Then I ring the papa and tell him and he says, I have to think about this. I tell him, Don’t think too long because Rafi’s life is in danger, and he says, It is not just that; Farid wants us to start using Salim as our criminal lawyer too, not just our business one. Mr White is an old man and it is time to bring on our own people. I don’t say nothing for a moment, first because this is all new to me and then because I’m not so sure about Salim but I can’t say anything about that, if Jamila heard she would kill me. The papa hears me saying nothing and says, Farid thinks it’s time to have all our legal stuff in the family.
Being a Habib I have spent a lot of time in courtrooms and Mr White’s office and stuff, watching the family go about all its legal business. It is very interesting how it works and I reckon sometimes in the law you want a bit of something, space, between you and other people, you don’t want that emotion in everything. This is what I have been seeing over the years, but I cannot say this to the papa, no way he is understanding what I am thinking, I do not even understand it all myself. So I keep saying nothing except I am feeling very sad if I do not see Mr White no more.
I will think, says the papa, and hangs up. I know this means he will talk to Farid and I do not feel good because it seems to me with this line in the sand too much of the action about the family is on the other side not the one I am on.
The first time I went to court with Mr White was when I was eighteen and Rafiq had just got that Donnelly slut pregnant. She was a year older than him but we Habib boys grow up quickly. God must like us because it’s just the way we are, never have any difficulty getting girlfriends or stuff. So the skip’s brothers tried to give Rafiq a hard time but Imad sorted that out. If that moron Ismail had got rid of the knife properly like he was told to there would have been no trouble at all, but Imad had no problem getting alibis anyway, he was doing the cars then but already he had that much respect he could have got a hundred alibis, I’m telling you. The fucking jacks, the DPP, you name it, no one had a leg to stand on. They learned the power of a family defending its honour.
So the next week the jacks raided Imad’s garage. I reckon it was the Donnellys told them about it, they found an Audi and a Beemer that would have been on the way to Botany twelve hours later, talk about bad luck. So Imad gets charged and let out on bail and that night this skip comes round to our house and it is Mr White, here for a serious talk. He is friendly and asks me what I like doing, and Imad says something rude in the language, makes me blush. Mr White looks at Imad and says, Boys will be boys. Something I learned is that Mr White does not speak or understand the language, but sometimes he could understand what you were saying. Sometimes this would piss Imad off, like Mr White was making a fool of him, which was not right because Mr White would not do that thing. But he did not always realise the respect everyone was always treating Imad with.
He had a big red face and this jacket that didn’t match his trousers, and a waistcoat and a bow tie. Like he bought his stuff from Vinnies or something—I guess he couldn’t afford a suit. We kids were told to leave the men alone, and they had a long conversation while Imad’s wife Hasna walked up and down the backyard crying like you wouldn’t believe. The problem for Imad was the parole he was on for the nightclub thing before meant he’d deadset go to jail this time. So they came out and Mr White said the papa had said he ran the garage not Imad, and that was what they were going to tell the police. And that’s how the papa went to jail for eighteen months, which was the unfairest thing I ever saw, but it gave Imad the chance to build his business concerns and that benefitted everyone. There is nothing the papa won’t do for his family.
I remember we all went to Mr White’s office before the committal, the papa and mama and Farid and Rafiq and our sisters. This was before Jamila married Salim; back then she had so much jihaz in her room, all these dinner sets and knives and forks and stuff, like sixty coffee cups and saucers, pots and pans like you wouldn’t believe, stuff all the sisters is buying and being given for when they get married. There were boxes everywhere mate like you could hardly move.
Also there was Hasna and Farid’s fiancée Reem that he hadn’t married yet. The papa was so glad to have Mr White as our lawyer back then, he told us he was the best lawyer in Sydney, although I don’t know how he knew that because we’d never had another lawyer. But p’raps the men talked about it at the club he goes to.
So we all crowded in there, in Mr White’s office around the corner from the Burwood courthouse, up the stairs. The mama had taken Rafiq out of school for the day, there was no way she was going to have him going home to an empty house, not like some of the mothers at the school. They didn’t give a shit what their kids got up to in the afternoons, around each other’s houses watching porn and being sucked off by Sonia Donnelly. Their mums would be at some club somewhere, playing the pokies and getting pissed as always. The skips and alcohol, I tell you.
Mr White explained what he would be saying to the magistrate. The papa had pleaded guilty so the jacks wouldn’t look more closely at what Imad had been up to with the garage. By then he’d sold it anyway because he was getting into the other stuff, more profitable. He was smart that way, always looking for new opportunities. Mr White gives this speech and when Jamila came back from the toilet he said it was time to go, so we all went down the narrow stairs in a single file, and I noticed the carpet was worn but at the time, not having been in many offices, none really, I didn’t think about it. Later I is seeing Mr White was not a very successful lawyer, but he didn’t care. P’raps he didn’t need the money.
We went onto the street and somehow I was first, and I was so proud as we walked along the footpath in this like procession. Mr White caught up with me and started telling me about this problem he had with his car, and from the sound of it the front left shockie had gone. Like, obviously. I couldn’t believe he didn’t know that, him having been to uni and all. I turned around and told the papa in the language p’raps Mr White wasn’t such a good lawyer after all if he didn’t know a thing like that, and the papa told me not to be an idiot and to show some respect.
We got to the court and went upstairs and met lots of friends like we always do at Burwood. It’s a really interesting thing about court how all the other people, the Chinks and Indians—not that you see many of them charged—and the Islanders and Maoris and Vietnamese and all, and of course the skips, they never have many members of their families there. But the people are always there in strength and that is why we are so powerful, because family is so important to us.
Knight didn’t come out of the building during the jury selection, leaving Bec to wonder if he was avoiding her. When she went back in, the judge was advising the jurors of their duties. Knight leaned over and said, ‘Justice Robert Leahy. They always read from notes.’
‘Why am I here?’
‘Later.’
The judge looked up occasionally, and put some feeling into his voice when he remembered. Still, it was a stilted performance, and as he spoke the lawyers and court officials settled into themselves, half closed their eyes and slumped slightly. Bec could see this puzzled some of the jury, who must have expected a bit more excitement.
When the judge finished, Mabey gave her opening address and the jury picked up. The Crown spoke well, nice selection of detail. There were no surprises for Bec, who’d been hoping the case might have strengthened since Knight charged Habib. It was still weak, too dependent on circumstantial evidence. Strange the DPP had agreed to a prosecution. Had Knight found more, something important but not included in Mabey’s outline? Unlikely.
They broke for morning tea at 11.30 am, and Knight started to use his phone. Bec waited, but he indicated for her to leave, with flapping movements of one big hand. There were lots of people in the loggia now, from other courts too, the families of the accused smoking, huddled together and talking urgently or gazing dully at the strange surroundings. The women tended towards weight and prominent tattoos; she spotted three Southern Crosses.<
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Along the footpath well-dressed city workers walked quickly and efficiently by, ignoring the court building. Bec went out and found a cafe in the grounds of the old church next door, bought two coffees and walked back. Knight still wasn’t there.
It was a hot, cloudy day—early February, the full weight of summer. She had a chat to the heavily armed cops from the Riot Squad, there to keep an eye on the Habibs and their supporters. A dozen young Lebanese men had turned up, big and with that strong black hair that makes barbering like topiary. All wore blue hoodies, stood staring angrily at anyone who caught their eye. Bec winked at one for the hell of it and he did a theatrical erupt, came towards her, pausing after two steps to allow his friends to pull him back. Lots of cursing and shrugging of heavy shoulders.
She walked away from the testosterone and made some calls: a couple of shootings she’d been doing, her interview for the Baby Bethane matter. The thing about being at court was that all the other stuff still went on, built up. She watched Rafiq and his family, the parents and two sisters short, John the mechanic tall and broad-shouldered. Gangsters spent a lot of time at the gym. Mahmud the father stood off to the side, working on a cigarette.
The older brothers were absent. Imad, who had been the major dealer in the city’s south-west for several years, had been locked up for arranging the killings of two competitors, although he’d been involved in plenty of other murders. Knight had led that investigation. With Imad inside, Farid had taken over the drug business. He was a busy man, out earning the money that would fund Andrew Ferguson’s next family holiday in Tuscany.
John was different, no record apart from possession a few years ago, a twelve-month bond. Bec recalled the transcript of the interview with his boss at Auburn Toyota during the investigation.
‘Big future here,’ the manager had said, ‘except he’s always taking time off when his family’s in trouble.’
‘In strife himself?’
‘Not a whisper, it’s those older brothers. One thing I’ll say about them, they’re bloody faithful to their own people.’
Them.
She wondered about John, why he’d anglicised his name and taken a different path. If he really had. He was not as handsome as Rafiq, his face pockmarked from some childhood illness. Still he was a good-looking bloke, stood straight and had an openness to him, attractive to women. His girlfriend was here now, and she was interesting too, because she wasn’t Lebanese. Danielle Dwyer had long blonde hair, very long, and was pretty in a baby-faced way, her body verging on plumpness but still capable of being squeezed fetchingly into a tight black suit.
‘Some of the Aussie chicks,’ the Toyota guy had said, ‘they love a bit of danger, know what I mean?’
As Bec watched, Danielle took John’s arm and whispered something in his ear. She was wearing heels and didn’t have to tilt her head much. When she finished she pulled back but kept her hand on his arm.
‘Movement at the station.’ It was Knight, standing next to her with Paul Easterley, who was due to give evidence. They shook hands, all looking at Danielle. Knight said, ‘I think Detective Easterley rather fancies Ms Dwyer.’
‘Trouble,’ said Easterley, licking his big lips.
Bec grunted. She’d had a good conversation with Knight about Dwyer last year, and they’d agreed that Danielle enjoyed power but hadn’t worked out what to do with it. Bec could see this clearly: Chevon had been like that too, in love with the effect her beauty had on men. Lots of men.
Some of the Habibs were staring at them now with hard eyes.
‘Baleful,’ Bec said.
‘What?’
‘Bec has the best vocabulary of any constable I’ve ever met,’ said Knight.
Easterley grinned nervously and launched into a story, two Red Cross workers called at his house on the weekend, asked if he could help with the floods in Pakistan. ‘I said to them, “I’d love to lend a hand, but my hose only reaches to the end of the driveway!”’
Knight smiled appreciatively, his attention still on Danielle Dwyer. ‘There used to be an expression in the eighties,’ he said. ‘Fag hag. Women who liked gays.’
Easterly looked confused and Bec laughed. She didn’t quite get it herself, but she got the idea. It was why she still liked Knight despite what had happened. He was whimsical, if that was the word.
Knight said to Easterley but glancing at Bec, ‘Liked being with blokes but didn’t want to come across.’
Danielle ran a hand up John’s arm and squeezed his shoulder. Easterley said, ‘Not an issue here, I’d say.’
One night during Beldin, before it went sour, the team had been out drinking, and Bec had found herself next to Knight.
‘John Habib’s a puzzle,’ she said.
Knight leaned back and swallowed the last of his beer. His eyes were brown and bloodshot, his skin tanned and more lined than you’d expect from a man in his mid-forties. Then there was the weight and his occasional vagueness. Perhaps he had one of those illnesses that work on you slowly. ‘Excessive thought is wasted on most of our clients,’ he said, looking sadly at his empty glass. ‘Most of the time, where and when gets a result, even in Homicide. The rest, John Habib second generation migrant caught between two cultures, you can put it in a box so far as I’m concerned, tape it shut.’
‘Sometimes why gets you who.’
‘Assumes why is knowable,’ Knight said. ‘Get us another round, will you?’ Bec stood up uncertainly. ‘You stick with [email protected], we’ll get along fine. You’re doing a great job.’
That was the moment, the point after which she knew there was something not right about Knight, or maybe it was Knight and her. But what could she say? He was senior by rank and years, and not a man given to straight answers. Beldin was a homicide task force, not a therapy session; in no way was it a democracy.
Mate, after the papa told me about not using Mr White anymore I went and had a word with Farid in his place of business, not the restaurant but the office he has in this block the family owns in Auburn. He says, Khalas, Mr White’s day is over. We will be using Salim. I say to him, But we always use Mr White. He goes, I have talked with Imad.
Now some people might find this funny, like how could someone in the supermax run a business activity on the outside and talk about lawyers and shit? The answer to this is simple though: mobile phones. What the crew did was drive out to Long Bay and park in the car park there when they know the boys inside is going to be out in the exercise yard. They stuck this sort of airgun out the window and shoot a tennis ball over the wall and it is collected by the boys inside, easy is what it is. The boys inside take out the mobile phone in the middle of the tennis ball and give it to some bloke going to Goulburn and he sticks it inside a condom and puts it in a certain part of his body. In the end it reached Imad and most of the time he’s been inside he’s had no trouble with phones even though he’s inside the greatest-security jail in the whole fucking country. Mate, what a joke.
That night Farid comes to the house for the meal and he is on at me about Rafiq, what I know and his lifestyle and all. I is saying I have no idea what my little brother is getting up to, he is a party animal and Sydney is a big place. And he is wanting to be a business man, always talking about some mate who’s starting a shop or some sort of internet business Rafiq is going to invest in. Like his mate Edi Sande, a chef who keeps these snakes in his lounge room and is a crazy guy. I went there once and I’m telling you, he had snakes on his sofa and everything, it was very weird. Edi went to school with Rafi and started a pizza restaurant, Rafi was helping him out for a while there before it went broke, because Edi is such an idiot, ask anyone. But Rafi is liking all that stuff, and one day he might be one of them entrepreneurs.
Right now but, it is Mr White I is thinking about most. I was surprised Imad had said to get rid of him. I mean Farid okay, I can understand that because he is very committed to the mosque and all that, like I can see him wanting to do everything for the people. But Imad is more sensib
le and let’s face it, what did Salim know about courts and jacks and shit? He has only been out of the university a few years, he can know nothing. So I say to Farid about Mr White, What about the loyalty he has given to this family? It is all wrong to do this thing.
Imad has been thinking about the business, Farid says, looking away from me like he does when he is angry and doesn’t want to talk to you. Like, he wouldn’t be saying anything if you weren’t family. He says, One of the guys in there with him is that Jervas, the property developer that killed his lady. Him and Imad have been talking about a lot of things, like strategy and the future. Imad says we need a lawyer we can talk to, no more of that bullshit when old Whitey says, ‘I do not want to hear this. I do not want to hear this.’
When he says this he uses that squeaky voice Mr White uses sometimes. I had to laugh it was that funny. But still it was wrong. What about the money? I say. I once heard Salim say he’d never work for Legal Aid, because if you pay peanuts you get monkeys. Farid laughs and says, We been topping up old Whitey for years, paying off the mortgage of this holiday house he’s got at Port Stephens.
This was a surprise to me, although I’d never talked to Mr White about money. Farid says, This is not about money anyway. You can always get more money. It is about improving the quality of our legal representation. One day we will have Salim and some other young blokes on the legal side and Rafiq doing the accounts and we will have control of everything. This bloke Jervas has explained it all to Imad, he understands it. He has a lot of time to think about these things. Jabber, you are a mechanic, you do not understand—you must trust the family. He touches me on the shoulder and tells me how Salim is getting a reputation and work from other families, like those El-Kadris whose son knocked that boy over at Bankstown last month. We is needing to have a lawyer we can trust who is always there for the family, not distracted by other work.
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