by Peter Corris
‘Could be a fuckin’ wallaby,’ one of the men said. ‘It’s happened before.’
‘Call the boss.’
‘He’s probably in the sack with Queenie.’
‘Shut your face. Call him.’
A mobile phone lit up.
‘It’s me. We thought we heard something outside, but there’s nothing we can see . . . Right. Understood.’
‘What does he say?’
‘He says stay alert and let two more dogs loose.’
They retreated with the still growling dogs and Paul and I waited until it was safe to move.
‘Formidable,’ Paul said.
‘Right. It’s a flush-out job.’
It took a while to organise, but by early evening the following day Soames, Henderson, Cathy Carter and I were in a motel close to the Top Gun Bloodstock property. About thirty Bravados were posted around the perimeter of the place with a concentration near the only drivable exit. A couple of the bikies were armed with shotguns. A set of spikes embedded in a heavy rubber strip was stretched across the road just outside the Top Gun gate. All we had were a couple of mobile phones and a computer.
‘You’re sure they’ll have Skype?’ Cathy said. She was in uniform, looking nervous.
‘I’m told they all do,’ I said. ‘They need to talk to owners and breeders face to face, as it were.’
‘You’re well enough rehearsed, Chas,’ Soames said. ‘Make the call.’
Henderson had trouble with the buttons so I dialled the number for him.
‘Top Gun.’
‘This is Charlie Henderson. Listen very carefully. Tell Rooster to log on to Skype. This is my Skype name—RoyCarlton, one word. He’ll understand.’
‘Just a minute.’ He ended the call.
‘Pretty good, Chas,’ Soames said.
Henderson was sweating inside his heavy clothes. ‘Can I have a smoke, for Christ’s sake?’
‘When it’s over,’ Soames said.
Our computer was booted up and ready to go. We stared at the screen, willing it to come to life. It flickered and then a man appeared sitting full square in front of us. He was big, broad-shouldered, with strong, regular features. His eyebrows were dark and his thick, wavy hair was grey. He wore a checked shirt and a knitted tie. His right hand went up to his ear and he fiddled with a hearing aid.
‘What’s this, Chas?’
We’d put Henderson in plain view. Now he slid to one side and Soames appeared on the screen next to him. I’d briefed Soames about the voice recording.
‘Gidday, Rooster,’ Soames said.
To give him his due, Fowler barely reacted. ‘Luke, you queer cunt. This is just like old times.’
‘No it’s not, Rooster. This is the end of old times forever.’
‘You look a bit sick, Luke. Thin, like.’
‘I am. That’s why I don’t care what happens to me from here on . . .’
‘What about your little petunias in lotus land?’
‘They’ll be all right.’
‘What’s Chas up to?’
‘He’s going to testify about you killing Roy Carlton and the Greenhall kid.’
Fowler was gesturing, issuing unspoken instructions to people offscreen. ‘No evidence there, mate.’
‘There’s a voice recording of you and Chas chatting.’
‘Yeah? Made by who?’
‘They tell me his name was Colin Hawes and there’re questions to be asked about his death as well. You’re ratshit, Rooster, to use your own expression.’
Fowler’s eyes went narrow. ‘Why’re you doing this, Luke? You got in for your share back then.’
‘Let’s say I want a clear conscience for my exit.’
‘Bullshit.’
‘And I have a nephew who’s big in the Bravados and wants to have a few quiet words with you about Dusty Miller. Maybe not all that quiet.’
The screen went blank.
‘He’s up and running,’ I said. ‘Let’s move.’
We arrived at the property in time to see one of the Bravados use bolt cutters on the padlock and three loud-revving bikes roar up the drive and circle the house with headlights blazing and motors screaming. Dogs barked and I heard shots.
‘I hope they’re not shooting the dogs,’ I said.
Paul was astride his bike, dying to get into the action but, like a true general, knowing where his place was. ‘Not with Kurt in charge,’ he said. ‘That’s Fowler’s men shooting at moving targets.’
The bikes returned and twenty headlights were trained on the drive as two cars appeared from beside the house. Big Mercs, their headlights on full beam, they roared towards us, went through the gate and the first car ran into the spiked mat the Bravados had lined across the road. It slewed wildly and the second car was forced to slow. Two bikies blew out the front tyres of both cars and the second crashed into the first. A man jumped out of each car with a handgun raised to look into the barrels of sawn-off shotguns held by men with balaclavas and attitude.
‘Be brave, arsehole,’ one of the bikies who’d seen too many Dirty Harry movies said, and both men dropped their guns.
The whole area was lit up by headlights with the smell of burning rubber and gunsmoke in the air. I approached the first car and saw a big, grey-haired man in the back holding a small, sobbing woman in his arms, their faces washed white by the lights.
Some of the bikies had been drinking, or taking drugs, and they were hot for more action. Paul was having trouble controlling them when he made the call to us.
Cathy strode forward. Thinner than before, standing very straight with her cap and her buttons glinting, she looked commanding. With me beside her she marched up to the first car and gestured for the back door to be opened. It was and Fowler and the woman, her heavy makeup smudged by tears, stared up at her.
‘Grantley Fowler,’ Cathy said, ‘I am arresting you in connection with the deaths of Roy Carlton, Patrick Greenhall, Herbert Miller and . . . Acting Police Sergeant Colin Hawes. You don’t have to say anything, but anything you do say will be recorded and may be used in evidence against you.’
28
It was a long drawn-out story after that, with legal difficulties of all sorts to untangle. Fowler’s high-powered and expensive legal team tried to argue that the arrest was unorthodox to the point of illegality, which it was. But guns, a specially weighted torch, a large quantity of drugs, false passports and cash found in Fowler’s car overcame that objection.
Cathy explained how she’d enlisted the help of the bikies and how I’d worked to facilitate the evidence from Soames and Henderson. Several of Fowler’s minions put pressure on by agreeing to cooperate with the prosecution. At times it was touch and go, but eventually Soames’s evidence (he’d kept the torch in a climate-controlled wine storage locker) and Henderson’s testimony proved decisive.
Fowler was convicted of the murder of police informer Roy Carlton and sentenced to twenty years’ gaol. A government-backed suit claiming that his assets were the proceeds of crime was successful and property and funds were seized. The ex-model he’d married, and who’d posed and cavorted in different fetching outfits throughout the trial, divorced him.
Although no charge was brought against Fowler for the killing of Patrick Greenhall, Herbert Miller or Colin Hawes, Timothy Greenhall and Cathy Carter had to be satisfied with the outcome.
Greenhall secured his investment and announced that he was devoting a substantial part of the profits he derived to establishing scholarships for medical research. I had a final meeting with him. The knowledge that his shady past had brought about the death of his son had had an effect on him. He looked older and was less assertive. He paid me a healthy bonus. That proved useful, as I took a long furlough.
A few details of Greenhall’s involvement with Fowler emerged at the trial and he stepped down from the chairmanship of Precision Instruments. The company still holds a strong position on the stock market and Harry Tickener tells me the word is that Greenhall i
s still in control by proxy.
Paul Soames, or Wetherell, or whatever, dropped out of sight. Luke Soames returned to Thailand and, granted immunity for his testimony against Fowler, Henderson moved to Queensland, where I suppose he found people to talk to about the good old days. Bit hot up there for Roger, though.
My strained relationship with Frank Parker remained that way, a casualty of the case. He was hurt that I hadn’t confided in him and maintained his ‘committee’ would never have leaked. That was the word he used and it confirmed my doubts—I had an inbuilt, possibly irrational, distrust of committees.
With Rooster and Henderson out of the game, the task force was able to proceed more openly, and speedily—those senior police and politicians who’d covered for them now lying very low. At least Frank was pleased about that.
I spent much of my long break with Alicia Troy. She’d secured a grant to research the relics of whaling operations around Australia. We travelled by 4WD, light plane and boat to well-known and little-known coastal places—harbours, ports and estuaries subject to constant change by winds, tides and shifting sands.
After the trip we both went back to work with renewed energy and gradually, for both of us, our affair became a memory anchored nostalgically in time and a hundred places.
The silence from Paul, who’d played such a crucial part in the case, troubled me and I rang Soames-Wetherell to ask about him. Before answering, the lawyer told me he was in the process of arranging visas for Luke Soames’s family, consisting of his male lover and the lover’s two children.
‘Tricky business,’ he said. ‘Particularly with our new masters at the helm.’
‘I can imagine. What about Paul?’
‘Taken with him, weren’t you?’
‘I could never make up my mind about him.’
‘No one can. I have heard from him recently. He’s concerned about the moves to declare the motorcycle clubs illegal organisations and wondering if some kind of incorporation device might be a counter to that.’
‘Could it?’
‘It’s an interesting question.’
A month later I got a phone call at 6 am.
‘Hardy, this is Paul Soames. You’ll be interested in an item on the front page of today’s paper.’
‘Have to wait. I don’t get the paper delivered any more. I got tired of it being nicked or getting the wrong one.’
‘You’ve got one this morning. Take a look.’
The paper was on the doorstep. The headline read: FORMER COP KILLED IN PRISON and the article went on:
Former New South Wales Detective Inspector Grantley ‘Rooster’ Fowler, who was serving twenty years for murder, was stabbed to death in Bathurst prison yesterday. Bill ‘Loopy’ Deling, a former member of the Bravados motorcycle gang, also serving a life sentence, admitted to the killing, saying it was in revenge for Fowler’s murder of Herbert ‘Dusty’ Miller, Bravados boss, in Katoomba last year. Officials said Deling had taken advantage of a temporary relaxation of Fowler’s status as a protected prisoner while he was being treated for illnesses connected with his alcoholism.
I fully expect to hear about Paul Soames again, although in what connection—political, legal, financial—is anybody’s guess.
