River of Salt

by Warner, Dave;

  The door opened and Mrs Waters strode out briskly, either because she had nothing to fear or the opposite. Nobody else had arrived so the nurse looked at her and smiled through her carefully shaded not-too-red lipstick.

  ‘Miss Norris.’

  The reaction had been as good as he might have hoped for in his wildest dreams. People in the street who normally averted their eyes when he passed stopped to say ‘well done’. Rob Parker had had a quiet word to him to assure him he was a ‘lock’ for membership of the club. Of course it hadn’t just happened by itself, all this recognition. He’d been forced to spread the word that he was the one who had acted swiftly upon certain ‘discrepancies’ and loose ends such as a car running into a rubbish bin near the murder scene that otherwise might have gone unnoticed. The local paper lapped it up: uniform cop with breakthrough. They couldn’t say too much because the case was yet to come to trial. Vernon and Apollonia were not impressed. Fuck them, their boss was. He’d personally called to congratulate him on some ‘sharp’ police work. And because Crane hadn’t yet come to trial and the matter could be easily dropped, Vernon and Apollonia didn’t have as much egg on their face as they might have, so while they clearly resented him inserting himself into the case, in the long run they still got to mark a kill on their job sheets. The Clarke kid was, as expected, pleading not guilty. Winston Clarke was playing it cagey. By now he would have realised that the film can was missing but he’d not reported it stolen. He was probably hoping like hell it was in another country but he must have harboured some suspicions about its disappearance.

  Nalder walked up the steps and into the station, hitching his pants at the back where they tended to slip. His gut had been expanding with the free pies the bakery was throwing his way. A bald man in a dark suit was sitting on the wooden bench with a briefcase at his feet. As Nalder entered, Denham signalled him from behind the counter for a word. When Nalder leaned in, he whispered, ‘Man named Oberon. Says he wants information on the two dead guys up at Cockatoo Ridge.’

  Now Nalder looked over at Oberon. He never liked men in suits with briefcases.

  Oberon got to his feet, put out a hand. ‘Timothy Oberon. I’m representing the estate of Harold Wakelin.’

  There you go, a lawyer. As usual his gut instinct had proven correct. He pointed at his office. ‘Like to come through.’

  Oberon followed. They entered the office and Nalder took his chair behind his desk. Padded green leather for his arse with studs around the perimeter but it didn’t swing. Oberon helped himself to the wooden dining room chair that waited off to the side for just such interviews.

  ‘Where are you from, Mr Oberon?’

  ‘Mathews, Snell—’

  ‘No, not what firm, I mean what town?’

  The solicitor pulled up. ‘Brisbane. Mr Wakelin was Brisbane-based for most of his life.’

  ‘In Boggo Road, from what I recall.’ Nalder made sure the solicitor enjoyed his smirk.

  ‘He made some mistakes.’

  ‘Being friendly with Schneider his biggest.’

  ‘Did you ever hear of any motivation for the killing?’

  ‘Crooks don’t need motivation. They fall out, they tend to harm or kill one another.’

  ‘So you never made any enquiry?’

  ‘Open and shut case, Mr Oberon. My door was open to you but it will be shut soon. Is there a point?’

  ‘Sorry, Sergeant, it’s just legal rigmarole. Wakelin had a life-insurance policy and for his estate to collect we need to make sure there was no suggestion he killed himself.’

  Nalder could smell bullshit. But he smiled all the same. ‘The blast came from where Schneider was found sitting. Then Schneider blew his brains out.’

  ‘That usual for it to happen like that? The killer not even moving after he’s fired?’

  ‘Nothing’s usual. Maybe they were pooftas. That happens a lot in prison, bum-buddies. They get out, one of them wants to carry on like before but the other one wasn’t really queer, just needed to get his end away. Schneider’s heart is broken so he kills Wakelin, turns the gun on himself. Or, they got pissed and they started to argue about who had gone to the fridge the last time to get the beer. That’s all you need. Now if there’s nothing else?’

  Oberon stood and extended his hand. ‘No, thank you very much for your time, Sergeant.’

  There was as much chance of Wakelin having a life-insurance policy as Nalder singing soprano. He pulled the heavy phone towards him and dialled Brisbane. An old navy mate of his, Bull Thompson, worked up there in juvenile delinquency.

  Bull himself answered.

  ‘How you doing, you old bastard?’ Bull asked. They swapped stories for a minute. Despite his new-found popularity, Nalder didn’t want to rack up interstate phone call costs.

  ‘Listen, you heard of a solicitor named Oberon.’

  Bull went quiet. ‘Tim Oberon. I sure have. He’s Charlie Hennessy’s fixer.’

  The Yank, of course, had never heard of Charlie Hennessy. They were meeting at the old spot near the river. Nalder was pleased to see parrots out and about. The farmers couldn’t stand them, would take pot shots with their .22s but they always cheered him up, reminded him of when he was a kid and kept a little exercise book with the names of every bird he’d seen.

  ‘Charlie Hennessy is the biggest bookie in Brissy and from all reports a deadset cunt. He’s got a monopoly of extortion in the Valley up there and my mate tells me he’s also set up shop on the Gold Coast, a bit of prostitution but mostly strongarm stuff. I suppose he has those blokes on call to collect from late payers anyway, so he figures he might as well make use of them.’

  The Yank didn’t seem to react but Nalder knew he was thinking under that pretty face. He spelled it out.

  ‘You got lucky with those two taking care of one another. They’ll send somebody else.’

  ‘You’re not going to do anything about it?’

  Truth was, he found himself on what they called the horns of a dilemma. He fucking would not countenance Queenslanders meddling here but he did not want to draw any attention to his neck of the woods. He tried to make Saunders understand.

  ‘Obviously these wankers worked for Hennessy who wants to push into northern New South Wales. That visit was all about finding out if there was competition, see if they’d been offed by some other crew from say, Sydney.’

  ‘What would have happened then if they had?’

  ‘I don’t fucking know, and I didn’t want to find out. But here’s the problem. If I tell Hennessy to fuck off without alerting the department, he will at best, offer me money. If I take the money, I am vulnerable. I lose control. On the other hand, if I tell the department about Hennessy, some crooked cop with a link to Sydney’s equivalent of Hennessy will spill the beans, and they’ll decide to take over from Hennessy.’

  ‘You’re saying one way or the other, I’m going to get fucked over.’

  ‘It’s possible some pressure might make Hennessy bypass Coral Shoals. I can make it unpleasant for his people: traffic fines, other infractions. He might decide it’s cheaper than paying me off or risking me going to his competition if he tries to heavy me. But only a real prosecution will get him out of here and that would take somebody — a pub or restaurant owner for example — to testify. You feel like doing that?’

  As he expected, the Yank said nothing.

  ‘I didn’t think so. I thought you should know.’

  He could see the Yank was thinking things through. In the end he’d probably pay up. That’s what he’d do if he was in his position. Saunders parked whatever he was thinking.

  ‘What’s the latest on the Thomas Clarke trial?’

  ‘It’s probably still a month away. He’s pleading not guilty, no surprise. He now claims that just as he’d been about to turn into the Ocean View Hotel, a van was turning out.’

  ‘He’s going to say somebody else must have done it.’

  ‘Exactly. Something else I learned from my new mate the Assist
ant Commissioner. The forensic people found three fingerprints from a hand on the inside roof of the car.’

  He demonstrated the position of the hand: fingers pointing back like you would carrying a tray.

  ‘Clarke’s?’

  ‘No. That’s the pity. They’re not Clarke’s, or his old man’s, and not Crane’s. They’re not in the system. How do you think they got there?’

  He saw Saunders had already thought that through.

  ‘I’d say somebody was sitting on the seat, likely while Stokes was straddling him. He put his hand up.’

  ‘You should be a cop. That’s what I reckon too. Of course they could be months old but Clarke’s people are bound to bring that up, say they’re the killer’s. They’ll raise your mate the beach bum as a suspect again.’

  ‘Did they find those same prints at the crime scene?’

  ‘No they didn’t. Nor Clarke’s, not at the scene or on the murder weapon, which was wiped down with a pillowslip. There are other unidentified prints around the room but who knows who was in there the last few months. We’ll say he wiped his prints to support his story, he’ll say the opposite. The jury will decide who to believe.’

  After what Nalder told him, Blake was brushed with a sense of unease, like when you’re in the ghost train at the fair and somebody tickles you with a feather in the dark. Everything had been starting to go well again. The Surf Shack was getting stronger each week. The band was playing a whole lot better. Panza knew about some recording studio in Sydney. Blake had been thinking they could actually cut a record. What a hoot that would be. But from what Nalder said, it could all be turning to shit again. This bookie from up north would send his guys. Blake couldn’t complain, couldn’t take it to court. Questions would be asked about where he was born. How he got here. He couldn’t risk that.

  And the Ocean View thing still didn’t sit well with him. The kid probably did it. But what if he hadn’t? What if he was just like Crane, in the wrong place at the wrong time? Crane saw somebody in the car fucking Val Stokes but if the fingerprints were from that occasion then it wasn’t Thomas Clarke. Whoever it had been could be the killer.

  He had the board in the back so he drove to the beach and paddled out. The swell was up, the waves had bite. He wondered about Mindy and Mike, where they were now, if Mindy had gone home to her mom in Camden or somewhere to tell her about her vacation. Imagined them drinking root beer and then Mindy deciding to show Mike the town, bumping into Trixie. ‘Hey, you remember Jimmy’s kid brother I was sweet on? I found him in Australia.’

  He felt the power of the sea behind him, timed his paddle, jumped on the board, stood. You might as well try and surf against the muscle of the ocean as try and control your fate in this world. It was impossible, no matter how much you told yourself it wasn’t. The only thing that you had going for you, the only thing, was those people who loved you or tried to protect you. He’d given Jimmy up because he told himself he had no choice but maybe you couldn’t alter the course of fate anyway, you were doomed to just repeat your mistakes again and again.

  Doreen’s car was not in her driveway. He’d really wanted to see her, to feel real. She’d been asking him to come around and watch television but television wasn’t his thing. The bad guys were never like the guys he knew back in Philly, who weren’t plain bad but either fuck-ups who did bad things or businessmen who punished you for your mistakes just as they rewarded you for victories. Okay, maybe Peste was the exception. He was just evil. TV cops were always squeaky clean, which was bullshit. He was guessing, even though he hadn’t fought in the war, that it was a similar thing with the Germans: they weren’t any worse than us. He bet they were just like the Jersey Mob trying to grab some of your territory. Sure there was stuff with the Jews but he doubted that was your average German soldier. That was Hitler. People always thought they wouldn’t make the same mistake, they would be more pure, they would be all moral and say ‘I refuse to do it’. But he’d seen firsthand what happened when you thought you could say that to somebody more powerful. That guy ‘Snake-Eyes’, for instance. They called him that on account of he always bet against the shooter in any craps game. He was a standover guy for Repacholi. Repacholi was trying to bully some longshoremen into working for less money which, as a boss, was naturally his job. But an Irish fellow named Brennan welded them all together. Brennan wouldn’t take a bribe for himself so Snake-Eyes was told to teach him a lesson but Snake-Eyes’ old man and uncles had been longshoremen and he said, ‘Not this guy. He’s just trying to put food on the table. Sorry, boss, no.’

  Blake heard about this from Jimmy and Vincent who were there at the time. How Repacholi looked at Peste. He seized Snake-Eyes and right then and there he chopped off the three middle fingers of each hand. That was the boss’s idea of wit: the two fingers corresponded to snake eyes on the dice. They made sure Blake understood, so that when Repacholi called him over to his parking-garage basement and told him to clip Brennan, he did not even think of refusing. His tool of trade was a gun and Peste, who always carried, was standing right behind him. Blake did not want to do it. He wanted to say ‘I refuse’. But the wave had already decided for him, was lifting him up, forcing him in the direction it wanted. The job itself might have presented no problems if Blake had been prepared to shoot Brennan in front of his kids. It could have been literally a walk in the park, but this was something Blake would not countenance, and so he’d been forced to wait. He finally shot Brennan during the seventh innings stretch of a Phillies v Cubs game when Brennan was coming back to his seat with a hot-dog. Used the smallest pistol he could find, a little two-shot, walked right up behind Brennan, kept walking when everybody else thought the guy with the hot-dog had stumbled or maybe had a heart attack. So, getting back to the German soldiers, he understood why they might have done what they did. All the same, he was disappointed to miss Doreen. It was one of those days when he could have done with her just being there.

  It was definitely her. Even though it was a couple of months since she’d seen her, she recognised the awkward gait, the fair complexion that suggested milky cups of tea and shortbread somewhere back in the family line. She was attempting to arbitrate over some dispute between siblings in a poorly appointed playground: one rusting slide and two swings that had seen better days. The ward sister at the hospital had said everything had gone well with the birth. The pram wherein the new arrival must be was in arm’s length of Peg. The sister had given Doreen the address, a street of weatherboards in a low section of town where the water stayed in deep pools after downpours. Doreen had walked through abandoned tricycles and upturned toys to the front door but before she knocked the neighbour, who was watering her roses, had told her to try the park. So here she was. There were a couple of pods of mothers and children but nobody in the immediate vicinity. This is the other side of the shopping aisle, she thought with a pang, the one where mothers buy White Wings mix and family size Weeties. The terrain here was miniature sandwiches with the corners cut off, coloured pencils, Disney comics, vaccinations, burping, bunny-rugs. She got out of the car and started over, was almost there when Peg turned and spied her.

  ‘Hello,’ Peg said, surprised, seemingly pleased. Doreen handed over the little fluffy toy chicken she’d bought at the florist.

  ‘For you.’

  Peg was flabbergasted but accepted it like she had the cigarette packet that time.

  ‘Is this her? Or him?’ Doreen was already on her way to peer into the pram.

  ‘Her. Yvonne.’

  Visible, just a head with a halo of thick black hair. She looked perfect.

  ‘She’s beautiful.’

  ‘And then they grow up.’ Peg indicated the other two, a boy and girl probably around five and three, they were yelling at each other because each wanted the same swing.

  ‘James, let your sister go first.’

  ‘She went first last time.’

  ‘Do what you’re told or I’ll let your father know.’

  Th
at did the trick. Doreen said, ‘I’m hoping you can help me. I’m pregnant.’

  As she tidied up, out of the corner of her eye she watched the test pattern on the TV. She imagined what it would be like: tidying up ceaselessly, putting away toys strewn around the house. Then she put on the kettle and sat in her favourite armchair and watched the kids shows — Superman, Crusader Rabbit, The Mickey Mouse Club. She longed for those days when you felt you could be whatever you wanted: a princess, a cowgirl. Night dropped like a careless word in a tense conversation. You wanted to push it back into your mouth but you couldn’t, time had moved on. Unlike the last few weeks when her appetite had run rampant, tonight it couldn’t be hauled out of bed. She forced herself to heat a tin of spaghetti and ate it with toast. The news came on. She did her dishes, pulled out the ironing board and set to work on her small pile of clothes. She ironed dresses she’d bought in the city, imagined they were party frocks. There was no Maverick tonight but Perry Mason was on. Perry was smart and invariably left the prosecution guy with egg on his face. She felt sorry for that guy: always outsmarted. The advertisements were split in two for men and women. For women, soaps you should buy for the family, soap powder you should buy to wash the family clothes, washing-up liquid to clean the family dishes and what cleaning spray you should use for your bench. The mothers all had bobs and pleasant faces. The cigarette and car ads showed men in suits being admired by women who looked nothing like the women obsessed with cleaning but who, given enough time, soon would.