On Cringila Hill

by Noel Beddoe

‘Ah. I want to ask you to do something.’

  ‘Edna …’

  ‘Just listen. We’ve got a corpse in Warrawong, which I’m told is almost certainly a homicide.’

  ‘Warrawong.’

  ‘Just down from Cringila Hill.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘We have a preliminary identification that people are confident about.’

  ‘Do we?’

  ‘We think it’s Abdul Hijazi.’

  Gordon looks out into the darkness beyond the front windows. He says, ‘Oh, dear. Oh dear oh dear oh dear oh dear.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘No idea whatever. All we’ve got is a corpse with a hole in its head on the footpath in the rain. We’ve done a bit of a doorknock. To this point, no one saw anything, they were making their tea, they were watching television.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So, someone’s going to need to prepare some comments for the papers and the talkbacks.’

  Gordon thinks he knows what she’s going to say next but doesn’t know what he hopes to hear. Eventually Edna says, ‘I was hoping you’d take a bit of a look at the scene for me.’

  ‘Who’s got it at this point?’

  ‘Peter Grace. Now, hold on. Listen. Let’s assume this runs on awhile, which it feels like it will. They’ll form a team from homicide in Sydney and they’ll come down. That would be nothing to do with you. I’d like it if you’d look around. You’d report only to me, officially but independently.’ She chuckles. ‘This, do you see, would be an innovative detecting technique.’

  ‘Of a type for which you are justly famous.’

  ‘So I’m told.’

  ‘Edna …’

  He can tell that she’s talking quickly to get through her points before he can object.

  ‘You are down as being “on leave” so anything you did would be from unallocated resources, which is how this would need to proceed. Any time you could give it … an hour here, two hours there … I’d have you regarded as on duty for a day and recredit a day of your sick leave. That’s all I can do, but I can do that.’

  ‘Who would be your local liaison?’

  ‘Peter Grace.’

  A pause. ‘I’m surprised you’d want that.’

  ‘I don’t, but it’s the way it’s worked out. I could maybe have it changed but that might cost me a lot more than it’s worth in the overall scheme of things. A homicide team will probably be led by Sean O’Shea, detective sergeant, solid man, but that would be nothing to do with you. You’d report to me, how it all was going, whether there was something building in Cringila, whether any situations are being manipulated.’ She pauses. ‘I’d be able to trust what you told me. You wouldn’t be putting together any nasty parcel of surprises for me to unwrap. I wouldn’t ask this unless it was important. Abdul Hijazi – it might be crucial – how this plays out. I’ve got David Lawrence here with me. I can send him up to Austinmer to collect you. Now, if you like.’

  He waits awhile, until he knows what he’s compelled to do. ‘Send him. I’ll get ready.’

  When he turns May is at the doorway to the kitchen. Her arms are folded and she’s scowling at him. ‘Tell me I didn’t hear you say what you just said.’

  ‘May …’

  ‘Gordon. The weather!’ She shakes her head bitterly. ‘Tell me,’ she says. ‘What can you do for me? What is the best gift you can give me? I’ll tell you. Get bloody better. Get better. So I can just get on with the other issues I have to deal with, which happen to be considerable, as I’d hoped you’d have noticed.’

  ‘May …’

  She gives a sort of snarl and goes back into the kitchen, but then she comes to the doorway again. She says, ‘You know why you’re doing this.’

  ‘Well …’

  ‘Edna has said “roll over” and you think you might get your tummy tickled.’

  ‘I doubt she’ll be able to do much for me. I think The Boys are going to get her.’

  ‘That doesn’t matter to you. It’s not the rewards. It’s praise! It’s praise from someone in an important job. It’s what you live for.’

  He shrugs. He says, ‘I’ll take it easy. I won’t walk very much.’

  He makes his way into their bedroom, lowers himself slowly to sit on the bed, looks forlornly at his lace-up shoes against a wall. There’s water in a glass on the bedside table and a sheet of foil with ridges where tablets are held. In a quick movement he removes a lozenge, washes it down with a drink. With eyes closed he waits then for the pain to dull. When he blinks them open May is in the room watching him.

  ‘You’ve taken a pill,’ she says, accusing. ‘It isn’t time. It isn’t nearly time.’

  ‘It’s really hurting, May.’

  ‘Yes, and it’s so unfair, isn’t it? You take such good care of yourself!’

  She kneels, removes his slippers, places shoes on his feet and laces them, brings a white shirt, tie, jacket, heavy coat from the wardrobe. She dresses him slowly, with difficulty. Gordon is determined not to grunt no matter what pain he experiences. As she adjusts his trouser legs he says to her stooped head, ‘I love you, May.’

  ‘Oh, Gordon. Gordon, I know you do. That’s not it. That’s not the issue.’ She rises. ‘Tea will be ready.’

  After the tea he fetches an umbrella and his walking cane and makes his way onto the verandah. Black bunches of leaves toss under the storm. Raindrops burst and stain dark the floorboards. In time the darkness in the street below him is broken by shafts of light from headlamps. A Commodore turns into their driveway. He calls, ‘I’m going,’ and makes his way, step by slow step, down the front stairs.

  ‘Chilly.’ The driver who greets him is a young man, slender. He wears a well-pressed suit, crisp white shirt, a striped tie.

  ‘Good evening, David.’

  They sit a little time in the front of the car. David Lawrence peers up at the dwelling illuminated in headlight beams. He says, ‘Nice-looking house. How can you afford a house like this up here?’

  Gordon smiles. ‘Been in the family a long time. You’d be surprised what you can have if it’s been in the family a long time.’

  David backs the car into the street, then through beating sheets of rain they drive, with occasional murmurs of information from the police radio. They reach Wollongong’s northern distributor, go along it, turn left and ascend to a bridge across the Princes Highway, head through town to the flame and steam of the steelworks in production. At Warrawong they turn right, head up Cowper Street towards Cringila Hill. Along all of that way neither man speaks.

  On Flagstaff Road they are waved down by a young policeman in uniform who holds a light cone. Sheltering under his umbrella, gripping tightly to his walking cane, Gordon makes slow progress to the stretched, blue-checked tape that marks out the crime scene. Beyond, there’s a huddle of spectators beneath umbrellas and heavy coats. Police have made a gesture of sensitivity by erecting a screen around the corpse. As Gordon pushes past, a little boy stooping on the footpath turns to call to the crowd behind him, ‘I can see his hand!’

  Gordon enters the barricaded area, past a policeman who says, ‘Eh, Chilly.’ Gordon does not respond, as is his habit when distant acquaintances use his nickname unbidden. He walks to where white-clad technicians prod and measure. The dead youngster lies chest down, his face pressed to the concrete.

  A worker raises his gaze, nods. ‘Chilly,’ he says. Rain splashes on his hood, rolls across his weatherproofed shoulders.

  ‘Roy,’ Gordon replies, and squints his eyes in the cold glare of the floodlights, ‘anything so far?’

  ‘Very little more than you can see. It’s quite a hole, the exit wound. If it’s a single wound it’s of tremendously heavy calibre.’

  ‘We haven’t got a bullet?’

  ‘Not yet. Probably it wil
l be in that yard, assuming he was shot from the street, which would appear to be the case. And if it’s more than one shot I can tell you this – this is someone who really knew what he was doing.’

  Nearby are three men who wear white shirts, ties, heavy raincoats. Gordon joins them. ‘Peter,’ Gordon says, and a heavy-chested man nods in greeting.

  ‘I was warned you’d be here,’ Peter Grace says.

  ‘Warned.’ Gordon raises his eyebrows.

  ‘Oh, well. Told. By the Empress.’

  The two gaze at each other under the rain, keeping all expression from their faces.

  ‘So,’ Gordon says. ‘What have we got?’

  ‘So far, a corpse and, in addition to that, just about SFA. When we got here there was a big puddle of blood but most of that’s gone in the rain. We’re confident it’s Abdul Hijazi.’ Peter nods at a knot of onlookers. Someone’s holding an umbrella above the head of a heavy, dark-clad woman who cups her hands, rocks back and forth, her mouth open and working. ‘That’s his family,’ he says. ‘They heard, and came down. They say it’s him. We’ll get the prints and all that and be certain in the morning.’

  ‘Can we talk in a couple of days?’

  ‘I’m told that’s the way that things are going to be.’

  As Gordon turns to go back to the car a tall man breaks from a group and approaches him. Gordon nods and waits. ‘How are you, Ned McKenzie?’

  ‘Cold and wet.’

  ‘Yes. And wasting your time just now, I’d have thought. One look, you know what we’ve got. There isn’t going to be any more.’

  ‘I’ve been over talking to the family. “Always a good kid. Our lives are over.” That’ll be my piece tomorrow. The fact he’s there and dead, that’s already been filed by someone else. What’s this with the stick?’

  ‘I’ve pulled something in my back.’

  ‘Ah. Why you haven’t been at golf. You should be home, warm and dry.’

  ‘You’re as bad as May.’

  ‘Any theories?’

  ‘What, me? I’d say he’s upset someone.’

  ‘Abdul Hijazi, upset someone? Fair guess. There’s going to be quite a queue. One thing for you blokes, there’ll be no shortage of suspects.’

  Beyond Ned, a young man has approached and stands, blatantly listening. Gordon runs an eye over him – tall, slender, early twenties. He has a small floral-patterned fold-up umbrella and a greasy-looking trenchcoat. He is bald across his crown and has combed his hair from the side of his head over the area.

  ‘Ned,’ Gordon says, ‘who’s this?’

  ‘This, it appears, is a colleague of mine who is doing work experience at a local television station.’

  ‘Work experience?’

  ‘This is what he’s told me.’

  Gordon rolls his eyes. To the young man he says, ‘Who are you?’

  ‘Ian Battle.’

  ‘How long have you been doing work experience?’

  ‘Eight months.’

  ‘Have they paid you anything yet?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Ah. Great world, the world you’re trying to get into. Now. I’m having a private conversation with a friend of mine. Go away.’

  Ian Battle looks at the policeman for a while with no expression on his face, then turns and goes back to the group of onlookers.

  ‘I’m moving on,’ Gordon says to Ned. ‘My back hurts.’

  Back at the car, Gordon asks David Lawrence to take him to Port Kembla command.

  After a moment, David Lawrence says, ‘Whatever you want, Champion.’

  Back at command under fluorescent lighting police tap at computers, read files, talk and listen into telephones. A plump, middle-aged woman with stars across the shoulders of her uniform rises when Gordon and David reach the door of her office. She has sheets of computer print-out on her desk, a large diary open at a middle page. Gordon lowers himself into a chair across from her. David sits by a wall.

  ‘Well, how are they going?’ Edna asks.

  ‘They’re confident it’s him. That’s about all there is at this stage. Whatever hit him, if it was one shot it was big – you know, donkey shot out of a shotgun or something, the skull is a terrible mess. If it’s more than one it was done by a marksman, because all you can see is the one wound. Nothing I can see on his back, arms, in the neck, nothing like that.’

  ‘How much do you know about Abdul Hijazi?’

  ‘We’ve all heard the stuff, should they have let him out, would he be going back in, when would he be going back in? Everyone’s heard all of that. May says, it’s his age, so they’re not allowed to write his name in the papers but they may as well because everyone down here knows who he is. When was this case, I mean the original act? I remember following the trial in the papers but I don’t remember when it happened.’

  ‘Nearly three years ago. A girl called Luz Solomona was raped on the grounds of Warrawong High School.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘Yes. Ugly. Four of them, most likely. Abdul was the only one ever identified. He was a classmate of Luz, they’d been friends apparently. You were still working at Wollongong and your daughter, had just gone up to university. You and May had headed off for a holiday in your caravan.’

  Edna closes her eyes and pinches between her eyebrows. Her hair is dyed blond and has received careful attention but Gordon can see that, beneath her make-up, the skin below her eyes is sagging and dark.

  ‘She was cutting through Warrawong High School at night, on her way home, I invite you to believe.’ Edna spreads her hands, palm up as if to say, how can you protect people who’ll do such things? ‘She was attacked, probably by four youths – well, one youth, established, and perhaps three others of indeterminate age.’

  ‘Who Abdul would not name.’

  ‘No. There are people who believe that he was deathly afraid of them. Well, them or their families.’

  ‘Local?’

  ‘No one knows. She only got a good look at one, Abdul, who she knew, and he was the one attempted intercourse.’

  ‘Attempted?’

  ‘This is why we’re where we are. This was the thing at the trial – what, in fact, did he do? It couldn’t be established just by a medical review, for reasons that were examined in court in ways that the poor girl must have found deeply humiliating. This was the basis of the appeal – what should he have been charged with, was there any real evidence he performed the actual act of which he’d been found guilty?’

  ‘Ah. And maybe three others.’

  ‘So Luz thought. Could have been others, off in the dark, but she thought it was three who held her down for Abdul. And four in total was the impression of the neighbours to the school who heard her screaming and, to their credit, climbed the fences and came to help her.’

  Rain beats on the office windows. ‘Who worked the first investigation?’ Gordon says.

  ‘Went through a few people. It started off with Mick Laecey.’

  ‘Mick Laecey?’

  ‘Mmm. He’d just got back from leave, after his daughter had died.’

  ‘Yes. Beautiful little Julie.’

  ‘Mmm. He came back, didn’t last long. But he was the Cringila specialist, apparently, and he started the investigation after that thing happened to Luz Solomona, whatever in fact it was.’

  ‘Oh, poor Julie. I don’t know how he got through that. It’d have killed me.’

  ‘Oh. Perhaps. In any case, he never really made it back to work. Just a bit of the Solomona thing, then back on leave, then he was gone.’

  ‘Ah. And, do you know, I’ve scarcely seen him since. You know how close we were. Or, are, I’d like to be able to say. After Julie died we’d ring him, you know, and say let’s get together, and he’d never say no but it would never quite work out. Then in the end I stopped asking, which i
s what I thought he wanted. He’d lost his wife earlier, you know.’

  ‘Yes. I knew that.’

  ‘Linda. His wife’s name was Linda.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘I’ll talk to Michael.’

  ‘Will you? Are you sure that will do any good, out of your scarce resources of time?’

  ‘Everything I’ve learned from another person about policing that was worth a damn I learned from Mick Laecey. And our families were close. Well, more back in Narrandera than when we came here, but, if nothing else, this would be a chance to catch up.’

  ‘Oh, well. As you think.’

  ‘Yes. And now.’

  David Lawrence looks at Gordon expectantly.

  ‘I must go and face my wife.’

  ‘She’s cross with you.’

  ‘Yes. At least I hope it’s not worse than that.’

  ‘Gordon, this is truly very good of you.’

  ‘Yes,’ he says, bitterly. ‘I know.’

  His most recent painkiller is already diminishing in impact. Gordon grimaces, levers himself out of the chair and leaves with David Lawrence.

  Chapter Three

  Jimmy has bought an electric clock so that he can see the time during the night without turning on a light. He doesn’t set an alarm because he won’t risk disturbing the sleep of his mother. He’s woken himself repeatedly through the dark morning hours, checking the clock’s illuminated digits. When not awake he dozes lightly so that his dreams are to an extent controllable and don’t take him to the disturbing places he reaches in his deep-sleep dreams. No dreams at this time about blood spurting from the head of Abdul Hijazi. No dreams about Jimmy’s father. This morning, dozing, he dreams of Luz Solomona.

  They walk together, barefoot, holding hands. The cool salt water washes up over their ankles as waves sweep up onto Port Kembla beach. Jimmy looks into Luz’s dark eyes, chuckles to himself in his sleep as she makes her funny, perceptive remarks about people they both know. He feels her stroke his cheek, hears her tell him again, ‘You’re beautiful, you know, beautiful to look at, not just good-lookin’.’

  Jimmy blinks himself awake. The salt of tears stings his eyes and he dabs the wetness away. He’s aware of his powerful erection and is determined to ignore it. He checks the clock. Time to go to work.