Old Scores

by Whish-Wilson, David;

  Swann realised that he’d been holding his breath, sipping little hits of air, holding at bay the image of Hogan’s men, arriving in numbers. He exhaled, put his hands on his knees, felt the earth turn, watched the light fade around his feet.

  33.

  For the first time in weeks, Swann was grateful for the early hour. He hadn’t slept, and the day’s work ahead was a blessing. There are things you can hide from in the daylight hours, people you can only reach when the sun is shining. After leaving Dragic’s farm, he’d called Dennis Gould from the car, told him the situation, that he might need to run. Hogan might be waiting for him to bury the body, then make the arrest. But there were no lights in the rear-vision, all the way to the pine plantation north of Wanneroo – the closest patch of navigable bushland. Like all pine plantations, a graveyard air at night, but Swann was grateful for the lack of underbrush, walking trails and neighbours. He chose a hollow between rows, soft beach sand, inaccessible to the machinery that broke, skinned and loaded the pine, ploughed the earth. Enough moonlight to dig by. It was humid in the hollow; sweat dripped off his nose, the dust of each spadeful coated his wet skin. Two feet down the sand compacted. Swann prayed he didn’t hit tamala limestone, the shovel-head scalloping the grave until he was four feet down, then in the hole itself, sinking into the cold damp sand, the surface at eye-level, then above, and still digging. Fireman’s carry then dropped Dragic into the grave.

  He drove back to the farmhouse and parked the ute, hosed down the shovel, locked the house. Looked for his footprints all the way back to his car, and where in doubt, roughed the surface with a leafy wattle switch. Pulled the car out onto the empty road, walking the switch along the tyre tracks, his footprints, tossing it into a ditch.

  On the drive home he was alone on the outer roads, but in the city the Statesman passed taxis, civilians, coppers, each of them looking at him, he noticed, behind his tinted windows. Swann had hunted men now like himself, another mask to wear. Details like clues – the red dirt in his tyres needing to be hosed off, the same with his boots. Afterwards, lying beside Marion in bed, a great distance between them, Swann was unable to sleep. Going back over everything. Everything back to normal. Like it never happened. Then going back over everything, again.

  Swann lay awake in his bed and looked at his watch, the minutes painfully slow. The street believed that Dragic had done a runner to Macedonia. Swann needed to build upon the rumour, reinforce it and make it real. But some knew otherwise. Hogan, and the man Dragic had hired to potentially harm his family. According to Hogan, a member of the Junkyard Dogs. A down payment made. The bikie would need to be told. The sun coming up behind the scarp, wattlebirds and magpies beginning the dawn chorus. Swann got up to boil the kettle, make tea for himself and Marion, another shower – follow the routines. There was a note from Marion on the chalkboard by the fridge. Gerry Tracker was in Fremantle Prison, on remand. A concerned friend from inside Corrective Services had called it in, obviously on Tracker’s instructions.

  Swann left Marion asleep, turned the ceiling fan up a notch, shut the door quietly behind him. First port of call – a payphone in Fremantle, on the corner of Market and High, nobody about except two drunks who’d wandered over from the dunes, draped in their blankets, leaning on a bench seat soaking up the morning sun. Swann dropped the twenty-cent piece, looked down at his feet, the ancient stains of blood and oil soaked into the porous concrete, layered with a fine windblown sand, dozens of cigarette butts. The call was a risk, because Riley was Hogan’s fizz. Swann let the phone ring on. In Riley’s Federation semi-detached, with its bare floorboards and cool stone walls, the chime would echo loud. Despite the early hour, Riley picked up. He was the club president, always on duty. ‘Riley. The Junkyard Dogs’ sergeant-at-arms. Personal number. Now.’

  There was the sound of a lighter’s hiss, a little suck as Riley’s mouth made a seal around the first of the day. Flicking through a rolodex. ‘Clem Gunston. Two six six, three five three one. Didn’t hear it from me.’

  Swann hung up, dropped another coin and waited. There was a chance that one of the Junkyard Dogs was freelancing for Dragic, that Clem Gunston mightn’t know, but three men had taken Dennis Gould for the drive.

  ‘Gunston. This better be fucken good.’

  Swann covered his mouth with his sleeve, spoke through it. ‘Only gonna say this once. Dragic is in the ground.’

  A pause, no hurry. ‘Got any proof?’

  ‘Try to get hold of him. You won’t. Better still, those plants in Wanneroo, they’re yours.’

  ‘Don’t know what you’re talkin’ about, mate.’

  ‘Whatever you been paid, doesn’t matter. But there’s no more comin’.’

  ‘How’d you get my number?’

  Swann hung up, replaced the receiver and leaned on the booth. Felt the shiver of released anxiety rise up his spine, exit the back of his head.

  *

  The freeway was empty on the drive in, too early for commuters. Dozens of joggers, keeping to the riverside tracks, their bright fluoro tracksuits snagging in the pure morning light, each of them wired for sound, walkman headphones bobbing up and down, the river unruffled to the horizon west. As he neared the city, the first convoy of trucks rose over the Narrows Bridge, their battered flanks and dusty tyres and drivers in identical grey collared shirts, caps pulled low. The car phone rang, and he lifted the console. It was Marion, her voice sleepy and warm, like any other morning. ‘Just making sure you got the message about Gerry Tracker. His friend, didn’t leave a name, said Gerry’s asking for you. Won’t talk to anyone else.’

  Swann started to reply, got it caught in his throat, the guilt in his voice. He coughed. ‘I’ll tee up a visit. Thanks. I love you.’

  ‘I know. You sound exhausted. Come home early, we’ll go to the beach. I love you too.’

  Swann swerved as a truck drifted into his lane, the driver’s face a mask of alarm. He pulled over towards the West Perth exit, scrolled down the windows and welcomed the sun on his face, inhaled the smell of diesel fumes and baking concrete, felt the Statesman pull along the curving road, his eyes ghosted by the image of Dragic’s grave and the smell of pine, the moonlight glistening on his arms.

  34.

  The situation wasn’t fucking ideal. Des Foley shifted his arse on the mat, let a buttock find its shape in the sand, take the pressure off his hip. Old injury, after a spill on a stolen Yamaha, just another thing to put up with. Even noticing it told him how his mood was darkening. The boy across from him, giving off that vibe he hated about young men – twitchy, sullen, never know what the idiots are going to do next. In prison, always trying to prove themselves; make a name, deflect the attention of the perverts.

  This boy should know better – had already done some time. They’d run out of Longmore Boys Home reminiscences. The yard, footy comps, stuck in the classroom zoning out. All the other stuff – the circle-jerking, the smell of spoof everywhere, gash on everybody’s minds – awkward to joke about wanking and blow jobs when you’re in a hole with another male – didn’t want the kid to get the wrong idea. But Christ, he was hard work. Made Foley feel like his jailer, which in a sense he was.

  The kid wanted to move, to get things moving, to get out somewhere and do something – a stupid play. Gerry Tracker would make the first move, Des had told him, let them know what he needed, what to do. All they had to do was wait. Think of it as doing time. Either converse with your cellie – speak seven different kinds of shit, didn’t matter – or even better, go inside yourself, make yourself stronger, have a good hard look and make the resolutions, adjustments – or daydream instead, nature’s fucken television set, drift along on the good times and the fantasies of good times to come.

  But no – the kid was caught between – neither in himself nor outside. Eyes shifty and bugged out one minute, wounded and glistening the next. Fucking jiggling his leg even. Breathing through his mouth. Eyes returning to the pistols in the bag beside Foley’s pillow. An
y minute now, the kid was going to make a move, and Foley would have to restrain him, or worse. His allegiance was to Gerry Tracker, his old mate, and himself. The kid running would put Foley in danger too.

  At least it was quiet in the house above. The old man asleep in gin-soaked dreams, until the dark. And Foley’s hip, really aching now, needed to stretch but there wasn’t room.

  Most kids in this situation would humbug Des until he relented, told the stories of the banks and his life on the run, the prisons, the prossies, the guns and the cars; milk him for information and useful knowledge. But Gerry’s boy didn’t seem interested, and Foley sure as hell wasn’t going to play to an empty house.

  Des started laying the cards down, on the blanket, again. Glad that the boy didn’t ask, knowing his response would be edged. ‘The name of the game is fucken patience.’

  Most blackfellas Foley knew loved a laugh, Gerry Tracker especially. He was a hard man in prison, did some hard things to survive, but it was his humour that made people admire him, even the screws and the skinheads. But the boy wouldn’t even ask about his father. Des didn’t understand that. His own father a prick of the lowest order, stole from them on his visits, temper like a grenade. If Des had a father like Gerry Tracker, bit of a legend in the system, Des would want to know. But the kid didn’t want to know.

  The words in Des’ mouth sounded false. Trying not to sound like his own mother, who’d tell the boy to toughen up, don’t let the bastards get you down, keep that ember of fighting spirit deep inside. But he had to try. ‘I’ve never really been out the goldfields. Tell me about your mother’s country. What’s it like this time of year?’

  The boy glanced, looked back at his feet. Little shrug, but he did start talking. ‘Now’s the best time … still cold at night, not too many flies. There’s this namma hole still got water – like a big swimming pool, fulla taddies …’

  Just as Foley suspected. The kid didn’t want to talk guts and glory. Not a crim at heart. A good kid, thrown in the deep end. The kind of kid belonged somewhere else. Talking easily now, every now and then a little prompt from Foley. ‘They got those little people out there?’

  The boy nodded. ‘Yair, they’s all over. Little fellas, bad smell, same mob as here. Mummery men. Into everything. Either like you or they don’t …’

  The Tracker boy started talking about experiences with the little people, eyes alive with living the stories, still avoiding the main source of hurt – his mother’s early death. But he got there in the end, and Des Foley listened, right up to the point when Gerry Tracker had gone bush to collect his son, the haunting visible in the boy’s eyes now, tremble in his voice. ‘There was something off. My dad was still asleep, just as the sun was comin’ up. I walked out the backyard, circled with this cyclone fence. Every foot around the fence was a big black crow, maybe fifty of ’em, and they was all lookin’ at me. It was the old ones. I woke my dad up, he took one look and we was outta there. He’s never been game to take me back, even for a visit …’

  Des Foley looked around the perimeter of the stumps, the weatherboard cladding radiant with the light outside, the eternal dark beneath the house. He wasn’t easily spooked, didn’t fear man or beast, but the story of the crows, and the image of Gerry Tracker on the run from a law Foley didn’t understand, made his skin tingle.

  35.

  Swann flagged the premier’s offices with the debugging wand, with Lurch the security guard watching his every move. Because he wanted to check, Swann searched the premier’s drawers until he found the receiver linked to the landline, pulled it out. Lurch thought to say something, shifted his weight, but a look from Swann decided him against it. Swann turned over the silver-cased receiver, sleek and modern, expensive. There were only a couple of local PIs with the motivation or the knowledge to run a surveillance operation using equipment of this price and sophistication. He would need to know who – most PIs were ex-cops and Swann didn’t like the idea of working around a potential enemy. He also noticed that the bag of cash had grown in size, loose notes and banded notes and rolls of notes were visible at the bag’s mouth. Which was what Lurch was really watching him for.

  Swann sat in the parliamentary carpark and smoked a cigarette, his view of the city that was growing ever-louder with rush hour, pedestrians stalking the pavements down Hay Street, buses throwing out orderly lines of suits and frocks and kids from the suburbs. He dialled Dennis Gould, got him on the fourth ring, voice bleary with exhaustion, launching straight into a summary of the second tender belonging to Hercules Construction, all good news on the surface of it – local companies long associated with public works, gathered under an umbrella held by construction heavyweight Robert John; an old-money family going back to the first gold boom in the 1890s, got the contracts for most of the country rail network, most of the ports and the Narrows and Fremantle Traffic Bridges. A natural rival to Exetar, Hercules’ tender was more expensive because, as far as Gould could tell, their timeline for completing the project was two months north of Exetar’s. As to which was more realistic, that wasn’t Swann’s concern, a matter for the Ministry’s resident engineers and town-planners, although there were no anomalies so far – all their accounts in order, no red flags on the names.

  Exetar – just a couple of loose ends before they put a line through the tender. Gould had tracked down Tommy Calhoun, the director of the security company currently occupied by Gary Quinlivan. Swann took down the street address and the number, although he didn’t call ahead.

  The double-brick and tile house was in Thornlie, front porch shaded by a stand of giant casuarina, their dark nuts and resiny-brown needles strewn across the hard-packed drive and yard. Swann parked behind a newish Holden panel van, gold duco buffed to a high sheen, and the burnt-out chassis of the same make and model, puddles of rubber, glass and plastic on the macadam. The house was dark and silent, built like a bunker into the hill that sloped up from the river. Behind an asbestos fence, an ancient swing set creaked in the breeze. Prominent, handpainted Mind the Dog sign. Swann rapped the front door, stood back and waited for a minute. Tried again, louder this time, and longer. The sounds of a shuffle, a dog’s chain, and the door cracked, blown by the wind.

  ‘Tommy Calhoun?’

  The man peered past Swann, both directions, his muscled arm gripping the choker on some kind of black mastiff, panting, eyes bugging, front legs off the ground.

  ‘Whatchya want?’

  ‘A chat.’

  Swann identified himself, and his purpose. The dog ceased its whimpering, began to growl, a long low growl at war with its friendly eyes, suggesting the growl would win out. Calhoun clucked, and the dog quieted. Like dog, like owner. Calhoun’s eyes were at war with his body language. Proud eyes, and aggrieved, but shoulders slumped in resignation.

  ‘Come in, ya dickhead. Get us both killed.’

  Inside the house, the shades drawn, smell of stewing garbage from the kitchen, chop fat, ashtrays and stale beer. The signs of a man alone, but also the remnants of a woman’s touch, not yet undone: the art and photographs on the walls, the neat arrangement of the leather couches, brightly coloured cushions, white shagpile carpet. Kids’ toys pushed into corners, folded kids’ clothes on the dining room table.

  But no sense that Calhoun’s family were around. Swann could guess. They’d be staying at a mother’s, a sister’s, a caravan park somewhere, until all this died down.

  Calhoun was hiding in his own home. Swann glanced into the windowless bedroom off the kitchen, saw a semi-automatic rifle, a brace of American grenades, tear-gas canisters and ammo in clips and boxes – the perfect room to make a last stand.

  Calhoun saw the glance, gave a shrug of the shoulders. ‘Wanna beer?’

  Swann could see it in his eyes – not used to being cooped up, cut off from the world. Hadn’t been answering his phone. Sitting in darkness at night. Loneliness on top of worry. Worry on top of shame. Shame on top of anger.

  Waiting.

  Too proud t
o take the holiday with his family. Sticking around, a petty act of defiance. The world of security goons a small one, and everything to do with reputation. Private armies made up of ex-cops, soldiers, crims and thugs. Calhoun owned one of the biggest, now taken off him.

  ‘All I want is the names,’ said Swann. ‘I’ve seen Gary Quinlivan. He’s not going to standover anyone. Who were the others? And why?’

  Calhoun grunted, padded past Swann into the tiled cave of the kitchen, took a beer out of the fridge, cracked and slurped, wiped froth off his moustache, beady, angry eyes. ‘You payin’?’

  Swann snorted. ‘I’m investigating what looks like a hostile takeover of your security agency. You don’t want to talk –’

  Calhoun put up a stop sign. ‘Hostile takeover. I fucken like that. If it was sold to me that way, might’ve been easier.’

  ‘How was it sold to you?’

  Calhoun put a finger-gun to his temple, pulled the trigger. ‘May as well have been a public arse-reamin’ – that’s what it looks like to my rivals, my staff, my missus.’

  ‘The names.’

  ‘Yair, and what about my name? Two months, the bastards told me, but I ain’t coppin’ that. I used to be a sniper. Death from a mile away. That’s how I’m gonna do it …’

  Calhoun showed Swann his eyes, but he wasn’t convincing anyone.

  ‘Maybe that won’t be necessary. Start at the beginning,’ Swann said. ‘Start now.’

  The way Calhoun described it, shoulders hunched and mitts around his tinny, voice straying into wheedling, catching himself when he heard the self-pity, the first move had been onsite vandalism, disabling earthmovers and cranes, theft of explosives and site vehicles, all of which made him look incompetent. When Exetar demanded explanations, he started looking closer. Right under his nose: the trucks and truckies. Total replacement of the drivers, with no warning. When the vandalism and stealing didn’t stop, the site manager complained to Calhoun, who told him about the trucks. The site manager made some inquiries, made some threats. That night he had a Molotov put through his front window, kids and wife watching Countdown, only escaped out of good luck. When the next day Calhoun dragged a driver out of his truck and beat him with a pipe, the other drivers had gang-bashed him, driven him off-site with boots to the arse, in front of everyone. That night, blew up his panel van. Three men marched inside wearing balaclavas, slapped around his missus, put a gun to his head. Two-month vacation, for him and all his staff. Starting now. Hostile takeover? More like a fucken invasion. And names? Take your pick of the city’s lowlife. Calhoun was no angel, but he followed the law when he could. None of his staff with a history of larceny. Violence, yes, perhaps, but his company gave violent men a second chance, some structure, a pay cheque. These new blokes, they’re career crims: bikies, bash-artists, hoons. Italians from Leo Ajello’s crew. Not even union men. No union’d fucken have ’em.