Cleaning Up

by Paul Connor-Kearns

  She was in the kitchen when he made his way back home, busily unstacking the dishwasher.

  He hadn’t intended to stay, thankfully, and they said a slightly peremptory goodbye, both of them feeling unbalanced and out of whack.

  Fuck did it feel good to get back to his place - sanity.

  Darrin asked Trish if she could run the Quay’s address through the titles registry and she had the information waiting for him when he returned to the station after three hours of foot patrol. The flat was owned by a company no less - Saltt Shipping, whoever the fuck they were. He didn’t know whether that was strange or reasonably commonplace. His mind whirred around it but he couldn’t join the dots. He found Moz in the D’s office pensively reading the Daily Star. He edged up to the desk and sat on the corner at a right angle to him. Moz exhaled slightly and lightly threw the paper down.

  Moz gave him the beady eye. His thumbs were rubbing against each other in a kind of podgy mating dance, forearms nestling comfortably on the upper slopes of his big round gut.

  ‘Social call is it Darrin? Moz reached up and rubbed his eyes as he spoke.

  ‘Not quite Moz.’ He waited a couple of beats, ‘I’ve got an address for Dalton.’

  That snapped him up a fair bit. The fucker even swung his feet off the desk.

  ‘Well, fuck me dead - how?’

  Darrin told him how, in detail, he even mentioned the fact that the prick had been talking on his mobile for most of the drive.

  Moz chewed on his lower lip and digested the info.

  ‘He definitely didn’t see you?’

  ‘Nah - I’m certain.’

  ‘And you even spoke to the prick,’ Moz grinned at him. ‘Constable May, you intrepid fucker. Not that it proves a damn thing of course, other than the fact that a dishonest living can pay off.’

  ‘You check out that company name yet?’ Mozzer asked with a slightly odd, knowing smile.

  Darrin shook his head at him, ‘I asked Trish but she told me to fuck off this time, too busy, she said.’

  ‘Well young Dazzler, let’s have a squiz shall we? Leave it to your Uncle Moz.’

  Darrin moved around the desk and stood behind Mozzer as he went into the Companies House Database.

  There it was, Saltt Shipping and Imports - four directors named; Cal, Leo and Niall O’Brien and a John Tibbs.

  Moz snorted at that, ‘hmmm, yes indeedy, the boys eh, you up to speed with this young un?’

  He was - four names that were synonymous with the city and its conurbation’s organised crime scene.

  Mozzer leaned back and sighed, ‘well it still doesn’t really add anything to the pot, I’m afraid Daz.’

  ‘No, how the fuck not?’

  ‘Nah - he’s connected. But he has been for decades now. They’ll be shop front legit, the company. It means fuck all really and it means nowt in the context of the drug op.’

  ‘Nowt! You can’t see them being involved, even hands off like?’

  ‘Proving it son, proving it! Those fuckers are enmeshed in this city’s tangled web. In fact they are the fucking web. We’re better off focusing on the scrotes, believe you me at least then we’ll keep our numbers up.’

  Darrin nodded but felt underwhelmed and more than a little pissed off.

  Mozzer shrugged his shoulders and gave him some avuncular soft soap, ‘you’ll be surprised how much of life is about appearances Darrin - sad but true that.’

  That didn’t help much either, in fact he didn’t even know what the fat fucker was talking about.

  Darrin stood up and walked out of the office, he knew that Barnesy would be looking for him, they should have been out patrolling more than ten minutes ago.

  Sarge Thomas called out to him at the dog end of the shift.

  ‘PC May- Chief Inspector Stone wants to see you in his office - right away that’s a good lad.’

  Barnesy gave him a look and told him that he’d handle his little bit of paperwork. Darrin gave Barnesy his thanks and headed up to the second floor - a little uncertain, a little nervous but feeling energised too.

  He knocked on the door and heard a cough and a ‘come in’.

  He walked into the office and Stone nodded at him to take a seat.

  Stone was the top D in the station, a no-nonsense hard-nosed fucker with a jaw line like the prow of a battle cruiser and disconcertingly still eyes. He was also very much the man with a quote when he needed to be and, as such, Stone handled most of the station’s media stuff.

  ‘You like detective dramas do you then Constable?’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘You know the story; lone wolf copper gets his man, screws the hot looking stripper - that kind of thing.’

  Darrin shook his head at him. Everybody was talking in fucking riddles today.

  Thankfully, the prick cut to the chase.

  Stone stood up and had a little wander around the desk - his meaty but manicured hands clasped behind his back.

  ‘Detective Morris has filled me in about your - peregrinations, PC May.’

  ‘Sir?’

  Stone coloured, obviously irritated by his obtuseness.

  ‘You and a certain Mr Dalton. Is that simple enough for you son?’

  Darrin nodded, ‘yes sir.’

  ‘Hmmm, good, better late than never I suppose. You know I’ve heard a lot of good things about you Constable May. I’ve heard you’re keen, hard working and that you have plenty of bottle too. Those are all good qualities for a go-getting young policeman to have. I’ve also heard that you don’t always favour teamwork and that you regularly need to be pulled pretty hard on the reigns. Would you say that is a fair, balanced assessment?’

  ‘I guess so Chief Inspector.’

  ‘You guess so.’

  Stone lasered him with his hard eyes. ‘I believe that some of your colleagues refer to you as Dazzler, is that right?’

  Darrin ducked his head, feeling a curious mix of pride and embarrassment.

  ‘Well- what I want you to do in the future is dazzle a bit less often and, instead, take directions when you’re working on a sensitive operation. I don’t want you going off half-cocked in the hope of realising your half-baked theories and speculations. Do I make myself clear, Constable?’

  ‘Very clear Sir.’

  ‘Good, dismissed PC May.’

  Darrin stood up to leave the office. He walked a couple of steps towards the door and then turned back to him.

  ‘Am I off it then Sir- the op?’

  Stone leaned back and tapped his wide chest for a few beats with an expensive looking pen, just the hint of amusement and maybe even something more playing at the corner of his mouth.

  ‘No son - I want you to stay on it. Just keep what I said firmly at the front of your mind. Life and, hopefully, your career, is not a sprint. Think on, now, get out.’

  Darrin gave Stone a curt nod and left the room - what the fuck! Game on.

  The kid didn’t show on Monday and Tommy was OK with that, the break from him was more than welcome. He busied himself with some paperwork for the first hour of the day then popped in to see Pauline. She still hadn’t heard anything about the funding bid but she was excited by an approach from a local advocacy service who’d proposed a working partnership on a project targeting the local Asian community.

  Tommy had reservations about the proposal, not because it was a bad idea per-se but because of the fact that the Asian community, other than the odd bit of recurring Pakistani-Bengali tension, particularly amongst the youth, was every bit as cohesive as his own community had once been and were, apart from the obvious social and economic impediments, pretty good at advocating for themselves.

  The biggest issue with that community, as far as he could see, was the entrenched disempowerment of its women and girls, victims of cultural values and norms that kept many of them firmly shuttered behind the walls of family and community. He knew that some of the older Asian women, who had been living in England for over forty years, could still bar
ely speak any English. Pauline had ruffled a few feathers about the issue more than once and many of the older Asian guys were outwardly respectful but also very circumspect in their dealings with her.

  Tommy had lived as an outsider in another culture and he knew how easy it was to see your ingrained cultural assumptions as a kind of universal truth but, it still rubbed against the grain with him. He didn’t like how the women were treated - period.

  Pauline thought that such a scheme might be an in to the local Asian community - maybe they could train up some women from the communities themselves to become advocates. Pauline believed that contact and communication was everything and that real change could only happen through it and any subsequent building up of relationships.

  ‘Would you and Sonny be prepared to climb on board with the initiative? If I do decide to go for it Thomas?’ she asked.

  He made a point of questioning the need for the scheme but he said yes, fuck it he’d be a team player and Pauline needed all the options she could get.

  They chewed the fat on things domestic for a while though he didn’t tell her about Donna and the kid. Some boundaries didn’t need to be blurred.

  That night he met with Jimbo for a few welcome pints in the Grapes - a pub that he didn’t mind during the week as the joint was always quiet. He avoided it like the pox at the weekends as it was guaranteed to be full of ten bob millionaires slowing down service by blocking up the bar. He didn’t enjoy the experience of being surrounded by a rake of vacuous numb nuts jabbering inanely about their golf handicaps and new cars.

  Jimbo was stringing two women along at the moment, enjoying the occasionally harried drama and the furtiveness that inevitably entailed. Tommy told him about Donna and the kid.

  Jim didn’t usually bother with advice, even of an indirect nature but he looked at Tommy for a couple of quiet beats and gave him a shrug of the shoulders.

  ‘Big ask that Tommy boy - does an errant rover like you want to take on that kind of baggage, although if she’s as fit as you say she is…..’

  That night he lay on his bed and mulled it over. He knew that he’d be awake awhile so he’d left the door to his bedroom and the lounge wide open, chilling out in the dark with some music, Bill Callahan’s wry baritone providing the backdrop to his thoughts.

  He and Bonnie had tried for a couple of years to have children but it had been to no avail. Tests had showed a battery of reasons why it was unlikely to happen; her inverted womb, her endometriosis and her twisted fallopian tubes, in fact there was more chance of seeing a unicorn galloping down the Barrington shopping precinct.

  Tommy couldn’t say that was the beginning of their drifting apart but it hadn’t helped. What had been a hungry sex life had been reduced to a mere process; a function and they never quite got that side of it back, never getting past the fact that the sex was now a reminder of what could not be.

  More so, he had realised, with the time and distance of separation, Bonnie had never fully dealt with the fact that he was a white man. That had never been apparent when they had lived together in the city but once they’d made the decision to leave Sydney and head down to the small coastal town, which was home to her mother and her siblings, it had quickly become an issue for her, though it never was for him. He truly didn’t give a rat’s arse about it, indeed he enjoyed the difference, thinking that ultimately, it should not matter. Time had shown him which ties were binding and which ones were less so. It had taken two years for them to drift apart. The isthmus that had once connected them was all washed away. He was still looking towards her but she was now looking away from him.

  And that was that, a separation and, for him, two more years of being alone. Two hard years of work, study and solitude, two years of not knowing where the fuck he should be until the visit to see his dad had shown him that home always seemed to be wherever the heart was. Tommy was getting older, nearer fifty than forty now and the separation from Bonnie had shown him what it was to be truly on his own. During that period he had often pictured himself as a lonely bird perched on a rock in a rolling ocean swell, an indulgence maybe but one that he had earned.

  On Monday Dwayne asked them if they fancied a promotion - up to eighty a run.

  ‘Fuck yeah,’ he and J had bitten his hand off.

  ‘Carry more of the same D?’ Junior asked.

  ‘More of the fuckin’ same and a different fuckin’ product too, my man - you boys ever heard of ice?’

  Junior nodded and as he did so, Pasquale noted that his friend tightly gripped the handles of his bicycle.

  ‘Up for it then lads, come on, what do yer fuckin’ reckon then?’ Dwayne grinned wolfishly at them, the prick enjoying dangling the carrot.

  They gave each other a little look and it was Pasquale who spoke up for them, ‘let’s do it.’

  Dwayne let out a dramatic and kinda meaningless snort.

  ‘See you boys round the fuckin’ back then.’

  They waited there for the usual five minutes and Dwayne came through the fence with a pack each for them. Pasquale felt the brittle texture. It looked like a slightly dirty soap - ice.

  ‘Good fuckin’ shit that lads, get it down to JT fuckin’ pronto like.’

  Junior studied his packet then looked across to Dwayne.

  ‘You ever had it then D?’

  D took an intake of breath and theatrically widened his eyes.

  ‘What you fuckin’ reckon young un? Better than getting your fuckin’ end away that fuckin’ stuff.’

  Junior nodded appreciatively, he had a fair bit more experience in that department than Pasquale, which would help him make the comparison.

  ‘My recommendation though lads,’ Dwayne took them both in with a look of disconcerting gravity. ‘Uncle Dwayne says leave it the fuck alone - fuckin’ alright?’

  Pasquale didn’t need any telling and he was aware enough to register the irony of Dwayne’s warning. He knew it had killed M and a skip was not where he wanted to end his days.

  They took off and Johnny Talbot was waiting for them with that irritating knowing smile on his face, like he wasn’t just another raggedy-arsed, tosser estate boy.

  They did the business in and out, nice and smooth. Then they went to the movies to see the new Planet of the Apes. They had it right too, Pasquale reckoned, most of the humans in it were pricks.

  Pasquale didn’t get home till nine. He called out a good night to his mum. She was in the lounge watching the box. He wanted to get right to his room without any kind of mither - chill out with some sounds. But, she came out to catch him. She told him that the school had called her at her work today. He was suspended due to his recurring absences.

  ‘I want you to go and see Sonny tomorrow,’ she told him, ‘do you know where his office is?’

  He nodded at her, ‘why’s that Mum?’

  She swallowed and he saw tears spring into her eyes.

  ‘I want you to leave for the moment Pasquale. I can’t put up with this anymore.’

  That surprised him, it felt like a slap and, despite himself, he too felt the tears.

  She reached out to touch his face but he pulled away and clamped down hard on his emotion.

  ‘It will be for three months love, they have programmes there to help - education, college applications, they can help you with the drugs…’ her voice trailed off.

  He looked at her with a cold smile, ‘Drugs Mum eh, the drugs!’

  ‘Yes Pasquale - the drugs.’

  ‘Going to let the refuge know about your past then, are yer Mum, tell ‘em all about that then?’

  She shook her head and sighed, ‘I can’t change the past Pasquale. I did what I had to do to get us here.’

  ‘And look where we are Mum, look where we are. It’ll free you up for Tommy though eh?’

  She looked at him coldly this time - the big fuckin’ freeze and then she turned back to the lounge room - discussion over.

  He sat a long time on his bed thinking about it, he was glad in
a way but pissed off too. Another decision that she’d made for him - but fuck it, he was ready to go. Pasquale got up from his bed and went over to the tallboy wardrobe and pulled down the large sports bag from the top of it. That and his travel case would do the job.

  When Darrin landed at the station, Clive Young, the Sergeant from the Drug Squad was waiting for him at reception. Young was what, mid thirties at the most, he wore a natty pin stripe suit that didn’t look off the peg. He had a ready almost ever present smile, offset and not quite matched by bright intelligent eyes that reminded Darrin of an eager rodent. Sarge Thomas gave him a pass for a while and they parked off in the D’s office, which was empty apart from a bored looking Sammy Watson who was half-heartedly making some chase up calls on a missing person case.

  Young kicked the conversation off, ‘heard you showed a bit of initiative then PC May - ruffled a few feathers too, along the way.’

  There was amusement in his eyes but Darrin knew that it was best to let that slide past. The station didn’t welcome indiscretion and definitely not anything that could be possibly perceived as disloyalty.

  He gave Young the straight bat.

  ‘Well you know Sarge - they did keep me on.’

  ‘Well Constable, to cut to the chase, the thing is, thanks to you, we might up it a bit, the op. Check this place out down at the Quays, have a look at this Dalton bloke, might even be some bigger fish to be caught.’

  Darrin nodded non-commitally at him, waiting for Young to lay his cards on the table.

  ‘Well we’ll see, we’ll get down there and canvas a few people, get a feel of the lay of the land. We can sus it out, see if there any unusual comings and goings. There might be some overtime down there for you - a part to play.’

  Darrin gave it up and showed Young his appetite for the opportunity. He knew that the relevant gaffers would have to chat with each other before it could be approved. But, his hat was in the ring, CI Stone was cool with it and he was hungry, almost fucking ravenous. It was always better to be a player than a spectator.