PRAISE FOR THE FRANK SWANN SERIES
‘Hard-boiled and riveting writing … A notable addition to Australia’s crime-writing canon.’ Crime Factory
‘Like Peter Temple, Whish-Wilson tells a cracker of a yarn while wielding language the way Sachin Tendulkar wielded a bat.’ The West Australian
‘Fast-paced, complex and with some excellent twists, this is quality crime.’ The Australian
‘Classic crime noir.’ Australian Book Review
‘A hard-boiled, vivid examination of crime and corruption in 70s WA.’ Guardian Australia
‘Combines the pace of a hard-boiled thriller with a lyricism that makes you pause and catch your breath, before plunging in for more.’ Angela Savage
‘Zero at the Bone is a gritty and utterly absorbing read.’ Good Reading Magazine
‘Frank Swann is an attractive lone wolf, and the period is perfectly drawn … Zero at the Bone delivers on a whole series of levels.’ The Newtown Review of Books
‘Unexpected, intriguing and beautifully written, you won’t want to put this one down until the very last page.’ The West Australian
‘First rate crime noir.’ Sun Herald
‘Line of Sight is beautifully crafted. The characterisation is flawless and economical, the plot has a creeping intensity that grows greater and greater as it progresses to the unexpected conclusion.’ The West Australian
‘Against an intimately realised Perth backdrop three stories intertwine … gripping and well constructed … there is a satisfying twist to the end of the tale …’ The Advertiser
‘Well written and meticulously researched, it’s a wonderful piece of hard-boiled writing and an incisive analysis of the changing nature of corruption in Western Australia.’ crimefictionlover.com
‘A tightly plotted, well-textured story of shady figures contesting a lease at the beginning of the mining boom … fast-paced, complex and with some excellent twists … Zero at the Bone is quality crime.’ The Weekend Australian
‘Like an expert surgeon, Whish-Wilson cuts away to reveal an anatomical dissection of corruption and street level history: Perth’s geography, class relations, its tribes and sub-cultures, including the most ruthless tribe of all, the cabal of bent cops who act with impunity. Whish-Wilson’s writing is terrific, taut and lyrical.’ Crime Factory
David Whish-Wilson was born in Newcastle, NSW, but grew up in Singapore, Victoria and WA. He left Australia aged eighteen to live for a decade in Europe, Africa and Asia. He is the author of The Summons, The Coves and three crime novels in the Frank Swann series: Line of Sight, Zero at the Bone and Old Scores. Shore Leave is the fourth. His most recent novel, True West, was published by Fremantle Press in 2019. His non-fiction book, Perth, part of the NewSouth Books city series, was shortlisted for a WA Premier’s Book Award. David lives in Fremantle and coordinates the creative writing program at Curtin University.
For Mark
1.
A midnight easterly blew off the desert, gusting in the higher branches. Swann turned the hose onto the garden that ran alongside his shed, soaking the Hardenbergia whose purple flowers had browned in the heat. Marion was asleep in the front room beneath the ceiling fan, but he hadn’t been able to drift off.
Swann aimed the hose into the clumps of wattle, woolly bush and banksia. When the plants were mature they wouldn’t need watering, but another day like today and they’d be crisp as the leaves under his feet. Swann avoided squirting beneath the concrete slab where two bluetongue lizards had taken up residence. Their saucer of water beside the nearest shrub was brimming, and he could see the heavy trace-shape of their tails in the sand.
Swann was glad that the lizards had moved in because they kept snakes away. Last year, he’d removed a metre-long tiger snake who’d occupied the same hole, attracted to the motorbike frogs in the neighbour’s pond. Swann had nearly trodden on the snake after looking for a cricket ball knocked into the bushes by his nine-year-old grandson, Jock. Swann immobilised the snake’s head with the tines of a garden rake and lifted it by the tail, dropping it into a hessian bag. He took it to the dunes behind South Beach and released it.
Swann put his head under the hose and soaked his hair and face. Gone midnight, and it was thirty degrees. Despite the faint moonlight and the floodlit port working through the night, the sky was a sprawl of stars. The crescent moon sat above the roofline of his fibro shack. He could see its pitted surface and the shadows formed by deeper craters. Above him was the Southern Cross and the Milky Way, like fairy floss across the western horizon.
Swann wiped a hand over his wet hair and flicked a spray of droplets into the bushes. He put his hands on his hips as another wave of nausea rose from his belly. He swallowed hard, and it passed. He was getting better at keeping it down, even if his symptoms weren’t improving. The headaches were more frequent and the nausea was worse every day. He was lucky that Marion was a nurse, pushing him to get help. She didn’t know what was wrong, but then again neither did his doctor, or any of the specialists he’d consulted. Swann was too sick to work but it didn’t matter for now. He’d worked solidly these past years and had enough money to last a few months.
The front gate screeched on its hinges. It was Swann’s early alarm system, together with the dog, who emerged from underneath the house, growling. Swann walked to the driveway. He recognised the moonlit silhouette of Kerry Bannister, dressed in her regular jumpsuit and blonde wig. Kerry was the long-term madam of the Ada Rose brothel that was a minute’s walk from Swann’s home.
Swann whistled to the dog, who ceased her growling. She was afraid of the dark and her relief at being called off was demonstrated by her wagging tail and running back and forth between Swann and Kerry. Swann halved the distance between them and Kerry did the same, shoulders set while lighting a cigarette, her weathered face illuminated by the streetlight.
‘Couldn’t sleep, eh?’ she asked, thrusting out a hand for him to shake.
‘Not when there’s mischievous Christians afoot.’
Last week, as a favour to Kerry, Swann had installed a security camera on the back wall of the brothel, to dissuade whoever kept painting crucifixes there in fluorescent road-marking paint, which was near impossible to remove.
‘I’m a witch, don’t forget. Safe from their mumbo jumbo. You and Marion should join our coven sometime. Speaking of, is she asleep?’
‘Sound. I don’t think she’d be keen to frolic at this point.’
The smoke from Kerry’s cigarette turned Swann’s stomach, and he felt a convulsion in his belly. If the ripple became a wave then Kerry had better stand back.
‘It was you I wanted to see. Glad I didn’t have to wake you. We’ve got a bit of a … hostage situation in room five. Daniel’s off sick. And before you ask, the male person concerned doesn’t strike me as the Christian type.’
‘You call the cops? Who’s he with?’
‘Montana. And no, I didn’t. Thought I’d try you first. With the Yanks coming tomorrow, I don’t want to look like I can’t manage my affairs.’
‘Is the person armed?’
‘Don’t think so. He’s just refusing to come out. Blocked the doorway with the bed.’
The Ada Rose had been open for as long as Swann could remember. It’d been a Ruby Devine brothel until her murder, when Kerry Bannister took it over. Kerry paid the right people, kept the shopfront discreet, looked after her workers and made sure men weren’t involved in the day-to-day. The brothel was a kilometre from the port and only became busy when the Yanks were in town, as they would be tomorrow.
Swann put on his jeans, boots and an old tee-shirt he could afford to have ripped, or worse. On his way to the brothel he stopped to heave behind a hedge. His stomach was empty except for the potato a
nd leek soup that was all he could keep down. His jeans hung loose on his hips due to lost weight.
Kerry Bannister and the three other women on shift gathered in the hallway outside room five. They were all dressed in civvies – jeans, sandals and loose shirts. Kerry moved her workers through the business in three-monthly cycles, paying for them to fly in from Sydney and Melbourne, and Swann didn’t recognise two of the newest women. He nodded to Havana, who still worked a room but also filled in as manager when Kerry was away. She was a Noongar woman in her late twenties with short black hair, and Kerry’s sometime partner. Her fists were clenched and her large brown eyes were fierce with the desire to get at the man behind the door.
‘I think he’s got her gagged. She’s not sayin anythin,’ Havana said when Swann knocked on the door.
‘Open the door,’ he said firmly. ‘We just need to know that … Montana is ok.’
Swann looked to Kerry. ‘Punters in the other rooms?’
‘Nah, we closed up, soon as this happened. He came in alone. Small bloke, sunburnt face and heavily freckled. Gave his name as Ron Smith. My guess is a cockie, or a miner.’
Swann knocked again but there was no response. He tried the door but it was wedged shut. ‘Carlie, could you get what I left at the entrance?’
Swann had used Havana’s real name, and she nodded, returning with the chainsaw cradled in her arms.
Swann took the old machine that he’d inherited from Marion’s father. He hoped it’d work. It was primed with two-stroke but he had no cause to use it in his suburban backyard. The last time he’d worked the chainsaw was a few years ago when he’d gone to a friend’s block outside the city, to carve firewood off a fallen jarrah.
He nodded to Kerry, who stood back as he opened the choke to full and shouted, ‘I’m coming in,’ then put the machine on the ground and pulled the starter cord. It caught first time, and the smell of exhaust filled the hall along with the deep chuckle of the idling motor. Swann lifted the blade and pressed go. The blade scythed the air and the motor roared. He gave it a good rev and kicked the door. Immediately the handle shuddered, and turned. The door opened a fraction, then more as the bed was dragged away. Montana fled the room, pulling panties from her mouth. The other women formed a circle around her, Carlie foremost, nodding to Swann to enter the room. Instead, Swann killed the motor, and the sound of the chainsaw died away. A small man with ginger hair and an orange moustache dressed in double-denim stared at him. Wore old KT26 trainers on his feet. He raised his hands to show they were empty. Swann stood away and let Kerry into the room. She backed the man into a corner. ‘Empty yer fuckin pockets onto the bed. Every last cent. And yer wallet too. I’ll be holding yer licence in case of further trouble.’
The man did as he was told. He had plenty of money: two wads of mixed notes, near three hundred dollars, which likely made him a miner. He opened his wallet and spilled cards onto the bed.
Kerry’s right fist hovered beside her shoulder. She shouted behind her, ‘Montana, you ok? He do anything?’
‘She’s alright,’ Carlie answered.
The man’s face was empty of expression. He didn’t appear drunk. He edged around Kerry and didn’t look at Swann as he passed. Kept his eyes on his feet as he sauntered past the gauntlet of jeers from Carlie and the others.
Kerry patted Swann on the bicep. ‘Thanks mate.’
‘Not a worry,’ Swann answered. ‘Where’s the toilet?’
‘Down the end, where it’s always been. You alright? You look peaky.’
Swann hurried down the hall.
2.
Devon Smith wiped his hands on his US Navy coveralls and closed the lid on the industrial dishwasher, waiting to hear the churn of water. The damn thing wasn’t working properly. He and Marcus had pre-washed the thousands of dishes by hand before putting them in the machine. Devon had earlier emptied the clogged drain, then crawled beneath the benchtop to check the plumbing while Marcus, who was a black six-footer, looked on with folded arms.
Marcus was like that. You’d ask him to do something hard and dirty and he’d puff his lips and shake his head. He wasn’t lazy, but he also wasn’t going to get his hands dirty before some white man had given it a try.
Devon Smith and Marcus were the same rank of Kitchen Patrol shitkicker. There was nothing Devon could do about Marcus because their supervisor, Lenny Arnold, was also black. Devon knew that they played cards together on the rear deck after their shifts, whereas outside of work hours Devon and Marcus lived entirely separate lives. The US Navy was supposed to be a family where the only colour that mattered was the uniform, but that wasn’t how it went down. The racial politics on board the USS Carl Vinson were no different than back in the US, which was alright by Devon Smith.
Devon looked to the clock and saw that it was 1640. Because of the delay, fresh dishes wouldn’t be ready for the dinner service unless they both hauled ass, but he needn’t have worried. Marcus and Lenny began to pick up the handwashed dishes and give them a cursory wipe with a tea towel before loading them onto the trolleys destined for the mess.
Smith took a towel and went to work alongside them. It was near a hundred degrees in the kitchen and the months of sweat and heavy lifting since the Carl Vinson began its tour meant that his arms were corded with muscle.
A day out from port in a white country, and Devon wanted to look his best. The only thing he knew about Australia came from the film Crocodile Dundee, and the excited stories of his fellow seamen from the tour a couple of years ago. Summer whites were being pressed and shoes polished. Plans were being hatched around the best places to get laid. Like every unmarried man on the aircraft carrier, Smith was looking to get his nut, but that wasn’t all. A man needed a plan, his father had taught him, and he and his father had devised a strategy that would potentially see him rich enough to quit the service. This fact made it easier to stomach working alongside Lenny and Marcus, who as usual were talking too loud and belly-laughing at things that weren’t even funny.
3.
Swann drove his Brougham into the parking space reserved for him and Gerry Tracker. On the passenger seat was the morning paper and a thermos of black tea. It’d just gone five in the afternoon and soon the neighbourhood kids would arrive.
Swann took his roll of keys and unlocked the front door. He flicked the lights and the fans. The gym smelt of foot odour, sweat and Goanna Oil, and he went directly to the roller door and cracked the lock. His illness had made him weaker, and he struggled to drive the door up through its guides. As he lifted, fresh air entered the low concrete chamber of what was known locally as Swann and Gerry’s boxing gym. There were no signs out front and they hadn’t advertised, but word had spread about the free gym for local kids and by six o’clock the place would be full.
The room beneath the video store didn’t cost much to rent, and Swann and his friend Gerry Tracker paid it themselves. Swann and Gerry had fought as amateur boxers back in the sixties, and they had decided to start the gym a few years ago after Swann came out of hospital. The gym had begun with a couple of heavy bags and a few sets of gloves but local sports shops and the Maritime Union had donated equipment and money, and now it was crowded with light and heavy bags, weights and ropes, chin-up bars and a full boxing ring in the back corner.
Swann and Gerry Tracker took turns overseeing the nightly circuit of kids doing exercises and sparring. Tonight, Gerry’s son Blake, plus a kid who Gerry was training, Lee Southern, were going to take the class. All Swann had to do was open up and watch in case any of the kids got carried away in the ring. Some of the local bouncers and a few stevedores from the port were regulars and helped where needed.
Swann checked the racks of gloves and arranged the skipping ropes from shortest to longest. The sea breeze didn’t look like it was coming in today, and he angled one of the fans towards ‘Swann’s Couch’, which some of the Noongar kids had taken off a verge and carried down for him. It was rain damaged but didn’t smell any worse than the rest
of the equipment in the room. He sat on it now, unfolding his paper. He kicked off his thongs and lifted his legs onto the cushions.
After returning from the brothel, Swann had slept fitfully through the morning while Marion went off to work, only the sound of the dog’s barking punctuating the silence of the suburban street. When he awoke there were three messages on the machine that he didn’t bother playing. He ate a piece of toast and butter, and then a bowl of yoghurt.
Following his breakfast, Swann dressed and walked to his doctor on Hampton Road. Now in his early fifties, Swann had been a smoker since he was eleven years old. Swann’s GP had organised a chest X-ray at Fremantle Hospital and fortunately the results were clear. His bloodwork was also clean of what his doctor called ‘the Celtic disease’ – the buildup of excessive iron in the vital organs. Swann didn’t know who his biological father was, and couldn’t give a detailed family medical history, except that his mother had died aged sixty of a heart attack.
After receiving his results, Swann had returned home and showered. It was on his way out the door again that he listened to the answering machine messages. A Paul Tremain of Lightning Resources had called three times. He said it was urgent. Swann deleted the messages and went out into the dull heat of early afternoon.
Swann returned to his newspaper. He was so out of touch that he had to read the date beneath the masthead – Thursday the second of February, 1989. Five-odd years since his double-shooting at the hands of a Junkyard Dogs assassin and Detective Inspector Benjamin Hogan.
Hogan, a corrupt cop, had shot Swann in the stomach and the injury had nearly killed Swann when septicaemia set in, although it was the other injury that suggested long-term damage, after a shotgun pellet nicked Swann’s spinal cord.
Swann’s wounds had healed, even though there was a risk of redamaging his spine should his head or neck take a jolt. He’d set himself a target of six months after the shooting before he started swimming and working some light weights, hoping to put rope in his shoulders to better support his neck. The plan had worked, and he’d built up his strength over recent years, at least until the sickness appeared a couple of months ago.
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