The Ambulance Chaser

by Richard Beasley

  ‘Stay here, mate,’ Toffee said. ‘I’ll be back.’ He then went and took Metro-Goon upstairs. We had split the prisoners up.

  About ten minutes later I heard shouting coming from the living room. With the doors closed, and being at the other end of the house, I couldn’t make out any words. I could hear Bill shouting, though. Gabby too, and Toffee. Then Jack. They all had a turn, menacing, angry, frightening, sometimes all at once.

  After the shouting, silence. Fifteen seconds after that, the low guttural crunch of one of Bill’s chainsaws kicking into action, quickly followed by the mini-bike whiz of my trusty lawn clipper. There was screaming then, more of it, for maybe fifteen seconds. Not shouting, screaming. Someone in agony. Then the chainsaw hit something hard. I thought they were hacking up the furniture at first, then recognition swept over me. A distant sound from a distant memory. I’m in a butcher’s shop as a child. We have ordered chops. The butcher starts up his electric saw, pushes meat and bone towards the blade. The blade skips through the bone with an upward rushing shriek. Deeper this time. A chainsaw, after all, is a tad more robust than a butcher’s saw. Even from this distance, though, one thing was clear. The bone was being cut through like balsawood.

  I looked at CV. His black eyes were hot and glistening. On the far side of his face, his nose trembled. I nodded at him, and smiled.

  Shortly after, Kava was back. He motioned for me to come with him. ‘Chris, mate,’ he said. ‘Come have some fun. Makin’ a real mess of the other one.’ We left CV, went upstairs, grabbed Metro-Goon, then led him into the living room.

  I walked in, holding MG by the arm. Bill Doyle’s favourite expression slapped me in the face. I was prepared, but it still belted me one. As one word. Fuckmedead. Only in capitals. FUCKMEDEAD.

  This was the scene. Bill was standing in the middle of the room. His feet were planted on a sheet of yellow plastic, which covered most of the floor. The yellow plastic was generously smeared in blood. Bill himself was liberally coated, including some deft splashes on his safety goggles, where droplets clung like Arabian jewels.

  In his right hand he held his chainsaw, tip pointed towards the ceiling. On his face he wore a smile. Fiendish and slightly deranged. In his other hand he held what appeared to be a heart. He squeezed the organ just as we walked in. Blood oozed freely from it, gushing down his bare forearm. Nice touch.

  Gabby was next to Bill. She was holding the lawn clipper. The Scorpion. She had blood from her hands to her elbows, like an army surgeon at the front line. Pieces of blood-splattered rib-eye were spread about the floor, along with the occasional piece of crimson-coated bone. Cherry, pink and ruby-coloured innards of various descriptions were strategically placed elsewhere, including over Toffee and Jack.

  Sitting in his wheelchair, covered in entrails and offal, Jack really did look like an ancient Beatle now, doing a historic reprise of the controversial Robert Whitaker shot from the album cover of Yesterday and Today. In the far corner was a blood-covered plastic bag. I assumed that it contained a football. Hanging limply out of the top of the bag were some strands of hair. The wig I had given to Jack. Blood-soaked, it was a fair match with CV’s. Sticking out from the middle of the bag was the spear from the spear gun.

  When I had taken this all in, when MG had been allowed to take it all in, Gabby started up the clipper. She revved it three or four times, then turned it down to a low chuckle. ‘Welcome to the abattoir,’ she said.

  She was good at this. Those flunkies from Charlie’s Angels – glamorous and tough? Gabby would eat them for breakfast while she tackled more Greer and de Beauvoir. She whizzed the Scorpion back to life. ‘Pull his pants down. Let’s see if he’s smart enough to talk.’

  Fuckmedead. Even I stepped backwards at that. As soon as I did, I was down on my bum. I had put my foot on a stray kidney, and arse-up I went. MG came down on top of me.

  He’d fainted, the poor metrosexual bastard.

  When he came to, when we had him in the chair, he talked. He talked and talked. I don’t care how tough you are. Anybody who saw that woman with the lawn clipper, and that blood-covered Sasquatch holding the chainsaw, would have talked too if anyone had asked. We all have a breaking point. When the living room has become the dying room, you can reach that point fast. Especially trousers down with the Scorp in front of your groin, and what appears to be your colleague’s gallbladder at your feet.

  I turned the machines on, started burning a DVD, and MG talked.

  Half an hour later, not long before eight, CV did the same thing. He was a bit harder to make out, given that he now only had one nostril, albeit ten centimetres in diameter, but, to his credit, he was equally as willing.

  One thing I learnt from that morning. Never underestimate the benefit of having a good relationship with your butcher.

  Thirty-Nine

  Just after ten, after an hour’s fruitful activity in front of Gabby’s laptop on Plan C, I was sitting with Toffee and Kava in the back of Jack’s van. The van had been converted to accommodate a driver without the use of their legs, and modified for easy access for people in wheelchairs. Even with Toffee and Kava, there was plenty of room for two more. We were in the city, double-parked in front of South Pacific’s building. I dialled the number on my mobile as soon as we pulled up. Jack kept the engine running.

  It took me a few tries to get through to Hardcastle. He was apparently in a meeting. The advertising executives were with him in the boardroom, going over the layouts and scripts for a new campaign. That’s what his administrative assistant told me. His personal assistant said the same, but added that there was simply no way he could be interrupted. I told her to go in and say six words to him, otherwise she was likely to lose her job. ‘Chris Blake. Jonathon Bartlett. Fuck up.’

  He was on the line thirty seconds later. ‘Hardcastle.’

  ‘Blake.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Bartlett.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Don’t bullshit me, Barry. A serious matter has arisen about a plaintiff called Jonathon Bartlett. Huge injury claim. Someone tried to kill him this morning.’

  ‘What? How the fuck do you know this?’

  ‘Meet me downstairs now. Outside the foyer. Bring Jarrett. You need to do this now.’

  ‘What . . . I can’t just –’

  ‘It could be about to get into the press. South Pacific may be unfavourably mentioned. Meet me now. Both of you.’

  Hardcastle and Jarrett were in the foyer within three minutes. Whether they had made any calls in that time, I don’t know. Once downstairs, though, walking out of the lift, Hardcastle had the look of a man who needed to find a toilet fast. Jarrett no longer looked like Cassius. Pale, gaunt, he was already wearing the patented expression of a businessman turning up to his committal hearing on fraud charges. No matter how hard they worked on looking composed, the face is a jigsaw, the pieces loosely held together, dissolving at times, the eyes at once sucking in fear as they radiate guilt.

  Toffee grabbed hold of Hardcastle, Kava took Jarrett. They were standing either side of the revolving entrance door when they walked out. Barry Hardcastle is a big man, but Toffee handled him the way some parents handle errant children. A brief struggle, but into the back of the van he soon went. Meanwhile, Kava threw Jarrett in too. Jack put his foot down as soon as they were in.

  ‘You look pale, Barry,’ I said as we took off. ‘Surprised to see me alive?’

  ‘I don’t know what the –’

  ‘Mr Hardcastle,’ Jack said as we approached Oxford Street at Hyde Park corner, ‘Jack Bartlett’s the name. We met at the rugby about a year ago. Bledisloe Cup Test. There was a charity function afterwards. You made a donation to a disability support group that I’m involved in. Very generous. I’m pleased to meet you again. Even if you did try to have me killed this morning.’ Jack eyed Hardcastle carefully in the rearview mirror. ‘I suppose you’re wondering what this is all about?’

  Hardcastle looked at me, not Jack. ‘Wha
t the fuck is going on?’

  ‘Relax, Barry,’ I said, ‘it’s all for a good cause.’ I was in the passenger seat, facing backwards, looking at Hardcastle. He and Jarrett were in the middle of the back seat, stuck like sardines with Toffee and Kava on either side. The sleeves of Hardcastle’s jacket had ridden halfway up his forearms in the squeeze. The jacket was pulled tight across his shoulders, and his pants were sausage skin on his thighs. He looked like he might burst, a corruption of blubber and rage. Jarrett, meanwhile, looked like a jockey in a sauna, shrinking between the others by the second.

  ‘What the fuck is going on?’

  ‘This is kidnapping,’ Jarrett spluttered, his usual supreme calm deserting him.

  ‘No, it isn’t,’ I said. ‘It’s just a charity event.’

  ‘Charity!’

  ‘Sure. You’re off to make a donation.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘There’s not enough organ donors in Australia,’ I said. ‘What does your driver’s licence say, James? If you die, are you down to donate?’ Silence. ‘The employees of your buddies, the Baldarnos, gave today. We’re on a recruiting and collection drive. Let me show you.’

  I had a small esky in the front seat with me. I held it up, opened the lid, took out the contents. A plastic bag. ‘The metrosexual one donated this,’ I said.

  I had poured some blood into the bag. Half a cup or so. And that kidney I’d trodden on. Squashed, it was more human sized than sheep sized. ‘You’re both wealthy men,’ I said. ‘You can do better than this, surely?’

  Hardcastle stared silently at the kidney. Jarrett went slightly limey around the cheeks. Then emerald. Then forest green.

  I don’t know. Perhaps they’re vegans.

  We were back at Lang Road before eleven. Bill gave the orders again. We used the same technique to burn more DVD footage. The chainsaw, the Scorpion, the bloodcurdling screams.

  We had a slight delay with Jarrett. Not because he held out on us. Just a toilet break. I think it was welcome to the abattoir that did it. There was a wet jet-like swoosh, a sound like water rushing through a washing machine’s too-thin pipes, then that pungent, choking, breath-stopping smell. We all stared at Jack. He frowned. ‘Not me this time.’

  Jarrett had gone to the potty in his pants. We were philosophical about it. He was there to spill his guts, after all.

  When it was Hardcastle’s turn, he talked too. Talked and cried. It’s one thing to see a small person cry, but when it’s a big man, it really gets to you. Well, to most of us. Even after a full confession, Gabby had about as much sympathy for him as a post-coital female praying mantis. Who didn’t reach orgasm. She even revved the clipper up one last time for effect. The poor bastard thought it was going to be the last sound he’d hear. He sank inside himself in a blubbering mess. I patted him on the shoulder. He had ordered a few killings in his time, but, after all, there was his charity work, and he had promoted me, too. He believed in me when others didn’t.

  ‘Take it easy, Barry,’ I said as he sobbed. ‘I’m a lawyer. Remember? I’m not going to kill you. Just sue you.’

  Forty

  Plan C.

  Prior to filming Hardcastle and Jarrett in the low-budget version of Centennial Park Chainsaw Massacre, Gabby and I did some more drafting on her laptop. This time I typed. A motion for an expedited hearing, a draft Statement of Claim, a short affidavit with one exhibit. The finishing touches were added once Hardcastle and Jarrett had completed the story.

  Then I rang the Supreme Court Registry. I asked who the Duty Judges were in the Equity and Common Law Divisions of the court. I had to make a choice between them. My claim, in many ways, cried out for equitable relief. On the other hand, equity had never really been my bag as a lawyer. In equity, they say things like donatio mortis causa, ne exeant regno, cy-pres trust, cestui que trust, estoppel in pais, and, my favourite, in parli delicto potui est conditio defendentis. The lawyers talk softly. Some mumble. Try working out what’s been said when some soft-talking mumbler of an opponent says, ‘in parli delicto potui est conditio defendentis’. Hello, have I had a fucking stroke?

  Most of all, though, there was something about going to equity with clean hands. I most definitely did not have clean hands. So, common law it was. And common law was good.

  The Duty Judge in Common Law was Acting Judge Mervyn Holland. He was perfect for my emergency application for injunctive and ancillary relief. Retired from the bench, but back for a short stint to help out, he was left leaning, pleasant, and, as a former ambulance chaser himself, eminently persuadable about the depths of evil most civil defendants were capable of plummeting to. He would not talk to me in Latin.

  I rang his chambers. I thought I would get the associate. I got him.

  ‘Holland.’

  ‘Judge?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Chris Blake.’

  ‘G’day. They let you back in?’

  ‘No. Not yet.’

  ‘It was bullshit. If you ask me. It was bullshit.’

  ‘Yeah. Thanks. I want to come up. At two o’clock.’

  ‘Chambers?’

  ‘Court.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘I’ll be representing myself. I need an injunction.’

  ‘Shouldn’t you be going to Justice –’

  ‘It’s a Common Law matter,’ I said quickly. ‘Can I have your fax number or e-mail? Just to send through some draft pleadings.’

  He gave me the fax number. Too old for e-mail, he said. ‘What’s it about?’

  I didn’t hesitate. ‘Murder. Fraud. Money laundering. Assault. Life and death. Manipulating the stock market.’

  Silence. ‘Are you okay? You’re serious?’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘Okay. See you at two.’

  See. Now, if I had rung up an Equity Judge and been asked what it was about, I probably would have had to say something like: Cruor. Fraudato. Pecunia abluo. Ingruo. Vita ut letum. Agito Argentum Forum.

  Try saying that softly while you’re mumbling, without falling over.

  Other calls were made. Gabby rang a journalist friend, Jack rang several. The same message. Court 13A, Supreme Court. Two pm. Acting Judge Holland. You’ll want to be there.

  I rang a few of my favourites from the Fourth Estate, too. Specifically, the authors of ‘Bankrupt Barrister in Monaco Romp’ and ‘Caught: The Court D’Avoider on the Côte d’Azur’. I told them that their favourite struck-off advocate was back from the South of France and making a guest appearance in the Palais de Justice, quatorze heures, Cour Treize A. I took the trouble to explain that the Palais de Justice, on this rare occasion, did not mean the District Court.

  Finally, Bill Doyle rang DS Colin Dixon for me. Explained that there had been some ‘significant developments’ on the South Pacific matters I had spoken to him about. There was a DVD worth having a look at this afternoon. ‘The owner wants to tender it in court this afternoon,’ Bill told him. ‘At two o’clock.’ Dixon said he’d make it to the party.

  The rest was up to me. I just had to put the final touches on my pleadings, then throw myself on the mercy of the judicial system.

  The judicial system. Some people don’t have faith in it. Some don’t understand it. Almost no one can afford it. Is it impartial, fair, independent? Is justice important to it, or only the law? Or mumbled Latin? Like most things, your opinion probably depends on what you bring to the argument. I had been bankrupted by a court. A court had confirmed my removal from the Bar. Well, such is life. You can’t blame the judges for the law. Not all of them, anyway.

  In court, you can sue the world. Or you can try to. Just like some of my clients at the Randwick South Legal Centre. You can still be heard. If you want to take on the world, at least for a short time, if you go to court, someone will listen. Then you’ll lose. But it’s the struggle in life that counts.

  I still believed in the judicial system. Freedom of speech, freedom from tyranny, a competent, just and humane system of government – such
things may yet have eluded Sydney, but we still had courts. Now it was my turn. To sue the world. To bring to justice the corrupt heart of the town that I live in.

  Great burdens are given to those who can bear them. I counted defendants the way an insomniac counts sheep.

  South Pacific was my first defendant. Hardcastle and Jarrett were second and third. The owners of the Risqué Pussy took up fourth to seventh spots on the grid, followed by Shane Simpson and Joe Dimato. Metro-Goon, and the man with no nose.

  Against these defendants I sought my principal relief and most of my damages. A permanent injunction from further attempts to feed me to the Anguilla australis in Centennial Park was the first order I sought from the court. Obviously, I was in equity mode when I drafted that. Then there would be damages for injury to my own nose, and the cost of all my equipment, which I particularised down to $484 worth of offal, offcuts and blood from one of Sydney’s leading butchers, and the cost of two Samoan bodyguards for seven days. It came to a tidy sum. I also put a high price on my psychiatric sequelae.

  I sued the Bar Association. I had to. I named the president as the defendant. I had no beef with him personally, he seemed like a decent bloke, but I was pissed off and I wanted my ticket back.

  The eleventh defendant was the Commissioner of Police. Simply because no one would listen to me. I was claiming equipment costs from him too, plus a superintendent’s salary for three months. If it turned out that Col Dixon had kicked off an investigation, I’d replead, seeking only an order for Dixon’s immediate promotion. The Commissioner for Taxation and the Federal Treasurer rounded out my top baker’s dozen. I had paid my debt to this society by cracking open a fraudulent serial-killing money laundering racket. I wanted early bankruptcy release.

  I could have gone on and on. A number of members of parliament – state and federal – their advisers, their spin doctors, the companies that run detention centres, most CEOs, the boards of most large corporations, and certain church leaders who seemed more determined to restore medieval law to society than to follow the teachings of one of my favourite left-wing liberal Jews. The list was lengthy. They had all caused me deep offence at some stage. I had suffered harm at their hands. Perhaps we all had. So I would really be suing for Sydney. For Australia. I wanted to sue for liberal democracy, freedom of speech, equality of the sexes, fairness, and the restoration of human rights in this country. For decency. For the redistribution of wealth and power. For kindness and empathy.