Zero at the bone, p.12
Zero at the Bone, page 12
Percy Fucking Dickson.
Swann put it out of his mind. Drew comfort instead from the coolness of the walls, breathed deeply to calm himself. He had to save his strength. He had to remain awake. Refuse all food and drink, as potentially drugged. He needed to be ready to explode. Make as much noise as possible, from his cell at the end of the row. Use deadly force. If he could kill one of them, then suicide was not an explanation. If he could kill one of them, they would kill him too, but questions would be asked. What were they doing in his cell, in the early hours . . .
Two sets of steps approaching. A pair of leather-soled shoes, the other police-issue boots, the heavy clump and squeak on the painted cement floor familiar to him, after all these years. One detective and one uniformed?
Swann pulled himself onto his feet, the dizziness overwhelming him, had to put a hand on the wall.
Two would not be enough, he would make sure of that.
The iron teardrop over the judas hole turned, revealed a blue gaze that stared, unblinking. Around the judas hole someone had drawn a cock, a pair of saggy balls. The unblinking blue eye looked out through the eye of the cock, the old crim’s way of mocking a screw’s gaze. Swann looked back, waited, heard the keys at the sergeant’s belt, the tumblers in the lock. He took the stance, bare hands raised before him, ready to rush the door, get inside the baton blows, go for the eyes, the throat, the neck.
The heavy door swung back. He heard the sergeant’s boots creak. A murmur. Cartoonish aftershave amidst the sour smells. Then the sergeant’s boots retreating down the row, the rising pitch of the beseechers at him, pleas for cigarettes, blankets, a human voice, to know that they hadn’t been forgotten.
Minister of Police Terry Sullivan entered the cell with his hands raised, a wrinkle in his nose at the smell, the sight of Swann’s bloodied face, spattered shirt, his balled fists.
‘No need for that, Frank. I heard you were here. Not my doing, of course. Take a seat. Cigarette?’
The cell door remained open, and Swann listened for footsteps.
‘There’ll be nobody joining our party, Frank. It’s you and me, for now. Depending on how we get along.’
Swann took the offered cigarette and leaned into the flame, the roll of dizziness making him stagger, saw the look of exhaustion on Sullivan’s face.
‘Not sleeping well, Sullivan? Polls crook again?’
‘No need for that.’
‘Come to rub it in? Express your concern? Right a wrong?’
‘You don’t look too good, Frank, if you don’t mind me saying. We’ve had our differences in the past . . .’
Swann grunted, tried not to move his head. Sullivan’s face dissolved in kaleidoscope, cigarette smoke, duplicates and triplicates of the smug eyes and grim smile, jug ears fanning out like a cut deck of cards.
‘Call my wife. Let her know I’m here.’
‘Can’t do that, Frank. But I can go one better. I can let you out. Sit down, you’re about to chunder.’
Swann sat, and Sullivan stood, looked at his watch.
‘Hogan know you’re here?’
Sullivan shook his head. The Police Minister had helped run Swann out of the force, had signed off on the paperwork, had spoken against him at the Royal Commission.
‘I’ve got a few concerns with our Detective Inspector Hogan. Let me be frank, Frank. I’m beginning to suspect that Ben isn’t a team player. That he’s taking things for granted. His promotion, for example. But leaving that aside, I wanted to make you an offer. You see, Ben’s gone into the mining game, and I’m hearing things . . .’
Swann could see Sullivan reading him, looking for cues.
‘What’s that got to do with me?’
‘You’ve offended him, for a start. And I’m in a position to help —’
‘I don’t know anything about Hogan’s business.’
‘Perhaps not. Let me fill you in.’
Sullivan steepled his fingers beneath his nose, an odd gesture that implied thoughtfulness, an attitude of prayer. But his eyes were all rat cunning, and resentment.
‘It’s not only Hogan that I’m concerned about. His mining outfit’s called Rosa Gold. Leo Marrone and Tommaso Adamo are involved, Bernie Isaacs too, a couple of others.’
‘You’re on the outside. They reckon you’re gone at the next election, not worth including. You want in.’
Sullivan dropped his hands, examined his palms, scuffed a thumb over fingernails. Looked Swann in the eye.
‘The fire yesterday, all Tommaso’s property. I’ve heard that there were witnesses. One in particular, who’s come forward. Some lezzo, a self-proclaimed anarchist. Civic-minded enough to call the Premier’s office. Said she wouldn’t go to the police. Wouldn’t leave her name, but claimed she had photographs. I want you to get me those photographs, or something else I can use. I’ve also heard that Bernie Isaacs is up to his old tricks, fixing races. Take a look at him too. Hard evidence only.’
‘Hogan?’
‘Leave Hogan to me. But make no mistake. You don’t get me something good on Isaacs or Adamo, and you’re back here. You’re the only man I can use who won’t tip off Hogan. I don’t want Adamo to know either. I want it to be a surprise.’
Sullivan stood back and waved Swann to the open door. ‘You go first. I’ll follow in a few minutes. It’s all arranged. You’re on bail, judge’s orders. Walk out and don’t look back. And not a fucking word, to anyone. Your bail can be revoked, just like that.’ He snapped his fingers.
Swann climbed to his feet, felt the nausea rise into his throat. He stepped towards the open door, felt his feet land, cushioned, like walking in a dream. Took another step, and then another.
The desk sergeant wouldn’t make eye contact with him, busying himself with paperwork. Swann walked out of the main doors of the station, the curved walls of Central looming behind him like a satellite dish tuned to the suburbs. The light and heat nearly brought him to his knees. He gripped the railings, avoiding the eyes of the coppers entering the station, the blood across his shirt, drying on his face. There were bore-water taps on the foreshore at Langley Park. He needed to get cleaned up before he called Marion.
‘Swann!’
He glanced up and saw Jennifer Henderson, sunglasses on, looking cool despite the heat. She stood beside her Karmann Ghia, no expression on her face as Swann lurched towards her.
21
Peter Henning drew a cloth across the sweating flank of the horse and spread the fine auburn hair between finger and thumb, inserting the needle into the vein. The mare smelt odd, was sweating something noxious. Isaacs stood behind him, too close as usual, observing the process, silent and smug. Another mid-week meeting, another race with minimal prize money, but Dandy Mandy had come in by three lengths in a 1200 sprint, at twenty to one, backed in from sixty to one.
Between races, Henning had watched as two young men and a young woman, who Henning knew was Isaacs’ daughter, moved from bookie to bookie laying bets of five hundred dollars on the nose. Unlike the other stewards and sundry officials, Henning hadn’t watched the race from the trackside box. Instead, he had stayed in the concourse and watched the faces of the bookies when Dandy Mandy came in. They didn’t look happy. Had sworn and muttered and made eyes to one another, and especially at Ron Bevans, the bookie most closely associated with Isaacs. Bevans merely shook his head, pretending to be as badly done as the rest of them, but Henning had been watching. No bets on Dandy Mandy had been placed with Bevans.
Since yesterday’s incident with Rum Punch, Henning had been gathering intelligence on Isaacs. From one of the stewards, Henning had heard that the payout insurance on Rum Punch was likely to be in the order of fifty thousand dollars. Now he knew why Isaacs had knobbled his own gelding. He’d wanted the insurance, although Henning didn’t know why. Rum Punch was down to race in the big winter carnivals on the wet tracks that his father, Sir Keith, was renowned for dominating.
It didn’t make sense. Henning had demanded that the stewards question Isaac’s helpers, who must have seen what Isaacs had done with the length of four-by-two. But they had claimed ignorance. Allegedly, Rum Punch had slipped while being loaded onto the float. And Isaacs had laughed in their faces. Worse still, the swabs that Henning had taken from Rum Punch had come back from the lab negative.
Which was impossible. The horse had clearly been doped.
Now here was Isaacs again, breathing down his neck. Beer breath and stale sweat, watching as Henning corked the syringe and placed it carefully into a plastic specimen bag, stowed it away in his Gladstone.
Henning wasn’t going to engage with Isaacs, not if he could help it. He had ignored the sarcastic comments and intimidation while Isaacs followed him around. A horse’s trainer had the right to be present during the after-race examination, so Henning couldn’t ask Isaacs to leave. But he would have the last laugh. Henning was certain that Dandy Mandy had also been doped. All the signs were there. Distress. Foaming spittle. That peculiar chemical smell.
Henning had asked permission from no less an authority than Sir Irvine Lee-Hastings, the head of the Western Australian racing federation, to deliver the swabs in person to the laboratory and then to personally oversee the testing process.
Henning glanced at Isaacs and was pleased to see that his silence was having the desired effect. Isaacs was fuming. Hands on hips. Gut drawn in. Drawing himself up to his full height. Black eyes enraged.
Henning smiled politely. ‘Take her away. I’m done with her.’
Isaacs waved at one of his minions. Watched Henning fix the steel clasp of his Gladstone bag, clicking shut. Take up the bag and his old trilby and head for the door.
Outside it was clear and warm. Most of the crowds were still on the terraces. The final race was under way. Shouts and cheers came from the nearest stand, the drone of the caller rising in pitch and volume. The macadam of the car park was still wet from the earlier rain, and Henning could smell the algae from the nearby river. The laboratory was in the city, and if he hurried he would make it before closing. He looked at his watch to confirm that he had time, removed his sunglasses from his jacket pocket and stopped in his tracks.
The reserved car bay where he parked his Rover was empty. Dry car shape where it had rained, only half an hour ago. He turned as he heard the footsteps and took the blow of the tyre iron on his face, dropped like a stone. Bitumen gravel, inches from his eyes. Busy ants. One of his teeth, a spray of blood. Darkness.
22
‘You’ve done this before.’
Jennifer Henderson’s mouth was by Swann’s ear, so close he could smell the gin on her breath, juniper hot. ‘I was a nurse in Vietnam, based in Vung Tau. It’s where I met Max.’ Her voice airy, childlike. Spaced out.
‘One of your patients?’
‘Max? More than once. I was a shy little thing, but he was injured often. Not always in the line of duty. He was a wild one, after a few drinks.’
Having washed the abrasions made by the soles of Hogan’s boots, she applied iodine salve and butterflied plasters to the deeper gashes around Swann’s nose and forehead. They were in one of the Hendersons’ investment properties, a ground-floor flat on Broome Street, Cottesloe, all linoleum floors and Formica bench tops, the standard Westinghouse oven. Cheap bamboo blinds and beige-painted walls. Idiot box in a steel frame bolted into the wall. The Hendersons owned the block of eight.
Swann sat quietly on the stool. He was still dizzy. His jarred neck sent flares into his head. He heard Jennifer open the lid of the washing machine. She’d taken off his shirt and run it through a short cycle. Now she hung it in the sunshine and he heard the Hill’s hoist creak as the shirt caught the wind. In direct sun it would soon dry. The bloodstains wouldn’t be totally removed, she told him, but she could lend him one of Max’s shirts.
Swann was startled by the touch of her hand on his bare shoulder. She pushed a glass of whisky into his fingers, held one of her own. Obviously the gin was finished. She sat on the stool opposite him and smiled wistfully.
When Swann was tailing the Commodore tailing her, Jennifer had seen the flashing lights and then the unmarked sedans pull him over. She’d circled back and watched his arrest and followed them into town. She hadn’t asked him why he’d been bashed, but apologised for not bailing him out, saying she was unsure because Swann said they shouldn’t be seen together.
At first, Swann appreciated her distance, working the angles in his head. He was going to have to keep Sullivan buttered up if he wanted to stay out of prison. Sullivan didn’t know about Jennifer and her connection to Rosa Gold – if he had, he would have used it as further leverage. Sullivan wanted dirt on the Rosa Gold directors and didn’t care how he got it. Hiring Swann was both a clear indication of the man’s waning influence and a cynical move. He could burn Swann after he was no longer useful, and nobody would care.
Swann finished his whisky and rolled his neck, felt a wave of nausea break over him. He put his hand over his glass as Jennifer splashed another finger into her tumbler. That pale light in her eyes, coming from a great distance, a place of comfort that no longer existed.
Swann sat forward. ‘The man who did this to me was settling an old score. It has nothing to do with Rosa Gold. But you were being followed. He looked like a professional.’
Whatever tender fantasy she’d been enjoying patching him up, reminding her of tending to Max, perhaps – it was gone. She bit her lip to stop it trembling. ‘The car you say was following me. Did you get a look at the driver?’
‘He’s not a local. But I lost him.’
‘And he must have lost me, which I’m grateful for. I couldn’t have come here otherwise. I feel safe, for the first time since . . .’
She didn’t finish the sentence. Her eyes turned inwards, the hard focus of whatever bad memory blocking everything out.
‘That look in your eye,’ he asked her. ‘It happens often.’
He imagined she would describe the trauma of finding her husband dead in the backyard. Or the sight of her home, trashed and violated. Or the memory of being a nurse in a war zone.
She would finally say it and they would talk it out. He would listen. He would tell her that she needed to leave, forget Rosa Gold – the money, the principle of the thing – it wasn’t worth dying over.
‘You really want to know? It’s the first time I’ve felt safe since . . . I met you.’
She laughed, watched his reaction, amused and self-conscious, a glint of mischief, the perfect triangles of her incisors when she smiled, that gap between her front teeth.
‘I don’t follow.’
‘I’m just saying I trust you, Frank Swann. It’s a compliment.’
‘Now that I’m laid low.’
‘Perhaps. Or now that I’ve made the first move . . .’
‘The first move?’
‘. . . away from my home.’
‘Start of a new life.’
‘You have a bad concussion – I can see it in your eyes. A bath, then sleep.’
She wasn’t in her right mind. She was drunk. He’d talk to her when she was sober. Tell her what she needed to hear.
Swann got to his feet, knees wobbling, head spinning. He felt like throwing up. Immediately she was over, a hand supporting his bicep. ‘Or perhaps you’d like me to call your wife. Have her pick you up.’
It was a statement, no genuineness in it, knowing that he’d refuse.
There was nothing going on, but it didn’t feel like that.
Just like last time.
‘Thanks for patching me up. But I need to visit a friend of mine. About another matter.’
She let him go, as if stung.
Swann’s injuries weren’t out of place amongst the battered and broken in the public wards of Royal Perth Hospital, where he’d finally tracked down Percy Dickson, admitted under an alias. Dickson had been gone over with a ballpein hammer, just like Dennis Gould. The same shattered kneecap and ankle, on the same leg. The other unharmed, for later if need be.
Swann stood at the foot of Dickson’s bed. Percy didn’t try to speak. He made no mention of Swann’s own black eyes and broken nose, the visible bootprint on his forehead, lacquered with iodine salve. Percy was an old soldier and storing it up. He was in bad pain. His entire leg was in a cast. His eyes were small and sunk into his head.
The shock of what had happened to Dickson could kill, let alone the fear that worse was to come, the anger at knowing his attackers would get away with it. Through gritted teeth, Percy described the two men in balaclavas who surprised him at his front door, coerced him with a pistol to his temple, tied him down and worked him over. He’d given them nothing more than they already knew, and so they’d shattered his kneecap, then his ankle. They were already aware that the stolen jewels were back in the hands of their owners. One of the jewellers, out of ignorance and against Dickson’s explicit instructions, had mentioned it to members of the Robbers Squad.
Percy claimed that he’d told the thugs nothing, but Swann knew this wasn’t true. Otherwise, how had Hogan made the connection with him so quickly? Or learned that it was Swann who’d brought the bikies into it? These were conclusions that Swann kept to himself. There was no point making Percy look at what he’d done, which was to put Swann right in it.
There could be no walking away now. Hogan’s intention was to have Swann killed in the lockup, of that he could be sure. If Swann didn’t stay one step ahead of him, keep Sullivan happy, that was where he was headed. By now Hogan would know that Swann was free, and that Sullivan had ordered his release. He would put two and two in the hat. Sullivan could delay Hogan’s promotion, but only so long as he remained Minister. There was talk of an election within the year, and a landslide win to the younger Labor team. In the meantime, Hogan wouldn’t defy Sullivan and kill Swann in the open, although the chances were good that he’d have a warrant out for Swann’s arrest, hedging his bets. But Hogan could easily have Swann killed by an Adamo stooge, then control the flawed investigation into his murder. Neither Adamo nor Marrone would hesitate if they knew Swann was snooping around Rosa Gold.
