I arrived back at my client’s house a few minutes before the police.
I skirted a neat pile of pink and dove-grey pavers and caught the attention of the guy backing the concrete mixer up to the edge of the huge, dark, wet hole. When I flashed my ID he turned off the engine, leaving the mixer turning, and climbed out.
Bryan Michaels emerged from the house looking polite and helpful, wearing the same professional face that no doubt helped him sell a lot of pharmaceuticals.
“I’m sorry,” I said loudly to the driver, “but you won’t be pouring any concrete here for a while.”
I watched Bryan Michael’s face twist and sag.
“You ruthless bastard,” I said, hearing the doors slamming on the squad cars in the driveway behind me.
Cate Kennedy
First Prize Trophy, 1994
<
~ * ~
Operation Bluewater
I sat hunched over my screen, squinting at the moving coloured tracks. The novelty of Monday morning had already worn off. We’d heard what everyone got up to on the weekend, consumed the organic apple cake Marilyn had baked for morning tea; now the week stretched out in front of me like a railway line to forever. Opposite, someone else’s screen alarmed. Some boat, somewhere, had crossed into an illegal zone. I blocked out his call to local compliance and tried to focus on my own screen. The only zone where nothing ever happened. That’s how it felt, anyway, after seven and a half months in this job.
“Morning, Meg.”
I sat up straight. “Mr Brandt,” The manager of our office stood before me, all suited up.
He sat on the corner of my desk, one leg swinging. His socks matched. What was going on? I watched as he leant in towards me, smiling. “How would you like to get out on the water?”
I grinned, “You bet.”
“Navy’s running a big operation. Everyone’s involved. Customs, Immigration, AFP, Quarantine. They need a bunch of Fisheries people. I put your name forward. Thought it might be good experience for you. You’ll be at sea five to seven days next week. Whatever plans you had, cancel them.”
I nodded, too excited to think of anything intelligent to say.
“Briefing’s at 1400. Conference room.”
Our lunch room had a prime view over Darwin’s harbour. I stared out at the sandy line of soil between the cobalt sea and the green tangle of mangroves. Smoke plumes rose up in the distance; the last of the season’s burn-off. Across the table, Lars’s mobile beeped. I watched him read the message.
“C’mon, Kindred. We’re to meet The Yaltala down at the docks. Looks like it’s been up to no good again.” I stuffed the rest of my sandwich in my mouth and stood up to pull my overalls over my shoulders, conscious of the white letters on my back. No, it wasn’t NYPD, or FBI, but out there on the water, ‘AFMA Fisheries’ carried some weight. I followed Lars out to the Hilux. He’d been my supervisor for the last three months and I still couldn’t figure him out. He had the languid drawl and walk of most long-termers, but I got the sense there was something more going on underneath. He threw the keys over his shoulder. Apparently I was driving.
“Heard you’re going out on the op’?”
He made it sound like an accusation. I nodded, watching the road.
“You graduates don’t know what an easy ride you get. Had to wait years to get out on a trip like that. Maybe I should get myself one of them floppy hats.” He half-smiled. “What did you do your PhD on, anyway? Oceanography? Natural Resource Management?”
I felt my cheeks grow hot. “The life span of the Patagonian Toothfish.”
He laughed his slow chuckle. “Well, you couldn’t be further from your freaky little mates up here.” He looked out the window, nodding his head, the corners of his mouth turned down. Was that a hint of respect? “Why didn’t you apply for a job down in Tassie, or the Antarctic? Be better for that skin of yours.”
“I did,” I said, pulling up in the government space right in front of the docks. A prawn trawler was making its way in, its gear folded up above it like insect wings. “That it?”
“Looks like it.” We waited in the ute, air-con running, while the boat moored.
Lars got out first. I tightened my ponytail and adjusted my cap, squinting into the sun even behind our special-issue tropical shades.
“Afternoon, Ben.”
The skipper nodded. “Lars.”
“This here’s my latest offsider, Meg Kindred. Mind if we come aboard?”
I smiled but received no acknowledgement. You got used to it.
I felt my body relax as soon as I walked on deck, adjusting to being on the water. We passed tanks of prawns, the first Tigers for the season. The cabin was low and pokey. I leaned on the doorframe while Lars checked the logbooks. “VMS picked you up outside the seasonal zone.”
All the prawn trawlers were fitted with a tracking device, the Vehicle Monitoring System, allowing us to gather data as well as monitor compliance with the various zones. I tried to look relaxed, staring at the screen-saver on the laptop, the logo of a footy team from down south. The Saints, I figured, from the colours.
“Meg, do you want to do a quick check of the equipment?” So, I was ‘Meg’ in front of people. Was he going to have a man-to-man chat with him about the incursion?
I hurried around the boat, checking the booms, nets and lines. Nothing out of the ordinary, apart from beginning to smell like prawn guts. I slid down the rails of the ladder and back to the cabin. As I ducked into the doorway, I saw Lars take something from Ben’s hand. I kept my eye on that hand as we said our goodbyes. It slipped into his overall pocket and came out empty. “Reckons they weren’t fishing there, just passing through. The books all check out, so there’s not enough to get a warrant. We’ll follow up on the catch quota after weigh-in and keep an eye on it, though, eh?”
“Fair enough.”
We sped towards the Customs chopper on the horizon. I stood up front, looking through high-powered binoculars. I had to concentrate to keep the smile from my face when I spotted it. A twenty-foot timber vessel painted blue-grey; an ‘iceboat’. Stupid name for anything in these waters, if you asked me, but it referred to the ice chests down below. I could see puffs of diesel smoke and half a dozen crew busy on deck. They were already on the run, making for the invisible line that marked the edge of our fishing zone. I felt our engines pick up through my legs. Surely the boat didn’t have a chance of outrunning us?
We drew level, keeping a distance of a hundred metres. One of the Customs guys ordered them to stop over the megaphone. No response. A second message, in Indonesian this time. The crew had disappeared below. The machine gun above me fired a single shot over their bow, like some old-fashioned pirate movie. These were modern day pirates, I reminded myself. Then two shots together, loud echoing cracks.
They didn’t stop. We were so close to the line now it was going to be touch and go. Our dinghy was in the water but they’d have to board while the boat was at full speed. I watched as our guys pulled along side. The older one, Craig, crouched, connected by a rope to his buddy, ready to try to jump onto the boat. There was a shout and he was flat on his face. A shot had come from somewhere. The cabin? The dinghy dropped back, and we all breathed again once Craig signalled he was okay.
I looked up at the machine gun. It stayed silent. They were going to get away. Around the ship, everyone was dark with disappointment, scratching their heads, hands on hips, arms crossed.
“Some fucker tipped them off,” the Customs woman said, coming down from the upper deck. “They were off before the chopper got anywhere near them. Makes you wonder what they had on board.”
Shark fin, probably. “But who’d do that?” I asked.
“Well, no one from Customs, that’s for sure,” she snapped.
Day three was looking more promising. My eyes were tired after a night shift but the time had been worth it to try out the night-vision goggles and infra-red scanner. We’d picked up three small boats
loaded with reef fish and trepang, now being towed back to Darwin.
I set my feet apart, grabbed hold of the railing and turned my face from the spray; we were in full pursuit of another iceboat. It was so low in the water with its catch it didn’t have a chance. They just cut the engine and sat down on the deck, cross-legged.
There was no resistance as our team boarded. Most of the crew didn’t look more than sixteen. We watched as Craig held up two huge shark fins, still bloody. I felt sick. Whatever you thought of sharks, the idea of them being thrown back alive, swimming around in circles until they drowned, or were eaten by some other predator, made me hate humans.
Mai tooted as he drove off. At least I’d made one friend from Customs. I lifted my arm in a tired wave, smiling with the satisfaction of the best week’s work I could remember. Maybe I could get used to living up here after all.
The letterbox was full of junk mail, despite the sign asking for none. There were two damp letters. One for the previous residents, and one for me with a government logo, ‘Environment and Heritage’. I slipped them into my pocket, binned the rest and started up the pastel stairs of ‘The Sands’ apartment complex. The locals disparagingly referred to it as ‘The Blands’, which was about right.
I slid a beer into a stubby holder, and opened up the doors to the balcony. The afternoon sun sparkled on the water, tropical jewels. I gulped down a few mouthfuls and ripped open my letter. I’d applied for a policy job with the Antarctic Division months ago. About time they sent me the rejection notice. I nearly lost my grip on my beer as I read. I had till Monday to accept the job.
Lars leaned on the partition above my desk. “Want to sit in on the interviews with the crew of that boat you brought in?”
“Sure.” I grabbed my notebook and pen and hurried after him.
It was a short drive out to the naval base. We waited at the boom gate while the uniforms checked us out, then drove in to park in the thin line of shade next to the reception building. There was a book to sign, passes to clip on, and we were inside. It was cool in the interview room. I set up the triple-deck tape recorder while we waited.
A young Immigration Officer brought in the first of the crew, small, in loose-fitting pants and thongs. The skin on his cheeks was dark and tough from sun and salt. I wrote the date and time at the top of the interview form. Lars explained the process, started recording and began with the basics. “What’s your name?”
“Ramelan.”
“Identification?”
He shook his head.
“But you’re master of the ship? Captain?”
He shrugged, as if he didn’t understand.
Lars said something in Indonesian. Now he shook his head vigorously. “No. Not skipper.”
“Come off it. You had the GPS in your pants, mate.” Now Lars pulled out the tracking charts, showing the boat crossing into our waters. He tapped his thick fingers on the spot.
“You were inside the Australian Fishing Zone. Do you have an Australian fishing licence?” Again Ramelan shrugged and looked down at the floor.
Lars tapped the charts again, harder this time, so that the table shook. “You were fishing illegally. Forty tonnes of shark fin! Do you understand that you will be charged? Locked up. If you tell us who owns the boat, it will go better for you.”
No response. Lars ended the interview and stopped the tapes. Again he spoke in Indonesian, lots of repeating and rhyming sounds. Whatever he said got Ramelan’s attention; he was looking right at us now, and starting to sweat.
Lars waited, letting the silence draw him out. I watched the second hand of the clock on the wall move around for the third time. Then two short sentences in Indonesian. Lars’s face registered no expression but I saw something in his eyes I didn’t like. Anger?
I turned up the air-con and wound down my window to let the hot air out. Lars shifted his cap off his forehead. “See what I mean? Eight interviews and not one bit of useful information.”
“You speak Indo’,” I said.
He smiled. “Secret weapon. Lived up there for a while, when I was younger and dumber.”
“What happens to them now?”
“The crew will be deported and flown back home. Captain will get a fine. We’ll send him down to Baxter till he’s charged. Boat’ll be scuppered.” He sighed as we turned into the office car park. “And, there are thousands more out there just like it.”
“What would you do?”
“You gotta wonder, with all the money we spend on compliance. Maybe it’d be better spent on aid.”
I stared at him. “You see it as a poverty problem?”
“Hell, yeah. There’s no traditional fishing anymore. The people on these boats are desperate. Just trying to support their families.” He locked the ute. “But the boat owners ... now that’s a different story.”
I crunched on an apple as I typed, tapping my foot to the radio. It was almost time to head home for the day. And make a decision about that job, I prodded myself. Lars appeared over the partition. “I’m just taking a quick run back down to the Coonawaria. Some intel came in that I want to try to use on our friend the captain before they fly him out tomorrow.” He looked down at my screen. “Might be better if you keep working on the report. Won’t be long.”
I watched his back, a red manila folder sticking out from under his arm, till he slipped around the corner. Why was I being excluded? The report was nearly finished. And why wasn’t he taking the triple-deck?
I walked past the media setting up a circus in the car park. Instead of the usual slow and easy chatter around the coffee machine, more people than I’d ever seen here at one time were rushing around with files, and phones rang all around the office. Lars was nowhere to be seen. Mr Brandt’s door was closed. Was I the only one who didn’t know what had happened? I turned on my PC, left it to warm up and headed to the water fountain. On the way back, I stopped at the assistant’s desk.
Carol barely looked up from the screen as she typed. “Lars was looking for you before.”
“What’s happened?”
Her pencilled eyebrows shot up into her leathery forehead. “Don’t you listen to the news, love? One of the foreign fishermen hung himself overnight. They turned up to take him to the airport and he was dead! It’s hitting the fan everywhere.”
“Shit.” My head started buzzing. Which one? I rushed back to my desk and logged on. The emails came dropping in, too slow, too slow. There was an announcement about not speaking to the press unless authorised. No names, no details. No other reference to the death. The media websites were all over it, even the ‘NT News’. Human rights advocates were dragging up past events and making the inevitable links to Aboriginal deaths in custody. After all the progress on illegal fishing, the funding we’d fought for; this was a disaster. I scanned every article. The Herald had managed to find out the name of the boat. It was Ramelan’s.
I stared out at the oil-rig squatting in the harbour, sucking the life out of the ocean bed and spewing out waste like an alien parasite. My head was light with turning images of Lars putting his hand in his pocket at the marina that morning, the bits and pieces in Indonesian I hadn’t understood, and the second visit. The tip-offs the boats were getting.
I heard raised voices and, with everyone else, craned my neck to stare as Brandt’s office door flung open. Lars stormed out, red in the face. He didn’t look at me as he passed and before I could say anything he was gone.
I stood up to follow him, but found Mr Brandt between me and the door. “Can I speak with you in my office, Meg?”
“Coffee?” He offered.
“No thanks.” I sat in the too-comfy chair opposite him.
“I’m sure you’ve figured out by now that your Indonesian captain has turned up dead this morning. There’s an investigation underway, obviously the AFP and the Coroner are looking into it. So I expect you to keep this to yourself.” He paused.
Was it a question? “Of course.”
He twirled a
fat pen in his left hand. “I’d like to ask you a few questions about the Ramelan interview.”
Great. I tried to relax into the chair, but it was swallowing me up. I nodded.
“You took notes?”
“Yes.”
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