the end. The Boatswain’s Club is on the corner there, next to the Parkway-Spruce Hotel.’

  Tomlinson squints. His eyes twitch, one at a time.

  ‘So…six blocks along Russell, left onto Victoria, right onto Locust.’

  ‘It’s a popular place. You can’t miss it.’

  ‘All right. Thank you.’

  ‘No probs, bloke.’

  The exchange is over in all of thirty seconds, then the bell above the door rings again and Tomlinson is gone. Back into the rain. I watch his umbrella open and float away past the window.

  Then I look to the barman, waiting for him to look back.

  When he does, he misinterprets my face. ‘You want another?’

  ‘Why did…’ I’m about to ask the obvious question, but then I don’t. Instead, I say, ‘Sure.’

  He pours me another. There’s silence while he does it. Then he goes back to drying the glasses from the dishwasher.

  In this rain, walking that distance, it’ll take Tomlinson about twenty-one, twenty-two minutes to get where he’s going. The barman, he’s not doing these calculations. Even as I watch him, serenely shelving mugs, he might already have forgotten about the stranger who just came and went, carrying a red umbrella.

  I ask, ‘Do you know who that was?’

  ‘Who? That bloke?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Is he famous?’

  ‘Kevin Tomlinson?’

  He doesn’t recognise the name either.

  ‘Spack Attack Tomlinson?’ I offer.

  This time he scowls and his gaze drifts past my ears. ‘Sounds familiar…’ he says. ‘What’s he famous for?’

  ‘He’s a psychopath.’

  ‘You mean, like, a footy player?’

  ‘No, he’s a real-life psychopath. And a thief.’ I take a sip, glance back to the door. ‘And it looks as though he’s doing well for himself.’

  The barman slows the polishing of the glass, comes almost to a stop. His eyes search the floor. After two seconds of thinking, he snaps out of it, looks back at me.

  I say, ‘He stabbed his home economics teacher in high school, spent five years in a youth prison, got out and made a career robbing houses, and somewhere along the way he blowtorched his own nipples off. He’s got a tattoo on his left arm that says Rebecca. He’s also got hepatitis C, mild narcolepsy and once he won twenty-seven thousand dollars on a horse named Rent Arrears…’

  I drink. The barman doesn’t move.

  ‘…which is what it says on his right arm.’ The bourbon roars in my throat.

  ‘How come you know so much about him?’

  ‘I used to know this kind of stuff for a living.’

  ‘Were you a cop?’

  ‘No, I worked privately. The first client I ever had was someone Tomlinson robbed. At least, the police said it was Tomlinson. We never found out for sure. This was a long time ago.’ I laugh to myself, feel the passage of time in my stomach the way a boat feels rust.

  The barman keeps polishing, pretending he isn’t worried about what’s just happened. I’ll let him pretend for a while.

  ‘They invited me along to a raid on Tomlinson’s flat. I was supposed to identify a stereo and TV belonging to my client. But I never got to do that.’

  I expect stealth, but they just walk up to the door and knock. It’s about as not like the movies as it can be. Seven uniforms plod along the second-storey catwalk, one of them’s even whistling, and when they get to his door they knock politely and wait, in the midday sun, for it to open.

  I’m at the back of the group, hanging so far behind you’d think I lived in this block of flats and I was just curious. The raiding party eye me with indifference. Some of them smirk at the distance I’m keeping, some of them don’t try to hide that they’re smirking. Some of them, I can tell by the way they chew their gum, are freaking out just the same as me.

  We all know whose home this is.

  The door opens and it’s a woman, her hair pulled back tight, and there’s lots of green shadow around her eyes. It’s obvious she hadn’t bothered looking through the peephole because she makes a face when she sees who’s out here.

  ‘Oh, fuck off.’

  The sergeant at the head of the group, the name on his pin reads Gant. He offers her a folded sheet of paper and says, ‘Becky, we’ve got a warrant to search this flat. Is Spacka at home?’

  ‘No, he’s not here,’ she says back, louder than she needs to.

  ‘You’re going to have to let us in.’

  Already other officers have their hands on the door, ready to push it open.

  Her lower jaw is stuck out in thought, like she’s actually wondering whether to take on these men hand-to-hand. It’s a perfect, fraught moment. Then she rolls her eyes, drops her hand from the door and disappears.

  The uniforms pour into the flat. As I creep towards the doorway I take a final look around to make sure Kevin Tomlinson isn’t coming up behind me with an axe. This catwalk is one side of a courtyard, and the doors and windows of the other three sides are peppered with faces, craning at doorways, peeking through half-drawn curtains. They’ve come out to see the cops finally catch up with the madman who lives next door.

  It’s a dim, barely furnished place and I’m at the entrance to a short corridor. At the other end, Tomlinson is sitting on a torn-up couch, drawing on a water pipe. Two officers approach and he draws harder, sucking back as much smoke as he can before they reach him. When they do, and when they wrench the bong from his grasp, he exhales up into their faces. The big bad wolf blowing down a house.

  I stay right here at the door.

  I don’t know what makes me look over, but when I do I see that the couple in the far corner of the lounge are kissing. They can’t hear what I’m saying. They’re caught up in their own story.

  ‘So what happened then?’ the bartender asks, watching me. He’s still drying that same glass.

  ‘Well…’ I say, scratching my head. ‘What happened then I had to piece together after the fact. I saw it, but I couldn’t hear it. I only found out later what was actually said. And it got recounted at the trial. But I don’t know if what was said really matters in the end.’

  ‘So…he went on trial?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘But you said they didn’t find the stolen stuff.’

/>   ‘They didn’t,’ I say, sipping frugally from my glass. I look up at the ornate wooden clock above the bar. Beside it there are two bottles of Old Forester. One of them is half empty, the other unopened. A bottle like that, he and I could get to be good friends.

  ‘There was nothing there. And I mean, apart from a few of Tomlinson’s things, the place was outright empty. There was a quarter ounce of marijuana on the coffee table but, as it turns out, Tomlinson didn’t go on trial for that either.’

  It’s been seven minutes since he left the Fountainhead.

  Sergeant Gant is trying to hide his disappointment, angling the bowl one way, then the other, like it contains an unimpressive stool sample. Around him the other uniforms would be turning the place upside down if there was anything here to do that to. They wander aimlessly, checking behind furniture and under loose flaps of carpet, trying to seem busy.

  ‘It’s a hell of a parole violation, Spacka.’

  ‘Big whoops.’ Tomlinson is still on the couch, his eyes stained red by the drug. He wears a flimsy tattered singlet showing the words on his arms. His shorts are shiny green and gold, crowning skinny, impossibly hairy legs. The choppy fuzz that grows out of his face is caked with food and it’s wet from who knows what. Becky sits next to him, marginally more clothed, eyes still green.

  She says, ‘It’s not his mull, it’s mine.’

  ‘No kidding.’ Gant is barely listening. He puts the bowl back on the table.

  ‘Yep,’ says Becky.

  ‘Yep,’ says Tomlinson, grinning.

  Becky adds, ‘I bought it and I own it, which makes it mine, right?’ She knows the script.

  ‘I’ll go down for less than a month if it’s not my gear,’ Tomlinson taunts.

  Gant sighs. ‘It’s on your coffee table in your flat and you’re smoking it, Spacka, so we’ll just see…’

  He catches the eyes of several other uniforms, who shake their heads, shrug. They’ve found nothing.

  ‘All right,’ he grunts, waving at one of the officers, then pointing to the pair on the couch. ‘Get them out of here. Everyone else, five more minutes.’

  The cop who strides to the couch has black hair and a crooked nose and he’s the one who was whistling on the way to Tomlinson’s door. Fast as he can he’s got his handcuffs out. He gestures at Tomlinson and says, ‘Up.’