Blood Sunset

by Unknown

  ‘You don’t know that, Rubens. It might’ve been a bad urinary tract infection that hadn’t been treated and the Zithromax could’ve been prescribed to flush it out. We could be completely wrong about all this.’

  I knew that was unlikely and so did Ella. I’d seen it too many times before and so had she. People unsure of a difficult path and instead taking an easier one. A path with many cracks in it. How many other cases were there like this, I wondered. How many other kids had fallen through those cracks? How many villains were hiding in them?

  ‘This isn’t my fault, Rubens.’

  ‘I know. It’s nobody’s fault. It’s the system.’ She went to reply but I cut her off. ‘But you know what: the system is made up of people, El. People like you and me and that doctor. The system should’ve stopped it the first time. Instead, we ignored the warning signs and allowed it to happen again.’

  I got up and walked to the bar for another beer. I was annoyed that the night had started out like this and wished I hadn’t got Ella involved in the first place.

  ‘Everything all right out there, bro?’ Logan asked as he poured the beer. ‘Want me to send out some oysters or something? You guys look like you need it.’

  ‘No, thanks. Rough day, that’s all.’

  ‘Well, that’s why they call it happy hour, you know?’ he said, handing the beer over and pouring Ella another glass of champagne. ‘Everyone’s supposed to be happy.’

  I sipped the beer and decided to forget about the case while Ella was around. Back at the table, she’d folded the paper away and lit another cigarette out of my packet.

  I put a hand on her shoulder as I sat back down. ‘I’m sorry about all this. Let’s just try and enjoy ourselves. I’ll deal with this later. I just get frustrated by it all. I shouldn’t have got you involved.’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I’m glad you did. You’re right. We did fail this kid. Makes me wonder how many other times it’s happened.’

  ‘What, at the hospital?’

  ‘No, just in general.’

  ‘Well, that’s why I want to take this one to the end. We can’t change the system, Ella. All we can do is play our part. That’s what I want to do.’

  She stubbed out the cigarette and raised her glass again.

  ‘Then let’s do it.’

  16

  ANTHONY AND HIS FAMILY lived almost directly opposite the Caulfield Racetrack. Thankfully we weren’t tourists, because the taxi driver was about as familiar with Melbourne’s leafy eastern suburbs as a desert camel. Finally we arrived at the house, which was almost a hundred years old and midway through a complete renovation.

  Music thudded from behind the garage door and an arrow pointed to a side gate where a bunch of balloons had been tied. First mistake, I thought. Eighteenth birthday bashes were notorious for attracting gatecrashers, especially in the suburbs. Inviting guests to simply enter via the side pathway was asking for trouble.

  The path led to a paved courtyard over which a pergola had been constructed. Dozens of red and black balloons and streamers hung from the rafters and a sign over the rear of the garage read ‘Happy Birthday Johnno!’

  About fifty guests were already there, the majority looking barely eighteen in frayed jeans, bright T-shirts and sunglasses. There was a brief lull as they stopped to see who’d arrived. Not recognising us, they quickly went back to talking, laughing and drinking. I looked around for my nephew but couldn’t find him. After a few minutes Anthony’s wife, Gabrielle, came through the back door with what looked like a tray of potatoes wrapped in foil. She carried them over to a spit roast by the fence, the delicious-smelling smoke reminding me that I hadn’t eaten since lunch with Edgar Burns.

  Gabrielle set the tray on a table beside the spit machine, then made her way over and said hello. She was a tall woman, with jet black hair and pale skin. Ella says she’s beautiful but I reckon she looks unhealthy.

  ‘I’m so glad you could make it,’ she said, smiling at the two of us. ‘Come inside and let me get you a drink.’

  I followed the two women through the door, watching Ella’s hips move freely beneath her summer dress. No doubt about it for me: she had the jump on Gabrielle any day. At the kitchen bench I wanted to put my arm around her, but instead slid the wine out of the carry bag and handed it to Gabrielle.

  ‘No need for this,’ she said, opening the fridge. ‘We bought plenty of wine. Plus there’s beer in the laundry fridge – real beer – and champagne in here. Rubens, if you want red, speak to Anthony; he’s got some special ones put aside.’

  What she really meant, I knew, was that my chosen bottle wasn’t good enough. She was probably worried one of her social club friends would see it and assume she was only a few steps off drinking cleanskin labels.

  ‘I’ll leave you girls to it then,’ I said, and went into the laundry where Anthony was packing beers into a tub full of ice. I shook his hand and accepted a Corona. It was ice cold and tasted sweet as ever, even without the lime.

  ‘Place looks good,’ I said, nodding to the backyard. ‘Where’s Johnno and Chloe?’

  ‘Ah, they should be out there somewhere. Last I saw they were in the garage talking to the DJ. Chloe’s new boyfriend.’

  ‘Boyfriend, huh?’

  ‘Yeah, been together a few months now.’ Anthony lowered his voice. ‘I reckon he’s the one selling her the drugs.’

  I frowned, not wanting to talk about it here. ‘You don’t know that.’

  ‘Maybe, but just after she hooked up with him, all of a sudden she started listening to that bullshit music. A month later I found the pills in her room.’

  ‘What have you done with them?’ I asked.

  He looked away. ‘Nothing yet. I’m waiting.’

  ‘Waiting for what?’

  ‘Never mind.’

  He opened the back door and the sound of a repetitive bass line filled the room, throbbing from inside the garage. I watched as he went over and told the DJ to turn the sound down. The DJ did as instructed and a number of the kids inside the garage made a face at Anthony as he walked out.

  I was about to follow him onto the patio when I heard a familiar cough from along the hall. I walked down to the guest bedroom and saw my father by the bed, apparently looking at something on the dressing table.

  ‘Dad,’ I said.

  He turned around quickly, startled. ‘Hey, Ruboy. Good to see ya.’

  ‘Good to see you too,’ I said, smiling at the nickname he’d used my whole life. We shook hands and I pulled him into a hug. He was leaner than he’d been at Christmas, and his grey hair seemed thinner. He wasn’t yet sixty-five but looked much older, almost as though he’d aged a year for every month since Mum’s stroke. When he pulled away, I saw he’d been looking at a picture of Mum in her garden. It was one of my favourite shots of her, taken about ten years ago. I had the same photo in my apartment, above the television. She was a strong woman back then, able to spend a whole summer’s day in the yard, digging and churning mulch and soil, only to come inside and work magic in the kitchen. God I missed her.

  ‘So you’re staying here tonight,’ I said, trying to sound chipper. ‘No need to drive so no worries, huh?’

  ‘Yeah, no worries at all.’

  He blew his nose into a handkerchief and I wondered if the weather was giving him hayfever too. I didn’t want to think that maybe my father had been crying before I walked into the room.

  ‘I don’t know how I’m supposed to sleep with all that bloody racket out there,’ he said. ‘What kind of music is that anyway?’

  ‘You’ll be right, Dad. Just turn your hearing aid down. You won’t hear a thing.’

  ‘What was that?’

  We both laughed at the old joke even though Dad didn’t wear a hearing aid.

  ‘Let me get you a drink,’ I said. ‘You want beer or wine?’

  ‘Neither,’ he said, standing in front of the dressing table mirror and straightening his tie. ‘I want a scotch. Crisp and on the rocks.�
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  ‘A scotch?’

  ‘Bloody oath, and I want to drink one with my grandson. He’s eighteen now, so he’s allowed a man’s drink. None of this lolly water they all drink these days.’

  I followed him into the hall and swigged from my Corona, wondering if it constituted lolly water in my dad’s eyes. Out in the garage, I found Jonathan and Chloe helping themselves to a chest filled with ice and an array of different drinks, mostly pink, green and yellow in colour. I wished Johnno a happy birthday and gave him a hug. His hair was spiked like a mohawk with bleached tips and coloured prongs at the back. It probably cost more to maintain a haircut like that than to run the Falcon.

  ‘Hey fellas,’ Johnno called to his mates in the garage. ‘This is my uncle, the one I was telling you about.’

  I turned around and held up my beer. Some of them returned the salute and I figured Jonathan had told them I was a cop. Hey fellas, watch what you say because my uncle’s a detective who worked in the Drug Squad. The way the squad had been disbanded so publicly, I wouldn’t have been surprised if some of them came over and tried to score off me.

  ‘Come outside, Johnno,’ I said. ‘Your Pa wants to have a drink with you.’

  ‘Yeah, sweet. Where is he?’

  ‘Making you a drink. Scotch, I believe.’

  ‘Cool,’ he said, bravado mixed with a hint of uncertainty.

  ‘Can I come too?’ Chloe asked, swigging from a bottle with pink liquid in it. ‘Or is this some kind of macho initiation crap?’

  I laughed. ‘Sure. You want some scotch too?’

  ‘Ah, do I look like a scotch girl?’

  ‘I wouldn’t know what a scotch girl looks like, Chloe. Although going by that lolly water you’ve got, I’d say you’re more of a Ribena girl.’

  ‘Ribena? This is a Bacardi Breezer, thanks very much.’

  ‘Yeah, give me a taste of it.’

  She handed it over and I took a swig. It was sweet and revolting and I handed it straight back, then put a hand on Jonathan’s shoulder.

  ‘Right then, let’s go watch your little brother gag on a man’s drink.’

  ‘I won’t gag,’ he protested.

  ‘We’ll see.’

  We joined Anthony and Dad at a table under the pergola that was set with four tumblers, a bucket of ice and a bottle of Johnnie Walker Blue. It was my father’s favourite drink but I liked the double meaning for my nephew.

  I saw that Ella was helping out with the salads inside the house. I called her to see if she wanted to join us but she said she’d come out when it was all ready.

  ‘So, to Johnno,’ my father said, raising his tumbler. ‘You’re a man now. You can vote, drink and smoke if you want.’

  ‘Dad!’ Anthony scolded. ‘He will not smoke, not as long as he lives here.’

  Chloe and I smirked at each other, then I took a sip of the scotch. It was cold and it burnt my throat like dry ice. You could tell it was good by the way it settled in the glass and around the ice in the bottom, something my father had taught us as boys. Yet it was an acquired taste, and going by the grimace on Jonathan’s face, I doubted it was one he would acquire tonight.

  ‘You know, I remember when I was eighteen,’ Dad said to Jonathan. ‘I was getting ready for life on the farm, then my numbers came up.’

  I nodded and so did Anthony. We’d heard the story a hundred times.

  ‘I was on the first ride over there,’ Dad went on. ‘Stayed the full four years and made it out in one piece. A whole other country, that’s what they said.’

  ‘You talking about Vietnam?’ Chloe asked.

  ‘That’s not what I call it. You don’t want to know what I call it.’ Dad looked again at Jonathan; the story was definitely aimed at him. ‘And it was a whole other place. A God-awful place. Hot and full of no one you could trust. You know what got us through it?’

  Knowing what I did now about many Vietnam vets, I could’ve said heroin, but instead let my nephew answer.

  ‘Drinking?’

  ‘Not just any drinking, son,’ said Dad, holding up his glass. ‘Scotch. Only the good stuff too. We used to knock it off from the Yanks. They’d have it shipped in from back home, and we’d sneak off with the bottles while they were sleeping.’

  We all took a sip and I felt a sadness unravel in me as I watched the spark in my father’s eyes burn out. Normally he ended this story by saying how returning home and getting married was when the real war started. There was no way he would say that now, not with his beloved wife of almost forty years stroke-afflicted and bedridden in a nursing home. I looked at Anthony and saw that he had seen it too.

  ‘So, Johnno, wanna tell me what you got for your birthday?’ I said, changing the subject.

  ‘Didn’t Dad tell ya?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘He’s giving me the Land Rover.’

  I was momentarily stunned. I’d noticed the P-plates on the four-wheel-drive out the front but hadn’t thought anything of it. Anthony leased the car through his physio business and often let his kids drive it, but it wasn’t more than five years old. I shouldn’t have been surprised. Gabrielle had been the only child of wealthy fabric importers and the family home had been left to her in their will. For Anthony, it meant he’d entered his forties with a million-dollar-plus property to his name, completely mortgage free. No wonder they could afford to give their son a four-wheel-drive. The money was on tap.

  ‘That’s awesome, mate,’ I said. ‘Do me a favour though and tell me when you’re planning to drive it so I know to stay off the road.’

  Jonathan looked at his dad, unsure how to react.

  ‘I’m just kidding, Johnno. That’s shit hot, mate. Congratulations!’

  We all drank our tumblers and Anthony poured another round, excluding Jonathan, who wanted to go back on the lolly water.

  ‘So what about you, Chloe?’ I said. ‘Enjoying your holidays?’

  Suddenly a sharp pain exploded in my shin and I realised Anthony had kicked me under the table. He obviously assumed I was about to embarrass everyone by taking Chloe on about the pills. I was so incensed by this that I didn’t hear Chloe’s answer and had to think of something else to say.

  ‘So how long have you got left?’

  ‘Of the holidays? I just told you that.’

  ‘No, sorry, I mean university. How long until you finish?’

  ‘Oh, two more years. It can’t go quick enough, I tell you what.’

  I smiled uneasily, unsure if she knew something was going on. ‘Well, enjoy it while it lasts. You don’t get holidays like that in the workforce.’

  ‘Only in the police force, huh?’ Anthony said. ‘I don’t know anyone who takes as much time off as you, Rubes.’ He laughed at his own joke but soon realised he was out of line. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it like that. I know it wasn’t a holiday.’

  I brushed off the insult and lit up a cigarette. I felt like offering one to Jonathan and Chloe just to spite my brother, but didn’t. When Dad said he was going to the bathroom, both kids took the opportunity to escape back into the garage with their friends, leaving just me and Anthony at the table.

  ‘I’m sorry, Rubes. It just slipped out.’

  ‘Mate, I wasn’t going to say anything here. Jesus, I know it’s sensitive.’

  Anthony lowered his head. ‘I know, mate. Shit, I’m just a bit jumpy.’

  ‘No shit. How’s everything else going, aside from that?’

  ‘Fine – that’s the thing.’ He drained his scotch and nodded towards the garage. ‘Look at them. Christ, you’d never know. They look like normal kids.’

  I looked over. Two of Johnno’s mates appeared to be arm wrestling, Chloe and her girlfriends cheering them on.

  ‘They are normal kids, Andy.’

  ‘Yeah, maybe. Have you checked out the DJ yet?’

  ‘No. Why should I?’

  ‘Because like I said, that’s her boyfriend and he’s probably the one selling her the pills. The way I see it, yo
u just go in there, let him know who you are and what you do. Let him know you’re on to him and get him to back off. Christ, it’ll scare the shit out of him. Simple.’

  ‘Well, for a start, if he is her boyfriend, I doubt he’s selling her anything. He’s probably just giving it to her.’

  ‘What, like some kind of sugar daddy?’

  ‘I’m not saying that.’

  Anthony’s eyes flared wide with rage. He pointed a shaky finger, like a broken spear. ‘Don’t go there, Rubens. I don’t want to hear about that. She’s still my little girl.’

  ‘Relax. You’re getting ahead of your –’

  ‘Relax? My daughter’s on drugs and you don’t even give a shit. Jesus, how can you tell me to relax? I knew I shouldn’t have asked you.’

  Anthony seemed aggressive, in the mood for a scrap. He’d always been like that when he got into the grog. I sipped my scotch and let it settle in my stomach before I decided to give him some home truths.

  ‘Listen, Andy, you’re not going to like this, but you need to try and understand something that it’s taken me more than ten years to figure out. Something many of my colleagues, and most of the population, still don’t get and probably never will.’

  He leant forward, interested.

  ‘We’re fighting an impossible battle. And it’s not just the drugs. A multi-billion-dollar music and entertainment industry has sprung up in the past decade. We’re talking about record sales that rival The Beatles. There are nightclubs in Europe that have become multinational corporations and are listed on the world stock exchange. They send their DJs on worldwide tours, fly them in on private jets and helicopters, like bloody movie stars. And walking hand in hand with it all are the drugs.’