THE DEVIL IN THE RED DIRT: DIVIDED IN LIFE. UNIFIED IN MURDER

by Michael Smith

  Cursing my scuffed shoes, I stepped through the crowd, past a queue, shook hands with a doorman and walked into the debauchery inside. The club was a picture of lurid excess, champagne sprayed through the cigar smoke that filled the heavily perfumed air. Expensive suits surrounded me, rare jewellery shimmered in the dim, with a choice bit of nakedness here and there. I moved through the rows of tables and chairs surrounded by expensive suits and gowns, my eyes wandered at the exquisite flesh on show, more specifically, at the exquisite jewels that sat upon it. I went through the drinking, and past the fun; I was there for business.

  Through a door I went, and in a gloomy kitchen I was. It had shut for the night some time earlier; the lights had been switched off and the staff had gone home. It wasn’t empty, though. No business in Darlinghurst really closed for the night. Venues just transformed into places of unholy worship. Places where flesh, fluids and powders became religious experiences. Barbershops, greengrocers, tobacconists, they all welcomed risqué business and ill-gotten gains after nightfall. In the kitchen in question, a Jane Russell type with curves that would have convinced the Pope to forsake God, sprawled onto her back over the benchtop. Her dress was pulled up, her white knuckled fists were full of a man’s greasy hair as he cunnilingued her like it was their last night on earth. A keen eye for detail would reveal that

  she wore a wedding ring, while he did not. Marital vows never meant so little as they did while nearing an illicit orgasm. Near them, a group of patrons were doing their best to snort from the stainless-steel surface a mountain of dust nearing Himalayan proportions. Cocaine. Likely the Chinese batch that had come in through Darling Harbour not a week before.

  I knew that because I’d imported it. An associate of mine over in Peking ran opium dens, she’d happened upon several kilos of incredibly potent cocaine. It seemed the Chinese preferred golden brown to snow white so she shipped it over inside priceless artefacts. Objects that I took great pleasure in smashing to get my hands upon the nefarious cargo. It would be a white Christmas in Sydney that year.

  Leaving the kitchen, I continued my journey by climbing a luxurious staircase. The banister and wall were carpeted in a deep red velvet. The stairs were finished with well-polished brass. It looked opulent, but it fooled no one. Those who ascended that staircase were conversely descending into depravity. On the stairs, a man lay there passed out, utterly drunk and lying in a pool of his own warm vomit. Another man, a shady looking individual resembled a hoarding squirrel in the last days before winter, rifling through his pockets. As I approached, the sneak-thief scarpered up the crimson climb like a priest’s hand up a choir boy’s gown. I walked on, leaving the prostrate man behind, the Good Samaritan I was not. A life lesson I will gladly give you for free. If you can’t handle your drink or your drugs, don’t try. It might sound like common sense but many a man, far better and much wiser than I, has fallen afoul by not heeding that sage advice.

  At the top, I knocked on a door of dark polished oak. A compartment slid away to reveal the menacing eyes of a doorman who I assumed was broader than the doorway he guarded. “Password?”

  “Let me in before I cut your bollocks off and give them to your wife as earrings.” That shadowy set of eyes looked me up and down. The sliding panel shut, the door swung open, and I was in the middle of a gawdy brothel. The flashiness of the place did little to hide its grubbiness.

  Women separated by their individual aesthetic qualities were brought together by their shared motives as they paraded the hallways in lingerie you could have flossed your teeth with. They flirted coyly with potential customers, to the seedy men’s faces they were honey dripping sweetness, but behind their backs they cringed and did the only thing that would help them through the night; they snorted their wraps of cocaine like it was a cure for a nasty case of the clap. Don’t think me judgemental of the ethics of the practice, after all it’s a business transaction between two consenting adults. When operated the right way, prostitution can give women a decent standard of life.

  It’s the biology of the thing that turns my stomach. I passed a fat, balding man as he slapped the perky arse of a wily operator who led him into a tackily furnished bedroom. With a little money in their pockets, these disgusting, ageing men could roll back the years and sleep with beautiful girls as young as their daughters. What kind of sordid pastime was that?

  When I imagined all the sets of musty-smelling, crusty bedsheets under that roof, I almost vomited on the spot. When I pictured the gallons of virus-riddled, milky discharge that flowed from the bloated pigs frequenting this kind of desperate place, I practically ran for the door at the end of the corridor. I had a strong stomach for drugs, blood and crime, but brothels made me feel ill. I guess growing up in a similar establishment, with my mother, had sickened me of them for life. Still, it had put shoes on my feet and food in my stomach, when many of my peers wandered barefoot and empty-bellied. The old girl wasn’t all bad.

  Having stepped through the door, I gasped at the fresh air on the other side. That cesspit of human filth was behind me. I’d made my way to a less sickening environment. I’d found myself in another stairwell. This was no customer staircase, gone were the lavish touches and the palatial finishes. This staircase was the rotting bowel of the building. It was a termite-addled, mould-infested, damp, blighted passage that smelled not unlike death. Paint peeled from the walls, lights flickered overhead, dirty water dripped from the roof and gathered on the floor in a pool of rusty, rank-smelling liquid. Still, it was a damn sight more palatable than what lay behind me. At least this was truthful. It looked every bit as putrid as it was. This set of stairs led me to my final destination, a doss house.

  The corridor that met me upon arrival was in complete disrepair. I knocked upon a door I’d stood at countless times before. Within seconds, a malnourished addict peered out at me through a crack in the door. He was jumpy, in clear discomfort, and itching at his pallid, track-marked skin. He stuck an emaciated limb through the door and offered me an envelope. His hand shook violently; he was, as we say in the business, bugging out. I returned the favour with a wrap of newspaper that he snatched up before retreating into his hovel. So eager for his fix, was he, that he forgot to shut the door. I watched the rotten little junkie rattling around, desperately searching for the paraphernalia he needed to take that medicine of his. So fraught that he clumsily knocked over his furniture while he frustratedly looked for the last of his clean syringes. If he didn’t find it, no matter. What’s a bit of shared blood amongst addicts?

  From the doorway, I counted. Another life lesson for you, heroin addicts are not to be trusted. The envelope in my hand was short. He’d been short before. He’d been warned. The tourniquet was already wrapped around his arm. I had to act quickly, before he spiked his vein, plunged his thumb, and before that serene look washed over his face.

  What came next was ugly. I won’t go into details. They’re incriminating after all. This was as far removed from the fun and games of downstairs as could be. This life ran on misery, profited in pain, and made hurt both a business plan and an art form.

  I calmly stepped back over his writhing, crying body, and walked back out the door. The sounds he made when I took his tonic from him were quite grotesque. The only thing I’ve ever heard that sounds quite like a clucking addict is the sound of rutting foxes.

  At the end of the corridor lay my contingency plan, or rather it lay sprawled semi-conscious somewhere behind the peeling red door that stood there. Behind that door, lived another customer of mine. A different kind of junkie. A trustworthy and reliable sort of addict, or as close to such a thing as you could find. I knocked and listened intently, for this trip through Darlinghurst’s putrid bowels would not have been wasted if Detective Constable James Harris of New South Wales Police was at home, at 103b Brewery Lane.

  I couldn’t see it then but I’d seen it countless times before, behind the closed door was a dimly lit, sparsely decorated bedsit. The floor was mouldy, and the cei
ling cracked, the sink in the kitchenette leaked with an incessant dripping. It was a shithole. One wall was covered by mismatching bookshelves full of old titles far beyond my intellectual or philosophical level. We didn’t really speak of it, but Harris was a fan of the English poets, German philosophers, and French novelists. Many of our peers labelled him homosexual as a result, I just thought he was strange; I guess time spent in the cauldron of war will do that to a man. Tucked behind a mirror above a sink was a small and faded, black and white picture of an army platoon in the desert of North Africa during WWII.

  In one corner of the room, several guns were stacked into a menacing pile. Laws in Australia might have fluctuated in their leniency towards gun ownership throughout the 20th century, but at no time would that arsenal have been considered acceptable. In another corner of the room was a pile of cash, the size of which would defy the belief of any working man.

  The scene was slightly different this time, sitting on a window ledge was DC Harris. He was quite unconscious. A sleeve rolled up, a needle sticking out the track-marked flesh of his forearm. His eyes open but vacant; his skin a blueish grey colour. He was overdosing. He was dangerously close to death. I was yards away, the other side of the door, and I had no idea. I could do nothing to assist my most valued customer.

  How I know just what was beyond that closed door is an excellent question which the more critical amongst you may well be asking yourselves. I won’t get into it right now, but trust me when I say in all that comes next, I know what was behind each closed door, what was spoken in my absence, what went unspoken in my presence. Think of me as omnipresent in all that follows. And if it’s an explanation of this phenomena you’re looking for, well that comes later.

  To say I knew him would be a lie. I had a certain amount of respect for the man, and I like to think it was mutual. Had I known he was drifting towards the big sleep that ends as a full stop for all of us; I’d have broken the door down and done what I could to help him. Or at the very least, I’d have robbed him blind. But I had no idea at the time. After a moment of silence, I headed back the way I’d come, cursing my luck, my scuffed shoes, and my grazed knuckles. I began the descent through the building’s many sordid levels thinking my trip had been a waste of time.

  But that’s quite enough from me for the time being. I might be telling this story, but it’s not mine. I play a walk-on part, only here and there. At the time, I kept my distance from the epic shit storm that you’re about to get into. And for good reason. I warn you, this is not a fairy tale. There are no heroes in this story. There will be no happy ending. There will be no redemption. At times it will be hard to read, and harder again to stomach. This is the story of the broken men who, from their place of desolation, tried to bring an end to the Devil in the red dirt.

  Speaking of broken men. James Harris, who has joint top-billing in this sinister saga, he didn’t move. He couldn’t. His eyes had glazed over and his strong granite jaw unclenched. Relief hit his body. Heroin had transported him to that ethereal place that lies somewhere between life and death. This is perhaps the only moment I will describe to you that comes close to a moment of happiness. And it’s synthetic.

  After what seemed an eternity in that state of suspended animation, he came to with a gasp. Once awake, he looked down at his arm and slapped the needle hanging limply from his punctured vein. He tried his best to fight through the state of shock that had engulfed his entire body. He did so expertly. One. He controlled his breathing with deep, steady breaths. Two. He slapped his pallid cheek with a large hand, over and over. Three. He stood up slowly. Four. He began to take laps of the room, leaning against the wall at first, then trusting his long muscular legs to do the work. Five. He sat down to a cigarette and chuckled as he thought back to an old friend of his. Lord George Gordon Byron.

  For those who question their very existence, it truly is the ultimate objective to feel sensation, for in our pain, to have our existence be confirmed.

  Sitting back down on that windowsill, wide-eyed and shell-shocked, he pondered exactly how close he’d come to death. For the past few years he’d been purposefully inching closer and closer to that fatal overdose. He had toyed with doses. He had flirted with death. If he knew what his future had in store for him… I think he’d have quit the foreplay and got right down to the business of fucking.

  Part One.

  God is dead. We killed him.

  Chapter 1

  A lot can change in a day, in just twenty-four little hours. That’s enough time for the Earth to complete one full rotation around its axis, give or take a few moments. I believe they call that a revolution. Now that is serendipity at its finest. DC James Harris would find out exactly how much upheaval one revolution of the earth could amount to on 29th November 1963.

  The day started out like any other. Harris rose early, a practice he had kept up ever since his time in the North African desert. He cast a curious eye out the window and over the rooftops and the skyline of Sydney, the harbour city. It was a picture of human advancement, thriving industry, and modernity itself. It was a picture of man’s resounding defeat of nature.

  On the street below, early morning traffic poured from Darlinghurst’s nightclubs. The sensible and the faint-hearted had left hours earlier; only the certifiable were left out at this time. Market traders were hitting the streets and setting out their stalls with a wary eye firmly fixed on those drunkenly falling out of the clubs. I don’t know if you’ve ever been quite sober amongst the zombified-stoned. Their eyes bulge from their skulls, they look quite soulless or, at very least, they look like the undead.

  Harris took to the streets as the sun first hit the cobbles. He made his way towards the police station at Darlinghurst Road. Standing outside, he looked up at the windows above. There was no sign of life from within. The lights remained dimmed. The strung-out folk of the night shift were likely sleeping. Friday morning on The Cross was never the most productive part of the week. Crime would have to wait until Monday, or at least its victims would.

  Harris had a ritual before entering the station. He’d lie on a low wall nearby and he would smoke a cigarette. Then he’d smoke another, and another. He’d take as long as he could before he walked in. He hated the place. Some days, he didn’t step foot inside at all.

  Today was different. Today, he couldn’t put it off any longer. He crushed his half-smoked cigarette underfoot and headed towards the glass doors. He walked with a swagger. He was six foot four inches tall and he was broader than the South Sydney forward line. He looked like he could crush a man’s skull with his bare hands, which is strange for an addict. Muscle mass is hard to keep when you spend your life chasing that dragon. As he walked his suit moved with him like a second skin. His clothes were expensive and impeccably tailored, his shoes too, but he could never hide the disdain with which he wore that costume. Because it was a costume, much like a masquerade. He wasn’t born with money; it, and all its trappings, irritated him.

  In the lobby, the lift was out. He took the stairs. His long legs covered two to three at a time. As he climbed, he rued the day he’d begun abusing opiates. There many side effects include drowsiness, constipation, itchy skin, hallucinations and lethargy. You will note that improved cardiovascular fitness or an enjoyment of staircases is not on that list. Sunlight streamed in through the glass window that encased the stairwell, from floor to ceiling. The glass turned the light into heat. As it hit Harris, it hit him with spite. By the time he’d made his way to the top of the staircase, he’d loosened his tie and unbuttoned his collar. He leaned there for a moment, against a wall upon the ninth floor, just outside the Major Crimes department. He lit a cigarette to help settle himself as he caught his breath. This was 1963, our understanding of cigarettes was not what it would come to be in later years.

  He took a deep breath of that toxic smoke and entered a rather nasty coughing fit. So violent were the coughs that the tensing of his body further aggravated the pain the stairs had bestowe
d upon his hamstrings. He’d never wished he worked with the wankers in Arson as much as he did at that moment; they were on the third floor. Straightening up, he pushed his fair, brylcreemed hair back and walked inside.

  In Major Crimes, the skeleton staff of the night shift were still at their desks. They were the unwashed, unwanted and semi-retired section of the New South Wales Police. It was easier to put them on the night shift, until their pensions kicked in, than lay them off at the risk of pissing off the unions. They were a bunch of elderly blokes, in cheap suits, with a dreary sense of desperation in their eyes. They were glorified secretaries; they answered phones, took messages and palmed off the work that came in at night on the day crew. In fact, they were less useful than secretaries. They often simply forgot, or chose not to write down a complainant’s details.

  Not a single pair of eyes looked up as Harris walked through the office. He could have walked in with a bomb strapped to his chest, a parrot on his shoulder and a monkey on a leash, and they wouldn’t have looked up from their crosswords. They were incompetent, lazy mutts who had conned their way to what was decent, if dishonest, living.

  At his desk, Harris pulled out a pair of glass tumblers and looked up at the clock upon the wall, 7:45. He had time. In the corner of the department, there was a closed office. Its blinds were shut. No light emanated from behind the shutters. With tumblers in hand, he headed in its direction. Still, no one looked up. The door was locked. He’d expected that. Harris inspected it from top to bottom. Like the staff and the building they sat in, it was old. If it was anything like the rest of the station, it was termite-infested. If he gave it a slight nudge with one of his broad shoulders, it would swing open like the doors of brothels of Darlinghurst Street brothels at the sound of coins dropping on the cobbles. He was in.

  There was lettering on the glass panel of the old door that croaked shut behind him.