Shore Leave

by David Whish-Wilson

  ‘Good morning, Auntie Rose. What … what the? Would ya look at these faggots?’

  Two more sets of feet on the stairs. ‘Prayin won’t do you no good, poofters. Time to clean house. Nigger, don’t you look at my face. You look at my face, it’s the last thing you’ll ever see.’

  Bernier dropped his eyes and his hand, knelt like a penitent. Two men walked past Devon, put a hood on Bernier’s head. He was handcuffed like Devon, which made it easier for the men to lift him to his feet. The chain behind him was unlocked, and he was taken away. When Bernier was gone up the stairs Devon was grabbed by the ear, got up onto his feet. They didn’t use the hood, which wasn’t a good sign. Devon was pushed and prodded toward the stairs. He thought about kicking backwards, rushing toward whatever happened next, but his body didn’t believe the pictures he made. His feet shuffled on, his head bowed.

  At the top of the stairs, Devon heard the sound of the shower, heard Bernier cussing. He was a big man. If he started something then maybe Devon could summon the courage. But the cussing continued until the water stopped. Devon was stood with his face in the corner of the kitchen. Beneath him was the bin overflowing with rubbish. He listened to Bernier being led into the kitchen. Heard a chair creak.

  ‘Get the Yank’s clothes,’ the man behind him said. It was the ugly man they called Ralph. ‘And bring the rifles. All of ’em. We need to get this shit happening.’

  The skinhead Ant returned with a canvas bag heavy with iron. Under his arms was a plastic shopping bag full of the midshipman’s uniform. Devon recognised the Dixie cup hat and felt a surge of sadness, watching it go past.

  ‘Get dressed, negro. Slow and easy. This pistol is ready to rock and roll, you move an inch sideways.’

  ‘Ah, Jesus. These rifles are covered in fuckin meat, somethin.’

  It was Ralph’s brother, the oddly neat one. ‘Thought I told you, Ant, to wash these down?’

  ‘Don’t matter,’ said Ralph, at Devon’s ear. ‘Little parting gift to Riley. Sure he’ll appreciate it.’

  Devon was turned away from the wall. Bernier had been uncuffed and had put on his bell-bottoms and white tee, his heavy cotton smock, while the kid, Ant, held the Glock on him. The handcuffs were put back on Bernier, and he was pushed down into his seat. The whole time he never took his eyes off Devon, who was white, could maybe say something. But Devon couldn’t think on what to say.

  ‘Ant, give sailor-boy here the Glock.’

  The ugly man pushed Devon forward. Devon felt the cold eye of the second Glock thrust against the back of his neck. ‘You told us you hate blacks, mate. Now’s your chance to prove it. Prove to us what you said, we might let you stay with us. We’ll help you get away somewhere.’

  Devon had heard their plans, and they didn’t include letting him go, but Ant grabbed him by the cuffs and fitted the Glock into his hands. Devon felt his finger on the trigger as Ant stepped sideways, and the ugly man pressed the pistol deeper into Devon’s neck. If he could just turn, get off a shot. Drop, roll, fire, like they did in the movies.

  But he just stood there. It was Bernier, looking at him, anger in his eyes, and something else, too. Bitter disappointment.

  ‘Go on, sailor-boy. You told Ant you bagged a nigger back home. You do it, or I’m gonna do it. A fucken waste, it must be said. Big reward on him that we won’t get to claim. Cos of all this bullshit with the guns.’

  Bernier straightened his shoulders as Devon’s hands rose. ‘What’s he talkin about, man?’ he asked, and this time his voice was deep and true.

  Ralph put a hand on Devon’s wrist. ‘What’s he talkin about? Lookit this.’ Ralph peeled back Devon’s shirt, exposing the 88 tattoo on his bicep. A sneer passed across Bernier’s face, then a mutter of disgust.

  ‘That’s right, negro. You shouldn’t’ve raped those two white women. Shouldn’t have strangled ’em with those big negro hands of yours. Shouldn’t have broke into this house, got yourself shot. We won’t get the reward for it, but it’s gonna make good press for us, for me. We already got everyone thinkin about the evils of black men rootin our women. Those whores we done in had it comin. Puttin it all on you, we rid ourselves of a scourge on our city. You broke in here, you messed with the wrong white boys.’

  Ant took his hand off Devon’s wrist. Devon was free to fire the weapon into Bernier’s chest. He felt his finger tighten on the trigger. Bernier staring at him, all the fear gone now. Proud and fierce.

  But the longer Bernier stared at him, the weaker Devon got, until he wasn’t strong enough to hold up the Glock. He dropped his hands, felt the hammer blow from behind, darkness.

  65.

  ‘You bastard. You come into my life now, needing help?’

  Tony Pascoe shook his head. His eyes were rimmed with tears that didn’t fall. Whatever fantasy he had of meeting Swann wasn’t going as planned. ‘I never asked for your help. You cut into my action. Put me in this position.’

  Swann had long ago given up on learning about his father. His mother refused to tell him. There were rumours. An American sailor. A union heavy named Bert who went into politics. Plenty of others that his mother denied. As a boy working his newspaper stand, Swann looked into the faces of men in the street, hoping for a resemblance or a flash of recognition. He had fought for his stepfather, Brian, in back alleys and outside pubs, against larger and older opponents, hoping that one day his father would step out of the crowd and intervene.

  But it never happened.

  Swann and his mother were stuck with Brian, a hopeless gambler who was also a mean drunk. Swann remembered the time Pascoe had been in their kitchen, when Brian started getting surly with his mother. How Pascoe had stopped it with a few harsh words. But that was just one night, and there were thousands of others where he wasn’t around.

  Now it dawned on Swann. ‘Brian. The bashing he copped. You were out then.’

  Pascoe met his eyes, giving him the warning not to dig deeper.

  ‘What have you got to lose? What does it matter now?’

  Swann felt Marion’s hand on his shoulder. Gentle squeeze. Despite the fire in his eyes, Pascoe didn’t look good. He nodded. ‘Yeah it was me. It won’t come as any consolation, but every time I heard he knocked your mother around, I went after him. That night he was ready for me. Pulled a revolver. In the process of getting it off him, he hit his head. I didn’t mean for it to finish him off.’

  Brian had ended up in hospital in an induced coma that he never woke up from. His liver packed it in from all the booze. His kidneys followed. His heart gave out. He died. He was forty-one years old.

  ‘He wasn’t missed. You did my mother a favour.’

  Swann didn’t say it, that Pascoe had done Swann a favour as well. Swann was sixteen at the time and boiling with fantasies of killing his stepfather. He’d beaten him up aged fifteen, but that didn’t stop the drinking, the stealing off his mother, the psychological and physical abuse when Swann wasn’t around. It was a matter of time.

  ‘I’m sorry, son. For everything.’

  ‘Don’t call me that. You haven’t earned the right.’

  But the truth was that he’d never heard the word, addressed to him, the word that he’d yearned to hear. He felt it even as he pushed it away.

  There were boot-steps on the footpath. Swann caught sight of Tony McIlroy’s prison guard uniform the moment it passed along the fence-line. Without thinking Swann stood and blocked McIlroy’s view of Pascoe, waved. Marion stepped beside him until McIlroy was at the front gate, and Pascoe was out of view.

  Now was the perfect time to hand Pascoe over. McIlroy was his gaoler. As the watch commander, he’d be wearing heat for the escape. But Swann stepped off the veranda, onto the bricks. McIlroy held up a slip of paper.

  ‘Just got a call from the superintendent, found my note. You were right. Cord was Rose McCartin’s maiden name. Her first visits she showed her driver’s licence. Here’s the address you wanted. Solomon Street.’

  Swann took the sli
p of paper, thanked McIlroy and asked him to pass on thanks to the super. Didn’t mention the leak to Riley’s bikies.

  ‘I’ll be off then. Is there something else, Frank? You look worried.’

  Now was the time, but Swann let it pass. ‘Just tired. Stay safe.’

  ‘Always.’

  Every workday morning, McIlroy walked fifteen minutes to Fremantle Gaol in his uniform, as he’d done for two decades, through the same streets where plenty of his ex-inmates lived, or had family.

  A taxi turned into the block, pulled to the kerb. It was Webb, wearing chinos and a denim shirt. He paid the driver and walked toward them.

  Swann shook McIlroy’s hand and watched him leave, his khaki uniform already striped with sweat.

  Webb nodded to the slip of paper in Swann’s hand. ‘Are we on?’ he asked.

  Swann was still dressed in yesterday’s clothes. All he needed was his revolver.

  ‘Yes. We are.’

  It was a two-minute drive to the Rose Cord house on the rise of Solomon Street. The house was an odd number, which put her backyard on the western side of the street. It was coming together. The backyards on the western side of the street sloped to give a view over the prison walls. Swann parked the Brougham downhill of the house. Webb put his briefcase in the boot after removing his pistol.

  Webb had just finished talking with his Federal Police liaison. It looked like they hadn’t taken his information conveyed last night seriously. They weren’t ready to despatch a team as Swann had hoped. They didn’t want Webb to notify the locals either. When Webb suggested that he and Swann scout the premises for signs of occupation, they agreed immediately, told Webb to stay in touch. The liaison officer’s voice was tired. He’d been up all night in the station monitoring the surveillance teams spread around the city.

  Swann entered the grassed driveway. The house was an old weatherboard affair built onto limestone foundations. The paint on the weatherboards had blistered under the ferocity of the sun and some had warped and slid where the nails had rusted through. The old tin roof was rusted. The red-brick chimney was perched on a dangerous angle. The jarrah-board steps leading to the front veranda were silvered and buckled. There were a few dead pot plants beside the front door but no other signs that it was used.

  The veranda would creak loudly under foot. Swann nodded toward the side of the house where the grass drive gave onto a limestone rubble path. There was no gate separating the front yard from the back, and so a dog was unlikely. Swann led the way, stopping under the first window. He tapped his nose and Webb nodded. There was a strong smell of diesel exhaust in the morning air and no other driveways nearby. A vehicle had recently left the property. Swann continued to the back wall. He peered around the corner into the empty yard, strewn with rubbish. There were cartons filled with empty stubbies and beer-cans. Some empty bottles of Bundaberg. A punching bag hanging from an ancient blue gum and a drum-fire stuffed with jarrah fence pickets. Didn’t look to Swann like the old lady was living alone.

  It was then that they heard the voices. Two voices, both male. One of them American. Swann cocked his revolver and Webb nodded him toward the back door. Five steps from the concrete-slab pavers to the stairs. Swann assumed that the American was the gun-trader, the kid Devon Smith, but something in Webb’s eyes told him different.

  Swann went to the door and listened. Still only the two voices, in the room nearest the steps. Swann was a metre from the two men. Webb took up his position at the base of the steps. Swann peered through the crack in the back door where it met the jamb. The old screen door was warped. The American spoke.

  ‘You don’t got to do this, man. You can let me walk. I know we ain’t far from the port. I can just walk there. Those brothers won’t never know that you let me leave. Nobody will ever know.’

  The other man laughed. ‘You don’t get it, negro. We’re owed the credit for taking you out. You got to die, here, now. Get ready.’

  Webb was too distant to hear the words but his face told Swann that he recognised the accent. The American was Charles Bernier. Swann nodded to the side and Webb scooted away. Swann counted to five before he heard the loud knocking on the front door.

  ‘One word, negro, one noise – I’ll shoot you in the balls first.’

  Webb kept knocking. ‘Open up, police.’

  The Australian whispered, ‘You’re goin down into the cellar. Quiet now. Stand up.’

  Webb kept knocking. ‘Open up. Police. Or we’re coming in.’

  Swann didn’t see what happened next but Bernier burst through the back door, rolling down the steps. When his pursuer kicked the door and stepped across the threshold, Swann grabbed his ankle, the man’s momentum toppling him over. Swann was straight on his back, the revolver at his ear.

  ‘Drop it. You’re done.’

  Charles Bernier backed away. His eyes were fierce, his cuffed fists raised like a club. He got a shock when Webb sprinted round the corner, his pistol raised.

  ‘It’s alright, son. I’m American. US Navy Master-at-Arms. But you got to lie down. You’re under arrest.’

  Bernier looked ready to put down his head and charge.

  ‘Webb, no. You didn’t hear what I just heard. Call Cassidy, right away. Bring back your cuffs.’

  The skinhead beneath Swann’s knee began to struggle. Before Swann could stop him, Bernier was across the yard, kicked the man in the head, stamped on his neck, knocking him out cold.

  66.

  Swann and Webb were parked in the street beneath the shaded arms of a Moreton Bay fig. The Federal Police had given Webb a walkie-talkie as a courtesy, and it crackled between bursts of communication from the officers staked either side of Page’s restaurant and the mobile command post. The command post was stationed inside a Main Roads van. It had eyes on the Big Salty restaurant, twenty metres down the street from where Swann’s Brougham also had a clear view of the darkened glass windows. Two police officers in Main Roads uniforms were sketching out a dig site with spray-paint and witches hats. It wasn’t subtle, but the street was narrow and there was nowhere to hide. In the commandeered video store beside Page’s restaurant, a squad of TRG officers waited for the signal, armed with shotguns and tear gas. Jared Page and his two goons had entered the restaurant five minutes earlier in preparation for the handover. The Cord brothers and their offsiders were due any minute.

  Swann had called Riley from the backyard of Rose Cord’s house while they waited for Cassidy to arrive. Webb had cuffed the skinhead who wouldn’t give his name, and sat him in the dirt. Charles Bernier sat on the back steps and chain-smoked until he was sick, had to lie down in the shade of the blue gum to recover.

  It hadn’t taken much to convince Gus Riley to frame-up Jared Page, real-estate developer and social-page celebrity, which surprised Swann. By the sound of it, Page sent plenty of business Riley’s way. But he was also a competitor and, according to Riley, someone who treated the bikie outlaws like hired help. The deciding factor, however, was Swann’s threat to inform the Federal Police that the original buyers for the guns were The Nongs, and Riley in particular. Swann didn’t know this for sure – it was a gamble, but Swann meant every word of it, and Riley went very quiet. When he spoke again, his voice was even. Riley’s only concern was that if he asked Page to act as intermediary in the handover of the stolen M16s, then he’d cop the suspicion of being the informer. Swann assured Riley that the suspicion could be explained away. It would be simple to claim that the Federal Police already had eyes on the Cord brothers, and had followed them to the restaurant.

  Riley’s only caveat on the arrangement, and one which confirmed his involvement in the weapons deal, was the matter of fifteen thousand in cash that he said the Cords had stolen. Swann thought about that, before suggesting to Riley that he say the money was payment for Page’s service. Swann was relying on Jared Page’s ego, assuming that he’d agree to act as intermediary and peacemaker. If Page took the money then he wouldn’t be able to say, later in court, tha
t he intended to turn the weapons over to the authorities, that he was doing a public service. It was the price of staying off the Feds’ radar, Swann told Riley, and he took it on the chin.

  When Swann called back five minutes later, Riley told him that it was on for midday at Page’s restaurant. He was expecting a call from the Cord brothers and would relay the same news to them. Swann passed the information to Webb, who instructed the Federal Police. Page’s restaurant didn’t ordinarily open until evening, and this gave the police time to get inside the restaurant via a back door and wire it with cameras and sound.

  As soon as Swann hung up the call to Riley, Cassidy arrived at Rose Cord’s home in his white Commodore. The skinhead immediately began complaining, repeating that the cuffs should be on Bernier and that he was a hero who’d caught Bernier trying to steal food from the kitchen. Webb had to restrain Bernier from repeating his assault.

  Webb held Bernier back until the skinhead finished his story.

  ‘Man,’ said Bernier. ‘That’s bullshit. They had me locked in the damn cellar under there. You can go check it out your own selves. There’s a dead old woman down there too. Been there so long she looks like some kinda mummy. They call her Auntie Rose.’

  Swann exchanged a glance with Webb, caught by the skinhead, who tried to stand. ‘I didn’t have nothin to do with that.’

  ‘Who did then, son?’ Swann asked.

  The skinhead spat and sat back down, but something changed in his eyes. Swann knew that look. He recognised it from all the interrogation rooms he’d worked over the years – the skinhead weighing up whether it was worth staying silent, a doubt that Cassidy would certainly exploit.