‘He can’t do that.’
If an accused proposes giving an alibi at trial, after not talking to the police earlier, he is supposed to tell the Crown what it is beforehand. Habib’s family barbecue story was dead in the water, but he hadn’t mentioned anything else.
She said, ‘He can, actually. But if he does, I’m allowed to tell the jury it looks suss, producing an alibi right at the end of the trial when it can’t be tested.’
‘I am sorry I didn’t ask about a plea,’ Knight said.
‘Actually, we might have a chance. The judge might give an adjournment so you could check it out. Depends if it’s an alibi or just a change of story. Question of definition.’
It was a tactical decision for the defence. Sometimes she thought there was too much of that, hoped juries in their collective wisdom could cut through lawyers’ tactics and perceive the truth. On the whole she felt they did. She needed to believe that, to keep her faith in the system.
Knight smiled, and the smile reached his eyes. ‘Habib’s guilty as sin.’ He used his fingers to tick off the points in the story. ‘During the investigation, the Crime Commission found he was dealing through a pizza shop he had, and at university. Coke. He was dealing with Teller at the time, so Teller must have funded it. After two weeks the shop burned down, we speculate there was a debt owed by Habib to Teller as a result of that. We have photos showing they continued to deal, and we can prove the Porsche ended up in Teller’s garage. We claim that was collateral, or maybe an asset seized to cover the debt. Habib killed Teller to get the car back.’ ‘Anything not in the brief? Of interest.’
‘After we charged him, the Drug Squad tried to wheel him over in his Porsche and he made a break, there was a car chase halfway across Sydney.’
‘Why didn’t they revoke bail?’
‘The druggies used unmarked cars. Rafiq told the court he thought they were members of a violent Lebanese crime family, out to kill him. The judge bought it.’
‘We can’t tell the jury that. Prejudicial.’
Knight smiled again, this time with his mouth only. ‘If you could tell the jury ten per cent of what we know about the Habibs, they’d lock up the whole family for life.’
He stood up. ‘You worried about Ferguson?’
‘I’m paid to worry about Andrew.’
‘Did a lot of work for Con Adams back in the eighties. You knew the Greek?’ Past tense: Con was a solicitor’s clerk who’d disappeared at the end of that sad decade. Karen shrugged. ‘Used to pay detectives twenty per cent of his fee for a referral.’ Again she said nothing. ‘Helped spread the drug money around. Now the lawyers get to keep it all.’
She said, ‘You can’t fight progress.’
When he’d gone she thought of Ian for a while, knowing she ought to call him, she made the effort once a week. But the energy was not there so she thought of flowers instead, murmured their names: cineraria and shasta daisy, nemesia, viola. Gardening would take you only so far, but it never let you down.
The call from St Vincent’s emergency, 1 am Saturday, six months ago. Ian had had an overdose, brought back by an ambulance crew, just in time. He was only twenty-three. As she drove to the hospital through the night, she blamed Phillip, of course. And Lucy, who was twenty years younger than her, pretty but not too much so, focused. She was a type of woman outside of Karen’s experience, there weren’t many Asians in the criminal law. Lucy wore frilly bras and didn’t mind letting the tops show, yet the effect was completely asexual. You noticed it in some Asian women, as though they didn’t realise what they were doing. Karen had watched men not looking, had talked to her friends about this.
‘Functional sexuality,’ Sara said.
One of those clumsy expressions that captured something important. Karen wondered about Phillip, he’d never shown interest in Asian women when they’d been married. Maybe it wasn’t sex that had drawn him to Lucy: he could have found someone prettier, a stay-at-home. God knew he didn’t need the money, he was one of the city’s best-paid commercial lawyers. He’d always liked sex but he hadn’t been sexual, not like Stephen. Maybe it was Lucy’s frenetic work pace that drew him to her, made him feel more at ease with his own need for constant activity.
She recalled two things from the hospital, the bright lights and the inhumanity. Professional gazes that saw no deeper than physical signs, the colour of skin and size of pupils, life as a set of symptoms. Maybe Ian deserved no more, but she did. It was like experiencing an assault. She hadn’t spent much time in hospitals before, almost none in public ones. The brutality shocked her, especially after all she’d gone through with him in the past year. Pitched past pitch of grief.
‘I’d say your son has been a heroin addict for three months,’ the doctor said carefully, unjudging. There’d been more, then he’d raced off to someone else’s tragedy; all the staff were in a hurry. She wanted to stand up with her arms out and yell at them, say, ‘Stop! Think about us!’ But even as she considered this, people ran by and another patient vomited, there were calls for a bucket and mop. Ian slept, and she went outside for a while, found her car had been booked. At five in the morning.
All this, it didn’t seem like her life anymore. Later she took him home, dirty clothes, scabs and all, put him to bed. Looked around the room while he slept: orange Penguin classics on the shelves, which he’d never read, a Kandinsky poster. A white iMac. She hadn’t wanted him to think she was trying to hang on to his childhood, intended him to feel she would help him move on. Now she wished she’d kept it the old way, a reminder of his time of innocence.
Whatever she did, nothing worked.
Things got worse, in all sorts of ways. The twins noticed the changes in Ian, not just the dirt but two earrings, a stupid tattoo of a bird on his arm, his continuing mood changes. When he came for a meal—she steered him towards lunch these days—he didn’t nod off again, but he would sometimes be dozy, or the opposite, speaking far too quickly. She figured sometimes he was on speed and read up on that, tried to discover if amphetamines were better—less bad—than heroin. They were cheaper, at least, and overdoses were rare.
His complaints were a constant, even if the drug had changed: the world had been found wanting. His skin was not good, with blotches and pimples he’d rarely had in adolescence. She tried to ignore these alterations, then tried to discuss them, tried to forget them. Tried to make sure the twins were away when he came over. Sometimes they didn’t see him for weeks on end, and she realised it gave her peace.
‘I love the boy,’ Stephen said after one absence of over a month. ‘But, you know.’
She did, God help her.
Stephen collected first editions. It was a small thing, maybe a hundred copies in all, a time-efficient way of retaining a link to books that had meant a lot to him when he was Ian’s age, Orwell, Fitzgerald, Auden. He received catalogues from local booksellers, and a few weeks after the St Vincent’s experience one had turned up listing a British first edition of 1984, for quite a lot of money. Feeling mildly chuffed, he got up and crossed the study, went to pull his own copy from the cedar shelves. It wasn’t there.
Thirteen books were missing, worth around five thousand dollars, although Ian would have sold them for much less. They changed the locks the next day, and Stephen banned Ian from the house. For him, it was the end of trying. He apologised twice and Karen said nothing; by now certain parts of her were exhausted, hardly working anymore. After that it became easier not to mention Ian’s name.
The twins had talked about him quite a lot, especially after the dinner when he nodded off, but gradually they too stopped. And there was a certain relief in that, the way a person ceased to exist so vividly when they were no longer spoken of. He was still in her heart, of course; the trick was to keep him there.
As Karen took the witnesses through their evidence she was sometimes needled by Ferguson. There might be a loud grunt, or a cough, or a comment made sotto voce, so neither the judge nor the court recorder could hear
. Such sledging, picked up by male barristers on the city’s cricket pitches, was common at the Sydney criminal bar. Karen had engaged in it herself when a defence barrister, but it was not appropriate for the Crown. It gave her no problems, though, and she knew Ferguson himself was aware of this and was only going through the motions.
Some things a defence barrister did solely to impress his client, even though not always in their best interests. There was a pecking order in the jails, and you wanted a reputation as a hard man, so crooks could boast about having you as their brief. That way you had more people asking you to represent them, and could pick and choose. The ones you chose were the big drug dealers, who paid cash up front. The money went into a safe in the office, and you drew on it as you worked their case. It was all quite legal.
There were plenty of stories about Ferguson. One involved a minor Lebanese crime family bringing him a briefcase full of cash when he was engaged. The accused was found guilty. Two of his brothers turned up at the barrister’s chambers that night and, unfamiliar with the workings of the state justice system, demanded the return of the money. Ferguson had had a word with another of his clients—Imad Habib—and the brothers had backed off. Since then he was always available to take on any matter involving the Habibs.
There were lots of tricks to being successful at law. Ferguson’s instructing solicitor, a moronic parvenu named Salim Soufi who had some connection to the Habibs, worked for a big firm, Walter Edwards. They employed a stream of attractive young female solicitors who made frequent visits to clients in jail. This gave those clients something to boast about in the yard, to toss off to in their cells at night. Walter Edwards was one of the city’s most successful practices. The law was a vocation, but it was also a cash machine.
Two months ago Karen had appeared before the High Court and it had gone well. She was on her way home when Stephen rang, and she smiled at the prospect of his congratulations.
‘You’re in the car?’ he said.
She liked to drive back from Canberra, was working her way through Proust care of an audio version. ‘Yes, it went well,’ she said in a rush. ‘Daley was—’
‘Ian’s had an accident. He’s going to be all right.’
‘My—’
‘Stop the car.’
Other vehicles were whizzing past. For a moment she hated them, the fact their speed never faltered. Awkwardly she pulled to the side of the road, tarmac and gum trees, gravel and litter. A long truck had to slow down, howled as it went by.
She was shaking. ‘What happened?’
‘He was in Bankstown last night, some park, and there was a drive-by shooting.’
Her mind raced: it happened all the time in the south-west, always in the news. She didn’t know anyone who lived there, let alone had been involved in a shooting. ‘He’s not—’
‘Flesh wound in the thigh. Bone nicked but only just, they got the fragments. It should heal, pretty fast they say. Scar, of course.’
‘His immune system—’
‘He’s not an addict anymore, Kar. The hospital did a blood test and I spoke with a doctor. No needle marks, no traces in his blood. Bit of good news there.’
‘Amphetamines?’
‘Traces. But still—’
‘Yes, of course.’ It was hard to take in, her boy being shot. ‘Fucking Bankstown.’
‘It’s been said before.’
He laughed and she calmed down, a bit. ‘God, I’m sorry. Has the media—’
‘No. Not yet, anyway. Don’t worry. Ian’s all that matters.’
‘Thank you.’
‘You don’t have to do that.’
‘I love you.’
‘Me too.’
Her laughter didn’t sound convincing even to herself. ‘When—’
‘Eleven last night. They’ve had three drive-bys in the past week and two other shootings.’
‘Drug dealers.’
‘Not always, the police told me. Started with that but now it’s spread, young men driving around armed and on ice, they get exuberant. Word he used.’
‘When—’
‘One of his friends called, a girl named Trish. Said he didn’t want us to know, but she figured we should. You, actually. Called my office though, she didn’t have any other number. I went down to St George Hospital.’
Karen got out of the car, felt her head spinning. Nothing made sense so she grasped for detail.
‘When did she ring?’
‘This morning, about ten. I wasn’t going to worry you before—’
‘Worry! Fucking worry! I had a right . . .’ Went on a bit. Stephen heard her out. ‘Sorry . . .’ Tears—it was really hitting her now. ‘Why St George? It’s nowhere near Bankstown.’ As if knowledge would make things better.
‘They take people from there, area health services. I don’t know.’
‘I’ll go there. Now. Angela can stay?’
They discussed the twins, arrangements for the caring of.
At the end he said, ‘Actually, there was a journalist, she called me this morning. Made the link.’ She just stopped herself from apologising. ‘I’ve bought her off, another story. The point is, this was entirely bad luck, random. But the media won’t do it like that. We need to keep it quiet.’
She tried to recall what he’d said earlier about it, felt sick. He’d been trying to be kind by hiding just how this might affect his position. But it must be hurting him, he cared so much about his job. Suddenly she felt angry. ‘I know.’
‘If you’d let me keep dealing with the police, Kar. I met the crime manager there this morning, he’s one of the faithful. We can keep this under control.’
‘Of course.’
It was what he did, deal with things, she’d seen it time and again with political matters. His eyes would brighten and he became slightly tense. You wouldn’t use the word happy, but you got the feeling it made him whole.
She could never do that. She could do other things, some of them very difficult, but not that. So now she let him have it, not even sure exactly what she was handing over. She would deal with the health side of it, get Ian back on his feet. Maybe he’d come home while he recuperated. Maybe they would talk, and things between them would improve. Maybe everything would change for the better.
It happened, sometimes. She’d started going to meetings for the families of addicts, and it was what they said: things could improve. You had to keep reminding yourself of that.
The evening after Knight returned to Adelaide, Bec ate with her flatmate Jen, a biochemist at the Department of Analytical Laboratories. She did science for the cops, although Bec had not met her on a job. They’d met at the ladies night at the Purple Haze at Liverpool. Bec had mentioned she wanted to move south to be near her brother: Jen had a spare room in her flat in Campbelltown. The arrangement worked out well enough, the two remaining just flatmates and not often seeing each other. Jen was doing some sort of diploma at nights, and Bec had her sporting commitments.
They ordered in some Indian food, opened a bottle of wine, as always began with Tiny talk. Her brother had had an accident three years ago, was in a wheelchair, brain damage, lived in a nursing home for old people near Camden. She visited twice a week, Tiny recognised her, just, cried and complained, asked her to get him out. After ten minutes of slobber and anguish he’d get hazy, by twenty have forgotten who she was, be ranting. It was this or semi-comatose, the nurses told her, there was nothing much in between. She didn’t like to think about Tiny too much, it made her resentful of Chevon, who hadn’t moved to Sydney to be near him. He was twenty-five and might live another fifty years.
Other subjects. Not Baby Bethane; Bec was trying to bury that deep. Jen shared about her boss, a demon. Bec talked about Knight, not much at first—there were rules for what you could tell outsiders about the job—but more as the wine settled in.
‘Get out, is my opinion,’ said Jen. ‘Back to Liverpool.’
Bec couldn’t, of course. Being a cop was like being in
the military, a hierarchy surrounded by rules and laws. There was little room for choice and that had pleased her, until now.
‘I can’t.’
‘Well there you are. Problem solved. More wine?’
She said no and Jen finished the bottle quickly, took the plates into the kitchen, where she left them in the sink, went into her room to study and shut the door. She always shut the door.
Bec washed up then sat in the lounge room to go through the fat ringbinder Thomson had given her. The general outline in the brief was familiar from her time on the investigation, but there were changes of emphasis, evidence added or subtracted, that interested her. The selection and order of witnesses was particularly important. Mabey would have had a lot to do with how it now looked. After a while Bec realised there was no point trying to compare this story to the one she’d been part of a year ago. She had to grasp what was here now. Anything else—say, another version of reality—was irrelevant.
A third of the way in she came to a photograph of Rafiq Habib and Jason Teller, standing in front of a construction site and shaking hands, like two muscular citizens who’d bumped into each other on the boulevard. There was none of the usual text at the bottom, showing time and date, that you get from a police camera. The brief explained the photo had been captured on the mobile phone of the Drug Squad’s Detective Sergeant Jim Marsden, two weeks before Teller was killed. Marsden had been driving through Darlinghurst and by chance spotted Teller walking along with a sports bag. He was aware Teller was a target of a Crime Commission operation, and also that he was not under surveillance that day. DS Marsden being keen had parked his car and followed on foot, saw him meet Habib and exchange small packages. Marsden had managed to take a photograph on his iPhone, but not of the exchange. So he’d thought nothing more of it until Teller was murdered, when the fact he’d met Habib recently became potentially significant. Marsden had produced the picture and sworn a statement it had been taken on 17 March outside 140 Carlow Street, Darlinghurst.
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