Crucifixion Creek

by Barry Maitland

  ‘Well, well.’ She hears Bob get up, his heavy footsteps going over to her desk. Harry has taken hold of her hand, squeezing it.

  ‘You’ve dropped some papers…What’s this? Kristich?’

  Harry is going over to him. She says, ‘I’m always nagging Harry to give me things to work on; I need the practice. Of course I can’t get into e@gle.i or use any in-house information, only what’s on the web. But you’d be amazed what’s out there.’

  ‘So you’ve got your own IT tech, Harry. Lucky man.’ He ambles back to sit with them again. ‘This reminds me of the old days, when Betty was alive. We used to have the blokes and their wives round, put our feet up, have a good yarn. Before your time, Harry. You never met Betty, did you? Great woman. Tower of strength to me. Maybe I’ve got lazy since she went. I should do it again—have you all over for Sunday lunch, you two and Toby Wagstaff and his missus. And Deb and Damian—he’s a good bloke. What do you think?’

  ‘Great.’

  ‘Hm.’ Bob swallows the last of his drink and gets to his feet. ‘Well, I’d best be off. Good to see you again, Jenny. You’re looking really well.’

  When he’s gone she says, ‘What was it he saw?’

  ‘Just a page from the Bluereef website. Nothing incriminating.’ He lets out a deep breath. ‘What was all that about though?’

  ‘I think he’s lonely,’ Jenny says. ‘Going back to an empty house after a bad day. Does he have kids?’

  ‘Two sons. Both overseas I think. They look exactly like him—he keeps a photo on his desk, him and Betty and the two boys.’

  ‘I think it was kind of him to call. Gave me a fright, though. I couldn’t remember what I had lying on the desk.’ Then she smiles to herself. ‘You know what the women say about Bob, the wives at police functions.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘That he’s got this presence, and what a spunk he must have been when he was young.’

  She feels Harry’s arm around her waist. ‘Enough drama,’ he says. ‘Let’s go to bed.’

  *

  He wakes from a deep sleep, the sound of a bell ringing in his ears and the trace of a dreaded smell in his throat, the one that makes him throw up at barbecues, the smell of the roadside bomb, of burning flesh. He gets up and sees the glow of an outdoor light, the one triggered by someone coming to the front door. He pulls on a tracksuit and goes downstairs, where the smell seems stronger. The light gleams through the glass panel in the front door. He opens the front door and gags. Something big and black and burnt is lying on the doorstep. Holding his breath, his eyes adjusting to the glare, he makes out the shape of a head, of shoulders, legs. He takes a deep breath and immediately gags again at the overpowering smell and turns away to throw up into the banksia beneath the front window.

  It’s human. Naked, skin streaked and blackened with blood and scorch marks. He runs back into the house and calls triple-O, shouting upstairs to warn Jenny.

  He returns to the body and squats beside it. Tries to find a sign of life. He reaches in to where the throat might be and when he presses the flesh it comes away in his fingers. On what might be the upper left arm the whole limb is black charred meat, right down to the pale line of a bone.

  The ambos arrive, closely followed by the cops. By the light of their flashlights he gets a better idea of the anatomy.

  ‘Holy Jesus,’ the ambo breathes. ‘They’ve taken a blowtorch to him—an oxyacetylene torch. Must be. They’ve written something on his back.’

  Harry peers at it and sees three huge letters carved deep into the torso by the flame, D O G.

  ‘Is he dead?’

  ‘Oh my word yes.’

  ‘Let me see his face.’

  They gently turn the skull. The features of the right side are clearer. One of the cops says, ‘You know him?’

  It is Rowdy O’Brian.

  *

  He watches the routine unfold with a nightmare clarity. The two general duties officers are soon joined by others who attempt to secure the scene, but since the only access to the front door is down the narrow laneway this is difficult. Through the front window he sees Toby Wagstaff, duty inspector from homicide, arrive in the street at the end of the lane, but he has to wait for the crime scene team to give him clearance before he can come in to talk to Harry. Eventually they are seated together in the sitting room, Jenny in the kitchen making coffee.

  ‘So Harry, here you are again. Up to your neck in shit.’ He regards Harry, concerned.

  ‘Looks like it.’

  ‘Do you feel up to talking to me?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘You’re a marvel, you know that? You’ll be the death of the old man.’ Wagstaff chuckles and runs a hand through his curls as if to flatten them, but they bounce back up. ‘So you know the victim.’

  ‘Thomas O’Brian, nickname Rowdy. We were in the army together in Afghanistan in ’04. I hadn’t seen him since then, but I recognised him among the people we pulled in at the raid on the Crows.’

  ‘So he’s one of them, a bikie.’

  ‘Yes. We couldn’t get anything out of him in interview and Bob Marshall suggested I try to see him privately, see what I could find out. So I contacted him and he agreed to meet me at the David Jones café in Elizabeth Street. I reported all this to Deb.’

  ‘Was he any help?’

  ‘Not much, not prepared to dob in his mates. But he told me that the club had been split by the takeover of the current president, Roman Bebchuk, who he warned me was a vicious bastard. He’s the one who did this.’

  ‘How would he have found out that O’Brian met you?’

  ‘Rowdy chose the David Jones café because it was the least likely place any of the gang would visit, but on our way out a woman recognised him, called out his name. I shot off. I don’t know who she was, but she might have seen me.’

  ‘Hm. Kind of obvious though, isn’t it? Leaving him on your doorstep with “dog” carved into his back?’

  ‘Brutally obvious.’

  ‘A warning?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Pretty personal, anyway. And your wife…’ He looks towards the kitchen.

  ‘Yes, that’s what really gets me. She is extremely vulnerable.’

  ‘Okay, we’ll pick up Bebchuk. Anyone else?’

  ‘His inner circle is his vice-president and the sergeant-at-arms. Their details are all on file. There may be others they use for dirty work. I’m guessing it would have taken at least three of them to do this, to torture him, transport him over here and get away fast.’

  ‘Yes, well, we’ll see what CCTV tells us. Where do you think it was done?’

  Harry thinks. ‘They’re not stupid. We didn’t find much when we raided the clubhouse, and they’ll know that’s the first place we’ll look. I’m guessing somewhere else, but I’ve no idea where.’

  ‘Let’s hope the post-mortem comes up with something.’

  ‘Then there’s the attack on Kelly Pool’s flat last night.’

  ‘Who?’

 
‘The Bankstown Chronicle reporter, the one who’s been running the Kristich story. Her flatmate was badly beaten up, probably mistaken for Pool.’

  ‘Yes, of course. You think this is linked?’

  ‘Certain of it. Same people. This is war, a war of intimidation. They’re warning everyone else to stay in line and keep their mouths shut.’

  ‘How do you mean, everyone else? Who are we talking about?’

  ‘The people who know what Kristich was mixed up in.’

  ‘Which we don’t know because his hard drive was wiped, yes.’ His eyes stray over to Jenny’s computer. The desk is now clear of papers, the screen blank.

  ‘Still,’ Wagstaff goes on, looking doubtful, ‘this is pretty blatant. The press are out there now. They’ll make a big thing of it.’

  ‘Maybe,’ Harry says. ‘Bikies killing bikies? Who’s going to care?’

  When they’re all finally gone, at least for the present, Harry sits alone in the darkness. He drinks another glass of whisky to try to wash the burnt taste from his throat.

  ‘Harry? Are you there?’

  ‘Yeah, love, over here.’

  She comes and sits beside him and holds his hands. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘Tell me. Were you close? In the army?’

  ‘Oh…There was a house…’ He sees it again in his mind’s eye, the faded rags over the windows, the smell of goats. ‘He got me out of a tight spot. But it wasn’t just one thing, it was everything, the fundamental thing—stick with your mates, cover each other’s backs—that stays with you forever. And I didn’t do that. I exposed him to harm. This happened because I asked him to talk to me. I wrote his death sentence.’ He swills down the last of the scotch. ‘And what a death.’

  ‘No. You couldn’t foresee that. You weren’t responsible.’

  But Harry knows she’s wrong.

  23

  A night in a luxury hotel room has not made Kelly feel any better. She packs her bag, puts the empty wine bottle in the bin and checks out. She gets a cab back to the hospital, where Wendy is still in a coma. While she’s there Kelly gets a call from Bernie.

  ‘Where are you, Kelly?’

  ‘The hospital.’

  ‘Oh, yes, right. Any change?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No news is good news, I suppose.’

  She mentally puts a blue pencil through the cliché.

  ‘Seen the paper?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘We’ve made a big thing of the attack on your place and Wendy. Threats against the freedom of the press. Violence to stifle debate, all that. Demanding action.’

  ‘Ah.’ She finds his enthusiasm depressing.

  ‘Yes, well. And I had a call from that developer. Maram Mansur. Very smooth gentleman. He is amused by your suggestion of his foresight and would be delighted if it were true, but it’s the first he’s heard of the rail corridor coming to Crucifixion Creek. However he is very annoyed about our slur on his business practices and is instructing his lawyers to take action.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘And something that came in too late for the papers—a dead Crow bikie was dumped in a laneway in Surry Hills last night. Want to take a look?’

  She’s about to say no, then asks for the name of the lane, and recognises Harry’s address. ‘Okay,’ she says. ‘I’ll go and see.’

  When she gets there she finds the lane cordoned off. Now that it’s daylight, a team of people is working in the lane, doing a fingertip search on hands and knees. She reaches into her bag for the phone Harry gave her, but as she lifts it out she realises it was this one she used to call the emergency services from her flat when she discovered Wendy. She freezes, then turns and walks away. When she gets up to Crown Street she takes the SIM card out of the phone and grinds it under her heel, then throws the phone into a rubbish bin. She tries to calm her breathing. She’s never been like this before, so rattled and panicky. Is it a symptom of age? Is this all just getting too hard for her to deal with?

  She jumps as her other phone rings. It is Catherine Meiklejohn, the editor of the Times. A woman she has never met but long admired.

  ‘Kelly? I wanted to congratulate you on your fantastic work on the Kristich murders. Wonderful reporting. An inspiration to us all. But I was deeply shocked to hear about the attack on your flatmate. I take it you were the intended victim?’

  ‘Yes,’ she says, and tries to force some confidence back into her voice. ‘Yes, I don’t think there’s any doubt about that.’

  ‘Shocking. Now listen, you are obviously in a very vulnerable position, and I don’t know what kind of back-up the Bankstown Chronicle can offer you, but if you were with us you would have a team of people working with you on this and keeping you safe, as well as helping you cover all the angles.’ There is the briefest of pauses. ‘What I’m offering you, Kelly, is a job with us, as one of our senior crime reporters. We’ll start with a big feature on you and how you broke the story. Will you come in and talk to me about it?’

  ‘Um, thank you. I’m really flattered. But…I have been working closely with my editor, Bernie Westergard…’

  ‘Sure. I know Bernie, and he’s a realist. Well, it’s up to you, Kelly. It’s your career. But you might only get one bite at this.’

  ‘Right. Can you give me a couple of hours to think about it?’

  ‘Of course. Let me know by midday, okay?’

  ‘Yes, and thank you again.’

  She kills the call and takes a huge breath. Has she just blown it? Surely Catherine could hear the weakness in her voice, her indecision? Yet the offer stands. She doesn’t know whether to scream and dance a jig or run home and bury her head under a pillow. Except she hasn’t got a pillow to go home to. And Catherine was right—she needs help. Back-up, resources, people full of energy to bounce ideas off.

  She stands in the middle of the footpath and straightens her spine and sets her jaw. She tells herself she is as tough as she needs to be, and as persistent. She created this story through her own efforts, and she’ll continue it the same way.

  There is a café across the street, and she goes over and orders a toasted sandwich and coffee. Tries to get her brain to think clearly. She wonders what she’d say to Bernie. The Chronicle has been her refuge for so many years now. She owes it a lot, but it’s time to come out of the shelter.

  Her phone again, Bernie—as if he’s listening to her thoughts. ‘Kelly? The ministers of planning and transport have just issued a joint statement. They deny that there are any plans to run the underground rail line anywhere near the Creek. They hope that this will put a stop to misleading and mischievous rumours emanating from certain minor organs of the press.’

  ‘They actually used those words?’

  ‘Same as. Doesn’t look good, Kelly. Does your source have anything new for us? We need a new angle.’

  ‘I’m working on it.’ She rings off. No, this does not look good. And the timing—what will Catherine Meiklejohn make of it? Is her big idea just an illusion? What evidence did she have for it, really? She imagines the whole th
ing, her whole campaign, collapsing in an embarrassing heap, all coincidence and false conclusions amounting to nothing more than the desperate imagination of a failed reporter. What does she have to give the Times now? Can she offer anything without Harry?

  She goes over to the counter and tells them that her mobile isn’t working and she needs to make an important phone call. She offers the girl five dollars, takes the café phone and dials Harry’s special mobile number.

  ‘Yes?’ His voice is barely a whisper.

  ‘Harry, can we talk?’

  ‘What phone are you on?’

  ‘This is a landline from the café I’m in. I had to destroy the other mobile. I think I compromised it using it to call triple-O when I found my flatmate.’

  All this comes out in a rush, then she waits, listening to the silence at the other end. Finally he says, ‘Can’t talk now. Don’t call this number again,’ and hangs up.

  She mutters a pathetic little curse, at herself, at Harry, at fate, then replaces the handset.

  Bereft of ideas, she walks down the hill to Central, where she buys a ticket out to the northern suburbs. The train is almost empty and she stares out of the window as it rumbles across the Harbour Bridge. The sky has turned dark and raindrops begin to stream across the window. Kelly wonders if she should ring Meiklejohn back and say she can’t do it.

  At Lindfield she gets off and walks back along the Pacific Highway through the town towards the public library. There she explains that she’s trying to make contact with someone who’s recently moved into the area, and describes her.

  ‘Oh, Phoebe! Yes of course. She comes here a lot.’

  ‘Do you have her address?’

  ‘Well we do, but—oh, you can ask her yourself. Here she is.’

  Kelly turns and sees the old lady coming through the doors, wrestling with an umbrella. She seems frailer now than before, a little more unsteady on her feet. When Kelly greets her she looks bemused, and Kelly has to remind her.