Shore Leave

by David Whish-Wilson

  Wiggs rode the bus beside the driver as they wound their way along the broad Swan River. It was another hot day and Devon’s pale skin was copping a hammering, not that he minded. It was good to see his forearms taking colour and to feel the sun on his eyelids and scalp. It was midmorning and the sun was at ten o’clock above the hills to the east. Devon watched the elastic movement of the traffic as the commuters slowed and sped up, slowed and sped up. Devon looked at Wiggs, a senior officer in his navy whites, joking around with Lenny and Marcus, dressed in their work uniforms, standing above him in the aisle. Their easy familiarity with the white CO was a sham. Devon had heard what they really thought of Wiggs, belittling him every chance they got.

  The bus crossed a cement bridge and left the city behind them. The suburbs looked no different to the suburbs at home, except for more trees. He had lived in one particular cinder-block house as a child that had a tall eucalypt in the backyard. He didn’t know then that it was an Australian tree – his father wasn’t much for naming things. The suburbs they passed through now smelt like that old tree, with its ugly gnarled trunk and white old-man’s skin, its green leaves that never fell, even in winter. Devon’s father had accidentally set it on fire one afternoon, applying a blowtorch to the skin of a spit-roast pig. The fire didn’t spread from the flaming tree because there was nothing near it. It stood there, charred black, for months. Then one day Devon saw the first shoots of green on the higher branches. Within a couple more months the tree was all green again, except that the trunk stayed black.

  The thought of his father’s spit-roast reminded Devon of the task at hand. One of the meals that would be served at the racetrack was Louisiana barbecue. Twenty pigs had been bought on the first day in port and hung from their snouts in the coldroom. The pigs had been slow-roasted on the six galley spits before being placed into the oven to keep warm. It wasn’t how Devon’s father cooked pork, over charcoal and hickory kindling, but it sure smelt good. The pigs were placed into huge oven trays where the flesh was pulled apart and the ribs cut out and the rest of the bones removed for stock.

  Devon didn’t usually take an interest in cooking but in this case it was important. He had lifted the laden trays and gauged their weight. He kept watch and waited for the right moment to take two empty trays and slide them onto a trolley. He covered the trays with loose aluminium foil and then went to meet Mike Scully, as they’d arranged. Mike and Devon exchanged identical trolleys and exited the lift at different floors. Ten minutes later they met in the same lift and once again exchanged trolleys. After Scully had gone, Devon peeled back one corner of the foil on both trays. There they were – the stocks and barrels of six M16s, complete with magazines. He replaced the foil and lifted the trays to test their weight – they were a bit light but he could fix that. Back in the galley he took plenty of the pork and scattered it over the automatic rifles so that they’d smell right. He marked the two trays with crosses and put them with the others. He’d personally loaded them in the side of the bus, placing them deepest in the luggage compartment so that they’d come off last. All the while his heartbeat was rising – it was too late to turn back now. If the trays were discovered, Devon planned to rat on Lenny and Marcus, say that they tried to include him in their plan but that he’d refused. It would be dicey but he relied on the fact that he was white and they were black. He watched them now, leering through the windows at some passing girls dressed in heels and light dresses as the bus turned onto a long flat road toward the river, the racetrack there in the distance.

  35.

  Swann’s best night’s sleep in six months ended when the phone rang in the lounge room next door. He ignored it, keeping his eyes shut to prolong the fugue, but the phone kept ringing.

  He was alone in the house except for the dog which joined him as he padded down the hall. He answered the phone and sat on the floor, let the dog nudge into him.

  ‘Swann, Steve Webb. Sorry to wake you but we’ve got a situation down at the wharf. Cassidy is here and demanding entry onto the Vinson. There’s media. Get down if you can, please.’

  ‘Ok,’ was all Swann could manage before hanging up. The dog followed Swann into the kitchen where he took down the makings for his morning injection. He broke an ampoule and drew up the solution into a fresh syringe, planted it in his thigh. It was the time of morning he and the dog normally walked into town, but he didn’t want her around angry crowds – the anti-nuclear picket that his daughters attended would be raucous if the media were there. Swann dressed in a collared shirt and dug out some fresh trousers, put on socks and shoes. He took his cap off the hook behind the front door, put on his sunglasses and walked into the glare of another hot day.

  The wharf was crowded with punters arriving from Rottnest Island and the anti-nukes picket, fenced at a distance from the passenger terminal used by the Vinson for embarking and disembarking personnel. Beside them were many of the same journos and photographers from the Northbridge crime scene yesterday, with the addition of Louise’s friend Maddie. She clocked Swann from a distance and watched him come. He pulled down his cap but was relieved to see that she wasn’t going to collar him for questions. She gave him a small wave instead and turned toward the sight of Cassidy and two of his detectives, stood at the bottom of the gangplank, berating Steve Webb and four burly uniformed Shore Patrol sailors who were blocking their path.

  Swann climbed over the low barrier fence and heard the cameras clicking behind him. One of the Shore Patrol uniforms reached for his sidearm as Swann approached but Webb stayed his hand. Neither Cassidy nor Webb spoke until Swann joined them. The look on Cassidy’s face said it all – red from arguing in the hot sun. He held up what Swann recognised to be a magistrate-signed search warrant.

  ‘But as I’ve explained, Detective Inspector. The USS Carl Vinson is sovereign American territory and therefore your search warrant has no legal status.’

  Cassidy put a foot onto the gangplank and once again the uniformed officer reached for his sidearm. Once again, Webb signalled for him to stand down.

  Finally, Cassidy turned to Swann. ‘I caught your mate out. I called him this morning, asked him a simple question –’

  ‘Which I was under no obligation to answer.’

  ‘Asked him a simple question. What brand of cigarettes does Charles Bernier smoke?’

  Webb looked to Swann. ‘I had to check my interview records with his work crew. He smokes Kools. Menthol Kools. Which I communicated, in good faith –’

  ‘Caught you out, being honest for a change.’

  Webb lifted his chin. ‘If leading me to believe one thing, and then telling me something else after I’ve trusted you, is catching me out, then –’

  ‘Not like I’ve got a choice. Otherwise you wouldn’t have told me anything, like you’re doing now.’

  Swann put his hands up. ‘Cassidy. You’ve only got three men. What do you expect to find on the Vinson? What’s the warrant for?’

  ‘Charles fucking Bernier.’

  Cassidy had no real intention of searching an aircraft carrier that housed over five thousand crew. Which was why he’d called the media. This was all about making Webb hand over Bernier. Swann looked to Webb but his face was unreadable behind the aviator glasses. His jaw was set and his body rigid with determination, but there was nothing else.

  ‘What makes you so sure that Bernier’s on the Vinson?’

  ‘This morning, we found Jodie Brayshaw’s Datsun 120Y parked over there, hundred yards. Fucking ashtray full of Kools menthol butts. Some of them got lipstick on them. Same lipstick Jodie was wearing. Which tells me that Bernier’s quit running, hiding, come and handed himself in. To the place and people who don’t accept our laws.’

  ‘That’s not true, Detective Inspector. He’s not here, and even if he handed himself in, we would turn him over once formal charges have been laid. A lawyer would be hired through the consul, I can assure you –’

  ‘You’re lying. I’m going to go over there now, and t
ell the papers, and through them, the people, that you’re stonewalling, protecting one of your own. I’m then going to report this to the commissioner, who will report it to the premier, who will put a rocket up your consul, who will report it to your ambassador, who will report it to your state department, who if I have my way, will report it to your war-hero fucking president. This is going to get very hot for you, my Yank friend. So I’ll say it once again. Let me board your so-called sovereign fucking territory and search for what I know is there.’

  Swann hadn’t taken his eyes off Webb’s face. Webb was a trained investigator. His stillness could be explained by his reluctance to exhibit signs that might give him away, but Swann felt that Webb was telling the truth. He couldn’t say that to Cassidy, who’d accuse him of being a stooge.

  ‘Webb, let the detectives examine the brig,’ Swann said quietly. ‘As a personal favour, before this gets out of hand.’

  Webb’s face darkened. It meant backing down, but he nodded.

  ‘Acceptable to you, Cassidy?’ Swann asked.

  ‘Yes. As long as we go directly there. Long as nobody from here communicates with anyone in there.’

  Webb didn’t move, staring hard at Cassidy. Finally, Webb handed his walkie-talkie to Swann. ‘You’ll be interested to know that Charles Bernier called his mother last night, from a local number. Not collect, unfortunately, which would leave a record. According to her, he sounded agitated. He asked her to wire him money, to the Perth GPO. Not a lot. Five hundred dollars. We’ve been in contact with her. She told Bernier to hand himself in, but he hung up. She then called us at a number given to her, toll-free. She’s going to ring if he calls again. She doesn’t know anything about Australia or about what he’s been accused of doing, except that he’s AWOL. She doesn’t want him going to any foreign gaol.’

  Webb had spoken to Swann but it was for Cassidy’s benefit, whose posture lost some of its shape. Cassidy straightened his tie as Webb stood back and waved them on board.

  36.

  Pascoe stared at the asbestos fence as though it were a life raft, keeping him afloat. He was alone on the back porch. Dying. He’d awoken on the sleep-out bed that the Sannyasins had set up for him, a fresh oxygen bottle on its trolley with the tubes attached to his nose. His breathing was even and the pain in his chest was no more than a dull ache. Then he felt the first convulsion in his lungs, the sharp burn of pain that spread into his belly, his throat. The cough came from somewhere deep and put blood on his lips. He turned his head and hawked onto the concrete, not looking. Stared at the asbestos fence and tried to stimulate his heart, which was struggling. He was accustomed to maintaining his calm but calmness wouldn’t cut it now. He had to bully his heart into beating harder so that he didn’t pass out. He wanted to be conscious at the end.

  Pascoe put his focus on Jared Page, stoked his anger until it was glowing hot. There were men like Page at the beginning of humankind, and they would be there at the end, manipulating and taking.

  Pascoe could see clearly what the oxygen starvation was doing to his eyesight, blurring at the edges, leaving the hard focus at the centre of his vision, his anger not working. So easy to close his eyes and drift into the ether, to fall into a coma and move on to the next place, or the no place, he didn’t really care. Pascoe found himself thinking of his good friend Des Ryan, next door, bringing a smile to his face despite the pain. Yesterday, while Pascoe was out casing his target, Ryan was busy drafting a letter to the editor of the two daily newspapers, demanding that Tony Pascoe be pardoned. The first letter Ryan had ever written, he told Pascoe upon his return. In the letter he wrote that Pascoe had done the crime, but had also served the time. Surely busting out was a dying man’s last desperate attempt to die a free man, and not a convict? Pascoe had admittedly been present when a security guard was shot, but it wasn’t Pascoe who’d pulled the trigger, or ordered the man to do it. The guard had lived, anyway, and twenty years was a long sentence. A death sentence, as it turned out.

  Ryan had told Pascoe about the letter because he knew what it meant. While Pascoe served his time, Ryan had dropped off the coppers’ radar, living the quiet life. Pascoe doubted that the new generation of detectives would have heard of Ryan, let alone bothered to read through the old case files that listed him as one of Tony Pascoe’s closest associates. Now, however, he’d gone and stuck his head above the wall.

  Pascoe heard the padding of bare feet inside the house. He realised that the pain in his chest had diminished, and so had the convulsions that felt like someone opening and closing their hand inside his lungs, little punches to his heart.

  It was Sarani. She took one look at his face and whispered, ‘Oh shit.’ She opened the oxygen to full, ran inside and returned with a bag valve mask. She took out the tube from Pascoe’s nostrils, replaced it with the tube from the valve bag, then fixed the mask over his face. Gently at first, but then more forcefully, Sarani began to pump oxygen into his lungs, the valve bag filling with the beautiful gas that she squeezed from the rubber bellows, forcing it deep, beyond the scarring and constriction that his cancer and emphysema had produced. Slowly, he began to feel better, mirroring the relief on Sarani’s face. When he felt good enough to speak, he nodded to her and she removed the mask. He was just about to thank her when she put a finger on his lips. ‘Don’t speak. Can you hear next door? The police are interviewing Des. They’re parked out front.’

  Pascoe lifted his head. Where the bed was situated, even if one of the coppers stuck his head over the fence, he or she wouldn’t be able to see them.

  He had to smile. Ryan had of course been right. He’d told Pascoe about the letter to the editor and insisted that Pascoe sleep next door. He’d gone and asked Sat Prakash and Sarani if that was alright.

  ‘You’re all over the radio, too. The talkback. Half of it’s about the American sailor wanted for murder. But because of Ryan’s letter, some of the radio hosts have been talking about you as well. Every second caller is saying that you should be allowed to die in peace. Plenty of them are saying they’d put you up, if you came knocking.’

  That made Pascoe smile, too. He accepted the nostril tubes, drew in a deep breath. He squeezed Sarani’s hand, closed his eyes, tried to gather his strength. None of this was how he’d imagined his end days – bunking down with hippies, accepting the kindness of strangers, on the run from the law. It was absurd enough to make an old crim laugh, which made Sarani put a hand on his chest, and another finger on his lips.

  37.

  Swann sat in the carpark of the Perth Central Police Station and waited. He had worked in this building for twenty years and risen to the rank of superintendent of uniformed police, responsible for several hundred men and women before he turned whistle-blower and put a flame to his career. He didn’t miss the institution, although his years of training were ingrained in him – the reason he was there in the carpark, waiting for Cassidy to return.

  The brig of the USS Carl Vinson had been empty except for three white sailors and one black sailor awaiting charges for minor crimes. Cassidy still didn’t trust Webb, and Swann couldn’t blame him for that. The location of Jodie Brayshaw’s Datsun so close to the aircraft carrier was a convincing piece of evidence, especially the presence of Bernier’s brand of cigarettes and Jodie’s distinctive purple lipstick in the ashtray. Cassidy had done what Swann would have done – rolled the dice. The problem was that he came up empty, and as a result had lost Webb’s trust.

  Cassidy had tricked Webb by saying that they’d discovered a makeshift camp in Kings Park, scattered with cigarette butts, in the context of enquiring about the brand Bernier smoked. Cassidy at that point felt sure that Webb had taken Bernier on board the Vinson, knowing that each sailor was scrutinised upon returning to ship – there was no way that he might have slipped past. Cassidy was under a lot of pressure, and it was showing. That was the problem with being a senior detective in the CIB, who’d been promoted on merit and not because of how much money he earned or what he k
new about others – Cassidy was tolerated but hardly trusted. And then there was the media pressure, with the two murders leading every radio and television bulletin and monopolising the front page of the dailies. The media was doing its bit to advertise Bernier’s image and other pertinent details, but according to Cassidy there was a developing political problem as many weighed up the economic benefits of the Americans in port set against issues of public safety. It was the hottest topic on talkback radio. According to Webb, last night two black American sailors had been assaulted in Fremantle by local youths and kicked to within an inch of their lives. In the meantime, Cassidy had men and women at the airport, the bus and train stations, asking around in the city’s pubs, markets and restaurants, undercover police in the parks and nightclubs, uniformed police canvassing Jodie Brayshaw’s neighbourhood, and detectives questioning her friends, work colleagues and family. The investigation was large and as a result, thinly spread.

  Which was where Swann came in. He had mentioned to Cassidy the Cord brothers renting at the Seaview Hotel, the younger brother being present when Francine and Bernier were staying there. Cassidy’s junior detectives were looking to interview Cord, but so far hadn’t been able to track him down. The fact that both brothers had lived there straight after gaol wasn’t unusual in a hotel that routinely housed parolees, but Cord might have been a witness, and Swann offered to locate him. The elder Cord brother had spent time with Francine the day before she went missing. It wasn’t the fact that both brothers were ex-convicts that interested Swann, although it might be significant. It was the quiet menace he’d sensed when observing them. Neither had spoken, but the memory of both men stayed with him, in particular the look in their eyes, lit by something smug, confident – more than the regular hatred of authority.