Harry Curry: Rats and Mice

by Stuart Littlemore

  ‘As well he might. I know Mr Curry’s going to make the application, and I can’t see how I could resist it, can you?’

  ‘Matter for your Honour.’

  ‘Certainly it is. I order the informant to pay the costs of both defendants. Five hundred dollars again, is it? You’d better ask Mr Surrey.’

  ‘It is.’ Harry hadn’t even turned around. ‘Five hundred dollars in each case, if you please.’

  ‘I suppose that’s fair. I so order.’

  The sergeant rose again. ‘I note that Ms Moresby’s still in the box, your Honour.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry, Ms Moresby. You can step down, of course. You’re excused.’ She stood. ‘Just before you do — can I ask you this? Are those billboards still up in other places, other States, or have they all been taken down?’

  ‘Our information is that they are still up in Victoria and parts of New South Wales, yes.’

  ‘Not the ACT?’

  ‘Oh, we don’t have advertising in Canberra.’

  ‘How silly of me. But you’re going to be busy, aren’t you? Only not in Canberra.’

  Surrey laughed loudly.

  The magistrate prepared to stand. ‘Gentlemen, I think that’s enough for today. I’ll see you tomorrow, for the coronial matter.’

  Harry declined his delighted clients’ invitation to a celebratory lunch and headed home. He called at the Eden wharf and bought a kilo of mussels, and picked up a Margaret River white at the drive-in before turning off the highway at the point signposted ‘Tourist Route’. It’d be a gullible tourist who swallowed that, he thought. The eventual end of the road, if you made it without tearing out the sump or shattering the diff, was a long way from civilisation.

  Once home, Harry changed out of his suit and put on a load of washing. He toured the house paddocks, making mental lists of things to mend and do, and returned to the house to set a fire, but hadn’t yet lit it when, at five o’clock, Molly from over the creek rang and invited him to share their evening meal, and he was happy to accept. When he got back home — the semillon had gone very well with the chicken fricassee — the house was cold and there was an apologetic message on the answering machine from Arabella to say that she was heading out to a gender-neutral judicial language committee dinner and that she hoped he hadn’t had too gruelling a day. She actually used that word — ‘gruelling’ — which conjured up for Harry a mental picture of Oliver Twist stirring a huge cauldron of very thin broth. The very act of gruelling. The gerund of gruelling. His day had been a lot more rewarding than stirring soup, he wanted to assure her. Arabella also asked him in her message, her voice tinny on the cheap recording device, to give her love to David. Harry went to bed late and continued reading his new Agriculture Department guides until he fell asleep with the light on at 1 a.m.

  Because he slept in, Harry had to push the big LandCruiser hard up the hilly highway, and made it to the courthouse by ten, but only just. It was another cold day and spring was still in retreat, but at least the gritty wind had abated. Surrey was waiting on the verandah, looking a little anxious, with his client beside him. Claude Rankin was a tall, slim but muscular man of about forty, dressed entirely in denim — shirt, jacket and jeans — but for a bright bandanna, yellow and white, around his neck and a large gold earring in his left ear. He reached out a calloused hand to shake Harry’s when Surrey introduced them.

  ‘Sorry I’m late, gentlemen. Do we need an adjournment so that we can confer about your evidence, Mr Rankin?’

  ‘No, mate. Not a problem. I know what I wanna say.’ And he handed Harry five pages of statement in tight red handwriting.

  ‘I might need some time to read this,’ Harry said.

  ‘Not necessary, mate,’ Rankin grinned, ‘it’s just somethin’ for youse to check and make sure I cover it all when I give me evidence.’

  ‘I know you both think that all I need to do is roll my arm over on this thing,’ Harry told them, ‘but what I don’t understand is how John Bettens, a brand-new appointee, can sit on a part-heard coronial inquest conducted over a considerable period of time by another beak.’

  ‘The original coroner died before the evidence was completed, Harry, and it’s been in the too-hard basket for more than a year. Somebody has to wrap it all up, and Bettens got the short straw. This is really a formality, just to rule a line under the proceedings in the court’s file, but it might prove difficult for Claude to put on the record what he tells me he wants to say. Up till now, everyone was assuming he’d exercise his right to silence, because the copper in charge is out to sink him — he’s pushing for a finding that Claude’s trying to defraud the insurance company by setting fire to his abalone boat and trailer, and even the Range Rover that was hooked up to it.’

  ‘Is the policeman here? What’s his name?’

  Rankin grinned. ‘Bird. Chooky Bird, they call ’im. Chickenshit would be more like it, far as I’m concerned. He got into a bit o’ trouble, they reckon, in that police Royal Commission or whatever, and they moved the prick sidewards down to Batemans Bay. Whatta they say — outta sight, outta mind? Bastard couldn’t lay straight in bed, and he tried his rotten act out on me. He isn’ gunna get away with it. He bloody isn’. You bloody watch me.’

  Harry and Surrey looked at each other, Harry shrugged, and they went in to find the tyro coroner already on the bench, waiting. Harry apologised again.

  ‘Quite all right, Mr Curry. The sergeant and I were just reading our way back into this matter. It’s been adjourned for fifteen months, and I take it you represent the final witness to be called?’

  ‘Yes, your Honour, again instructed by Mr Surrey.’

  ‘Good morning, Mr Surrey. Sergeant, I can see you’ve got Sergeant Bird with you, or I assume that’s him, and I note from the papers that he’s been in charge of this fire enquiry since it began. You’ve come down from Batemans Bay, have you, Sergeant Bird?’

  The small, rodentine man in uniform sitting beside the bald sergeant, no longer acting as prosecutor but now in the role of officer assisting the coroner, inclined his head in what looked like a furtive nod.

  ‘Very well. Sergeant, I take it you’ll call the witness and when you’ve finished with him Mr Curry can ask any questions he thinks are important, assuming there are still matters that he feels should be covered for the record.’

  ‘Yes, your Honour. I’ll call Claude William Rankin.’ The sergeant opened his file to an almost blank page, and Bird leaned forward to whisper something to him.

  Rankin had been sitting in the body of the court, quietly, holding his bundle of papers. Harry cursed himself for his late arrival and the consequently insufficient briefing, but his client seemed unconcerned about the lack of legal assistance. He strode to the witness box with the determination of a country-and-western gunslinger. It was the bandanna that did it, Harry decided. Once there, he was sworn in and invited to sit. ‘No, I’ll stay standing if that’s all right with you, sir.’

  ‘Perfectly all right, Mr Rankin. Yes sergeant?’

  The sergeant ran through the formalities then adopted a serious mien. ‘Now, Mr Rankin, don’t answer this question until his Honour has given you a warning. The question is this: did you set fire or cause or permit any other person to set fire to your Range Rover motor vehicle, or the trailer that was attached to it on the fourth of June this year, or the Haines Hunter fishing boat and its fifty horsepower Mercury outboard that were on the trailer?’ Rankin started to speak. ‘No, Mr Rankin, please wait for the warning.’

  Bettens leaned forward and also spoke seriously. ‘Mr Rankin, do you understand that you have a legal right to claim privilege and refuse to answer that question on the grounds that it may tend to incriminate you? That question, or any other such question that may follow?’

  ‘Understand that perfectly, your Honour. Me lawyers told me all about it. I don’t need that fifth amendment crap.’

  ‘So let’s be perfectly clear: do you wish to claim that privilege?’

 
‘No, I bloody don’t.’

  ‘Mr Rankin, I don’t mind at all whatever language you want to use, I’ve heard it all before, but you might think it’s in your interests to be a bit careful, because this is all being recorded and taken down and will form part of a permanent record held by the authorities. For posterity, as they say. Best to give posterity the most favourable impression, don’t you think?’

  ‘Do my best, then.’

  ‘Thanks. Go on, sergeant.’

  ‘Okay, then. Would you please answer the question?’

  ‘Lissen carefully: I didn’t set fire to me own Rangie, or me own boat, or me trailer, or me outboard. I lost a bloody fortune, sorry, a fortune, over all that. The insurance company wouldn’t pay replacement value on anythink. They done me like a dinner. There’s one thing I agree on with Sergeant bloody chookshit Bird there, though, and maybe only one thing: insurance companies are bastards. And you can keep that “bloody” in.’

  ‘And do you deny that you have or ever have had any knowledge of who it was who set fire to your property?’ The sergeant seemed in no way surprised, or ruffled, by Rankin’s vehemence.

  ‘Yes, I do. I deny it.’

  ‘Your Honour, I don’t think I can take it any further than that.’

  ‘Thanks, sergeant. Is there anything further your client wants to put on the record, Mr Curry?’

  ‘I’ll ask him, your Honour. Mr Rankin? Now’s your chance. Away you go.’

  ‘Your Excellence, can I read it?’

  Bettens kept a straight face. ‘Yes, Mr Rankin. The rules of evidence don’t apply here — you’ve got a free hand.’

  ‘Good on ya. Okay.’ He unfolded his bundle of pages and started reading. ‘I parked me outfit — me car and trailer and boat — a bit down the street from the Eden Fisho’s that night about six o’clock and went inside for me tea. I had a couple o’ beers with Dennis and some other blokes, and then I come out about nine o’clock to drive home. The outfit was gone — Rangie, trailer, the lot. I went down to the cop shop and reported it, and they said it was too late to do anythink that night, they’d look tomorrow. One o’ the blokes from the club give me a lift home, and they rang me at eight o’clock the next mornin’.’ He looked up. ‘The coppers did, that is, and said that they’d found it up the Eden tip, burnt from end to end. I took the ute up there and seen it. Nothin’ left, not really. I made the insurance claim and when they finally paid out, a year later, I finished $24,000 behind. All that year, Sergeant Chooky Bird kept comin’ round home, tryin’ to get me to say I done it meself.’ He looked up again from his pages and addressed Bettens directly. ‘I told ’im to piss off … sorry, I told ’im to go away, I wouldn’t talk to ’im. I knew ’e was a crook.’ Back to the written statement. ‘But ’e kept comin’ back. And every time I was in the pub, he’d turn up there and have another go at me, tellin’ me to come down and be interviewed. I wouldn’t do it. The last time, he said to me, “Look, Claude, this is off the record. I know you done it, and I don’t blame you. I hate bloody insurance companies, they’re a pack of bastards. I just want you to confirm that you done it. All the police know you did. It’s just between you and me,” he said, “and I just want to know. Nothin’ll happen to you. You done it, didn’t you?” Do you want me to tell you what I told him?’

  Bettens shook his head and tried to look serious. ‘No doubt you told him something to the effect of, “No, sergeant I didn’t do it. Please desist.”’

  ‘Yeah. Somethin’ like that. Words to that effect, as you say.’

  Harry thought there was more to come. ‘Is there anything further you want to put on the record, Mr Rankin, about your dealings with Sergeant Bird?’

  ‘Yes, there is.’ He turned a page and read what was in front of him in red ink. ‘I have it on very good authority that Bird was dealt with for corruption in that Royal Commission they had up there in the smoke, so they sent ’im down to the Bay to keep ’im away from trouble, and within six months he was back at his old tricks. There’s a certain licensed club up the coast that I know’s got a poker machine with Chooky Bird’s name on it.’

  ‘I object to this,’ the bald sergeant protested, following an elbow in the ribs by Bird, but Bettens waved him off.

  ‘What do you mean by that?’ he asked Rankin.

  ‘You know what I mean. Everyone knows what I mean: there’s a poker machine, a certain one, standing in a row of poker machines in a certain bowling club not a million miles up the coast from here and all the profits from that machine are paid every Saturday morning to Bird, who goes round the club when only the cleaners are there, to collect in person from the manager.’ Rankin looked up at Bettens again, finished with his notes. ‘Once a crook, always a crook. And I’ve got it on the same high authority that there are a number of other things he does for that licensed club which the licensing police reckon’d be just a little bit naughty. They can’t stand a bar of ’im neither. Not just me.’

  Harry looked across at Bird, who sat rigid and implacable. No expression at all on his face. The sergeant had adopted the expression of a man emerging from the hardware shop and pausing, certain that he’d forgotten something from his shopping list.

  ‘That’s it, is it, Mr Rankin?’ Harry asked.

  ‘It’ll do,’ Rankin said. ‘Now let’s see the Internal Affairs put the cleaners through that nasty little bastard over there. They’ll have to, now. It’s official.’ He folded his arms before adding, ‘I dunno how he ever got in the police — he’s too bloody small.’

  At last Bird bridled. Call a man a crook, okay … but call him little — those are fighting words.

  ‘You’re right,’ said Bettens, ‘that’ll do. You’ve got it all off your chest, Mr Rankin. I’m going to close the record off unless either of you gentlemen tells me there’s anything else I need to cover.’

  Harry and the sergeant assisting the coroner both shook their heads. Harry turned to Surrey and spoke sotto voce: ‘Good luck if Claude thinks Internal Affairs will get involved in that.’

  ‘I’ll file my report in due course. The interested parties will be notified.’ Bettens stood up. ‘Adjourn the court, please.’

  And that was the end of Harry’s week of rats and mice. Surrey was back in Goulburn in time for lunch at the Paragon, but Claude Rankin told Harry he had something for him, and gave him directions to his house at Tathra, where they had a midday beer together, and Rankin sent Harry off with two big white plastic buckets, lidded and packed with ice — one of oysters in their shells, and the other filled with bright red lobsters, freshly cooked.

  I think I’ll shoot you anyway, and Bang! he does

  When the policeman, holding his cap in his hand, entered the hospital room, the occupant of the bed muted the sound on the television — a daytime soap was showing — and greeted him unenthusiastically, then returned his attention to The Young and the Restless. Or was it Days of Our Lives? Who cares? After thirty seconds of staring at the silent screen, he buttoned the set off and dropped the remote on his tray table. The unhappy patient was young, grossly obese, and had often been seen in tears by the nursing staff since he’d emerged from his emergency spinal operation five days earlier. An intravenous drip was connected to his arm.

  ‘Fucking TV. I better get used to it.’ He still didn’t look at his visitor.

  The policeman pulled out a chair and sat, sliding his cap under the seat. ‘Whatta the doctors say?’

  ‘Nothing they can do, and I should be glad I’m not a quad.’ The young man tugged at the neck of his blue-and-white-striped pyjama jacket. ‘Glad — shit! Never drive me car again.’

  ‘Yeah, you will. They’ll give you hand controls. Wouldn’t take you long to learn that.’

  The young man didn’t appear to be listening. ‘Tomorrow’s me birthday. Big celebration.’

  ‘Well, that’s good.’

  ‘If someone asks me what I got for me nineteenth birthday, I can say paraplegia.’ He pronounced it ‘parapalegia’.

 
; Silence fell over the room. Sparrows argued on the windowsill outside, and the sea of Canberra townhouse roofs stretched to the horizon. The Neurology Unit at the Canberra Hospital.

  ‘You seen a solicitor yet?’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘Compensation,’ said the policeman. ‘Criminal injuries. Bastard shot you, after all. You’d get the maximum — $50, 000.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘If he’s convicted. I had to give evidence in one of those cases last year. Girl who got sexually assaulted. They gave her thirty thousand, and not much happened to her. You’d do better than that.’

  ‘Yeah. Fifty grand.’ The victim thought about it. ‘Trouble is, they’ll say it was my fault. That I snuck up on him in the dark. Surprised him.’

  ‘But you didn’t, though, didya?’

  The victim took his time. ‘No.’

  A family in dark clothes walked past the open door, the middle-aged mother in tears.

  ‘I can get you the name of a solicitor, if you like. To apply for the money. Or you could just get the forms yourself, save the legal costs.’

  ‘Do it meself. You could give me a hand, and it’d fill up the time while I’m lying here for the next three months. Give me something to do.’

  ‘That long? Three months?’

  ‘What they say.’

  ‘Christ. Then what?’

  ‘Rehab, getting used to a wheelchair, diet, exercise, eventually retraining.’

  The policeman nodded. ‘Hadn’t thought of that, retraining. They give you any ideas?’

  ‘Not really, not yet. One of the welfare people says maybe I can stay in security, just work inside monitoring alarm systems and that.’

  ‘That’d be all right, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘If it’s all I ever wanted to do, I suppose.’ The young man angrily threw a magazine at the window, and the squabbling sparrows scattered. ‘But it isn’t. I was only working there till I was old enough to get a security licence — carry a pistol and that — get some experience as a patrolman, and then I was gunna apply for the police. Go to the Academy.’