Dead Men

by Derek Haines

  Steve woke up in hospital to the discovery that he’d been in a coma for seventeen days. Lucky to be alive, he was moved from intensive care a little more than two weeks after he regained consciousness. He was moved to a single ward bed, and told that he would be allowed visitors in a day or so. Had he known who his first visitors would be, he wouldn’t have smiled so sweetly at the nurse who informed him.

  ‘Good afternoon Steve,’ said a hulking police detective and then introduced himself and his partner. Steve didn’t catch the names, but he did hear detective sergeant, and detective constable. ‘We have a few questions we would like to ask you Steve.’

  ‘Do I have any choice?’ Steve replied.

  The detectives didn’t answer his question. They started with their own questions. Steve had a feeling that this was going to be about the bashing, so he prepared himself to tell them he couldn’t remember anything. He feared the police, but he was more scared of people who handed out bashings like the one he’d received.

  He was thrown off guard when the questions had nothing to do with the bashing. They started with questions about two girls he’d had sexual intercourse with. And did he know that they were fourteen and fifteen years old. His head was reeling, and continued to reel as the questions changed after some time to questions about robberies, drug dealing and car theft. Steve was mumbling. His answers were making no sense. It seemed that he hadn’t recovered enough from the beating to be back to his sharp lying self. At the end of three hours of questioning, Steven Peter Sharp was placed under arrest. The next day, the two policemen returned and formally charged Steven with two counts of indecent sexual assault of a minor, seven counts of robbery, one count of fraud, two counts of theft of a motor vehicle and one count of possession of heroin. Steve didn’t need anyone to tell him he was in very, very deep shit.

  It was of little consequence to Steven at that time, as his head was reeling with the events of the recent weeks, but later he would wonder how all the information was gathered to lead to his arrest. He would discover that his beating wasn’t the end of one man’s retribution. Two men with the shiny black shoes had visited his sister and his mates during his coma, and extracted in less than gentle fashion, information about him from them. He didn’t know, and would never know that the detective sergeant who arrested and charged him was on the payroll of the owner of the Pink Cockatoo.

  His first court appearance was made in his hospital bed. He wasn’t granted bail, and was remanded in custody and moved to a secure ward in Fremantle Hospital. Steven could clearly see Fremantle Prison through the bars on his ward window. When he was discharged from hospital he was moved to the remand section of Fremantle Prison. The high limestone walls of this prison were a fearsome sight. From the inside they were twice as fearsome. He recovered from his beating with only a very crooked nose to remind him of its brutality. He was in remand for a period of nearly eighteen months due to the length of the court proceedings he faced. The final result was a nine year sentence. He was eligible for parole in 1991. The depression he felt at first was replaced with acceptance. There was little he could do about it. But he did do one thing. Within three months of being moved from the remand section to start his official sentence, Steven enrolled to take courses to be able to sit for high school exams. Within three years he’d passed all his subjects. He then enrolled to do his tertiary entrance exams. He passed with exceptionally high marks in 1988. Steven had ideas about going to university to study business.

  Steven’s behaviour and application to his studies during his sentence earned him his parole at its earliest opportunity. The parole board considered his application for only a short time before granting it. Upon release, he made enquires with his parole officer about the possibility of him moving from Perth to be able to get a fresh start in life. Arrangements were made for him. He was given the details of his new parole officer in his chosen new home town. He arrived in Sydney in early 1991, and reported to his parole officer within two days of his arrival.

  Guilt

  David ran away to Sydney in 1985 with his young and attractive girlfriend. He’d gained a transfer with his new employer to their Sydney branch that gave his most recent urge to run a degree of decorum and reason. It was dressed in the guise of a promotion. His girlfriend wasn’t entirely pleased about cutting short her working holiday, as she was enjoying Perth, after what had been a less than happy teenage life in Sydney. David knew little of this part of his girlfriend's life. He ignored her seemingly luke warm response by assuring himself that she’d be happy to be close to her family. Justifying the continual urge to run was becoming easier for David.

  It was a wet Sydney that greeted its newest inhabitants. One new, one returned. It rained on one hundred and seventy six days out of the first six months after their arrival. In his terms of transfer, his employer had offered to assist in relocating. This covered the cost of furniture removals, airfares, car transport and related moving costs. What it didn’t offer was assistance in finding somewhere to live. In 1985 there was a rental shortage, with the vacancy rate for rental properties at minus point five per cent. This meant having to find a flat or apartment that was going to be vacated within a month and be lucky enough to win the agent’s favour and obtain a lease. It wasn’t unusual to be greeted at the door of a run down, filthy flat by a unsmiling property manager from the local real estate company, who was normally a woman and an utter bitch to go with it, asking at the front door, ‘And how much are you prepared to pay per week?’ This was before you even had a chance to look at the dump. Rental property is always expensive. In Sydney in 1985 it was extortion.

  After two weeks of fruitless searching David and his girlfriend stumbled on an almost new townhouse. It was fresh and clean, and comfortable. Most of all it was available. They signed up immediately and paid their bond and rent in advance. It was expensive, but they at least had a roof over their heads. It was nearly a two hour drive in peak hour to David’s office, but luckily his new sales territory was on the side of the city his new townhouse was so it was in Sydney terms, convenient. Within a few weeks David settled into his new job, and his girlfriend found work with a software company a half an hour drive from home. They both applied themselves to their new positions, and very quickly established new friends and social engagements. Their busy schedules, especially David’s, allowed little time for the relatively new couple to have time to develop their relationship.

  He would admit it to no one, but David was missing his children. In Perth he at least had his access visits on weekends. In Sydney he had his weekly telephone call. It was no substitute for seeing their drawings from school, or being able to go to their school concerts, or play games with them. In between phone calls David drank. He would never drink alone, because he thought that was the preserve of alcoholics. He preferred companionship when he drowned his sorrows. In Sydney he found no shortage of willing drinking partners. Outwardly he was friendly and smiling to his various bar friends. It would only be late in the evening, if they were sober enough to notice, that the sadness would hang heavy in David’s face and eyes. Luckily for him, no one stayed sober enough to notice. His girlfriend did. Although she would get angry at his late and drunken arrivals home at one in the morning or later, normally mumbling something about, ‘Sorry I’m late, I got caught up with some clients,’ she knew he was feeling a loss. When she discussed it with him in the sober moments of a Saturday afternoon, he would scoff at the suggestion. It would be a long time before he admitted his loss and even longer before he would admit it was really guilt that was driving him deeper into depression.

  The painful memory of his tearful wife, shaking with fear, with a young screaming baby daughter in her arms, and his four year old son holding the hem of his mother’s pale green dress to his mouth, pleading and sobbing, tears streaming down his young and innocent cheeks, ‘No Daddy, no Daddy…….. don’t go ……. Daddy………… Please Daddy, please don’t go, please, Daddy, Daaaadddyyy!

  David
couldn’t tear this memory from his mind. The guilt ground away unmercifully and incessantly. It consumed him. It corroded him. It was destroying him. This was something David could never run from. It lived inside him. It was him. It would always be him. It would sit as a small thirty second movie playing on auto replay in his mind’s eye like his own personal internal twenty-four hour continuous cinema. It was the same horror movie over and over and over and over. The screaming of ‘Daaddddddyyyy…,’ echoed until the movie started again.

  Eighteen months in Sydney was outwardly successful for David and his girlfriend. His sales figures were impressive, achieving over one hundred per cent improvement in sales for his territory since his arrival and of course his company was very pleased with his progress, even if he was a little difficult to manage. His sales manager let him have a free rein as his sales figures were proof he was working his territory well. It was common knowledge to his managers and work colleagues that he didn’t need any excuse to have a drink, a game of golf, a lunch or a dinner, but he was young, aggressive, well liked by his customers and most of all he was a profitable addition to the Sydney sales team. By the end of his second year he was the highest selling salesman in the Sydney office. His company had him earmarked for promotion.

  His girlfriend was doing equally well in her job. She quietly went about her progress with little notice or support from David. She was bright, intelligent, educated and talented. He was fully self centred in his own success and self destructive in his guilt. Nevertheless, she loved him, and understood and was sympathetic to his outward expressions of missing his kids. He’d had a rough time of it with his divorce, which had not been long since finalised she thought, but had very little idea of the depth of the guilt he suffered, or the waves of depression that would engulf him. She saw and loved what the rest of the world saw. A brash, confident, successful man, climbing his ladder of success. His lack of education was more than made up for by his seemingly natural talent to sell. This was a skill in demand. She assured herself that he would settle down in time. In this she was right. It would just take far longer than she could have imagined.

  ‘Congratulations David, you have earned it. I’ll see you at the next management meeting in Melbourne.’ And with that, David’s managing director shook his hand and boarded the plane back to Melbourne. Driving back to his office, David let the events of the day wash over him. He was very pleased and even if one can be, proud of himself. He was now going to be sales manager for the Sydney branch. It was only two years since he had moved from Perth, and his climb up the corporate ladder had begun in earnest. In being appointed to the position he had leap-frogged many more long serving salesmen. He was a rising star in his company. At twenty-nine years old, he was the youngest man to have held the position. He arrived back at his office and went about the task of finalising his duties as a salesman. It was Wednesday. On Monday, he would move from his desk near the photocopier and telex machine in an open plan office of forty-two people, to his own office. It was the second largest in the building. Only the state manager had a larger one. He would have a sales team of nineteen men to manage from there. He was too excited to be daunted by it at that moment.

  For all of his faults and inner confusion, David had an exterior persona that shone. He started his new position without fanfare. Just relocated offices on that Monday morning and started work. Within a few weeks, and as many sales meetings, he had the confidence and support of all bar a couple of the salesmen. Most admired his sales ability, and fell in behind him easily. He wasn’t overly concerned about the two who had not quite accepted his promotion. He understood why, and decided to let time solve the small problem. It wasn’t affecting the rest of the salesmen, and the only outward sign was the aloofness of the two at sales meetings. Their grievances were simple. One, a hard nosed pressure salesman in his mid thirties had his nose out of joint because he thought he should have got the position of sales manager. The other, the eldest of the salesmen, thought the same. It was just human nature. A natural reaction in David’s mind.

  As time went by, the situation with the two hadn’t really improved, so David thought after tolerating this for four months he’d better confront the problem. He tackled it head on and arranged a time for them both to meet him in his office on a Tuesday morning at nine. They arrived. Entered his office, and were about to sit down in the visitors' chairs. Standing at the office door he said, ‘No, don’t sit down fellas. What I’d like you to do, is sort out between yourselves, which one of you will be sales manager. When you’ve done that, the successful one can sit down in the big chair behind the desk, and write out my resignation letter. I’ll be back in twenty minutes to sign it.’ With that he closed the door and walked to the coffee machine, smiling a wicked grin. Before he had made his cup of coffee, two apologetic creatures appeared at the door of the small kitchen.

  With his imaginative sales ability David delivered his company a twenty two per cent increase in sales for his branch in the first year of his tenure as sales manager. Fifteen per cent over his sales budget. Profit had risen from twelve per cent to seventeen per cent. He took pride in being able to report the result to the management meeting at head office in Melbourne. Smiling faces in a board room are a welcome sight. At dinner that evening with the senior management of the company, he bathed in his own glory. Arriving back at his hotel after the dinner had concluded, he opened a can of beer from the mini bar, lay down on the bed propped himself up on a couple of pillows, turned on the TV, and relaxed. Then as usual, whenever he relaxed and emptied his mind of the day, his internal cinema took him over. His guilt trip began again. ‘Daaadddddyyyyyyy…………’

  Weddings are planned events, special days to be cherished. Every detail planned for months in advance. The culmination of love and commitment, truth and devotion. The one day of a woman’s life she is a very real princess. A day lifetime promises are made.

  ‘Well, it’s more than likely I’ll be transferred to Victoria,’ David told his girlfriend. ‘If we’re going to get married, we should do it before then. All your family are here, mine’re in Perth. It’d be a pain to have it later down there. What do you think?’ he said in a question that sounded more like a decision to his girlfriend.

  ‘When would your company want you to move?’ she asked.

  ‘Probably in about three months,’ he replied.

  ‘Well, I suppose we could organise something. I’ll check what can be arranged. I’d like a church wedding you know,’ trying to have some authority in this decision.

  ‘Ok, see what we can do,’ he replied, seemingly ending the subject for the time being.

  David in his single minded approach to what he thought was a logical thing to do didn’t notice the look in his girlfriend’s eyes. He wouldn’t have had to look too deeply to see that he had missed something important. Four simple words would have filled the saddened look in her eyes. He had forgot in his planning to say, ‘Will you marry me?’ He hadn’t asked her. He’d told her. And made a deadline for the event to suit his own business time frame.

  The bride and groom enjoyed a one night honeymoon at a Sydney hotel. Work for David was very busy. This wasn’t his last selfish act.

  ‘You’ve turned into a complete wanker. Do you know that David Holdsworth?’ was the welcome home David received from the now Mrs Holdsworth of three months standing. ‘You’re a drunk and a selfish, conceited, self obsessed arse hole. God you shit me!’ she continued, then stopped to run to the bedroom and cry herself to sleep. It was eleven thirty. David was drunk as usual. Sitting on the sofa he waited. His internal movie started right on cue. ‘Daaaaddddyyyyyy………’ He sat and let the tears run down his cheeks. He felt the urge to runaway. From himself.

  There was silence at the breakfast table. It was Thursday morning. His wife in deep concentration, looking out the apartment window at nothing. David concentrating just as deeply into the bottom of an empty coffee mug. He broke the silence. ‘I’m resigning. I want to go back to Per
th to be with my kids. I’ve had enough.’

  She didn’t move her stare from the nothing she was looking at through the window. Her mind running. All the work she had put into her life and job, completely unnoticed by David. She was successful. But only David mattered to David.

  Her reply came after a long silence. ‘You know David, when I came to your office a few months back, that day I had the dentist appointment nearby, and you took me so graciously to lunch in your staff canteen; I noticed something. Your office’s smaller than mine. Much smaller. And it has no view. You know I have a view of the river from my office. Your office furnishing is cheap ex rental shit. The desk lamp on my desk is worth more than everything in your office. Do you realise David, in my office we’ve got Royal Doultan. And, when I go to lunch, it’s normally to a five fucking star restaurant. You think you’re someone David Holdsworth. You think you’ve been a success. You think the universe rotates around you. Do you know I earn more than you? Fuck you David.’

  David’s stare hadn’t moved from the empty coffee cup. How do you answer a tirade such as that? How do you admit your guilt? There was no argument to have, she was right. Every word was right. He pondered that she’d missed an awful lot that she could’ve thrown at him. He was selfish. No doubt.