The casino, p.23
The Casino, page 23
‘I’m in. Jesus Vince, what happened to you in that hospital?’
‘I found God.’
‘Are you joking?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe.’
‘Okay, I gotta go. Drive safe. I’ve driven that way a hundred times and there are kangaroos on the road.’
‘We’ll be careful. Talk soon.’
He hangs up.
Vince knows he sounded confident, but deep, deep down, there’s already an itch. He understands the pain brewing. There will be bottle shops between here and where they’re going. Fifty, at least. The thought of driving all night, passing each one, makes him anxious.
•
Hours in, only minutes before midnight, Ewan turns the car radio down and says, ‘I should probably tell you something. If I don’t pull this off, Colleen’s going to come after me.’
They’re out in the back roads.
Regional Australia.
Empty and jet black, except for the headlights and roadside reflectors.
Vince yawns. ‘Mate, the way this is shaping up, I think we’re all in strife if it doesn’t come together. Lana, you, me. The lot of us.’
‘She had pictures,’ Ewan says. ‘Pictures of what this guy has been doing to people.’
They keep driving.
Ewan rubs his eyes. ‘There’s something else, but I want you to promise me that you’ll keep me clear of it.’
‘I’m listening.’
‘I’ve seen the guy.’
‘Who?’
‘Anton. At least, I think it was him. I was there the night of the bombing. So was Beth. I’d been trying to find Herb all day and I got a call at the Saturn, giving me the Nobby Beach address. The beach was crawling with cops, but Beth knew a spot where I could take a look, up in that weird amusement park on the hill. After the blast, I had a bit of a dust-up with someone and I reckon it was Anton.’
‘Would you recognise him again if you saw him?’
‘I’d say so. But no blowback, alright?’
‘You should have called it in.’
‘Yeah, no shit. But you know how it is.’
Vince knows.
He’s in II. He knows better than most.
No one can trust a Queensland cop.
PART ELEVEN
SHOTS FIRED: POLICE AMBUSHED IN TWEED HEADS
BY ANGELA OWENS
THE GOLD COAST BULLETIN, 1 JUNE 1986
WHAT BEGAN AS routine surveillance turned into a shootout yesterday as a Gold Coast policewoman was ambushed on a quiet Fingal Head street. While the exact nature of the incident is undisclosed, Queensland Police are seeking the whereabouts of two people: Martin Watts, 42, of Elanora, and Victorian restaurateur, Elizabeth Grant, 36. Watts is reportedly sporting distinctive facial bandaging and may be armed.
The incident in question occurred at around 11 am on a suburban street, where witnesses reported hearing multiple shots. There is a possibility that the two escapees are now at sea or moored somewhere along the Queensland coast. Residents are advised to report any suspicious activity to the Broadbeach police station.
DEPUTY POLICE COMMISSIONER REFUTES OPPOSITION MINISTER
BY PHIL RICHARDS
THE COURIER MAIL, 1 JUNE 1986
DEPUTY POLICE COMMISSIONER Arthur Sorenson yesterday dismissed claims made by the Shadow Minister for Police that ongoing unrest in Brisbane and the Gold Coast is linked to widespread police corruption. Speaking at a press conference in Brisbane, Mr Sorenson defended the beleaguered police force, citing a high number of high-profile cases as having drained resources, prompting him to make a stark request of Treasury. ‘What we need is fewer accusations and more budget. We need more recruits and better equipment, and we need it right now. The idea that my own men are responsible for months of mounting violence is preposterous and offensive in the extreme. The shadow minister should know better. My men, and the union that represents them, will keep these comments in mind come the next election.’
The minister’s claims, made in Parliament last Tuesday, were made in response to a steep statewide rise in crime, as reported by this paper. Since the start of the year, the Queensland people have witnessed unprecedented death and mayhem, much of it involving police: earlier in the year, there was the unsolved shootings of Sergeant Ray Blintiff and Robert Hearst, the sudden heart attack of Blintiff’s branch leader, Barry Caller, followed quickly by the bombing of police on Nobby Beach (four deaths in total). Since then, almost a dozen other people have died violently in what many consider to be organised crime–related killings.
CHAPTER 68
CHARLIE LEANS BACK IN his chair and plops the newspaper down on the kitchen table beside the remnants of his morning Weet-Bix. He taps a particular story, something they’re running alongside a sizeable photo of the Deputy Commissioner, Arthur Sorenson. ‘Can’t believe we both work for gangsters.’
Lana is in her dressing-gown scrambling eggs. She steps away from the stove, glances at the paper and gives Charlie a peck on the lips. ‘I can.’
‘Do you know what happened to these Brisbane blokes? Do people talk about it at work?’
‘Who?’
Charlie looks at the paper. He reads out the names of all the dead policemen. This is unusual for Charlie. He usually isn’t much for talking about work.
‘Nah, that’s Brisbane business. No one really says much,’ Lana tells him. She adds salt to the frying pan.
In truth, she has heard snippets of gossip. Back on the bombing case, there was that young policewoman down from Brisbane. Lana can still hear bits of her story: It’s been crazy lately. It’s not like the big smoke is any better. There’s some big problem up there, too, and, It was the start of a big story up there, I reckon … until what happened down here.
Charlie yawns. ‘Can’t believe you have to go in today.’
‘One of my cases is breaking.’
‘You reckon you’ve got time for a jog before you go?’
‘Sorry.’
‘Not that sorry.’
Lana laughs. ‘True.’
She slides the eggs onto a slab of buttered toast, adding a dash of pre-grated cheddar. The whole thing looks like an absolute wreck.
CHAPTER 69
EWAN AND VINCE SLEEP for an hour, upright in the car and outside the jail in Goulburn. At twenty past seven, a young woman in business attire and short heels steps out of her car and comes over to where Ewan and Vince are parked. She knocks on the window, waking Vince. ‘Are you two the dickheads from Queensland?’
They are, Ewan tells her.
She taps her watch. ‘Come on, then. If I have to get in this early, you two better make yourselves useful.’
•
The jail is the sort everyone dreads. An imposing set of colonial buildings, all eerie and grim. Behind the streetside facade, the prison resides within high brick walls topped with razor wire and guard towers. It’s not Ewan’s first visit to a prison, but it still gives him the creeps. They’re all the same. Training centres, boys homes, super-max correctional facilities. They all emit the same awful energy: suppressed violence, factory efficiency, concentration camp aesthetics. All prisons seem to come from a deeper past.
The admin woman leads them through. The guards nod curtly at her, assessing Vince and Ewan with a practised eye. She takes them across the walled yard of the main housing area and into an adjoining brick building, thankfully steering clear of the main lock-up. Inside the brick building, there’s a series of offices—all empty at this time of day—and further in, a thick timber door leads to a records room. In that room, Ewan counts fourteen filing cabinets, three rows across. Each cabinet is piled two-high with decrepit, overflowing cardboard boxes and the air is thick with dust mites.
The woman places her handbag on a desk in the corner and slips out of her heels. She takes a folded piece of foolscap from her pocket and reads. ‘You’re looking for this Anton bloke, yeah? It says here that he was cell-mates with Daryl Harding. Bloody hell. This is going to take a minute. Which one of you is the cop?’
‘That’ll be me,’ says Vince.
She turns to Ewan. ‘Sweetheart, be a friend and go through that door over there and put the billy on. It’s just around the corner.’
‘How do you take it?’
The woman stares at the paper in her hand. ‘White, with one.’
‘White with two, for me,’ says Vince.
‘You can make your own,’ the woman says to Vince. ‘Come with me.’ She strides away.
Ewan and Vince exchange a look.
‘I’ll make you one,’ whispers Ewan.
CHAPTER 70
FOR THE FIRST HOUR, the woman mainly removes paper files from cabinets and piles them on and around her desk. She uses Vince as a pack mule. Take this. No, not that, this. Put it over there. She drinks two cups of tea as she works, and between kitchen duties, Ewan sorts the retrieved files. At some point, the woman announces that they have what they need. She scans and divides, producing two piles. ‘Now it’s time to get to work, gents.’
Vince is given files about men called Anton, or some derivative of it like Tony or Anthony. The files are arranged in order of release, dating back to a week before the Nobby Beach bombing. ‘Look at them carefully,’ the woman says. ‘The devil’s in the details with this stuff.’
Vince reads about the incarceration of wild men. He looks at the mugshots, all scared faces and empty eyes. He reads about extended sentences, behavioural strikes, punishments and job postings. Every man in his pile has bunked with Daryl Harding, or with one or two other men who Vince soon learns were in cells directly adjacent to Harding. ‘Been caught with that before,’ says the woman, by way of explanation. ‘They all live on top of one another in here.’
After two hours of this, Ewan, who has his own pile of files, goes and turns the jug back on. Vince can hear the water turning over in the electric kettle. Round three of tea-time.
The woman digs around in her handbag.
Vince closes a file from his stack. He opens another and starts reading.
The jug rumbles away.
The woman shakes her cigarette lighter.
Vince scans a page:
Anthony Charlton Barnes.
Released July 1985.
In for arson, manslaughter. Previous arrests for assault and battery.
The mugshot is missing. Vince leafs through the pages. The guy is a contender, for sure. A model prisoner, but clearly biding his time. Keeps to himself, has regular visits but never from family. He’s looked after, with regular cash coming into his bursary. Vince checks the donors: a bunch of names he doesn’t recognise.
Then a name he does recognise:
Jack Herbert.
A vein of arctic cold runs through Vince’s hands, up his arms.
‘Fuck,’ he whispers. ‘Fuck.’
Jack Herbert, better known as Jack the Bagman. Notorious middleman for the Joke. Everyone in Internal Investigations knows Jack.
Vince starts turning pages.
Recommended for parole.
Employment pending.
In good standing.
A polaroid flutters to the ground and Vince picks it up.
It’s a picture of his cell. A regular room in the dungeon.
Girls on the walls—no, they’re meter maids.
Meter maids and surfers.
Vince flips the polaroid over, and there is the missing mugshot of Anthony Charlton Barnes, stuck on the back with grease or Christ-knows-what. Vince looks at the image and feels the walls contract.
Same hair.
Same eyes.
Same mouth.
‘Ewan … Ewan.’
He jogs over and Vince passes him the mugshot with shaking hands.
Ewan takes a look and nods. ‘That’s him.’
The woman says to Vince, ‘You look like you’ve seen a ghost. Do you know this bloke?’
Vince has to sit. He squeezes his eyes shut, to keep his brain together.
A long couple of seconds pass.
Go.
Move.
Vince snaps back to reality.
‘Can I use the phone?’ he asks, already lifting the receiver.
CHAPTER 71
THE HOUSE IS QUIET. Lana is on her way out, but taking her time with it. No point turning up early for a day of unpaid overtime. She deliberately draws it out. Waters the plants by the front windows and straightens up the coffee table. For five minutes, she sits on the couch and smokes a solitary cigarette, doing nothing other than soaking it all in.
Her car is parked down the side of the house, so she exits through the rear kitchen and is almost out the door when she spots the dirty frying pan on the stove. The least she can do is dump some water in it, let it soak. She puts her hand on the pan handle and—
The wall phone rings.
She walks over. ‘This is Cohen.’
The voice on the line is rushed and frantic, barking instructions.
•
Lana runs at full sprint down her street, out onto the main arterial and along two blocks before ducking down another side street. She hears sirens and feels the familiar rush of police action. Breaking across the boulevard onto Nobby Beach, her thighs and calves burn as she hits the soft sand, searching the shoreline and seeing it almost immediately: two hundred metres up on her left—flashing lights, blue uniforms. Lana runs, awkwardly dragging her gun out of the holster.
She screams, ‘No, wait, Charlie! Wait!’
Charlie is moving in and out of the shallows of the ocean. He’s in his running attire, pacing back and forth like a trapped animal. Six cops have their guns trained on him, one of whom is Inspector Ron Bingham. He walks up on Charlie with a shotgun aimed directly at his head.
‘No, stop,’ Lana screams, closing the distance.
Charlie glances over.
Charlie, but not Charlie.
Anton.
Vince’s voice echoing, I’m looking at his photo, Lana.
Bingham yells something, his hands tightening around the gun.
Vince’s voice: There’s money from the Joke in his bursary. I think our lot are—’
‘Lana,’ Charlie says, kneeling in the sand as she comes closer. ‘Lana.’
She ignores him, points her gun directly at Bingham’s skull and advances that way, calmly telling the Inspector to lower his weapon, and to remove his handcuffs and to arrest her boyfriend. She comes closer and closer until Charlie is out of view entirely and her gun is almost touching the side of Bingham’s face.
The Inspector’s eyes shift over to her for a second.
‘It’s time to do your job properly,’ she says. ‘Or I’m going to fucking shoot you.’
ARMED STAND-OFF ENDS PEACEFULLY AT NOBBY BEACH
BY ANGELA OWENS
THE GOLD COAST BULLETIN, 2 JUNE 1986
A POLICE OPERATION culminated in dramatic scenes at Nobby Beach yesterday when multiple units responded to reports of a wanted person near the surf club. The incident, which drew dozens of onlookers, centred on a male suspect who was cornered midmorning. Inspector Ronald Bingham attended the scene personally, highlighting the serious nature of the operation. ‘It was intense,’ said local beachgoer Sarah Mitchell. ‘There were police everywhere and this bloke was just pacing back and forth, yelling out. You could tell something big was going down.’
The suspect, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was taken into custody without injury. Sources suggest the operation may be linked to a broader investigation currently underway on the Gold Coast; however, police have declined to confirm any connection to recent high-profile cases.
PART TWELVE
TWO WEEKS LATER
CHAPTER 72
AT THE END OF it, Ewan Hayes is so lost he winds up where all lost people on the Gold Coast congregate. He takes a room at the casino. ‘On me,’ says Colleen, with a slight cackle. ‘Room and board provided.’ In her estimation, he’s proved himself useful enough. ‘Pity Bingham fucked it up,’ is her assessment of what happened with Anton. Her calm, businesslike chatter chills Ewan to the bone. It’s all out with the old and in with the new for Colleen Vinton. ‘If you’re looking to stay in my good graces, darl, you can find Martin Watts for me. I can’t let that prick get away. Let’s see how you go with that, but no hurry. You’re good for now.’
In short, Ewan is the new Anton.
•
Luckily for Colleen, the old Anton is a professional crim. He knows the deal. At first, he doesn’t say a word to anyone—not an utterance. He proceeds through the first weeks of his arrest under the careful tutelage of one of Vinton’s best lawyers. They have Anton dead to rights, according to what Ewan hears from Vince, but they’re going to do it quietly. No big hurrah in the papers about serial killing and the police bombing. Months from now, Anton will plead guilty to the assault on Trina Chalmers and to the murders of Herb Fleming and Ben Cameron, and in return he’ll get the only thing he wants: to serve his term in Goulburn, where he’ll be safe and where he knows people. The only interesting titbit from the whole thing is Lana—specifically Anton’s feelings towards her.
Vince tells Ewan over the phone, ‘The bloody idiot keeps writing letters to her. I’ve been putting them in the trash where they belong.’
‘Does Lana know you’re doing that?’ Ewan asks.
‘Mate, she’s the one telling me to do it.’
Ewan barely knows the woman, but he can empathise.
He’s more than a little heartbroken himself.
•
A week after Anton’s arrest, something surprising happens.
Ewan gets paid.
Fifty thousand dollars in his bank account, courtesy of Grace Holloway’s father.
He’s elated for exactly ten seconds before the elation turns to disgust. This late payment of theirs feels like the assuaging of guilt. They used him, tricked him into being a part of their story and tarnished his career, all of which landed him in his current situation with Colleen.
