I opened it on the ride up to the top floor. It was from Damon. Twenty years after I last heard from him.
Hi Lars, be great to see you again. Hope you are well. I know you are insanely busy with the new job and congratulations on that too!
With a phone number, a Facebook link, a Twitter link, an Instagram link, a UQ email address and a personal email address.
Twenty years of nothing and now, as the press is going mad over The Slayer, up he pops.
I asked Simon to cancel whatever I had going on at lunchtime.
What If?
‘ALLO GIRLIE,’ HE SAID AS I SAT DOWN AT THE OUTDOOR table in a courtyard with Moroccan-blue umbrellas. ‘Wanna beer?’
‘No thanks,’ I said with a smile. He still wore a suit, dark blue today, with a white shirt and purple tie. His shoes gleamed. Patent leather with pointy toes, as always.
It was, actually, good to see him after so many years. ‘How’s retirement? Still living in West End?’ I asked, noting how incredibly fit he looked at the age of eighty-one.
‘Retirement’s brilliant,’ he said, as if surprised. ‘Met a bird online. She’s from Mauritius. Ever heard of Mauritius?’
‘I have. It’s close to the Seychelles,’ I replied.
‘That bird at the school. I remember her. Had an old black and white photograph of a Chinaman in her office. Standing out the front of that big tree.’
‘You noticed that?’ I asked.
‘I notice everything, girlie. Ain’t nothing that Billy Waterson does not notice. The trained eyes of a gangster turned copper.’
He was sitting, as he always did, as all Homicide cops do, with his back to a wall. Instinct. So a crook can’t come at you from behind.
‘What’s it like being Commissioner?’ he asked as he caught the glance of a passing waitress and pointed his finger at the now-empty beer glass, indicating a refill. ‘You want one of them green teas or just some soda water?’
I turned to the waitress. ‘Soda water. Thanks.’ She scuttled off. ‘It’s great,’ I replied. ‘Who would’ve thought,’ I added.
‘Me,’ he said, with a look of satisfaction. ‘Could tell that a Wolverhampton mile away.’
‘You could? No, you’re just being nice.’
‘Too old to be nice. It’s true. Fuck me. The first time I saw you, after Kristo says, you is being paired with the girl and me saying, which girl? There’s a girl in Homicide? And him pointing and me looking at the Asian …’
‘Part Asian,’ I corrected him with a laugh.
‘That, and the fucking dyed hair and your fucking Docs and your fucking attitude; straight off, I knew you’d touch the flag, if you wanted to.’
‘Thanks Billy,’ I said genuinely.
‘You’s here about The Slayer, aren’t ya?’ he said, small talk finished.
I sat back. This was going to be delicate.
He was waiting, as if daring me to bring up the knife.
‘I don’t want to talk about the knife,’ I said.
He didn’t say anything.
‘She was convicted, fair and square,’ I said. ‘She’s done her time and we’ve both repudiated the Attorney-General’s call to put her back inside.’
‘He needs to read his fucking law books.’
‘But,’ I said carefully, ‘what if, just to put out a hypothetical, what if, just for the sake of argument, what if her release triggered a copycat or, again, just to be hypothetical, one of the other suspects we looked at, at the time, chose to take advantage of Jen’s release to kill someone?’
‘Miles is dead,’ he said flatly. ‘Died a few years back when he fell off his boat on the river, shit-faced with a ton of grog in him. Body washed up by the Stamford Hotel, in the middle of a Japanese wedding. No loss to the world there.’
‘Uh-huh,’ I said, leaving a silence for him to fill.
‘Them other two. Nils, and what was the name of that geezer you said was creepy but we didn’t pay much attention to?’
‘Damon.’
‘Him. The Scientist. Them, I dunno. They might be still out there.’
I told him about Damon’s letter. Breaking the silence after twenty years, after Jen’s release.
‘I hate coincidences. No such thing as a coincidence in a murder investigation.’ He leaned forward and stared at me. ‘Why don’t I do a bit of moonlighting? Check ’em out, them two lads. See what they’re up to? What do you think about that for an idea, Ms Commissioner? On the quiet, of course. Not wanting anyone to know that the two original investigators had gone back to look at the case. Yeah?’
‘Yeah,’ I said.
And not once did we have to talk about the knife.
The Fix Is In
IT WAS A CHOICE BETWEEN THE BEATLES AND A CONFESSION.
Billy had just made his way into Homicide. He was twenty-seven years old when he began his life as a rookie, nine years off the boat, a Ten Pound Pom, then the youngest-ever cop to be admitted into the hallowed squad. It was 1964, the year of The Beatles’ Australian tour and Brisbane was their last stop.
Billy and his mentor, an ancient and dangerous bloke by the name of Rooster Henning, who was born in 1898 and joined the Force after losing a foot at the battle of Passchendaele in Belgium in 1917, who walked with a bad limp and an ivory cane that he would often swing hard onto Billy’s neck whenever he was displeased, worked out of the old Queensland Egg Board building in Makerston Street, in the city, overlooking the river. The Egg Board building had been taken over by the Force two years earlier, as their new home.
They were hunting down a killer.
Two weeks earlier, a young woman by the name of Violet Lazar had been murdered with a hammer, which had been left at the scene of the crime in Boundary Road, in West End, not far from where Billy was renting a small wooden house with a green lawn out the front and another lawn out the back, a far and distant cry from the concrete wasteland of the home in London where his ma still lived, surviving mostly on the quid he’d send over to her from Brisbane once every two weeks. Violet, all lipstick and rouge, was a lady of the night but Rooster drummed into Billy that it didn’t matter if she was a three-legged albino from Rhodesia, she was a person whose life had been ripped away, one of God’s children and the divinity had been altered by her abrupt ending. Thus, they had a God-given duty to find the gent who had sent her to heaven a little too early, even if it was His will.
They had tracked down a man by the name of Giuseppe who lived in a boarding house not far from where Violet would often be seen on street corners in nylon stockings and short skirts. Alone. At night. Made for murder. Take it from me, young William, said Rooster, all God’s children need to be cared for and it’s up to fellas like us to do it.
Thus, they had Giuseppe, who did a little bit of this and a little bit of that and not a lot of anything, in a sweat-room, being a concrete cell out in the courtyard of the old Egg Board building, tied and handcuffed to a chair, semi-conscious from the bashings. Rooster first, Billy next. Whack. Whack. After a little while, Rooster – who was sixty-six and well past the official retirement age, not that anyone would mention that to him because they were all scared of him, all the suits and all the pollies up in parliament, especially the Premier because Rooster was blackmailing him for adultery – after a little while, Rooster began to tire and had to sit on the floor.
Giuseppe was, as it turned out many years later, innocent of Violet’s death; however, at the time, in the concrete cell, Billy and his mentor Rooster were convinced otherwise and, without an admission of guilt, they had decided to bash him into making a confession. The problem: Giuseppe was remaining steadfast in his innocence and was refusing to acquiesce. The other problem: Billy had, against great odds, managed to purchase two tickets to see The Beatles at Festival Hall, also in the city, and he was going to meet up with Edith, his wife of one year, out the front, in exactly eighteen minutes from his last punch to the side of Giuseppe’s head.
If the little turd did not confess now, or
within the next ten minutes, Billy would miss rendezvousing with Edith, who’d told him, ‘If you are late, if you are even one minute late, William Waterson, I will go inside without you.’
And she had both tickets.
And she would.
Edith Waterson: Soon to be slain by a drunken driver while walking along Ann Street in the city, on her way to church, one Sunday morning, the drunk having stolen the car and zig-zagging his merry way through the otherwise-empty streets of Brisbane city, only to come to rest in blood and carnage, his and Edith’s.
Billy wept for a year.
And Billy still, to this day, now, in 2019, goes to that place in Ann Street, every morning, way before dawn, on that anniversary of catastrophe and lays a bed of roses, yellow, her favourite.
Where is she now, Billy? he asks himself.
To which he replies: She is in heaven and I, too, I too will soon be there. Wait for me, Edith. I still have things to do down here. Crooks to catch.
I love you, he whispers to the bunch of flowers in the anonymous cradle of remembrance where there was once a haberdashery and where now there is a supermarket.
Edith Waterson, born in gun-country, Ipswich, was hard and tough and Billy knew she’d just walk into the foyer of Festival Hall without concern – you spend too much time at work, working with the dead, William Waterson – and watch the concert on her own.
Edith Waterson: Remember me, she had whispered into his ear, a lost breath, a haze, a float of mist, black, grey, white, remember me, she had exhaled her breath of love onto his mouth, Billy inhaling her love, her last breath as his tears fell onto her face, as he enveloped her into his arms before Rooster had called him and said: ‘Mate, don’t cry. You’ve got family and it’s called the Force.’
But he did.
Billy, he did. He cried. He cried from that day in late 1965 to now, in 2019, and he will cry until the end of days without another knowing of it.
Billy was too scared to tell Rooster he’d gotten two tickets to see the famous Beatles because, like all people of a certain (old) age, Rooster thought the pop group was dangerous. They had long hair. Well, they didn’t, not really, not like they would, later, in the Abbey Road days, but any hair that wasn’t short back and sides was a threat to Western civilization. Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby, even Elvis, had short hair. Proper short hair. Long hair on men (ignoring history) was, according to Rooster, a sign of being a pinko, a Commie, a beatnik. Billy was (rightly) scared that Rooster would clobber his ivory cane onto him with disapproval.
Billy loved The Beatles. He loved Love Me Do and I Wanna Hold Your Hand and A Hard Day’s Night and these songs gave him a swirl of pride, them being from Liverpool with accents and him being from the East End with an accent.
Eighteen minutes. Giuseppe was broken, bruised, beaten. But silent.
Edith was waiting.
Seventeen minutes.
‘Boss,’ said Billy.
‘William?’ asked Rooster from his place on the floor, sweat dripping off him.
‘I don’t think this geezer is going to tell us what we want to hear.’
‘He’s guilty.’
‘Yeah, boss, I know, but I think we have to let him go and find some evidence. I don’t think we’ll get a confession.’
Giuseppe couldn’t speak and could barely hear what they were saying. He was recalling a time when he was a kid in Cagliari, riding bikes up and down hills with his eyes closed. A dare to the world.
‘You wanna let him go? This wop pile of shit?’
‘He’s not going to confess, boss, and we’ve been holding him for three days now. And we haven’t even arrested him,’ said Billy.
Rooster clambered up off the floor and, for a moment, Billy was sure he’d get a caning.
Sixteen minutes.
‘Fit him up,’ said the older cop. ‘Bring in the fix.’
‘The what?’ asked Billy, confused.
‘Don’t you know nothing, young William? Forge a confession. Then go to his house and plant a hammer with some blood on it.’
And he did. The next day. Billy did both, forged a confession and planted evidence that would send Giuseppe to Boggo Road for fifteen years. By the time he got out, another bloke had confessed to the crime of killing Violet but, by then, Rooster was dead and Billy didn’t care as fixing up crooks had become second nature, along with the other young cops in Homicide who, like him, had to be told by a weary mentor how things got done.
The Beatles were unforgettable. Mind-blowing. He arrived out the front of the concert hall just in time, a minute to spare with Giuseppe still tied and cuffed to the chair in the concrete cell, unconscious and slotted into the system of bad policing.
That night, much later that night, he and Edith danced in the streets, alone, doing the twist, pretending to be Ringo Starr and Chubby Checker, all rolled into one. That night they swooned and made love under the stars and told each other they would remain entwined forevermore.
So, by the time Billy got to Jen White some thirty-five years later, he was well experienced in the art of bringing in a fix.
But only if he thought the crook was guilty and if the mundane issue of evidence was proving to be a major problem. If evidence or lack thereof was stalling the process of letting a guilty person walk without being charged, Billy’s simple maxim was: make it up.
By 1999 things had changed and the old days of bringing in the fix was frowned upon. Largely. Not entirely. Scrutiny was the issue. In the old days, when Billy was working under Rooster, cops were revered. Like bank managers and real estate agents. In the old days people had respect. Then, blow me down, the ABC broadcast an hour of horror one Monday night in 1987, called The Moonlight State, on Four Corners, which lifted the lid on what every cop in Queensland already knew: the state was deeply immersed in rotten corruption. Cops scrambled, politicians scrambled, the government was tossed out, old cops like Rooster (who was dead at this time) were tossed out or, worse, put in jail.
The fix was in but, this time, it was in on the entire police force.
Billy survived. Didn’t have to dob in anyone, kept himself under the radar and vowed to be super-careful in the future when it came to a little bit of brown paper bag bribery or turning a blind eye to a mate who had committed a crime and, of course, to fitting up a crook with some dodgy evidence.
So, with all of that, Billy knew he could not tell Lara of his plan. She was idealistic and good-o, cheers for that but, at the end of the day, it comes down to putting the crook in the slammer. In any which way. As long as you think the crook is guilty. Don’t let a lack of evidence get in the way of a good conviction.
It was simple.
He wandered down to the Valley, to one of the Asian supermarkets and got himself a long-bladed knife, wondering how they’d gotten a free pass in selling stuff that was ordinarily illegal to own. Knives of all sizes in one dingy part of the store.
Then he went to the evidence room at the cop shop and lifted Jen’s fingerprints and carefully laced them onto the handle of the knife, then he took some of James’s dried blood from the shirt he wore the night he was killed and rubbed that onto the blade of the knife, then he carried it in a plastic bag up to the girls’ school in Ascot, went to the already-searched locker that belonged to her and stuffed it down the back. Later, he called one of the lads in one of the other crews and asked that he do another search of Jen’s things at the school and waited for the applause.
Kristo summoned him into his office.
‘Did you plant that knife, Billy?’
‘Boss, would I do that?’
‘Yes. Did you?’
‘No. Not at all. Not never, boss. Scout’s honour.’
Kristo didn’t believe him. The Dutchman didn’t believe him. None of the other detectives in the squad believed him.
But for Lara. Young Lara, twenty-six years old, the youngest detective ever in Homicide, his protégé. The idealist.
Lara was not naïve and she knew of her part
ner’s reputation. Unlike Jen, Lara read the newspapers and knew all about the controversies within the force, now a service. But she wanted to believe Billy.
Because Billy was her guide and mentor.
So, she did not ask him if he’d planted the knife. She took her scepticism, drew a red circle around it and placed it in an ice box in the freezer, never to be thought of again.
And there it has remained. For almost twenty years.
Any semblance of guilt for having been part of a ruse to put Jen in jail, for twenty years, in abeyance. After all it wasn’t her, it was him. After all, these sorts of things happen. Evidence can suddenly turn up at the last moment, even evidence in a place that you’ve searched before. After all, the killings stopped once Jen had been arrested.
After all –
—
‘BUT WHAT OF the consequences?’ Billy had asked Rooster while he forged a confession on behalf of a broken Giuseppe.
‘No such thing as a consequence, William Waterson,’ replied Rooster. ‘Not when we are doing the Lord’s work in putting evil behind bars.’
Billy didn’t buy that but said nothing.
Because he knew there were consequences. There are always consequences.
They are called guilt.
They are called the reckoning.
They are called atonement.
They are called ‘Who are you?’
They may be wraiths and they may be actual places or events but they are real.
If truth be told, Billy would have rather fitted up Nils. The Viking with his attitude and history with Lara was a far better candidate.
Nils was good for a fix. Billy had rarely seen such a good candidate. However, there was a problem of him (Billy) shouting at the video geezer who was supervising the interview with Nils, when he (Billy) had lost his temper and ordered the cameras to be switched off while he grabbed Nils by the throat and threatened to kill him because he (Nils) kept staring at Lara.
And, unlike Jen, Nils had some alibi issues. Some dodgy low-life motherfuckers kept banging on about how good mate, old colleague Nils was at a Miami bowls club on the night of the first murder, despite Billy not being able to verify this. Billy really wanted to put Nils away. He hungered after the Viking. He hated Nils because Nils had hurt Lara and Billy loved Lara like the daughter he and Edith never had. He wanted to hurt Nils to the end of days to show Lara how much he cared for her.
Blood River Page 29
