A Necessary Evil

by Bruce Venables

‘He said he’d sold the wharf leases and fucked the unions off. And he’d sold all the freehold.’

  ‘All the freehold!’

  ‘Yeah.’ Ames nodded. ‘Whatever that means. It’s property, isn’t it?’

  ‘Jesus! He never said anything to me. Did he say if the others knew about it?’

  ‘Nup.’ Ames shrugged.

  ‘He’s ripping them off!’ she exclaimed.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The others!’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘It’s obvious,’ she said exasperatedly. ‘Harold’s sold all of Tip-Toe’s assets.’

  ‘I knew that,’ Ames sneered. ‘He’s dumped the money in foreign banks. He told me that himself.’

  ‘That’s why he’s doing it!’

  ‘Doing what?’ Stan wished she’d drop the subject.

  She tried to make it as clear as she could. ‘Tip-Toe’s freeholdings must be worth millions, and if the company is closed that money would be shared by nine principals. Am I right?’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘Harold’s been planning this for two years. He’s using Pat Morgan’s slip-up as an excuse to get rid of six of those principals! That way he increases his share to a third!’

  ‘Yeah. And we get the other two-thirds.’ He grinned greedily. ‘What’s wrong with that. I’m all for it.’ Ames reached out and took Jane’s hand. ‘We’ll be worth a fortune, you and I. We could take off and spend it, go round the world—what do you say?’

  ‘Stan,’ Jane withdrew her hand from his, ‘let’s get one thing straight.’ The venom in her voice surprised even him. ‘I would rather contract poliomyelitis! No! Even worse! I’d rather be burned to death than go anywhere with you!’

  ‘Jeeeezus! Forget I spoke!’ Ames leaned back in his chair, sulking.

  ‘We’re business partners!’ Jane said icily. ‘That’s where it stops with us!’

  ‘Okay, okay!’ He knew he didn’t have a chance. ‘Take it easy.’

  ‘I’ve got to get out of here!’ Jane stood. ‘I’m going home.’

  ‘Not yet!’ Ames grabbed her arm and forced her back into her seat. ‘You can’t leave until eleven o’clock. We need alibis, remember? So smile and acknowledge anyone you know in this joint. We want people to remember we were here.’

  ‘Taittinger. Vintage,’ Grainger Bertram snapped at the house waiter, after being seated in the garden area at the rear of Condoblin House. He checked his watch, making a mental note of the time. It was 9.17 pm. The ancient retainer staggered back up the lawn for the champagne. Grainger was irritated. He hated being the first to arrive—in fact he’d deliberately been fifteen minutes late in order to avoid it. He turned and looked out over the Harbour waters. The night was perfect. He only hoped the meeting with Henry Lovell and Gustav Jergens would prove to be the same.

  Grainger frowned. It was typical of Henry Lovell to arrange meetings like this. Henry was a secretive man and business with him was always done covertly and on the spur of the moment. Mind you, he mused, Henry’s meetings usually meant he knew something was on from a business point of view and wanted quick money to follow through on a deal or merger. Grainger had to give Henry his due. These sorts of get-togethers invariably meant that all three of them would be supremely richer within a few hours. It was just that all the cloak-and-dagger secrecy bullshit had to go on beforehand, which never ceased to irritate Grainger.

  He looked up towards the beautiful old house and his irritation was instantly replaced by a tingle of expectation as he saw Henry and Gustav approaching, followed by the doddering old waiter with the champagne.

  ‘Grainger, how nice to see you,’ said Henry Lovell, extending his hand.

  ‘Good to see you too, Henry.’ Grainger took his hand and nodded at Gustav Jergens. ‘And Gustav. It’s been too long.’

  The three men sat down as the waiter began opening the Taittinger.

  ‘So, Henry,’ Grainger asked jovially. ‘What’s this little get-together all about?’

  ‘Blowed if I know,’ replied Henry Lovell. ‘You’d better ask Gustav.’

  ‘My secretary said you requested the meeting, Grainger,’ Gustav stated in a clipped Austrian accent.

  ‘I don’t arrange clandestine meetings. I was told Henry wanted to see me.’ Grainger’s anger was evident in his tone. ‘Is this some sort of practical joke, Henry?’

  ‘It was my idea, actually.’

  The three businessmen turned at the sound of a fourth voice. Two men were approaching from the water’s edge. They were both holding Thompson .45 calibre machine guns.

  Grainger was momentarily dumbstruck. He’d only ever seen Thompson guns in gangster movies. He looked at the muzzles with their flash suppressors. They were like yawning mouths.

  ‘So long, fellas.’ The voice rang into the still night and the executioners fired simultaneously.

  The reply Grainger Bertram intended got no further than his throat. The muzzles roared and the huge bullets tore through the air. They smashed into Grainger, ripping his throat and stomach to shreds. They lifted Henry Lovell off the ground and threw him twenty feet up the lawn. They sliced through Gustav Jergens, also riddling the old waiter and shredding the leaves and bark from the tree behind him. They ricocheted off the stone walls of Condoblin House fifty yards further up the hill and screamed away into the night.

  The assassins continued to fire until their fifty round drum magazines were empty.

  The silence when the guns stopped was deafening. Cordite smoke and fumes clung to the damp grass in a knee-high cloud. Four men lay dead, their bodies torn into pieces as if they’d been savaged by some huge vicious beast. One of the old waiter’s arms was completely severed from his torso. So too was Henry Lovell’s left leg. It lay beside the bullet-riddled champagne bucket, fifty feet from his body. The stench of disembowelled guts mingled with the gunsmoke.

  Joey Bastini grinned at his partner then walked over to inspect their work. Gustav Jergens’ body was jerking spasmodically in the throes of death. Joey pulled out a revolver and shot him through the head. He checked the others. They were well gone, but he shot them all again in the head just to be sure. Then he turned and motioned to his partner. They walked off towards the water and the motor boat that would take them back to the south side of the harbour. They had one more job to do.

  Pat Morgan stretched his arms above his head and breathed in the night air. He was glad the opera was over. Wagner was not his favourite composer. In fact, he didn’t have a favourite composer at all. He detested opera. But you had to be seen to enjoy the arts, especially if you were a prominent politician. Pat leaned towards an attractive woman and whispered in her ear. She nodded and began making her excuses.

  ‘We have to go, I’m afraid.’ Pippa Ramsey smiled at the small crowd gathered around her and Pat Morgan. ‘I’ve got an early morning and Pat’s got to be fresh for his campaign speech at the Memorial Club luncheon.’

  They made their goodbyes as Pat’s car drew up before them. The car park attendant opened the driver’s door for Pat and assisted Pippa into the passenger seat beside him.

  ‘Thanks for that, love,’ Morgan said as he drove out of the Opera House Concourse. ‘I really needed to get away.’

  ‘You’re more than welcome,’ Pippa replied and rested her head on his shoulder. ‘Now would you mind telling what the hurry is all about?’

  ‘You! What else?’ He grinned at her. ‘I’m taking you home to my place. My needs are urgent and explicit.’

  ‘Really!’ Pippa purred and placed her hand on his inner thigh. ‘How explicit?’

  ‘Feel for yourself.’ Morgan laughed and gunned his E-Type Jaguar up Macquarie Street. As he did so, a dark blue sedan moved off after him.

  When the phone rang in the hallway of Molly Stergen’s house, it set John Birmingham’s nerves jangling all over again. Molly had just succeeded in calming him down and now he was blubbering again.

  ‘Jesus, Molly! Don’t answer it!’

>   ‘Calm down, John,’ she said reassuringly. ‘If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times! You’re letting this thing become an obsession.’

  ‘I’m not here!’ he whined. ‘If anyone asks, I’m not here!’

  ‘It’ll be for me.’ She patted his arm and stood up. ‘Just relax—I won’t be a minute.’ She smiled sweetly and left the room to answer the phone.

  ‘Stergen residence. Molly Stergen speaking.’ She believed in being polite when answering a call, ever since she’d been a little girl and her father had had one installed. It had been the first telephone in the street they’d lived in.

  The voice at the other end of the line sent a chill through her body. ‘Leave the house now, Molly. And leave the front door open.’

  ‘Who is this?’ Her voice quivered.

  ‘You’ve got two minutes Molly, or you’ll die with him.’

  The line went dead and Molly’s body began to shake uncontrollably. She grabbed her handbag and headed for the door. As she passed the front room, John Birmingham appeared. He knew instantly that something was wrong.

  ‘What is it?’ He grabbed her wrist. ‘It’s them, isn’t it?’

  ‘Oh Jesus, John! Let me go!’ Molly shook herself free of him and opened the front door.

  Birmingham grabbed her again. ‘Don’t, Molly! Don’t leave me here alone! Don’t! Please!’ He began to cry.

  Molly was on the verge of hysteria. She pushed him away and he fell to the floor gibbering unintelligibly. ‘I’m sorry, Johnny!’ She rushed out the door. ‘I’m sorry!’

  Molly opened her small front gate and ran up the street as fast as her legs would allow her. She heard the clatter of running feet behind her and the crash of her front door slamming into the wall as the men kicked it aside to enter her house. Then she heard him scream. It was a scream of pure terror. She didn’t look back. She ran up into Crown Street and didn’t stop until she fell through the door of the Clock Hotel.

  ‘Christ alive, girl!’ the barman said. ‘What’s the matter with you?’ He quickly poured her a large brandy. ‘Here you go, love! Pull up a stool and get that into you!’

  Molly took the glass and spilled it everywhere. Then she began to cry as John Birmingham’s scream rang in her ears.

  ‘You stay right where you are, Molly,’ the barman patted her arm. ‘There’s some coppers in the main bar—I’ll get them for you.’

  ‘No!’ Molly took a deep breath and brought herself under control. ‘No, Paddy. I’ll be all right in a minute. Just give me another brandy, will you, love? I’ll be all right in a minute.’

  Three streets away in a public toilet in Moore Park, John Birmingham felt the insulin course through his veins. He looked up at the two men who’d injected it into him and with his last breath, summoned the dignity to call them bastards.

  Ian Spencer knelt down and felt for a pulse in Birmingham’s carotid artery. There wasn’t one.

  ‘Did it kill him?’ Derek Schumacher enquired.

  ‘Yeah,’ Spencer replied. ‘Let’s check in with the boss, then go and have a drink. I reckon we’ve earned one.’

  Pat Morgan gunned his E-Type over the hill, past Rose Bay Police Station and down along the sea wall on New South Head Road. He was on the verge of ejaculating.

  ‘Take it easy, Pip!’ He grasped the woman’s head and tried to pull her mouth away from his penis. She resisted valiantly and he groaned deeply. ‘Oh hell, Pip! We’ll be home in a minute—don’t spoil things. Take it easy!’

  Morgan struggled to concentrate on the road ahead, completely unaware that a dark blue sedan was maintaining his speed two hundred yards behind him.

  ‘Where’d the fucking sheila go?’ Joey Bastini snarled.

  ‘She’s going down on him. Frenchin’ him,’ sniggered the driver of the dark sedan.

  ‘What a way to fucking go!’ Bastini chuckled as he placed his fingers on the detonation device in his lap. ‘Gettin’ blown while you’re blown away!’ He flicked the first of two switches and looked up in time to see Morgan’s car veer off course as the driver lost control of the steering.

  ‘Jesus!’ Pat Morgan screamed as he felt the E-Type swerve towards the sea wall. Pippa Ramsey struggled upright and screamed with him. Something in the engine had exploded. He hit the brakes but got no response as the car rocketed towards the wall. Then he saw the flames. They came straight through the fire wall of the car and reached towards his face. They flared from under the engine bonnet and licked the windscreen. Pat Morgan’s mind snapped. The dream returned. The dream he’d thought had gone forever. He was once again down in the mines in Broken Hill. The flames were going to get him after all. He screamed again as the Jaguar smashed through the sea wall and flew into space.

  ‘See you later, arsehole!’ Joey Bastini roared with laughter as he flicked the second detonation switch and watched the Jaguar explode into a fireball as it flew into Sydney Harbour.

  The dark sedan drove past the smashed sea wall and Joey’s driver gave a chuckle as he glimpsed the flaming wreck of Pat Morgan’s car slowly sinking into the dark water. He dropped his speed and drove sedately along the beautiful vista of New South Head Road.

  The slaying of three of Australia’s most influential citizens caused a furore. Across the nation, the editorials of the daily newspapers screamed for justice. They railed against the police and the judicial system. They demanded action from parliamentarians. They deplored the audacious flouting of the law by organised crime syndicates. They demanded justice. They charged the Parliament to open a Royal Commission. It was great stuff—high-minded and honourable. And it sold newspapers.

  It was also great stuff for all concerned in the New South Wales Parliament, especially on the eve of an election. Politicians of all persuasions postured and challenged and spoke out and demanded. They were quoted and filmed and televised and recorded. ‘Everything that can be done will be done,’ became the catchcry. No stone would be left unturned! Political parties and affiliations would be placed aside, as they worked together to bring to justice the perpetrators of such a perfidious crime. On this they were united!

  Assistant Commissioner Harold Everard was summoned to a special sitting of the Cabinet and ordered to head up a special task force to investigate the matter. From the steps of Parliament House, and in front of a bank of cameras, he swore to the public that he would never rest until justice had been served.

  Suspects were rounded up. Witnesses were found. Everything they said was followed up by a team of fifty detectives working around the clock. Suspects were released. Witnesses’ statements were discounted. Such was the flurry of police activity occasioned by the event that even the public was impressed.

  Harold Everard called in the State’s most experienced detective, Superintendent Stan Ames of Thirty-Three Division, but even the great legend himself could not solve the crime.

  News editors and current affairs programme chiefs insisted more be done. And it was.

  Acting on ‘information received’, Detective Superintendent Ames and a team of crack police officers raided the house of well-known Mafia figure, Joseph Bastini. A shootout occurred when Bastini attempted to evade capture and he was killed by police.

  Superintendent Ames went public and apologised to the people for failing in his duty. Via a national television network, he informed the public that Bastini’s death was a tragedy for the families of the slain businessmen and for the people of New South Wales. Bastini had been the only solid lead throughout the whole investigation and the truth concerning the murders had died with him. Then, on live television, Ames caused a sensation by formally offering his resignation to the Commissioner of Police. He stated that his mishandling of the case and his subsequent disappointment was so great that he could no longer function as a police officer. He intended to take his pension and retire from the public spotlight to some remote part of the country, or perhaps even overseas and live out his life in peaceful obscurity. Even the hard-nosed television journalist conducti
ng the interview had been impressed.

  The following day, on the very eve of the 1976 State election, a scandal broke within the ranks of the State Liberal Party. A member of the government front bench had been photographed in Manila, in flagrante delicto, with several young boys of dubious age. Paedophilia, the newspapers screamed. It was enough. The public ire was once again inflamed. And more importantly, redirected.

  The murders were forgotten. And one month later, the rank of Commissioner of the New South Wales Police Force was bestowed upon Harold Everard.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Sydney. 1977

  It was nearly a year after the Mosman Murders, as the slaying of the three tycoons had been dubbed, that the penny finally dropped for John. The investigation was still officially ‘open’, but John Buck and Shayne Everard, like many other detectives assigned to the special investigative task force, had been transferred back to normal duties.

  John had been uneasy throughout the investigations. Something had been wrong, but he couldn’t put his finger on it. His senior officers had seemed uninterested in the evidence. There had been an air of indifference about everything they did. He’d confided his unease to Shayne, who’d agreed there’d been a strange atmosphere in the task force office.

  In the normal course of events, when a major crime was committed the boys took to the investigative task like ducks to water. Everyone was raring to go—to catch the crooks, to solve the crime. But this one had been different. It was almost as if the powers that be didn’t want to know the answer. And this had been a big crime. The biggest, probably, short of a political assassination.

  John sat up in bed and stared at his alarm clock. It was three in the morning and he had to be at work by eight. He got up and went out onto the balcony overlooking Bondi Beach, careful not to wake Shayne in the other bedroom. They’d been sharing the flat for almost a year now and Shayne was working the 6pm–2am swing-shift and would not have been asleep for long.