‘Why weren’t we told Teller was undercover?’
‘A hard decision. But as I tell my people, that’s what I’m paid for. We were still hoping Sony Kalla would come back and we’d arrest him. The Indos weren’t prepared to do it up there, he has too much protection, so it had to be here. When Cole told you that, she was right. But she wasn’t part of the operation anymore.’
Murphy waited until Bec was looking him in the eyes again. She said, ‘Ian, the boy—’
‘Harris says Cole called him just after his plane landed and gave him the address, he went to the house. As he arrived, two men of Middle Eastern appearance ran off. Cole was not there, but he heard her calling out and traced her to the stormwater pipe. She told him the Lebs had tried to shoot her, missed and hit the boy. She escaped, ran into the park and went to hide in the pipe, slipped and fell. Harris decided to check the house before he got her out of the pipe, went inside, that’s where you found him.’
Bec recalled him sitting on the couch, looking stunned. Maybe it had been shock. She rocked back in her chair, unable to tear herself away from Murphy’s gaze. It was compelling and relentless, and she realised that he was smarter and bigger than her. He had Harris’s story, and he had the interests of the organisation at heart. Bec felt small and selfish, and more than anything, she wanted this whole thing to be over. Murphy’s version was growing inside her, filling an emptiness.
And yet. Carefully she said, ‘This girl Trish, she told me she saw Harris with a gun, heard him shoot Hirst.’
‘Saw?’
‘Heard. A shot.’
‘Another addict?’ He sighed. ‘We’ve identified her, can’t find her. There’s an alert.’
‘Inspector Harris did try to shoot me.’
Murphy said, almost kindly, ‘Unreliable memories. Both of you suffered major falls, concussion or worse. Not sure in your case, you refused to be examined, makes it difficult for everyone. But we assume so. The officers investigating the shooting have interviewed all the witnesses several times and there is a major conflict between your evidence and what other people are saying. At the moment, this conflict appears to be irreconcilable.’ Bec felt wretched. ‘The weight is clearly and very much on the side of Detective Inspector Harris.’
‘That’s—’
‘Be quiet!’ Murphy snapped without anger, and smiled. ‘Just think for a moment. About what I’ve just said. How much it would help this organisation, all of us. Me personally. If we did not have to have a public dispute between two of our most valued officers. One at the end of his career. One at the beginning.’
Everything was changing, and she had no idea what to do. Intensely she wanted to believe in something. To love someone.
‘You must promise not to repeat what I’m about to tell you?’ She nodded. ‘I am placing my trust in you, some of the fate of this organisation?’ Again she nodded, dizzy with confusion, almost overwhelmed. ‘Harris did not manage those officers well, Teller and the steroids in particular. Ends and means, his own managers were lax. Brian’s a hard man to resist, gets the bit between his teeth. But prices will be paid, I need you to believe me, Bec. Let me handle this. Please?’
It was all too much. Suddenly and completely, she felt herself surrendering to his will, and she knew that this was the right thing to do and her healing could begin. With time she might be a whole person once more.
Someone, presumably herself, said, ‘Of course.’
‘I need your faith in me, can you understand that?’
‘Of course. Sir.’
He was on the far side of his big desk now and sat down heavily, rested his forehead on his hands for half a minute.
She felt some of herself returning already, and she was altered now.
‘The top medicos say Brian Harris was not well on Sunday evening. He’d spent the day breathing in dope smoke, THC. Should never have gone back to work that night. Against procedure. You broke a few yourself, Bec, but we won’t talk about that. Good people can make bad choices.’
He took a deep breath. ‘Brian is currently under psychiatric care. In the past two days we have been over every minute of his life in the past year, every case he’s worked on, every decision he made. Brian Harris is tight, Bec, apart from his poor management of Teller and Cole.’ He shook his head sombrely. ‘I am very sorry personally and on behalf of this organisation for what you went through on Sunday night, whatever that was. Some terrible things happened on the weekend, but they happened for a range of reasons. We’re close to linking the gym shooting to the Habibs, for example. These things that happened to you do not all connect. They do not all lead to Brian Harris. But I acknowledge you were justifiably confused. All I can say is you handled it magnificently, it was your baptism of fire in what I am certain will be a brilliant career. I’m not supposed to tell you this, but there will be a commissioner’s commendation. If I have anything to do with it, which I do.’
He said, ‘You okay?’
‘Sir.’
It was over, and she felt at peace and this was what she wanted more than anything. It must be so after a confession.
‘I will never let you down, Bec. That’s a promise I can and do make. Do you believe me?’
‘Yes.’
She did believe, and believing, felt that things might make sense once more. If she had faith, and did not expect to know everything. Murphy must know everything, but that was not something she had any right to aspire to.
‘Cole’s already left the state,’ he went on. ‘Changes will be made to ensure nothing like this ever happens again.’ He raised his eyebrows. ‘Whatever happens here, Harris is finished with drugs. You have my word. I’ve spoken with the commissioner in Perth. Cole will receive significant compensation for what she’s gone through, and the best treatment. She’s decided to resign, is leaving the job with full honours, and it would be a threat to her safety and also an offence to try to make contact with her again.’ Bec nodded. ‘She will not be giving evidence at the trial of Rafiq Habib. She has nothing useful to contribute there. Do you accept this?’
‘Yes,’ she said hoarsely.
The assistant commissioner got out of his chair and came around the big desk, opened his arms. He sniffed once but made no other attempt to hide his emotion. Bec stood up and surrendered herself to his embrace.
Mate, this trial, it was like the whole family had got on top of this giant horse and it was bucking around, throwing some of us off or just hanging on for life. Then they put it off for a week because the Crown’s kid’s gone and died, turned out he was a junkie. And there’s other stuff going on too, like with all these shootings, for a week we had Reem and Hasna and all their kids staying with us at once, for the security, with Farid’s crew outside all the time and coming in for coffee and all. It was like a madhouse. Then the jacks come in with a warrant to search the place and when they dug up the papa’s vegetable garden they found the bottle of vodka. The things that was said then, Farid to the papa—mate, you did not want to be there. You used to be like a god to us, a godfather, shouted Farid. Which was not really true ’cause it had been a long time since Imad or Farid treated the papa with that sort of respect. A very long time. But I am thinking by then it is a long time anyone is telling me the truth about anything, and p’raps I need to start thinking things out for myself.
All this stuff I am trying to think out while I am working on the cars and I do say the work suffered. And that is making me angry with an anger I have never had before but I see it has been there all the time, just down deep. I cannot do my job properly because of all these things that is happening.
Also I is worrying about how Rafi is going out there in the remand centre at Silverwater. Salim has been racing around trying to arrange a court appearance so we can be getting him out of that place and it is not working for some reason no one will tell me. Being a Habib, Rafiq should be all right there with his physical safety, but you can never be sure. They is getting some violent people in prisons.
> Then this crazy thing happens, you know how they say all the things is happening at once? On Monday when the trial is going to start again I am due back at work and I call in sick. Then Mr Wilson rings me and asks me to drop in and I tell him I am sick so he says he will come to our house so I say I will come in for a few minutes. I am wondering what’s happening because this is not Chris Taylor anymore but his boss. When I get there in his office he tells me they are counting all my family days in the past year as annual leave, so I have no leave left, no sick leave even. I say, How can you do this, is you doing it to anyone else here? Mr Wilson, who is this bald guy with glasses, shows me these figures on a printout from his computer and tells me I have no leave left for the next four months. I tell him then I will take leave without pay, I must go to my brother’s trial, they is trying to put him in jail for a crime he did not commit. He says, If you do that John we will have to terminate your employment arrangement. We is trying to accommodate you and giving you time to pray and a prayer room even for you and Hassan Ghazzawie, but enough is enough. I say, This is a denial of natural justice I will talk to the union. He says, You do that, John, but we are running a business here and frankly you have reached the crossroads.
At this I feel very upset because I have not broken the law for years and I have worked hard and get to work early and everything and pass all the courses and save my money. And I am the best mechanic there I have natural ability and everyone knows it, I am always being asked questions by the apprentices and other mechanics. I tell Mr Wilson this and he nods his head and says, All this is true but you are often not here and we are running a business. It does not matter how good you are if you are not here and clients’ cars are not getting fixed.
I am angry but sad too because this thing with Rafi never stops and I am wishing I can stop feeling like I am being torn into two pieces. But I just get angry and start to say something about family, but Mr Wilson interrupts me and says, I do not care about your family, John, I care about my family. I care about keeping my job so I can look after my family, and I cannot do this if the clients’ cars are not getting fixed on time.
Well this is a big surprise to me as I have never thought about it in this way. I am just starting to think when Mr Wilson says, In fact I have an offer for you. You are a wonderful mechanic and winning that award last year and everything, so we do not want to lose you. But things cannot go on the way they have been. I would like to offer you the position of trainee floor manager at another Toyota location. I am so surprised by this and I say, Thank you so much Mr Wilson, this is not what I was expecting from what you was saying just now. Well, says Mr Wilson, there is a catch actually. The other location is in Melbourne.
At first I am thinking I do not hear him properly, but then he says, I realise being away from your family would be difficult for you, but maybe it would be good for you too. After one year, if things go well, we would hope to be offering you a manager’s position back here in Sydney.
My mind is a confusion of emotions and I just look at Mr Wilson, thinking to say, No way, but I am also thinking Dani will come with me this promotion might get her to agree to marry me which is what I want most in all the world. It is one of those things that happen good and bad all mixed in together and I want to call her right now but Mr Wilson he must have read my mind because he says, You go to work now and do not forget, no phone calls until lunchtime. Give me your decision by the end of the week.
I say, I just—and Mr Wilson stands up and puts out his hand to shake. No court anymore on our time, John. The crossroads is not next week, or tomorrow. It is now. So I go to work and I is doing all this thinking.
To be honest I was glad I had an excuse to call Dani at lunchtime because we had a fight two days before when I saw her car when I was driving past the block of offices Farid owns in Auburn and where he has his office on the top floor. That night I told her I saw her car and she told me I had made a mistake and I said, No mistake I always remember a number plate, it was your car and what were you doing in Auburn? It is just a general interest question but she gets all upset and tells me again I have made a mistake I am not perfect with numbers and she reminds me of the time when I thought my friend Michael’s new mobile number ended with a seven but it was really a one. So I explain to her that really it was not my mistake because he’d written the number and his writing is so bad it was his mistake really.
So we argued about that and we forgot about her car but she rings me the next day to say she has remembered she lent her car to her friend Suzette and it was her who was in Auburn at the dentist’s when I saw the car there. Dani says, I am sorry lover to get so upset but I do not want you ever to be spying on me or not believing my word I think there is perfect trust needed in a relationship. I tell her how much I think this too.
So now I am thinking I will ring her up at lunchtime and ask her out to a special restaurant tonight with cloths on the tables and everything and there I will ask her to marry me and come to Melbourne. And when she says Yes I will be so happy it will feel like my heart is ready to burst with love.
Stephen Brunton cradled Karen as she cried through the night, this night just like the previous ones. This night just like all the ones to come. She cried for Ian and for herself, and for Stephen too, for the tremendous harm it would do once news got out that his stepson was a drug addict who’d died in disturbing circumstances, in the midst of some sort of gang war. He would lose his moral authority and the forces of reaction would triumph.
It was all so bleak, and when she looked back on her life she found little consolation. In her last trial, the one before Rafiq Habib, the jury had gone out to visit the crime scene in Bronte. She’d followed, and as they drove up Oxford Street realised just how many crimes she could associate with the buildings they passed, how much misery. The scene of a gay bashing in Crown Street, the nightclub where a bikie had shot two dealers, the sandstone Supreme Court building off Taylor Square with its tunnels and cells. She was so familiar with that rat’s maze, its low concrete ceilings and the alarm buttons every few metres. Then the Taxi Club, where Ronnie Sage the transvestite had lost one of his eyes. The Moore Park toilet block . . .
She’d gone into the criminal law for meaning, meaning through stories. But all that was left was horror.
Stephen told her it didn’t matter, the effect it would have on him. Said there were more important things than politics. There would always be another day. Karen knew this was not true, it was one of the really big lies. Simultaneously she deeply resented the fact he was thinking about himself, even in this. Feared for what it would do to their future together.
Later he told her of the deal with Chris Byrne, but only after she insisted. The details of Ian’s death would not be released if the Drug Buyers’ Act’s consideration by Cabinet was postponed six months. This would give the police minister’s alternative proposal a clear run.
‘I am so sorry,’ she said, and he kissed her on the forehead. ‘How does he put something like that to you, what were his exact words?’
Stephen looked at her fondly. ‘Actually, it was me who suggested it to him.’
She hugged him tightly, feeling herself dissolve.
Murphy escorted Bec to the door of his office. She was thinking about the future and as he went to open the door said, ‘Sir, can I ask you a question about Russell Knight? In confidence.’ Murphy stopped and stared. ‘Someone told me Harris had a hold on him, because of something he once did.’
Murphy had frozen with his hand a few centimetres from the door handle. He looked at her dubiously but she held his gaze; after what had been said, surely she had a right to know more than before. He said, ‘Knight never took money, if that’s what’s worrying you. He worked with some who did, as a junior detective, but that’s not his fault. It was a failure of management. With me?’ Bec nodded. ‘Maybe he bent the rules to lock up a few men who deserved it. I’m not saying he did, no excuse for that sort of thing, but different category.’ He stared at B
ec and then nodded to himself. ‘Harris got him out of a spot once involving that sort of thing, I believe. What I’m telling you, it fits?’
It fitted.
That night he came to her again, the man from the floor in Dubbo. Except this time he wasn’t on the floor, he was drinking with her mother, sitting on the couch cuddling, bottle of vodka and two glasses, topped with pineapple juice for Chevon. Bec didn’t know who the man was, he was Indigenous but from away, Walgett perhaps. On the estate, there were men who came and went all the time, responsible for half the fights, half the babies. Tiny was out somewhere, Bec in her room, trying to do homework. Scared to go out, scared to go into the lounge room. Not just frightened, though. Wanting something else, a different life, but not knowing yet what that might be.
The adults had gone into her mother’s room to have sex, at thirteen Bec knew all about that, what her mother did with men. Chevon must have passed out because the man started to yell, Bec heard the sounds of blows, flesh on flesh. She stood up and went into her mother’s room, the door open. The man stopped hitting Chevon’s unconscious body and took a swig from the bottle, put it down on the carpet with elaborate care. It fell over and he didn’t like that at all, blamed Bec loudly. Stood up, shakily, and came towards her. Said because Chevon was out of it, Bec would have to do, made a grab, ripped off her top and she turned and ran, him following, laughing and stumbling. There was a stupid chase through the house, in slow motion due to the man’s condition, Bec hiding as much as she ran. She didn’t consider leaving the house, at first because she thought she needed to be there to help her mother, later because the man had locked the doors.
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