by Nick Place
‘Which is a shame because Victoria Police has endless demands for my talents, right?’
‘Man up,’ she shrugged and, with another dazzling smile, was gone.
He was still watching her walk away when his mobile went off. He felt an unexpected flush of shame, as though Marcia had caught him scoping his young colleague’s lycra-clad shape. Glancing at his phone, he realised it wasn’t her number. It was a 9497 prefix. Where the hell was that? Fairfield?
‘Laver.’
‘Umm, Mr Laver? It’s Jake Murphy, from last night.’
***
Stig found a quiet corner of the internet café. He and Wildie drew enough looks without people getting a close look at his web search.
He couldn’t believe Wikipedia had an entry for Her Majesty’s Prison Barwon. Home to Victoria’s worst prisoners, along with the usual lightweights, it was in a depressingly bland series of buildings on the Bacchus Marsh Road in Lara, a nothing suburb in the wastelands near Geelong, to Melbourne’s west. Only a few kilometres further west than Stig’s origins, which struck him as no coincidence.
The Acacia wing of Barwon Prison was even listed, where the Who’s Who would be found. The Hoddle Street shooter Julian Knight, now studying law and annoying the attorney-general with legal questions for all these years. The Russell Street bombers. A host of creepy criminal lowlifes, from serial rapists to disturbing killers – like the murderer who spear-gunned his wife and kid a few years before – often in high security to protect them from outraged fellow inmates, many of whom were the fathers of daughters and had plenty of in-built anger looking for direction.
Also working quietly on their empires from within Barwon, and of more interest to Stig, were the few gangsters and drug lords still breathing after the much-celebrated underworld gang war.
But looking at the prison’s description, they might be in the Grevillea wing – some government nuff nuff thinking a maximum-security division would be less brutal on everybody if named after a flower.
He clicked on one of the gangland figure’s names and found even more detailed Wikipedia entries existed for the individual criminals. Who filled in this stuff? The crim? Those weird crime groupies you saw outside the court when somebody got sentenced? The entry said Stig’s man was housed inside Grevillea. Thank you, Wiki.
What Wikipedia didn’t tell him was the requirements of a potential visitor to either of these sections. Stig’s fake driver’s licence – Steve Anderson from Clovelly Beach, a suburb of Perth; nice to meet you; yes, I do miss the weather – was good, but Barwon security would surely be better.
Stig was aware that he was no genius when it came to surfing the net; computers had never been a major part of his life. He squinted and scrolled through the page and then found a link to a reference site. Department of Justice. He felt dirty even clicking on the link, but now he was at the official page for Barwon – and the navigation bar had a ‘Visiting Prisoners’ section.
Stig clicked and waited impatiently as the café’s slow internet took forever to load the page.
Arranging to visit a prisoner
You will need to write to the prisoner (care of Corrections Victoria) and ask him or her to have you placed on their approved Visitors List.
In your letter, you should include your full name, date of birth and address. It is then up to the prisoner to make the arrangements for you to be able to visit them.
Write to:
(prisoner’s full name)
C/-Corrections Victoria
GPO Box 123
Melbourne VIC 3001
Your letter will be forwarded to the prisoner.
If you have been previously convicted of an offence you will have to get permission to enter a prison. You will need to write a letter to the general manager of the prison that you wish to visit, providing your CRN and the name of the prisoner you wish to visit, and requesting permission to visit.
Fuck that, thought Stig. Not going to be doing the business face to face with anybody in Barwon. He was about to close the page when he realised somebody was behind him.
‘Do you want another half-hour?’ The Asian girl, probably a uni student, from behind the counter. Straight-faced and wide-eyed. Who me?
‘Maybe. I don’t know. My mother’s in a bit of trouble.’ Why was he bothering to come up with a story for this chick?
She was gazing at him. ‘Your mother is in Barwon Prison?’
‘No. I mean, she works there. Listen, you could piss off and stop reading over the shoulders of customers, you nosy bitch.’
‘There’s no need to be like that, sir. I was just asking.’
‘Give me five minutes.’ Stig clicked back to Google.
Her shadow still behind him on the screen’s reflection.
‘We only sell thirty-minute blocks.’
Stig turned slowly and gazed her. Then said, ‘You must have misheard me the first time, so I’ll say it more slowly. Fuck. Off.’
She turned and got out of there.
Stig checked his email. Not a word from Sophie, out the back of Byron. He ached for that house. Ached for her. But never again. Unless she could meet him overseas, later. If she would.
There was a hard rapping on the window of the internet café. Heads bobbed up from screens and gazed impassively at the rangy man in a singlet with a bushy beard and orange mohawk, spreading two huge arms in a universally recognised ‘what the?’ gesture.
Stig yanked the power cord out of his computer, thinking that would clear the web memory. That would do it, wouldn’t it?
He left without paying. The nosy bitch stayed behind her desk and didn’t say a word.
‘You took your bloody time,’ said Wildie, walking fast, edgy. Stig wondering if he’d taken something or if it was just the usual Wild Man volcano building.
‘You think I’d be a fast typist? What do I look like, a geek?’
‘You really want me to answer that?’ Wildie giving him a sly grin so that Stig relaxed, realising his mate was in control. They arrived at a brand-new Ford Territory SUV, crimson red.
Stig regarding it.
‘This our wheels?’
‘You bet. I thought you’d enjoy a family wagon. Mate, it’s hilarious. In the city car parks, they have car cleaning while you’re gone … just leave your keys. For us, it’s like an all-you-can-eat buffet. I was going to go for a brand new BMW sports.’
‘Nah, this is a better call, Wildie. Less obvious. To go with your new mohawk. What’s say we cruise over to Heidelberg. Think about some shopping?’
Wildie starting the car. ‘We need groceries?’
‘Maybe. Can’t hurt to check some out.’
The little Greek man was already getting up from his cluttered antique desk in the back room of the deserted café, beaming a smile of welcome, arms outstretched, as Laver, in jeans and a T-shirt, approached.
‘Mr Rocket! It’s been a long time. Yassou, my friend.’
‘Sammy. You haven’t changed! Although is that grey hair in the moustache?’
The man’s face collapsed in exaggerated self-pity and sadness. ‘There might be a sprinkle. When you live a hard life like me, this is going to happen, my friend.’
‘You down to your last million?’
‘Laugh it up, Mr Rocket Man. Do I see you down here at five am in the morning every day before the sun, no sleep from your aching back, or not? No, I don’t.’
‘I know how hard you work, Sammy. That’s never in question. Business okay?’
Sammy shrugged expansively. ‘What can I say? There’s a global crisis.’
‘I wasn’t aware it had crept all the way to authentic Greek restaurants.’
‘It’s hitting everybody, my friend.’ Sammy, serious now, leaning in. ‘More than half the restaurants on Sydney Road are losing money, you know.’
Laver was genuinely shocked. ‘Is that new? I assumed that was the norm and they were all tax write-offs.’
Sammy waved him off. ‘You know so much abou
t it, Mr Big Shot.’ He leaned in again and said quietly, ‘I haven’t seen you for so long. I thought maybe you might have gone straight.’
Laver grinned. ‘Not yet, Sammy. It remains a world of opportunity.’
It had always suited Laver to have Sammy think he was some minor criminal. Meant he asked a lot fewer questions than if he’d known Laver was a cop and, anyway, it was sort of fun to have somebody in Melbourne who believed he was on the other side of the fence. Laver had never spelled it out either way. It was Sammy who had come to the conclusion that a man paying handsomely for the use of his café’s white van for irregular periods must be up to something.
He asked Sammy, ‘Can you do without the old girl for a few hours?’
‘It is yours, my friend. It is lovely to see you. The price can even remain the same, despite a percentage rise, because of the time being completely reasonable.’
‘Stop it, Sammy. I’m getting misty-eyed.’
Laver found the van was as tinny as ever but it drove well enough as he battled traffic, heading east towards Preston, then across towards Ivanhoe. He even realised his hangover had lifted enough that his head felt clear, so he turned on the radio, searching for music.
The idea had first occurred to him when he was living in a rented flat around the corner from Sammy’s café, about seven years ago. Whoever thought that trailing people in a black sedan, the driver in forbidding dark glasses, was a good idea hadn’t thought far beyond Hollywood reality. Even a Commodore or Fairlane sedan, the usual unmarked police option for surveillance, was pretty obvious if somebody checked their rear-view mirror more than a couple of times. Plus, if you found yourself behind them or beside their car at a red light, your face was right there in their line of vision.
Laver had been walking past Sammy’s café and saw the white van, magnificent in its nondescript anonymity. The archetypal courier van, who knew how many thousands of which were endlessly circulating on Melbourne’s roads, delivering anything from mail to seafood. Sitting in one of these, he’d be higher than a driver’s eye level, unless they were in a four-wheel drive. And he’d be just another delivery van. Even if they saw the van a dozen times in a trip, most criminals wouldn’t register it.
On a whim, he’d wandered in, shaken hands and asked Sammy if he could borrow that van, no questions asked, for a small cash donation. Sammy had turned out to be perfectly up for some side business, especially as he only drove the van about three times a week, pre-dawn, to get fruit and vegetable supplies for the café. An agreement, with a lot of unspoken assumptions, was reached – and, over the years, friendship had blossomed.
Laver cruised through the commercial FM stations on the van’s factory radio, wondering if the static or the DJs were the worse noise pollution. He eventually left it on Triple R, a local community station, which was on one of its jazz trips. Hopefully something else would kick in at the turn of the hour.
He pulled into the Heidelberg Groc-o-Mart car park just after 4.40 pm, the car park about two-thirds full and chaotic, with kids running in all directions as mothers grabbed some last-minute dinner provisions on their after-school runs. Laver nursed the van to a parking spot near the exit onto Upper Heidelberg Road but within sight of the supermarket’s front door and the other car-park exits. He was glad to see Sammy hadn’t indulged in an unexpected cleaning spree in the time since he’d last used the van. As usual, his clipboard was jammed behind the passenger seat. Laver picked it up and pretended to be going down some sort of list, true to his disguise. Even such a small detail could be all you needed to make anybody sussing you shrug and turn away.
As he checked the empty list against his fictional delivery, he scoped the parking lot. The white Ford was about forty metres away, the two men sitting comfortably. It was an hour since Jake had called Laver, so they’d been there for at least that long. It obviously didn’t bother the two men that they might look suspicious, not leaving their car. One with a hand holding a cigarette out the open window. So they didn’t really mind if they were seen.
Or it hadn’t occurred to them that anybody might be looking.
Laver’s eyes kept roving and landed on a red Territory with two guys in it. He had to work hard not to jump as he realised he was looking at the two men from the Soul Food Café. The guy who might be called Stig and the other big one. What were they doing there in the car park, their SUV facing towards the Waterdale Road exit?
He fished in a pocket for his mobile phone and SMSed Jake, asking what time he was knocking off.
The reply beeped: 5 min:)
Laver spent the intervening time contemplating why Jake would add a smiley-face emoticon to a text to a cop who was watching his back against people who might want to hurt him. Was Laver getting old, falling off the back of the Twitter generation? Or was Jake maybe just an idiot?
Laver typed into his mobile: get in car. drive home. cat normal.
Then cursed the predictive spelling he hadn’t yet worked out how to turn off on his phone and backtracked to change ‘cat’ to ‘act’. And sent it.
And then cursed again, and SMSed a final time, asking Jake for his home address, which was beeped back, emoticon free. Laver put aside the clipboard and studied the Melways street map for Jake’s house.
To his credit, when Jake emerged, he did a pretty good job of not looking scared to death. He wandered out of the main sliding door, went to his car, got in and drove off without obviously looking in any direction apart from checking for moving cars.
Laver watched Jake’s left indicator blink on as he waited for a gap in traffic so he could turn left onto Heidelberg Road. Laver watched the red Territory cruise slowly in that direction. The white Ford stayed where it was.
Jake turned into the traffic, and the Territory was right behind him. Laver was still watching the Ford, wondering if he could get the licence plate before following the Territory, when a silver Honda shot past him, going too fast for the car park, and caused a car to jam on its brakes, honking, as the Honda lurched out into traffic in front of it.
Laver grinned as he recognised the sweaty profile of the private detective, Thirsk, through the Honda’s window. Amateur hour.
Laver was going to have to follow or risk losing them and leaving Jake to Stig and his mate. But just as he started the van, the Ford began to move and glided smoothly to the exit and out onto Heidelberg Road.
Laver was two cars back and one lane over from the Ford as they headed down the hill from Ivanhoe towards Alphington. By the time they turned right at the bottom of the hill, straightening up towards the city, the Ford was cruising a full five cars back from Thirsk, who was right on the Territory’s hammer. Jake sailed along, three cars further ahead, and now turning left onto the Chandler Highway towards Kew.
Across the Eastern Freeway overpass and the Ford was still hanging back, a calm and distant tail but one that was worrying Laver in case he and the Ford missed a vital traffic light, as he battled along behind the entire caravan. He was glad he’d checked Jake’s address. But then they were lucky in getting through an amber light at Princes Street and were still within range as Jake, then the Territory, then Thirsk’s Honda turned left at the next roundabout.
Laver was able to slow now, because he’d done the Melways homework. Jake would turn at Barnard Grove, the second street, where his mother’s house was about nine along on the left-hand side. Instead of following the others down the narrow one-way street, he would be able to watch from the intersection. This little pocket of houses, jammed next to the walls of the freeway where the traffic rushed in early peak-hour frenzy metres away, was like a small suburban air pocket. Any cars that went down Jake’s street had to loop back out and come straight past Laver again to return to the main roads.
Laver planned to watch the others from the intersection of Barnard Grove and Willsmere, the street they were all now on – but the men in the white Ford had the same idea, so he hung back even more, stopping fifty metres behind, then hanging a U-turn while he ha
d the opportunity so he was ready to pick them all up on their way back out. The whole plan banking on the hope nobody would actually follow Jake into his house. If Stig didn’t re-appear in a reasonable time, Laver’s plan got sketchy. Charge in on the white horse, gun-free? It wasn’t as though he could call the police. Or maybe he could? As Mr John Citizen? A career cop forced to phone in an anonymous tip – thanks again, Strickland, you politician bastard.
It took a few minutes, but the red Territory emerged from Grandview Terrace, the loop road, with a long arm and a single middle finger greeting the motorist who blasted the Territory for pulling out in front of it. That would be them, thought Laver. The Ford now needed to turn, apparently caught by surprise that the Territory had come back out a street behind them. Traffic meant they were stuck and Laver had a decision to make.
Clearly, they were trying to turn, wanting to go with the Territory, not stay on Jake. Thirsk wasn’t to be seen, but he didn’t matter.
Laver was very interested in the two in the Territory. He went with them.
The Territory swung right then left onto the feeder ramp to the freeway, and Laver smiled that the men in the Ford were screwed now if they hadn’t been close enough to spot that. Even if they were, they needed to get back on the pace before the freeway ended a couple of kilometres later. Traffic was lighter heading towards the CBD so they wouldn’t know if the car had turned south for anywhere in the city, or north, or straight ahead to Carlton and the west.
‘Well, that was a fucking waste of time.’
The Wild Man was perched back in front of the Xbox, clearly ecstatic to be driving a virtual car in Grand Theft Auto rather than a real car in the real world. Stig making a cup of instant coffee in the kitchen, feeling his jangly nerves, considering another dip into the merchandise to calm things down. Again.
But tried to focus on the here and now as he said, ‘You think? We found out where the kid lives.’
‘Yet we didn’t sort him out, then and there.’