Shore Leave

by David Whish-Wilson

  Swann caught the single column on page five discussing Paul Tremain’s Lightning Resources. According to assay reports, and now visual confirmation on the part of invited journalists, the Coolgardie mine site contained one of the biggest gold strikes in recent history made by a ‘minor player’. The journalist described the forty-centimetre vein of gold that ran for seventeen metres and likely continued deep into the igneous quartz rock, forty metres underground. According to the article, Tremain himself had guided the journalists down into the earth wearing a yellow hardhat and dusty overalls, letting them run their hands over the visible fortune – an estimated five tonnes of gold.

  The article didn’t mention the reason for Tremain’s unusual media invitation in an industry known for its secrecy. Swann had an idea why, however, based on rumours he’d heard that somebody was stealing Tremain’s gold. Not a nugget here and there, but kilos of the stuff. According to one rumour, five ten-kilogram bars had disappeared off a commercial flight somewhere between Kalgoorlie and Perth. There had been more alleged thefts at the mine site. The Gold Squad was investigating and added security had been hired for the mine, but the thefts continued.

  Swann had known for weeks that Paul Tremain of Lightning Resources would contact him. The thefts were no great mystery, and there was nobody else that Tremain could call upon. There were other PIs in town, but they were all compromised. Swann, however, wasn’t going to bite. He’d made a career over the past decade recovering money for investors ripped off by various corporate scams, but until he got better those days were over. He had promised Marion and his daughters, and he was firm on that promise. Swann was in no position to take on the Gold Squad. Tremain’s calls would go unanswered.

  4.

  Tony Pascoe took shallow sips off the oxygen bottle, knowing that he’d need it later. The private room on the fifth floor of Fremantle Hospital was dark and quiet except for the flickering lights of the heart-rate monitor beside his bed. He was no longer connected to it, although a saline drip still ran into his left forearm. His right wrist was handcuffed to a gurney rail.

  Pascoe had taken a big risk to get into the hospital, and it’d nearly killed him. At the nearby Fremantle Prison, while his mate Terry Worthington stood guard by the door, Pascoe had suffocated himself with a plastic bag until he’d gone unconscious. That was part of the strategy, although he didn’t plan on going into cardiac arrest. For a packet of White Ox, Worthington then ran to the screws and had them call prison medics.

  The assumption was that Pascoe had tried to knock himself. After all, he was sixty-seven years old with stage four lung cancer and chronic emphysema. Pascoe only had months left to serve on his twenty-year sentence, but he had no family and hadn’t received a visitor for nineteen years. What did he possibly have to live for?

  The assumption was fair, but incorrect.

  Pascoe had plenty to live for, even if he didn’t have much time. The doctors had told him a year at the outside. Six months more likely.

  There was no need to rush. Pascoe had grown up in Fremantle, but he hadn’t been on the streets for a long time. He’d questioned new inmates about the place; what had changed and what’d stayed the same. There’d been a building boom before the America’s Cup – new groynes and sailing club berths in particular. The inner city hadn’t changed much, beyond a bit of tarting up. The Fremantle Prison where he’d spent so much of his life was in the middle of the city. From his cell Pascoe could hear the sound of laughter and music from the pubs, the roar of the footy crowd on Saturday afternoons.

  It was in his shared cell that he got to know Mark Hurley, sent down for seven years over the possession of a trafficable quantity of cocaine. Mark was twenty-five, but still a kid in comparison. He’d built himself a suit of armour in the exercise yard and developed the thousand-yard stare, but he wasn’t hard and never would be.

  Pascoe had only known Hurley for a few months, but he’d developed a sense of fatherly responsibility toward the kid, mainly because of what was waiting for him on the outside. Since last week, Hurley was back in the world, released to an uncertain future.

  Pascoe had two sons of his own, but God knows he’d never been any kind of father. He hadn’t acknowledged either of them, and had never tried to make contact.

  There was no point thinking about any of that. It was too late for him and his sons. He wanted only to look after Mark Hurley.

  Pascoe thought of his escape, making the pictures in his head. One thing about doing time – it focussed the will. Most kids that entered the system now accepted the medications that made life easier for the screws. The majority were in for drug offences anyway, and it was natural for them to spend their time doped up and passive, but that’d never been Pascoe’s way. He was known instead as a prison scholar, having completed two degrees in arts and law, and an MA in philosophy. He’d written poetry that’d been published in journals. His signature oil paintings on plywood were part of a series of abstract expressionist works that were in private collections. He practised Zen meditation for an hour every morning before dawn, sitting on his bed as the world came awake around him. There weren’t many in the system who’d done the stretch Pascoe had, who could say, hand on heart, that in twenty years they’d rarely felt bored or lonely.

  The battle was to maintain his sense of dignity within the razor-wire confines of the prison walls. The threat was not external but internal. He had spent so much of his life in institutions that it was easy to become dependent, to become part of it, to let it become part of you.

  Pascoe had made a life for himself, such as it was, inside the prison. Outside of the hospital, another world awaited, no more real but one requiring a different set of skills.

  Pascoe knew that the derelict camps in South Fremantle behind the abandoned factories were still being used, but that the coppers would look for him there. So too the camps beneath the saltbush and tea-tree scrub at the nearest beaches, or in the remnant bush up on Cantonment Hill. Failing to locate Pascoe among the fringe dwellers, they’d expect him to head east, away from the port.

  Pascoe reached for the cannula in his wrist. The skin was bruised and inflamed. The nurses didn’t know, but last night he’d taken the cannula out. While a nurse leaned over him to tuck his blanket, he’d unclipped the name tag from her pocket. Behind the hinge of the clip was a length of wire. He had used the wire to pick his handcuff, then removed his oxygen mask. There was no guard assigned to him because he was considered too infirm, and with the impending date of his release, hardly a flight risk. When it became quiet in the corridor he’d gone through the darkened wards and helped himself to clothes and money from the cupboards beside each bed. He now had a knapsack, a pair of ladies’ trousers, a windbreaker, seventy-four dollars in change, a male driver’s licence and a pair of thongs.

  Reinserting the cannula took a while, but he’d watched the procedure many times over the past months, since his first collapse and subsequent diagnosis. Now he removed the cannula in a single movement and put his wrist to his mouth, sucking away the blood. He took the wire pick and worked it into the handcuff, stepped off the bed and began to get dressed. He unclipped the five-litre oxygen bottle from its trolley and lifted it into the knapsack, along with the tubing and mask. It was heavy but well hidden. He walked to the door and looked down the hall. Four am, the time Pascoe usually roused himself to meditate. He felt alert and ready. The old excitement of doing wrong began to work its magic, as it had since he was a boy.

  5.

  Swann had slept well, head buried beneath his pillow. Not once did he awake to the heaving in his stomach or the acid in his gills that sent him staggering toward the toilet. He ate a breakfast of dry toast and coffee and felt well enough to walk the dog into Fremantle. Mya trotted beside him at her odd angle, leading with her left shoulder, the kelpie in her breeding showing through.

  It was another hot morning. The easterly wind blew over him and brushed the ocean flat between the new groynes, built for the defence of th
e America’s Cup. The local sailors had gone down four–nil to the Americans, but the race had kickstarted a home-renovation boom whose echoes he could hear in the streets around him: angle grinders, nail guns, bench saws and cement mixers.

  Swann had slept so well that the sound of the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson entering the port, guided by tugs and the blasting of foghorns, hadn’t woken him. He saw a group of US sailors on the pavement outside the Italian Club, looking at a street map. They were lost, but when an elderly Italian woman dressed in black passed them, they looked to their feet. Swann could guess, and he saw the relief in their faces as he approached. They were all young, the oldest perhaps twenty, each wearing their summer whites complete with bell-bottomed trousers, Dixie-cup hats and black neckerchiefs. Swann’s friend on the Carl Vinson, Master-at-Arms Steve Webb, had told him that according to legend, the neckerchief referred to the Greek myth where a drowned sailor needed a place to hide a coin, so to pay the ferryman to cross the River of Styx.

  ‘Sir, we were looking –’

  Swann nodded gravely, which made the young midshipman swallow hard. Mya got busy sniffing at the freshly laundered legs that gathered around them, most of the young men looking off into the distance.

  Someone had scrawled Aiderose on the top corner of their map. Someone else had tried to scratch out the phallus and breasts drawn alongside the address. Swann didn’t try and correct their spelling.

  ‘Keep going along this road until you come to Ada or Rose Street, then turn left. You’ll find it across the road from the Seaview pub, which should be open. And, word to the wise, your Shore Patrol puts an undercover officer in the Seaview, just to keep an eye. So behave yourselves.’

  The story about an undercover patrolman was a lie but Swann was inundated by thankyou sirs, and wide smiles. The Yanks, they were nothing if not polite – merely one of the reasons they so impressed local women accustomed to the regular blunt, broke, Australian male.

  Swann left the men and turned into the city streets. The truth was that he felt uneasy about pointing the sailors in the direction of the brothel. In a perfect world, there would be no brothels and no prostitutes, but Swann had lived long enough to observe the laws wax and wane with regards to the various prohibitions. From his experience, making the sex trade illegal just put more women in danger.

  Everywhere Swann looked, American sailors in a variety of uniforms milled about on the footpaths, talking to taxi drivers and buying souvenirs while they still had money. The aircraft carrier was in port for two weeks to carry out maintenance. This news wasn’t widely known due to security concerns, not even by the sailors and officers themselves, but Swann’s Shore Patrol friend had given him the full story. He’d hinted in a letter that Swann’s services would certainly be needed.

  Swann’s usual dog-walking routine was to skirt the town and take in the Fremantle docks, where he’d grown up as a wharf-rat, hanging around the ships and scrounging food and coins off the crews from all corners of the world. The USS Carl Vinson, however, wasn’t like most ships. It was part of a nuclear-powered fleet whose presence in Australian ports was fiercely opposed by local activists; Swann’s eldest and youngest daughters, Louise and Blonny, among them.

  Instead of heading to the port, Swann turned south, toward his home. Marion would return from her shift midafternoon, when they’d head to the beach to cool off. During his lay-off from work, Swann was teaching himself to broaden his cooking beyond the regular meat-and-three-veg that he’d grown up with. Tonight he planned to make lasagne and a green salad. Maria at the local deli would give him instructions on the lasagne, and Swann’s neighbour Salvatore had already taught him how to make a standard meat sauce. Swann likely wouldn’t eat, but hoped that today might be when his appetite kicked back in. Either way, between that and the latest novel he’d cracked into on Marion’s recommendation – David Ireland’s The Glass Canoe – it’d fill the hours before she returned home.

  The Mercedes SE sedan in Swann’s driveway was a first. A first for the street, too, and possibly the suburb. Its owner wasn’t inside the car and Swann scanned the front seats, saw some manila folders and the hilt of a hunting knife wedged in the leather upholstery. Swann’s neighbour, Salvatore, waved his hose across the garden bed planted exclusively with roses. He normally waited until dusk to water his roses, which he laid before candlelit altars to the Virgin Mary in each of the rooms of his house. Like many people Swann knew, Salvatore was haunted by something from his past, and like most people, too, he didn’t want to talk about it. Sal was naked to the waist and scratching at the tattoo of Jesus Christ on the cross that began at his belly and finished at his neck and shoulders. He had obviously heard Swann’s gate creak open and was keeping an eye. He nodded his head toward Swann’s front porch, shaded by the large flowering frangipani.

  At the first creak of the gate, the visitor sprang from the porch. Swann knew who it was already, but was surprised by the size of the man. He’d never met Paul Tremain, although he knew him as one of the hundreds of mining speculators trying to climb the greasy pole.

  Tremain was short and wiry, wearing a tight blue suit and an artificial tan. His dyed black hair was combed in a ruthless side part. His large blue eyes sat above a long nose and a fleshy mouth. His jaw was small and his chin was dimpled. His striding down the drive reminded Swann of the studied poise of the Terrace legal eagles, headed into court. Tremain stopped at precisely the length of the dog’s leash, and thrust out his hand.

  Swann dropped the leash and Mya scampered to Tremain’s legs, began to paw at his knees, offering her head for a scratch. Tremain couldn’t help himself – despite the dusty paw prints on his immaculately ironed trousers, he reached down and fondled her ears, genuine affection in his eyes. Dogs were fair judges of character, and Swann accepted the precisely calibrated handshake of their generation and went to the porch. The day was heating up and his scalp was sweaty. He kicked off his thongs. Tremain sat in the chair opposite, Mya nudging his shins for a pat.

  ‘I know who you are, Mr Tremain, and about your situation, but I’m not taking on work right now.’

  ‘So I’ve heard. But I’ve tried everyone else –’

  ‘I know. That’s why you’re here, but like I say …’

  Swann wafted his hands. Mya moved from Tremain and began to sniff around Swann’s shopping.

  ‘Some advice then. Of course I’ll pay for your time. Whatever you ask.’

  Tremain sat forward and nervously worked his hands, saw what he was doing, forced himself to be still. Swann sighed. ‘Who’s at the mine site? Who’s doing your security?’

  ‘Chemex. They’re the third firm I’ve hired. Same result.’

  ‘You need to go offshore. All of the locals work at the behest of the CIB. Their licences, you understand. Who in the Gold Squad?’

  ‘A Detective Sergeant Dave Gooch.’

  There was nothing to say, except for the look in Tremain’s eyes – he genuinely didn’t understand. ‘Let me guess,’ Swann said. ‘After the early thefts from the site, Gooch was made aware of the first shipment from Kal to Perth. The one that went missing.’

  ‘Yes. Every ounce of it. Near eighty thousand dollars worth. Every cent promised to my creditors.’

  ‘Did you know that Gooch has a gold mine, just shy of Leonora? That he has a part-share in three or four leases with Tommaso Adamo?’

  Tremain’s face flushed with blood. He’d tried to remain calm, but was beyond that now. ‘Yes, I did know that, actually. I’ve done my research. But seriously? This is nineteen eighty-nine, not eighteen eighty-nine. What are you saying? That I’ve struck the big one, but that every bit of it is going to be taken from me? That I have to sit down there myself in the depths of the earth, seven days a week, with a shotgun, just to keep what’s mine?’

  ‘That’s not a bad idea.’

  Tremain opened his mouth, the sneer written on his face, but thought better of it. He closed his eyes, kept them closed, swallowed his anger.<
br />
  ‘Go offshore, you say.’

  ‘Yes. But even then. The temptation, you understand. The threats. The isolation. The opportunity. It’s likely that even were a licence to be granted to an overseas firm, that it’d have certain … conditions. Delays in approval, that sort of thing. I’m assuming you need to act fast?’

  ‘Fast. Yes. The beauty of the strike is that there’s near twenty million, according to the geologists, in the one vein. That’s unheard of. It doesn’t need crushing, or separating. You can carve it out with a hammer and chisel. Which is the problem.’

  Even as they were speaking, reflected heat radiating off the drive, honeyeaters chirping in the frangipani leaves, Swann didn’t find it hard to imagine Tremain’s workers right at that moment working the vein, stealing for themselves and for Gooch and his higher-ups.

  ‘You need to close it down. Fill it in. Cap it with a mountain of cement, until you’ve got the situation –’

  ‘That’s no good. The vein is near the edge of my lease. The only useful thing that Gooch told me is that if I don’t get it out soon –’

  ‘Your neighbour will drill across.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Have you been approached by a potential partner?’

  ‘Yes, many, every step of the way. I’ve told them no. Was that foolish?’

  ‘Depends who they are. Has Gooch –’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Unless you want Gooch to take over the whole thing, you need to find someone at a level of government. A minister. A senior public servant. Have you thought about that?’

  ‘I’ve had meetings with them all, to complain.’

  Swann put his hands on the wings of his chair, made ready to stand. His stomach was churning again. The garden was right there, but he didn’t want Tremain to see him sick. The dog read his movements and rose on shaking legs.