Old Scores

by Whish-Wilson, David;

  Access, for information …

  Swann didn’t want to know what the others wanted, or had over him. He slipped his enamel mug into his Gladstone bag, slid out the Statesman keys and headed for the stairs.

  He went ten flights down and two more to the basement, carrying the heavy bag over his shoulder. By the time he reached the basement, one of his knees had begun to ache and the urge for a cigarette had passed. He went back up the stairs and exited into the ground-floor lobby, then went back down. There was no security between the street and the communications system that operated across this building and the nearby public service buildings.

  Swann entered through the cheap veneer door, reinforced with metal plating, that he’d been instructed led to the telecommunications room. In a narrow corridor that smelt dry and musty he could see the exposed wiring that carried the massed telephone and fax lines up into the higher reaches of the building, again unprotected by conduit or any kind of piping; something else that would have to be remedied.

  At the end of a corridor was a solid wooden door that opened onto a room that was completely dark. A warm electronic heat and the sound of buzzing. There were banks of red and green lights, but otherwise Swann couldn’t see anything. He reached his hand along the wall adjacent to the door and found a switch, tripped it. There in the centre of the room, hunched over the vast console, was the telephonist.

  ‘Norman!’

  The telephonist turned, lifted off his headphones and mike. ‘Recognise that voice. Fremantle Station – Charlie sixty-six. That you, Frank? Frank Swann? I was warned you’d be coming down. Though by the smell of you, you’ve changed your brand of cigarettes. What’s that – Craven A to Peter Jackson?’

  ‘Close. Peter Stuyvesant.’

  ‘Fair play to me, Swann. That’s my own brand – invisible to my delicate nose.’

  Norman Gorman was a legend in the police service. He was blind, which accounted for the darkened room, but had been the police force telephonist for as long as Swann could remember. Swann had heard that Norm retired, but clearly retirement hadn’t suited the famously dapper man who got about with a steel cane that doubled as a fencer’s foil.

  ‘Couldn’t stand the bloody silence out in the suburbs, Frank. Stopped looking after myself. Need the ritual of getting dressed and getting on the bus, getting off the bus, getting stuck into some work. The coppers didn’t want me back, so here I am.’

  Swann went and stood next to Norm, put a hand on his shoulder. He was looking good, except for his regular nightclub tan. Even as a younger man, seated at his desk underneath Central, dressed in a double-breasted suit and satin shirt, always a folded hankie and perfectly matching silk tie, his thin brown hair perfectly combed in a centre part, he’d often resembled a wax model of an Edwardian gentleman. And the thing was that Norman dressed himself.

  As the telephonist for the police force, Norm was always treated with a deal of respect. He put through calls and took messages, but the rumours were that he also listened to everything. Nobody knew this for sure, because there was no way to know, but Norm had helped Swann with information on a couple of occasions when colleagues had been gunning for him. Swann never asked where Norm had heard the threats and the plans.

  ‘Talk me through your system here, Norm.’

  Swann listened while Norm described the internal communications network installed during the tenure of the previous government, and which linked eight local buildings and dozens of departments, with Norm as the focal point.

  ‘And the premier’s office – is that routed through here?’

  Norm shook his head. ‘They have a separate operator up there, a woman by the name of Lapin. French for rabbit.’

  ‘You trust her?’

  Norm wobbled his hand.

  ‘Can we get the lines to the premier’s office run through here? That doable? I’ve got to put some remedial measures in place outside your room too, because it’s wide open to bugs, but in here it looks secure. In the meantime …’

  One of Norman’s eyebrows lifted, but only for a moment. If he was curious about Swann’s motivations for allowing him access to all of the premier’s telephone conversations, it wasn’t in his voice. ‘Sure, Frank. Anything’s possible.’

  7.

  Des Foley slumped in the bucket seat of the stolen Fairlane. He’d parked the chugging four-litre sedan across the road from the real estate agent, and cut the idle. It was only a few streets from where he’d stolen Old Tom’s car, but he doubted the man would look for it here, at the bottom of Hay Street. Since the sixties, many of the previous residents of the East Perth tenements, slum-shacks and worn-out lodging homes had migrated to the public housing satellite cities of Mirrabooka, Balga and Nollamara. They had their own gangs up there now, but some still returned to their old haunts to steal, knowing all the backstreets and means of escape. It was fair to assume that Old Tom would write his car off as stolen by blacks, a thing to be thrashed and cannibalised. Foley had no respect for Old Tom and his dobbing ways, but he’d checked the car’s glove box first, to make sure that Tom had insurance. He wouldn’t steal it otherwise.

  Foley watched the estate agent’s building for twenty minutes, shifting only to slump deeper into his bucket seat when a car passed and its headlights strafed the row of double-storey shopfronts before turning left towards the Gloucester Park raceway. Foley was only a few hundred metres from the Central Police Station, and a couple of marked Falcons had cruised past, as well as some unmarked Commodores belonging to detectives. All of them were headed back to the station at the end of a shift, and none of them looked too closely.

  Foley didn’t drink much, and then only beer, and he didn’t smoke. He’d learnt to avoid dependency while in prison, where it made you weak. In his line of work, anything that made a man twitchy was to be avoided. Foley had good focus, disciplined to analyse the job at hand, to problem-solve and anticipate complications. Anything else was a potentially dangerous distraction.

  His only weakness was a love of adrenalin, but he was experienced enough to tamp that down, too, and use it as fuel, rather than make it the thing itself.

  Foley could feel the embers of a familiar nervous glow awaken in his belly, radiate into his limbs. He took a deep breath, and then another. Applying oxygen to the embers, but only enough to keep them alive. He needed his mind clear. It was only a break-and-enter, but one mistake and he was back in jail, for twenty to thirty. Or shot dead in the street. He was parked in the middle of the one police jurisdiction where his fake ID wouldn’t cut it.

  When the street was clear, he opened the Fairlane door and stepped onto the footpath, still warm after the day’s sun. He wasn’t surprised that the branch office of Lefroy Realty was in this part of Perth. A few minutes away from East Perth by foot, there were no blackfellas or bog hoons or poor old immigrants on this street. It was all graphic designers and politicians’ offices, real estate agents and gourmet sandwich bars. And then the looming Central Police Station, looking south across the Causeway.

  Foley walked the block to gain access to the dirt alley that ran behind the street fronts. He’d B&E’d all of the shops down the terrace row when he was a kid, and years later there was nothing spruce about the rear of the shops. He peeled away a cack-handed effort at fencing with rusted tin and star pickets and slipped inside. He counted down the buildings that rose with the gentle incline towards the city lights, knelt before the rear security door and got to work with his picks.

  It was an old lock and only took a couple of tweaks before he felt the tumbler snip. The crappy wooden door inside, loose on its hinges, gave him even less trouble. He closed the door behind him and reached for his torch. It was heavy and doubled as a weapon. He’d taped a brown paper bag over the nose, to diminish the light, but it was sufficient.

  The files would be kept in the manager’s office, which was unlocked. A single filing cabinet beside an unadorned desk with an electronic typewriter. He slipped the tray labelled M–S and found t
he Mostel file. It was fat. He shone the torch over photographs of properties and land deeds and council applications and rental agreements, all neatly numbered and too many to count. At the front was an index, linking property addresses. There were eighty-three in total, most of them addresses in the inner city, with a few down High Street in Fremantle.

  Foley whistled. Eighty-three properties. That was a significant amount of rental income, every week. It only took a few seconds, but Foley’s plan changed from the simple standover of a single landlord to something else. He didn’t know what yet, except that it felt right. The bastard owned half the local area and yet there he was, bullying Foley’s mother, making it personal.

  Foley recited it back to himself. Making it personal.

  Exactly what he would do.

  He turned before he heard the sound. A car door slamming, the boot of a station wagon. He stood at the office door and looked into the street, recognising the face from the flyers throughout the office. It was Timothy Lefroy, the business owner. Foley had plenty of time to withdraw through the office and return to the alley. Nobody would know of his visit.

  Except that remnant burn of anger, and the knowledge that the Mostel file would only reveal so much.

  Lefroy was carrying a swag and a sleeping bag over his shoulder, a pillow in each hand. He unlocked the front door and held it open with his foot, threw in the swag and sleeping bag, the pillows, let the door close as he returned to his car.

  Foley waited for Lefroy; this time he was carrying takeaway in a heat-sagging plastic bag, and a bottle of wine. Lefroy unlocked the door and entered, kicking the sleeping materials towards the nearest desk.

  When Lefroy approached his office, Foley stepped into the hall and punched him in the face. Lefroy stood there, hands by his sides, still holding onto the wine and food, so Foley punched him again, watched his knees buckle, the light go out in his eyes.

  Foley caught the estate agent as he fell, and dragged him into the office. When a man is knocked out it’s impossible to gauge the length of his spell – could be a few seconds, could be a few minutes. Could be forever. Foley sat on the edge of the desk and fished around in the takeaway bag, drew out a paper wrapper containing four spring rolls, began to munch. There was no need to hurry. The real estate agent was aiming to sleep in his own office. Meant a break-up, or a divorce, and he smelt of booze. Nobody would be looking for him tonight.

  When Foley finished the spring rolls, he was still hungry. He opened one of the foil trays and began to shovel fried rice into his mouth with his fingers, pausing every few mouthfuls to flick rice onto Lefroy’s face. Finally, the man began to stir. Foley put down the tray of rice in preparation. As he expected, once Lefroy’s eyes opened he was immediately lucid. Fear will do that, and the next thing. Lefroy began to shout. Foley pinched Lefroy’s nose, forced his jaw shut. Knelt on his chest, and pushed. Lefroy nodded, unblinking. He’d recognised Foley, and that was a good thing. Cut out all of the unnecessary. The need to hurt him further, or explain his purpose. Lefroy knew.

  But whether it was guilt or shame behind that look of understanding, or just plain fear, would make all the difference.

  8.

  Swann hung his towel on the veranda railing and went to the garden hose. He stood under the mottled shadow of the tuart tree and let the sun-heated water in the length of hose run out over his head, the colder water coming through onto his belly and legs. He stripped off his shorts and wrung them out and stood naked under the cold water, gazing up at the tracer-lines of pink and amethyst and orange streaked across the western sky. He hosed the beach sand off his feet and padded over to the jarrah porch, wrapped the towel around his waist and eased into his old canvas deckchair, to watch the sunset fade. On the upturned milk crate beside him was a bottle of Captain Morgan rum, and he poured himself a couple of fingers into a patterned glass that his children had once used to drink milk. The glass had somehow managed to avoid the carnage of twenty-two years of accidents and more than a few tantrums. He added cold water from a plastic jug and took a sip, added some more. He ignored the cigarettes on the floor beside his chair. He’d just swum a kilometre down at South Beach, a hundred metres or so offshore, weathering the small chop and stingers until he couldn’t swim anymore.

  Swann sipped on the rum and closed his eyes and felt the last rays of sunshine leave the yard. Some wattlebirds were fighting in the nearby callistemon over the first red flowers. In another tree up the street he could hear a party of red-tailed black cockatoos, their laughter loud across the neighbourhood.

  Swann never thought he’d say it, but it felt good to have a nine-to-five, to not have to linger in parking lots overnight doing surveillance, or stalk company CEOs across town while they lived the high life, from Coco’s to Clouds to the clubs in Northbridge – them drinking champagne and eating oysters, Swann drinking lukewarm thermos tea and pissing in a bottle.

  He heard the screen door swing open, and listened for the sounds of Marion’s padding feet. She’d been over at their second daughter Sarah’s house in White Gum Valley, babysitting Neve and Jock, their first two grandchildren. Sarah had her first child at eighteen, soon followed by another. She was finishing high school at the nearby TAFE, and Swann and Marion were often called to help.

  Swann had just turned forty-five. He felt young to be a grandfather, but there it was.

  ‘Frank, come here. I’ve got a surprise.’

  Swann grinned at the pleasure in Marion’s voice. It hadn’t always been like that. When the kids were young and Swann was drinking, the stress of his job had taken them close to divorce. And then he’d lost them all at one point, for the sake of another woman, who wasn’t worth the pain it caused Marion and his kids. He rewound the towel over his waist and wandered into the kitchen. There on the table was a banana box. Inside the banana box was a pair of eyes, brown and wet, and an even wetter muzzle. He looked to Marion, who laughed, lifted off the box’s lid to reveal a puppy, between two and three months old. ‘She’s a staffy-kelpie cross. Sarah’s neighbours had one left, and it was headed for the pound. Couldn’t let that happen.’

  Marion kissed Swann and stroked his neck, watching his reaction. The kids had various pets growing up, including a feral cat called Colonel Charles Custard who’d wandered over from the nearby quarry and, most recently, a wiry mongrel called Clarry who bit Swann on the feet whenever he was hungry. In every case the strays had adopted the family, rather than the other way around, wandering into the yard and refusing to leave.

  Swann picked up the dog and held it before him. She licked his hand and piddled down his arm, a warm yellow stream, her trusting eyes staring into his.

  ‘Don’t tell me that wasn’t planned.’

  Swann placed her back on the table and scratched her ears. He put his dry arm around Marion and they watched the dog circle the edge of the table, looking for a way down. Swann didn’t need to say anything. He felt like he understood. The quiet in the house, the absence of children, it was a relief, but it was also hard.

  Marion worked as a home-care nurse, tending to the palliative needs of dying men and women, the drug problems of those too screwed up to attend clinics, the clap treatments of the prostitutes in the nearby area, and the various ailments of the street people around Fremantle. She was nobody’s fool, but also tender by nature. It was draining work, and she didn’t get much in return. She’d always loved animals for that reason. They loved her right back, even Clarry, who’d never once bitten her.

  The phone rang. Swann washed the dog pee off his arm under the kitchen sink. As a PI, he hadn’t been able to afford an office, and his clients called him at home. One or two had called over the past days, offering him work that he’d been glad to turn down, and no doubt they would keep ringing. Marion took the pooch out back while he lifted the receiver.

  ‘Swann?’

  An unmistakable voice. Chocolate and whisky. Heenan.

  ‘Swann? Turn on your TV at seven, check the leading story. Something to
think about. I’d like to meet with you about it, first thing tomorrow. In the meantime, I want to hear how today went. The people who came to see you. We’ve got to keep a hygienic distance between us and some of these jokers. But they do need to be heard, for reasons of keeping an ear out. Sure you understand, Frank.’

  Swann recounted, in detail, his conversations with Corvo and Riley. He kept waiting for the Heenan to stop him, to say that he didn’t want to hear, but he never did. Instead, he had the impression Heenan was writing it all down, taking notes, and he kept prodding Swann for further details. Did he think Corvo really believed that a casino was on the cards, or was he just fishing? When Swann replied that he seemed pretty sure, Heenan became angry. Ludicrous, that was. What a stupid idea. Someone was white-anting the premier already. Most likely Sullivan, the ex-minister of police and recently retired leader of the Liberal opposition, who the premier had thrashed at the election. Bent bastard. Long history with the worst coppers. Could even say he’d learnt strategy from them. Whatever means necessary.

  Heenan was ranting. Sounded a little drunk. Swann looked at the clock above the fridge and saw that it was nearly seven.

  But then Heenan’s voice changed, became coy, suddenly choosing his words carefully. ‘Swann, I see this as part of your job, to … I don’t know, cultivate these people. Feel free to … do them favours, if you think it useful to us. You know what I mean.’

  ‘They’re in our debt.’

  ‘Precisely. But don’t forget that it goes both ways. They offer you something, do a favour for you, for us, then …’

  ‘I understand. Heenan, it’s seven. You want me to hang up?’