Old Scores

by Whish-Wilson, David;

  ‘The upper management. Exetar. Do they know what’s going on?’

  ‘Not much they can do. Strike. Nothing they can do.’

  ‘Let me guess. Since Quinlivan took over, no more thefts, vandalism, threats.’

  ‘Yep. Nope.’

  ‘What I don’t get is,’ Swann continued, ‘why muscle into a construction project right near its completion? So they pad out the salary bill with a few sleepers. Small potatoes for the bikies, for crims like Leo Ajello.’

  Calhoun didn’t know, looked to the empty in his hands, stubby fingers tapping. But Calhoun didn’t know about Exetar’s Burswood tender. The premier’s commitment of taxpayer money. The opportunity to get in on the ground floor, from day one, and milk the public tit. The Burswood project would take years to complete. Now Swann understood. Gus Riley had mentioned his men working on the site as drivers. They were training for the next job. Swann could see the headlines already, years down the track. Burswood cost over-runs. Project delays. Massive spending blowouts. A secret margin on every purchase and expense – thousands of purchases and thousands of expenses. Local organised crime getting their noses into the corporate trough. Using their street skills for intimidation and extortion and violence to control the site. Exetar eaten out from the inside. But who was controlling it? Conlan brothers’ money was behind the East Perth development, and also Exetar’s bid for Burswood. But Conlan’s Harrowgate money was behind each of the tenders. Swann wondered. In a world flooded by cheap finance, it must be a stipulation, a requirement, but ordered by who? Had to be the premier, and Heenan, brokering the tenders even before the election, a focus on local employment and local money. Good for jobs, good for everyone.

  Swann left Calhoun in his darkened kitchen. The mastiff followed him to the door, looked out at the empty street, wouldn’t cross the threshold.

  36.

  Terry Accardi was parked before the stand of paperbarks, in the corner of the crumpled and potholed lot where the junkies usually congregated. His idea of a joke, perhaps – the unmarked Belmont shouting obvious cop. Across the foreshore men and women wearing wristbands and headbands and sunglasses jogged before the glare of the river, the sun sheeting down from the west, the sound of the traffic on the Narrows like a hive of angry bees. Swann parked alongside and lit a cigarette and had a look around. Before leaving Calhoun’s house he’d done a check of his car for bugs, or tracking devices – after last night and the lack of sleep, the suspicion of Hogan tailing him was reasonable. The strategy behind Hogan setting up Swann for Dragic’s murder, then banking it, was still not clear. Which is why Swann needed to get with Accardi, and put it on the record.

  A battered, brown Datsun 120Y entered the carpark then U-turned when it saw the Holdens. Swann got out and looked around, then joined Accardi in the Belmont, lifted a paper bag off the passenger seat and put it behind, the rear seats laden with ziplocked glassine evidence bags.

  ‘That all from the bloke in the river?’

  Swann could see jeans and sandshoes, socks and an office shirt, all wet. A wallet, cigarettes, gold wedding ring.

  ‘Just come from the autopsy. Looks like a cut-and-dried, should I say, clear case of drowning. Wasn’t dead before he went in the water. I have to drop this off at Central, go back to the deceased’s wife, follow-up interview, then his colleagues. What do you have for me?’

  ‘Tell me about the dead guy.’

  Accardi gave him a look, didn’t really have the time. Swann looked back, let his silence do the talking.

  Accardi nodded. ‘Michael Cassidy. DOB April forty-six. Lived a block from here, back nearer the zoo. Wife, no kids. Degree in botany. Environmental scientist for the Ministry of Development. Like I say, went into the water alive. Strong swimmer, according to his wife. Waiting for the tox reports. Car found parked near the mouth of Claisebrook Creek, presumed where he entered the water, body drifted on the tide down to the flats near Burswood. That’s it, so far.’

  ‘He have any juice at the Ministry?’

  ‘That’s an interesting line of inquiry. This involve your background checks of the Burswood tenders?’

  ‘Might do. If I was going to drown myself in the river, I wouldn’t choose there. No bridges, little current, pretty shallow.’

  ‘Fair call. His colleagues’ll have a better idea. Tell me what’s going on.’

  Swann laid it out – the whole Exetar shebang. Put in the new context, the enviro’s drowning not a few hundred metres from the East Perth development started to click, Accardi’s hands tensing on the steering wheel. But problematic, too. The parasites bleeding Exetar, at this stage Leo Ajello, Riley’s Nongs and Gary Quinlivan, was a perfect match for Accardi’s remit from the Federal Police – organised-crime money moving into legitimate business fronts. As a Homicide cop, the enviro’s death was a legitimate way into his parallel federal investigation, his role open-ended and unofficial, using Swann as his eyes and ears. Swann watched Accardi play out the angles. If the drowned man was murdered, Accardi could investigate more widely, but not without potentially putting his local peers offside, bringing suspicions of secret agendas. If Ben Hogan got a sniff that Accardi was playing both sides of the street, his career was over. The Feds wouldn’t want to know him either.

  ‘There’s more. What is it?’

  An uneasy moment, knowing that it had come. Swann’s decades in the force, his early years on the street, all his training and experience – the wisdom of telling a Homicide cop about his involvement in a murder, despite his relationship with Accardi – didn’t sit right. But his younger friend needed to know. Swann was working for Accardi, who was working for the Feds. Ben Hogan could snatch Swann any time he liked, pin him for murder. In that event, the case might even fall to Accardi. Swann laid it out, exactly as it happened, could feel Accardi shrinking from him, soiled goods. Swann’s voice a monotone. Got to the part about the burial, Accardi put up a hand. ‘Don’t want to know, Frank, except whether you were followed. No body, as you understand …’

  ‘Hogan has the murder weapon. No doubt he can supply a witness.’

  ‘Not like him to play games. What the fuck does he want?’

  ‘Hasn’t said. But it’s coming.’

  They looked across at the city, floating there on the heat haze, the shimmering river, dome of clear blue sky. ‘I haven’t asked until now. Do the Feds know about me?’

  ‘No, they don’t.’

  Swann patted Accardi’s shoulder, little paternal squeeze, longer than he needed. A goodbye like any other, or a final parting, only the day would tell.

  *

  Official visiting time at Fremantle Prison was over, but Swann knew the watch commander of the afternoon shift – Tony McIlroy – a six-foot-four Scotsman who lived on the same street as Swann in a stone cottage that looked like it had been built for gnomes. Swann called ahead and asked to see Gerry Tracker. No, he didn’t want to see Tracker in his remand cell – the visiting room would be fine. It would be an ordeal for Tracker that’d involve waiting, being searched and still more waiting and being searched, but Swann didn’t want to stretch the relationship with McIlroy too far – he had a feeling he’d be visiting frequently.

  The great limestone walls of the prison loomed over the carpark, catching the late afternoon sun. The steel front doors were open to allow a delivery, overseen by a rifleman on the rat-run above. The day had been hot, and Swann could see in the eyes of the guards on duty that something was up. A tension in the air that might relate to a particular incident, or might not – the general build-up of resentment and anger when the temperature soared. The prison was built like a medieval fortress and the only change since the 1850s was that the cells were more crowded. Many of Swann’s childhood friends had ended up in the jail as either crim or screw and he knew the stories well. The guards ran their own race, organised by a gang called the Purple Circle, rorting the overtime system and some of the commerce inside, but that was to be expected. The thought that Ben Hogan had a murder char
ge over him weighed heavy as Swann sat in the stinking waiting room, imagining Marion and his daughters and grandkids visiting him. He could understand why some men chose to do their time easier, cutting off all contact with loved ones.

  Gerry Tracker had been beaten: his right eye was closed and his lip split, his nose bridged with a deep cut. One of his wrists was bandaged, and he favoured his right leg as he hobbled into the room, no light in his eye as he approached. Swann offered a cigarette as Gerry eased himself, wincing, into the hard chair. ‘You feel it? This place is set to fucken blow.’

  Swann nodded, glanced at the two guards leaning by the door, keen young men. ‘Any particular reason?’

  ‘Not that I can tell. I’m in isolation, but I can feel it through the walls. Thanks for comin’, Frank.’

  ‘They got sick of you holding out on Blake, eh?’

  ‘Pretty much. I know you can’t do anythin’ but it’s somethin’ one of them said.’

  ‘The gun?’

  ‘Yes, but more than that. Somethin’ about the car Blakey stole. None of that came up in court, but these guys … they were too old to be uniformed constables. And they knew how to bash. They’re either ex-detectives, sent back to uniform, or they were Ds in borrowed clobber. I’ve been worked over in interrogation rooms before, and these guys were fucken elite bash-artists. Reckon they’re gonna be visiting me again in a couple days.’

  ‘What are they holding you on?’

  ‘Resisting arrest. Petty shit, but with my record …’

  Swann offered Gerry another cigarette, which he lit off the end of his first, pinched it off, secreted the butt down his sleeve.

  ‘Have you heard from Blake? We’ve got to get that gun back.’

  Gerry exhaled a stream of smoke. ‘That’s the thing, Frank. What I need from you …’ Gerry leaned forward, and began to whisper, breaking up his message with louder comments about the food, the heat, the conditions.

  When he’d finished, Swann sat back, lit himself another cigarette. ‘Jesus Christ. Gerry. C’mon, mate.’

  ‘I know.’

  Harbouring Australia’s most wanted, plus a wanted son. Swann’s first duty – split the two up. Get young Blake well away from Des Foley. Get the gun back to the sergeant.

  Gerry Tracker leaned forward and began to whisper again, describing the set-up beneath the neighbouring house, the best way to make his approach without getting shot. What to say to Blake, about the gun. To trust Swann, to return it anonymously. To pass on Gerry’s message. Des Foley could look after himself. But Blake needed to tell Swann what he knew about the car. There was something off about it. Swann would know what to do, based on Blake’s answer. If it was nothing, Blake should hand himself in, serve out his time. If it was something, he needed to get back to country, hide among his mother’s kin, out in the goldfields. Gerry would come once he’d done his time.

  There was shame in Gerry’s eyes, aware how much he was asking, but he had no choice. Life and death for his son. Blake’s future in Swann’s hands. Gerry’s eyes moist, blinking it away.

  Swann stood, shook Gerry’s hand. Gerry Tracker couldn’t know how much trouble Swann was in, needed this like a hole in the head. So tired he was floating, feet like balloons. He left Gerry with his cigarettes. The guards would try to confiscate them, but Gerry had a way with words.

  37.

  Swann stood at the back fence in the laneway and waited for the old man cradling his rifle to move from the sleep-out windows. Gerry had warned Swann about the old boy, indicating that his eyes weren’t good but his hearing was acute. Several times over the past years a gunshot had rung out. None of the neighbours called it in – they didn’t want Tom Pickett institutionalised. Swann saw Pickett’s shadow retreat into the house and vaulted the fence. Took out his pistol and turned the safety off. Des Foley was a hothead, and Swann wasn’t going to be slow on the draw if the escapee started firing. Cop thinking – in the back of his mind the understanding that if he took down Foley and gave him to Accardi, the young detective would be set for life – above recrimination. Likewise, if he gave Foley to Hogan – the slate might be cleared.

  The moonlight cold on his forearms, as he crouched in the dirt and wild oats at the rear of the house, hidden from the old man above. He sniffed the air but there were no cooking smells coming from under the house, or conversation. Too early for them to be asleep. Here goes nothing. Swann waited until the shuffling above him died away, then rapped on the weatherboards twice – hard and loud. Then waited. Rapped twice again. Waited. Repeated.

  He heard the boards lift away and Blake Tracker’s hopeful face appeared, dissolving instantly into hatred. He saw Blake signal behind, began to whisper to him, the message from his father, keeping his voice calm and clear. Did he remember Swann?

  Blake’s eyes focused hard on Swann’s moonlit face. ‘The guy who drove the EK Holden? Diff troubles?’

  Swann nodded. Blake withdrew into the darkness and motioned for Swann to follow. He crawled on his hands and knees along a trench dug into the chalky limestone and sand, came to a dugout, still in darkness. Torchlight in his face, Des Foley behind it, horror-show shadows, Browning pistol. Swann saw the look of recognition come into Foley’s slit eyes, his mouth tightening, laying down the pistol and reaching for a filleting knife at his side, shifting his weight.

  Swann began to speak, quietly without pause, never taking his eyes off Foley’s knife hand. Foley was shirtless, blood dripping in a lace across his chest. Blake had been giving Foley a tattoo, cutting incisions with the knife, pressing ink from a Bic pen into the stripes now welts – the fist-sized outline of a kelpie’s head carved across Foley’s breast. Foley’s other prison tattoos were confined to his torso and upper arms, knowing at an early age what his fate was going to be, not wanting anything visible and identifiable.

  Foley listened while Swann passed on Gerry’s message. What Gerry wanted, for Blake. Careful not to pressure Foley. The tattooing a sign of intimacy that Swann was wary of – Foley the mentor, might want to demonstrate to Blake how to handle an ex-cop when your back’s against the wall. Swann’s gun was returned to its holster. He finished the message, and waited, looked around the dugout. Neat and ordered, like a prison cell; everything packed away, but to hand.

  Foley shifted his weight, a small gesture that relieved a lot of tension. His eyes still burned in the torchlight, his face a mask of shadow. Made a little mouth towards the kerosene lantern, Blake Tracker nodding, then kneeling and lighting a match and turning the wick until a glow filled the dugout. Sat back against the wall and waited – his fate still in other hands.

  Foley turned off the torch, sat forward on his bucket, ready to parlay. Agreed that Blake should go with Swann. Told him of their plans to return the gun. Showed Swann the cash to accompany the weapon, and sweeten its return. Asked Blake to tell Swann about the guards, flapped his wrist to hand over the conversation.

  Blake Tracker spoke quietly. Swann watched the kid’s glances towards Des Foley, who nodded for him to continue. Swann didn’t know how far back Gerry Tracker’s relationship went with Foley, but it had to be significant. Blake shared his revelations about guards standing over him, demanding that he coerce Gerry into smuggling. Foley was right – they’d want significant money before they’d forgive Blake’s escape.

  The kid too proud to ask his father for help, or more likely didn’t want him to get in trouble again. Time would tell. Swann interrupted – ‘Gerry … your dad, he mentioned that the policemen who arrested him were going on about a car. Not the gun, but a car. What do you know about that?’

  Blake’s face folded. Hands searched for each other. Sucked in a breath.

  ‘Blake? Tell the man. He’s gonna help.’

  Blake Tracker hung his head, closed his eyes. He’d seen a lot, but whatever it was, he’d locked it away deep. Looked into the shadows, where they couldn’t see his face, little shake of the head.

  Swann tied a different tack. ‘The detective who chased
you. Who you took the gun from. Can you remember his name?’

  Little nod of the head. A gruff whisper. ‘Never forget ’im. Detective Sergeant Carter.’

  ‘Faark.’

  Swann looked to Foley. ‘You know him too, eh?’

  Foley sniffed, spat. ‘I know the prick. Served on your watch, dinnie? Back when you were at Central.’

  ‘I was uniform, he was CIB. One of Don Casey’s bagmen. Armed Rob squad. No wonder you know him.’

  ‘The very man. When he was in Armed Rob he invited me to work for him. Fuck that, I told him. Then it was game on.’

  Swann and Foley understood at the same moment, looked to Blake, still looking away, shoulders small. Swann spoke first. ‘Blake. Whose car did you steal?’