by Peter Docker
He takes out a tin full of charcoal and rubs it all over his face, neck, beard and head. He checks himself in the wing mirror of Bullet’s Toyota. He does his best David Gulpilil from The Proposition:
‘Where are these people from?’
‘Der ranges, Captain-sir-boss.’
‘How long have these people been hiding in the ranges?’
‘Dem not hidin in the ranges, Captain-boss – dem bin libin in the ranges!’
‘How long have they been living in the ranges?’
‘Dey always bin libin in the ranges, Captain-sir-boss!’
He grins at his blackface image. The face that grins back reminds him of Josh. Smokey snorts with derision, pulls out a big heavy beanie, and jams it down low on his head. He pulls on his knapsack full of semtex. He stagger/walks over towards the entrance to the cage of the Animal Bar. Is the cage to keep the animals in, or out? He keeps his demeanour relaxed, nondescript. The kids that blow themselves up in the marketplace don’t look like warriors. They don’t look like killers. They look like kids. They drift into place, walking straight through security with a look of calm, and vacuous innocence on their young faces. Then there is the roar of the explosion and the flames. The shock and the acceptance blending like blood and milk.
Sitting against the fence on the outside are two young girls about fifteen. They look up at Smokey’s approach, and smile lopsided grins at him.
You wanna fuck me? says the first one.
Come on! I want something in my hole! says the second one.
You girls better go home.
I’ll suck you cock for twenty dollar!
Ten, says the second girl urgently, and they disintegrate into laughter.
Smokey steps past them, and goes inside. Country and western is blasting from somewhere. Fitzroy Xpress playing ‘Me and My Hot Bottle of Wine’. There is a small wire-protected opening, which looks like a visiting area in maximum security, where the Aboriginal drinkers get their gurri. There is a line of five people waiting their turn at the window. One of the people waiting in the line is a pregnant woman, not much older than the two drunk girls just outside. Some other people are dancing, and everyone is screaming shouting drunk.
Smokey pretend-staggers into the toilet area out the back. In the mens there is a urinal, and two toilet bowls behind partitions off to one side. The bowls are metal, and there are no lids. Smokey has been into some bad shit-pits all around the world, but this one takes the cake. That’s if the cake is made out of old shit and vomit, iced with blood and snot. The cisterns are set high up the wall, and are covered with cages. Smokey stands up on the rim of the first bowl. He takes out the mobile phone he has wired into the semtex, and keys in the arming code. Then he gently slings the bag up and on top of the cistern. It is easy to see – but that involves someone coming in here, and looking up. And then to get to it, you would have to get up and balance on the rim of the bowl. No one’s gonna do that in thongs or bare feet. Smokey jumps down. The bowl full of shit and piss and vomit is nearly making him retch. He gets out of the dunnies, and pretend-staggers for the back door.
As he leaves the cage, the young girls, drunk and pretty, are still there. Smokey doesn’t look at them. Can’t. His whole body is aching for the touch of a woman.
Hey, brutha! Got any gunja?
We love you long time!
And they laugh like the little girls that they are. Smokey moves away into the darkness. He knows that those girls have got a whole night ahead of them of fucking for a bottle, if they’re lucky. There’ll be plenty of takers. There always is. Fucking grog. Fucking gurri. Fucking ngwarla. Smokey glides through the shadows, his eager fingers feeling for the blade.
Baton Change
Izzy concentrates on her breathing. She can feel that smoking crap getting dislodged from the lining of her lungs. She hoicks up and spits again, deciding for the umpteenth time not to sanitise her behaviour in front of the cops. She remembers running on the beach with Josh that one time in Thailand, how he loved to run like a wild animal, to run and run until he would collapse in a heap. Then get up, laughing his crazy laugh, and do it all again.
In a car, this hill leading out of Somerset feels like nothing – but running up this long slow calf-burning slope is pure hell. Even in the early morning the sweat pours off her. All that beer and wine coming out of her system like rats deserting the sinking ship. Five paces behind her is Officer Mahood, running in his boots, with his automatic weapon hanging from the front of his body. Behind him is the white police 4WD with another three officers in it. Their shotgun barrels point out the windows like they are off roo shooting.
Behind them a huge plume of smoke is rising from the ashes of the hotel. Even through her grog haze the blast had shaken her out of her sleep in the early hours. She lay in bed and smoked another cigarette. The sirens of the fire trucks milling around chase her up the road, course up her spine, and poke her hard in her throbbing brain.
C’mon Mahood! You’re going soft! calls out Izzy, and bites into the hill with her runners.
Why don’t we walk back, Izzy?
I thought you’d say ‘drive’, Mahood.
They don’t like me getting into the truck all sweaty, says Mahood, gasping for breath.
Izzy glances back at the 4WD. The officers riding in air-conditioned comfort seem to be enjoying Mahood’s discomfort.
Why don’t you bring your runners and shorts?
I’m on duty, Izzy. What happens if the shit goes down?
The shit?
She tries to laugh, but can’t manage it. Just in the eyes.
Suddenly, up ahead, right in the middle of the blacktop – there is Queenie. Right where there was no Queenie a moment ago. She stands there wearing a motorbike helmet, visor up, hands by her sides, gazing impassively at Izzy running towards her. The hair on the nape of Izzy’s neck stands up, and she gets that creepy drunken ants dancing feeling on her skin. She blinks her eyes, and Queenie is gone. Just the heat-shimmery road ahead. She glances back at Mahood. He is looking past her, concentrating on his run. He’s seen nothing.
Izzy digs in, and she pulls away from the TRG officer weighed down by his operational gear. Izzy remembers reporting on the cadre course held by SASR in Northam. Those boys could run all day carrying railway sleepers. She needs to clear her head. Things are getting crazy. Now she is hallucinating in broad daylight. That narrow daylight must be a bastard. She pounds the road.
The red dirt and the scrub shimmer back at her from the endless expanse by the side of the road. The buildings of the town have fallen behind, and it’s just the endless red and grey and black fullness of the landscape.
Then Izzy hears the high-pitched whine of a motorbike. She glances back over her shoulder. The cops in the 4WD, with their windows wound almost all the way up, and the aircon on full blast, haven’t heard it yet. But Mahood hears it. He runs to try to catch Izzy, his hand on the pistol grip of his weapon. But Izzy is in the zone now, and powers away.
As Izzy digs into the hill, she sees the bike belting towards her across the red dust to the south of the road. Izzy runs faster, but in a measured way, as if she is running in a relay sprint, and is coming up on the baton change. Mahood is trying to speed up but he is already buggered. The figure on the bike is wearing a helmet with a dark face visor, but Izzy has no doubt who the rider is. The bike comes flying up beside Izzy, and slows.
C’mon, Izzy! calls out Queenie.
No, Izzy! yells Mahood.
The cops in the 4WD see the motorbike and step on the gas. But it’s too late. Izzy is running along next to the bike. She grabs hold of Queenie and swings herself onto the bike. The motorbike veers off the bitumen road and powers flat out through the scrub. The TRG police swing off the road to follow in the 4WD, leaving Mahood wheezing on the tarmac.
Queenie chooses a very narrow kangaroo track and powers the bike through. The 4WD runs over small shrubs and trees as it tries to follow Queenie down the ever-narrowing track, with
the bush closing in all around. Eventually the 4WD comes to a sliding halt and crashes into a tree as thick as a man’s waist. The cops sit in silence, and watch Izzy’s blonde curls disappear into a mini cloud of red dust flying off through the bush.
HE Goat Herder
Macca stands on the ridge and looks down at the mass of dead cattle beyond the water and on the ridge to the east. Two TRG officers stand beside him.
So he galloped down here?
Macca starts to walk down to where the trampled body of Macomish lies next to his dead horse. The TRG officers follow him down.
Why didn’t youse all go with him?
Sir, it all happened so quick. None of us knew how to ride. The bull stood up. The perp shot him, right between the eyes.
I thought we were getting mounted coppers?
They needed them for that Nyoongar protest in Perth, Sir.
Macca walks past the mangled body of Macomish to the huge mound that is the dead bull.
The bull just stood up?
Yes, Sir.
So, either he improvised, or he knew that would happen?
A pretty fluid plan, Sir.
Him shooting the bull drew Macomish away from you?
Yes, Sir.
Then he fires those Claymores. The cattle take off west, and as they reach that ridge, he fires the second bank, and they come stampeding back down, and trample Macomish?
Yes, Sir.
He’s like a fucking goat herder, but with HE.
HE? asks the TRG officer.
High explosive, says the other one, disgusted with his mate for not following.
Macca strides out up the eastern slope above the river pool. The hapless TRG officer follows him. The sweat is pouring off Macca. It takes him about fifteen minutes of crisscrossing the ridge before he stops behind an innocuous-looking clump of bush. He looks at the fire lanes into the little valley. Macca squats down. There is a dug-out hole. Macca lowers himself into the hole, and sights back to the bull with an imaginary SLR in his hands. The undergrowth in the clump of scrub has been carefully cut back. Firing from here, it would be almost impossible for anyone except the bull to see the muzzle flash. Macca looks around. There are marks in the dirt from the device Sweet One used to set off the Claymore charges. But there are no spent cartridges. Macca didn’t expect to find any. Macca sniffs: cow dung. He rubbed himself with some dung so that he could set the charges and not spook the cattle. He knew that they wouldn’t really want to leave the waterhole.
In his mind’s eye Macca sees the bull stand, he sees Macomish on his horse already a bit out in front of the coppers. He shoots the bull, and then waits for the right moment to fire the first bank of Claymores. He watches Macomish panicking and in a rage at the same time. He could shoot him now. But he doesn’t. He fires the first lot of anti-personnel mines at the cattle. They take off. He waits sixty, seventy seconds, and fires the last lot. The cattle turn and stampede down, Macomish is trampled. He’s a cool operator. I don’t reckon his heart rate ever gets above forty. Macca stands up.
Macca wanders down to where two blokes in white overalls are taking photos of the dead JP. He grabs the sat phone from the TRG bloke and dials.
Sir, it’s McIntyre. I’m out at the JP’s.
Don’t feel bad, Macca. You warned him.
That’s the worst thing, Sir. I don’t feel bad for him. He got what he deserved.
Jesus, Macca. The guy was a pillar of the community.
Why won’t these people out here take this seriously? These blokes are about as serious as you can fucking get.
It’s not Macomish’s fault.
These colonial bastards and their shit attitudes are why we are here.
They have to live out there, Macca.
Macca sighs. He’s been having the same argument for thirty years. Each time he feels like he’s getting somewhere, he finds himself right back at the start.
You’re there to catch a killer, Macca. He killed your mate.
Macca realises that he hasn’t thought about Big Bill at all. To begin with, he told himself he was getting involved for Big Bill. But now he knows that isn’t true. If he wanted revenge, he’d be just the same as Sweet One. Just the same as the Taliban, and all those other primitive tribal bastards, with their blood feuds all around the world. Now he is intrigued. Now he wants to know how this can end. Everything that has a beginning has an ending. When did this begin? How did it begin? Maybe long before. There are answers that Macca doesn’t want to face. All he knows is that it is meant to be him, it is meant to be him that brings this thing to a close.
Macca takes out a smoke, cradling the phone delicately between ear and shoulder. Then he puts the phone on speaker so he can light up.
Last night, a massive bomb destroyed the Animal Bar, says Macca.
Animal Bar?
Blacks’ bar, confirms Macca.
Fuck! What year is it? Any casualties?
The place was empty when the bomb went off. Two construction workers were asleep in a Toyota out the back; they’re critical. The flying doctor is getting them to Perth.
Macca smokes in the heat. The flies gathering to the feast of dead cattle and the dead JP are as thick as smoke from a bushfire. In the distance they hear a large pack of dingoes with their distinctive high-pitched drawn-out howls.
What’s on your mind, DI McIntyre? asks the Commissioner.
He is getting information from somewhere. Police information. Coroner information. And he must have logistics support. A third man. I’ve been digging through old files and photos. Aransen’s ex-girlfriend has a brother.
The girl he was convicted for conspiring to bash?
The same. The brother was in the army, too. That’s how Aransen met her.
Was he SASR?
No, sigs. But he was posted to the regiment. He was pensioned out after an apparent mental breakdown.
I remember that. He commanded a patrol in Afghanistan before he was qualified. Civilians got killed, and two of our boys badly wounded. That’s her brother?
Half-brother, yes. Matty Hardigan. I want a watch on him.
We’re racing against the clock.
Because of Animal Bar?
And the JP. Every community affected by the emergency intervention in the NT has instigated a picket line. No white bureaucrats are being let in. It’s snowballing.
We’re running out of people to protect.
We’ve got to beat him to the punch.
The half-brother to the ex-girlfriend may be the key.
The PM is beside himself, continues the Commissioner.
He had his chance to halt the racism.
Is that what you really think, Macca?
Macca looks around at the carnage in the little valley in the middle of nowhere. It reminds him of another bloody little valley in another bloody little country.
Tell you the truth, Sir, I don’t know. I’ve been a copper too long. We’re always tidying up after those bastards in suits.
The Commissioner laughs.
Mate, we’re bastards in suits.
I hear ya, Sir.
You’re a good cop, Macca. That’s why I got you. You went after those dirty cops.
Yeah, says Macca, when it was too fucken late.
The last of his sentence dies away, and Macca realises that he’s lost the connection. Too late to protect Snowy. Never even considered that Big Bill was under threat. He’s lost Izzy somewhere. And now he’s got to protect Smithers, who he wishes was dead.
Fill Your Hand, You Son of a Bitch
Matty Hardigan stands on the concrete bike path down near the water in East Perth. He takes out the smartphone from his jacket pocket, inserts the battery, and turns it on. The smartphone warms up, turns on, and starts receiving. He checks his surroundings once more. There is no one around. A cold wind has sprung up, and blows light rain in from the Indian Ocean. There is one jogger a long way off, and aside from him, Matty is all alone in the rain swirling through the streetlight
s. He types in the address and hits SEND. He takes the battery out of the smartphone. He tosses the smartphone in a high arc out at the water, and hears a muted splash. He throws the battery, but doesn’t hear it hit. He takes out the second smartphone, and repeats the whole process. With the maps and the building plan, this is the last of it. He sends it to another address, then disassembles that smartphone, and throws it all in the water. He turns up the collar on his jacket, and walks back to where he parked his bike.
He feels tired. He is sick of the whole thing. He knows the more he does, the more inevitable it becomes that the cops will get him. The whole state feels like it is at war. There’s more police and soldiers here than Kabul. And they will see him as the enemy. He gets on the Honda, puts on his helmet, and roars away up the quiet street.
In four minutes he is pulling up out the front of Mel’s place. Matty takes the stairs two at a time. In the four minutes of riding he has decided to get out of the country for a bit. Sit in a bar in Thailand. Been meaning to do it for a while. Until it’s all finished up. The only way to say no to Sweet One is to not be available. He hopes Mel will come with him. She used to be so sensible. She’s never been the same since Smokey came back this time. And Mort, too. He’s a fucken cancer, that bastard.