Shore Leave

by David Whish-Wilson

  When he took them away, Barry Brown was there, smiling strangely. ‘Those fucken M16s you stole. The media is onto it. You weren’t the only one to identify the semi-automatic used on our clubhouse. The telly expert reckons the weapons came off your Yank-boat. You know what that means, right?’

  Devon wanted to keep his head up, maintain what little dignity he had left, but the news cruelled him. He knew what it meant. The navy would probably deny that they were the source of the M16s, but behind closed doors they’d be working fast. The stocktake that was done once the Vinson returned stateside would be conducted now. The staff responsible for the armoury would be dragged in by the master-at-arms, worked over. Even if Mike Scully didn’t talk, they’d find the five grand cash in his locker, put two and two together. The game was up, the fuck-up complete. If Devon returned to the Vinson, he’d be looking at a decade behind bars, and not in a federal prison where at least he’d earn a rep, but in a military joint like Leavenworth, fucking Kansas, where the time was hard and lonely.

  Barry Brown looked at him, saying nothing. He had a Glock in his hand, placed on his knee. It came to Devon in a flash of clarity.

  ‘What do you need me to do?’ he asked.

  Barry Brown nodded. ‘Good kid. Smart answer. We own you now. Listen up …’

  49.

  Swann’s knowledge that Gus Riley had a secret exit from the clubhouse paid off. They were parked around the block on a suburban street that backed onto the clubhouse walls, watching the lights in the houses go out. Swann was about to call it a night when Cassidy heard a gate creak and they saw the hunched figure of Gus Riley in worker’s overalls and a beanie come onto the street. He walked to an old Holden utility with a ladder strapped to its roof. The ute coughed to life and blasted a cloud of fumes.

  Swann started the Brougham but kept his lights off, following at a distance. Riley turned west toward the city, his arm out the driver’s window as he adjusted the wing mirror. It was late now and even the main roads were quiet and empty. Swann hung back but could tell from a distance that the ute was equipped with a CB aerial. He pointed Cassidy toward the console and Cassidy turned on the police radio and began flicking through the channels, catching conversations from long-haul truckies; a wife talking to a husband somewhere out in the Gascoyne; a pair of traffic accident ghouls reporting a pile-up on the Great Eastern Highway.

  Cassidy flipped the station again and now the conversation was between two young music lovers talking about the latest Cure album, how beautiful Robert Smith’s haircut was, and wasn’t it a pity that his flying phobia stopped him from touring Australia?

  Cassidy changed to a blank bandwidth and turned down the volume, put the mic onto its hook and accepted a Camel from Webb in the back seat. Before they’d moved to the rear of the clubhouse, Cassidy had gone and had a word with Gooch, still parked down the street. When he returned his face was a mixture of bemusement and disgust. Cassidy had told Gooch that Swann had nothing to do with anything Gooch was involved in, and that Gooch was wasting his time. Gooch had told Cassidy to fuck off before calling him a Mick bastard, the kind of insult that reflected their age, but also the ancient division in the force between Mason and Catholic.

  Swann assumed that Gooch had dropped the tail, but now when he looked in his rear-vision mirror Gooch was there a few hundred metres back, not even bothering to pretend otherwise, headlights on high beam.

  ‘Gooch’s still with us.’

  Cassidy looked in the wing mirror and shook his head. ‘That prick gets any closer he’ll tip off Riley.’

  Riley was keeping to the speed limit, just another night-shift worker on the early-morning roads.

  ‘I’ll try and lose Gooch,’ Swann said. ‘Whatever he’s mixed up in, Riley might be too. The bloke that Gooch is standing over, Tremain, said he was at the clubhouse making a payment when the drive-by happened.’

  ‘Small fuckin world,’ Cassidy snorted. ‘Full of stupid fuckin men.’

  In the back seat, Webb dialled the Vinson again, grunted a few monosyllables, arched his eyebrows in surprise, hung up. ‘Think we’ve got our man. Was on shift this morning, caught just as he was heading out on shore leave. Isn’t admitting to it, but he had five grand cash in his locker, can’t account for it. They’re keeping him in the brig until I get back.’

  ‘I’ve got to get one of those,’ Cassidy said, referring to the mobile phone. ‘Sure beats the police radio. They come in a smaller size than that?’

  ‘Nope,’ said Webb. ‘You Aussies don’t have the cell tower infrastructure yet anyway. They have it stateside, although it can be sketchy unless you’re downtown. But it’ll catch on.’

  Cassidy had used Webb’s phone to call Central and order a TRG squad to standby. He’d reinforced his earlier bulletin on the Cord brothers as a ‘do not approach, suspects are armed and dangerous’ warning, adding to the message ‘possible responsibility for drive-by shooting at bikie clubhouse’. Cassidy didn’t go into details with the despatcher, but the chances were good that it’d be leaked to the media before morning. Cassidy then called the duty commander of the CIB and told him what he knew about the Cords, without mentioning that he was currently on duty with Swann and Webb. Instead, he told the senior detective that he’d received the information from an informer and that he’d update the dayshift commander in the morning.

  Webb and Cassidy began to work through the Charles Bernier murders. Due to the discovery of Bernier’s neckerchief, Webb had given up on his earlier insistence that the evidence against Charles Bernier was circumstantial. The clincher was his revelation that Bernier’s blood type was A-negative, a rare type, and one that matched the seminal fluid in the McGregor and Brayshaw murders.

  ‘Only one way to be more certain,’ Webb said. ‘There’s a new technology, soon to be in play, based on genetics. It’s been used on a couple cases back home.’

  Cassidy blew smoke out the window. ‘I know it’s been used to test paternity. I heard about that British case, the serial murderer, two years ago. There’s talk of introducing it here, soon as we have the right case. But for it to work now, we’d need a sample from Bernier, and we can’t find the bastard.’

  ‘What about the condoms in the room Bernier rented, back at the Seaview?’ Swann asked.

  Cassidy nodded. ‘They’re being tested to confirm blood type as we speak; should know by tomorrow.’

  The Brougham rose over a hill and the city sprawled beneath them, glittering under a sky of stars. ‘Bernier’s out there somewhere,’ Cassidy said. ‘Though it doesn’t make sense that he could murder twice and disappear, unless he’s got good friends.’

  ‘Which explains the white man at the GPO,’ Swann said.

  Webb murmured his agreement. ‘The two things are different, however. The murders, and then the disappearance. Both require a degree of planning, forethought, except that the murders don’t appear to be well planned. There are witnesses and physical evidence. He strangled two women with his own neckerchief, left it there at a crime scene.’

  ‘Perhaps he was interrupted, had to leave it,’ said Swann.

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Cassidy. ‘Either way, Bernier’s real planning went into his disappearance. With the help of friends.’

  ‘Who’d help a man responsible for two brutal murders?’ Swann asked. ‘And what kind of life awaits him, now that he’s disappeared? I can see an AWOL sailor being protected, helped to find a new identity, employment, accommodation – but a murderer? His face has been on newspapers across the country. He’ll always be looking over his shoulder.’

  Webb sat forward in his seat. ‘Was the teller at the GPO certain that the while male who cashed in the money order was American?’

  Cassidy nodded. ‘She was, but it’s not hard to mimic such a universally recognised accent. We occasionally get Australian bank robbers imitating an English accent, for example.’

  Swann hunched over the wheel, looked in the rear-view mirror at Gooch’s Falcon, who was catching them up as
they swung onto the Kwinana freeway, passing through the concrete canyon that broke the western end of the CBD.

  ‘I’m gonna try something,’ Swann said.

  ‘Do it,’ said Cassidy. ‘No point tailing Riley if Gooch gives us away.’

  Soon as they crossed the narrows Swann turned left off the freeway, gambling that Riley would continue at least until Canning Bridge. Out of the exit, Swann switched off his headlights and put his foot down, saw Gooch’s high beams taking the turn. Swann shanked the wheel and cut onto a quiet suburban street. They watched Gooch drive past. Swann returned to the main road and headed toward the freeway. He accelerated to one hundred and fifty and it wasn’t long before he recognised the tail-lights of Riley’s old ute, turning off the freeway onto Canning Bridge, headed toward Fremantle. There was a crackle on the empty UHF channel and Swann recognised Riley’s voice.

  ‘Be there in fifteen. What’s the status?’

  The answer was garbled with static but there was enough. ‘Sending the kid in now.’

  ‘Roger that.’

  Canning Highway was empty of traffic and Swann pulled right back, let the distant tail-lights of the ute guide him.

  50.

  The path from the front gate to the cottage door was only twenty metres of cracked concrete pavers but Devon’s feet were heavy with the dread fear of the firearms pointed at his back.

  The neighbourhood was quiet as the sky lightened around him. Birds were chirruping in the shrubs on the limestone hillside. The bikers were crouched behind the low wall at the front of the yard and a dumpster on the street. Ahead of him, there was a man either side of the front door with a loaded shotgun, waiting for it to open. It felt like a scene from a wild-west movie, except that Devon’s fear told him it was real.

  Devon had agreed to be what Barry Brown called the tethered goat, but there was no guarantee that when the front door opened the bikers wouldn’t open fire immediately – their rifles, shotguns and Glock pistols would be no match for the M16s unless they used the element of surprise. Devon walked slowly because the shock that was pumping with every beat of his heart made him feel light-headed and faint. He reached the porch and had to put his hand on the railing. He felt sure that the light in the front room of the house flickered as he took the first step. There was music inside, loud and repetitive, an industrial track where the drums sounded like clanking machinery and the singer’s voice was a hoarse screech of laughter that seemed directed at Devon. Even if he lived through this moment, even if the bikers let him survive beyond the recapture of their weapons, there was nowhere for him to run. He was broke and would never be able to return to the US.

  Devon heard a sound behind him and glanced over his shoulder to see Barry Brown urging him forward with a waved Glock. Devon took the last steps in a dream. He was panting but couldn’t get enough air. He watched his right arm raise itself and begin to knock on the heavy front door. He remembered the fire-drums in the backyard that sloped down to the highway, and the red eyes of the men gathered there and the already paranoid atmosphere among the residents of the skinhead house. He wondered whether he would be shot from the front or the back, but his knuckles kept rapping and the noise grew louder. There were no sounds from inside, and the bikers were already moving toward him, stomping up the steps and taking their positions either side of the front door. As instructed, Devon stood back and kicked the door just inside the jamb and above the handle. The door cracked, and he did it again before he heard the lock break. He was immediately shoved aside as the men moved into the dark hall, clearing the front rooms with the precision of trained soldiers before swarming into the lounge area as others entered through the back door.

  When it was finished, and the bikers were searching the cupboards and wardrobes, ripping everything onto the floor, Devon walked inside. He was ignored by the bikers as they went about their business, rapping on the floorboards and hoisting a man up into the ceiling crawlspace, hacking into the drywall with a crowbar and gouging into mattresses with knives. Devon stood outside the front bedroom, watching Ted at work, pulling hanks of woollen stuffing onto the floor, raising a little snowstorm above his head, drywall dust floating in the air, coating him with a fine white powder. When Ted turned, he looked like an enraged clown, shoving Devon out of the way as he went across the hall.

  The front door was right there, and it was open. Now was the only opportunity that he would get. Devon shuffled backwards, felt the cool breeze on his barbered neck, replaced by the grasping of a giant’s hand.

  51.

  Swann woke with a bad headache. He’d only slept a couple of hours but that was enough for his neck to stiffen. He got up and padded into the kitchen, drank a glass of tap-water. It was midmorning and already the temperature was in the thirties. The honeyeaters had stopped singing and even the wattlebirds were silent in the trees. Only the whirring of cicadas and the chirruping of a mole cricket broke the heat-heavy silence of his neighbourhood. He pulled the blind and went to the kitchen table, began to prepare his daily injection. The phone started ringing and he let it ring, breaking the ampoule of chelate solution before drawing it into a fresh syringe. He tapped out the air as Marion had taught him and stabbed it into his upper thigh, pressed the plunger home.

  The phone kept ringing. Swann rolled his neck and kneaded his upper shoulders, worsening the pain in his head. He went into the backyard and turned on the hose, sprayed it over the parched bushes beside the shed.

  Last night hadn’t ended as they’d hoped. A few kilometres out from Fremantle, the radio crackled again and Gus Riley answered it. Whoever was on the line told him that the operation was a dud. Riley had grunted a reply and pulled to the kerb, executing a U-turn in the middle of the highway, catching Swann off-guard. Webb and Cassidy hid their faces and Swann drove past with his head down. Riley was so occupied with making the turn that he didn’t look at them. Swann then used Webb’s brick to call Kerry’s brothel, got Lee Southern on the line. Lee had inside knowledge of the APM nationalists, having worked as a Kinslow tow-driver for a spell. He told Swann that he didn’t think Kinslow would touch the M16s, or let them anywhere near his towing operation in Osborne Park. He was under Federal Police and ASIO surveillance.

  Swann finished watering the garden and went inside. For the first morning in many months, he felt like he could eat something. He looked in the fridge and saw the leftovers from Marion’s dinner with their three daughters. Tuesday night dinner was a long tradition and Swann had taken over cooking for the past few weeks, but he’d missed it last night, something that he would need to make up for. There was a plate of mashed potato and some slices of corned beef. A few peas and green beans, some cabbage and diced carrot. Swann took it all out and sliced it up and mixed it together with some beaten eggs. He had grown up on bubble-and-squeak, especially on football mornings when his mother plied him with a heaped plate as fuel for the coming game. Swann spooned the mixture onto a heated pan and watched it bubble in the oil.

  Swann’s mother had died many years ago, but he thought of her every day. He didn’t know whether there was an afterlife, and didn’t particularly care, but when he was laid up in hospital and didn’t know whether he was going to make it, Swann began to hope that there might be a place where the dead remained alive, if only so that he could see his mother again. She was a good woman who endured a hard life with a deal of grace, humour and generosity. He could hear her voice now, telling him to turn off the gas and put the pan under the grill, just like she’d told him a hundred times before.

  The phone began to ring again and this time he moved to the corridor so that he could hear the message. The pan began to squeak and squeal under the grill but he could hear Tremain’s voice, telling him that the mystery man had called to ask if he’d made the delivery. Swann turned off the grill and headed down the hall. He lifted the receiver and began to speak, wiping away a little bauble of blood on his thigh.

  52.

  Tony Pascoe climbed out of the van and straig
htened his jacket, cinching the top button and lifting his trousers over the boot heel-tabs. The borrowed boots now squeaked when he walked.

  It was another hot morning. The shade from the jacaranda tree was weak and he could feel the sunlight burning his face, despite the opiate in his bloodstream.

  Something had lurched in his chest this morning. The previously dull weight of the tumour now felt like jagged bluestone against his ribs. Sarani had sourced the pethidine after he awoke grey-faced with his fists clenched. He didn’t want to get her into trouble, and had tried to hide the pain, but it was like the bluestone rock had been dropped into a pond of what remained of his consciousness. What were previously ripples of discomfort had become waves that crashed inside him, leaving the taste of blood in his mouth.

  The Subiaco street was quiet except for the ticking of a front-yard sprinkler and the warbling call of magpies in the branches above him. Pascoe wondered what his friends back inside Fremantle Prison were doing right now. The truth was that he missed them. They say that you can never really know anyone else, but that wasn’t true. The closest friendships that Pascoe had ever made were developed in prison. Once the japing and yabbering noise of the younger inmates died away it was possible to hold a decent conversation, either in the cells or out in the yard. Pascoe supposed that it was like being in the military. The prison walls diminished his world, but that only emphasised the importance of his friends. The regular human virtues of loyalty and generosity were cast into sharper relief by the reality of prison life.