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

by Michael Smith

  “It’s the stillness. It’s the calmness. This world is burning. People in every hidden corner of the earth are being tortured. But the cold ones. They are at peace. We should all be so lucky. I’m providing them the respite that was not afforded to me. I don’t blame my father for throwing me in the river. I think it was the kindest thing he ever did for me. It was the last kindness he ever showed me. Were you beaten by your father?”

  Lescott gathered his notebook and cigarettes and put them in his pockets. He’d heard enough.

  “You can’t leave. You haven’t asked what happened to my eye?”

  Harris and Lescott looked at one another, Lescott shook his head. This conversation was doing no one any good.

  “They don’t like men like me here. The guards, the criminals, the Warden. They fear what they don’t understand, and they don’t understand me. From what I gather. My cellmate was being rather badly treated by the others. He did things to children, on the outside. So, the prisoners did things to him, on the inside. But he was approached with an offer of redemption. He crept up to my bunk and he attacked me in my sleep.

  I awoke half-blind and in searing pain. The most primitive survival instinct kicked in and we struggled.” Hoskins paused, he was enjoying the memory. “And how we struggled. We struggled and we struggled. It’s no wonder children were the victims of his feeble libido. He was weak. The entire cell block heard his screams all through the night. As I raped him over and over. The blood from my wound poured down onto his body, yet still I ploughed and I ploughed. And when the guards came in in the morning. They found me quite spent. While he was quite dead.”

  Lescott stood, “We’re leaving. This is obscene.” Harris nodded distractedly and joined his partner in standing. Something strange had gotten into him. He was somewhere else altogether. Doing battle with something in his mind. Lescott watched as he strode around the table and placed his hands on the sides of Hoskins’ head.

  Hoskins roared with laughter.

  “What the fuck are you…” Before Lescott could finish his sentence, Harris had snapped Hoskins’ neck.

  “He wanted respite. He got it.”

  “They’re going to bang you up for this.”

  “You know what… Fucking Virgil? I don’t care. I’ve had enough. This rabbit hole you pulled me back into. I want out. I’m tired. I want to sleep. No good can come from any of this. We’re beaten. It’s done.” Harris moved back around the table and sat back down, presumably waiting for the Warden to send guards in, to throw him into a cell of his own. They wouldn’t come.

  Behind the two-way glass, guards were scrambling in a panic as they grabbed at their keys and their truncheons. They readied themselves and waited for the Warden’s command to storm into the room. The Warden shrugged, “He’s only saving the hangman a job.”

  “But what do we say?”

  “We say what we always say when this happens. A prisoner fell down the stairs.”

  Chapter 56

  Maybe it was the attritional nature of the war for control of Sydney. Maybe it was the fruitless search for Harris and Prince’s fortune. Maybe Stan had straight up lost faith in George, and got sick of Lenny. Whatever it was, it made it easy for Tilly and Elsa to manipulate him.

  For weeks he had been feeding them information. Information they’d used to consolidate their power while weakening George’s. A shipment of cocaine was being flown into the airport? He’d tell them which hangar it ended up in. Watson fixed a race? He’d tell them where and when. He wasn’t able to quietly readjust himself without Tilly and Elsa being there to laugh at him. They’d talked him into misguidedly betraying his boss and long-time best friend.

  Stan had been something of a mentor to George in the latter’s formative years. He’d given him his first no-show job as a supervisor with the Painters and Dockers, he’d taught him how to make dirty money on the nags. But as the master became the apprentice, Stan had struggled to adapt. It made him question Watson’s leadership. When Watson made decisions that Stan believed to be less than wise, he second-guessed him. He put contingencies into place and took out shady insurance deals. This undermined George at every turn.

  It had driven Stan straight into the outstretched arms of Tilly and Elsa. Devine was rebuilding her empire with aplomb. She was a wily old thing to be sure. This ascent was the culmination of a decade’s worth of planning and waiting. But, perhaps surprisingly given her dramatic rise and the money she was pulling in, she’d stayed true to her roots and humble. Still she operated her burgeoning empire from the kitchen of her Palmer Street Brothel. The future of Sydney’s criminal landscape was decided over a cup of earl grey and a plate of biscuits.

  “I’m having second thoughts about all of this.” Stan spoke over the brim of a teacup. Sat across from him, sipping at tea from delicate, but chipped teacups on matching saucers, were Tilly and Elsa. “He’s not taking it well, he’s unstable. More people are going to get hurt as he gets more desperate. That brewery fire was just the beginning.”

  The women stayed silent and let him sweat for a moment. They really were she-devils. But to give them their due, they were clever. They deserved their success. They were running rings around the rest of Sydney. They weren’t about to let Stan get away from their agreement. He was far too valuable to them.

  “You told me no one would get hurt if I helped you take over his businesses,” Stan protested.

  “And we haven’t hurt anybody. Your friend George is doing that all by himself.” Elsa rubbed salt into the wound.

  “We can put an end to this…” Tilly smiled a dastardly smile as she dangled an all-too enticing proposition in front of Stan.

  “How?”

  “No one else gets hurt. Everyone goes back to making money, everyone from both sides. We give you your pick of Darlinghurst businesses. Maybe the Kelly Hotel or Fitzpatrick’s? You could even have the fucking Hippodrome.” Elsa went about charming Stan, what she was saying was music to his ears. He had friends all over Sydney, gang war would see him lose more than anyone.

  “They’re George’s businesses?”

  “For now…” Tilly beamed.

  “You said it yourself, he’s deranged. He’s unstable. It’s going to get worse before it gets better. He needs to be stopped,” Elsa reasoned.

  “It’s the kindest thing for him. He needs to be put out of his misery. That way, the killing stops. If you do it with a smile on your face, he won’t even know it’s happening.” Tilly comforted Stan with a twinkle in his eyes.

  Elsa watched Tilly as she watched Stan leaving the room. Tilly had a peculiar look upon her face which the younger woman hadn’t seen before. It was strange, Tilly was blushing, she looked flustered. “What’s going on with your face? You’re looking all red…”

  Tilly stubbed out her cigarette into a large crystal ashtray in front of her and loosened the collar of her blouse. “I’m telling you Elsa, nothing gets my knickers wet like all of this. Playing with men, toying with them. Moving them around like pawns. I haven’t gushed like this in decades. I’m going to be needing a root today.” She was a bloody man-eater and fair fucking play to her. Since she was a child on the Strand, men had used her for whatever was in their pocket. She’d earned the right to give a little back.

  Stan stepped out of the kitchen door which led to a back alley; he didn’t want to take the chance of being caught where he shouldn’t have been. Watson’s numbers were weakening, but still he had eyes and ears everywhere. There was always some chancer looking to sell some information for a bob or two. He pulled his fedora low over his face.

  It was a dark autumnal day in Sydney. Showers were turning on and off at will and the wind was blowing coldly down the streets, picking up dirt and litter upon the breeze, covering pedestrians in the city’s filth. Stan waited at the kerb with a weather eye on the cars driving down the street. With each new set of eyes came a new potential threat. Those eyes, from behind their steering wheels, were more likely just commuters heading to wo
rk. But to Stan, that day, it felt as though they were all judging him for his betrayal. With each glance thrown his way, the guilt gripping his chest inflated.

  The screech of brakes. A broken garden wall. A street light bent and blinking. A motorist’s body lying unconscious over the wheel. The horn blaring ceaselessly. The police report would blame dangerous driving. But the driver of the taxi that ploughed into Stan, from their hospital bed, would swear that he had been going under the speed limit. He’d swear that the pedestrian had stared straight at him as he’d walked in front of his car.

  Chapter 57

  Like I said, Livingstone’s star was rising. Chief Superintendent. He’d leapfrogged several men to the post but the decision was an easy one for the decision makers. With a man like Livingstone at the helm, Sydneysiders knew their police force was in good hands. The line between law and chaos was drawn every day, by the strength of his conviction and the laborious nature of his efforts. Or so they thought.

  The newly promoted Chief Superintendent should have woken with a skip in his step. All of his plotting, his scheming, his manipulation, and his deception were really starting to pay off. Soon he would be away from the damp, draughty corridors of Darlinghurst Road. He’d put in the hard yards, and he would see the benefits come raining down before too long.

  But there was no skip in that step. The midday sun poured through the curtains in his living room when Mrs Alan Livingstone aggressively yanked them open. “You stupid bitch. I should have married your fat fucking sister. At least she can cook.”

  He’d drank heavily through the night, and when he finally ventured to the comfort of his marital bed and sought the warm embrace of his wife, he found nothing but a cold shoulder and a bad temper. He retired to snore upon the sofa in the living room, for the rest of the night and the whole of the morning. Let it never be said that romance is dead while Alan Livingstone is alive and well.

  His wife, Joanna Livingstone, paid no attention to the cruel bile that spilled from his filthy mouth. She had married him young, he had promised her the world. She never asked him to promise to keep his cock in his briefs, that was her mistake. She had assumed loyalty from a disloyal man. By 1964, their marriage was a loveless husk, save for the profound love she felt for their two children. She had learnt to get her marital pleasures elsewhere. “You came in late last night.”

  “Work’s been crazy.” Livingstone sat up gingerly. The sofa is never the best place to sleep. It’s even worse when you’re too drunk to remove your children’s toys from it before you collapse. He winced as he pulled a metal aeroplane from under him, it had wreaked havoc on his back.

  “You know… It’s not the lying that bothers me. It’s the fact that you seem to think I’m stupid enough to believe the crap that comes out of your mouth.”

  Livingstone leered at his wife as she cleaned the room around him, “Let’s have sex. It’s been forever.”

  “Forever. For who? I can smell cheap perfume on you. I could smell it when you came to bed last night. Besides, I had sex with Larry Davidson from down the road last week.”

  “The barista?” Livingstone’s ego deflated. He’d never met the chap, but the women around his neighbourhood swooned whenever they mentioned him. Livingstone assumed he was a greaseball lothario who spent his days over an espresso machine. “A wog?”

  “Exactly what is it about the name Larry Davidson that sounds Italian to you? He’s a barrister. You fucking idiot.”

  Alan lit a cigarette and tapped ash all over the floor in silent protest at his wife, “Remind me, why are we married?”

  “Because… Alan. You’re too cheap, and too image conscious to divorce me. So, I will take what I can get from you… And from Larry Davidson. In return I will turn a blind eye to your deviancy.” Joana snapped at Alan dismissively. “Just don’t expect it from me, because I get it from elsewhere.”

  Livingstone was wounded. His wife didn’t need him. She liked his wallet. But she could live without it, if push came to shove. He was insignificant. For a man who enjoyed power and having power over people, that broke his heart.

  Livingstone gingerly made his way up the stairs of his massive Georgian townhouse towards his bathroom. He stretched his limbs out as he ascended. He’d been drinking too much and it had left him feeling out of shape. All the stress had left fat clinging to his body around the middle of his torso and he was feeling quite pear-shaped. He’d been sitting behind a desk too long. Perhaps that day, he would walk into work. Perhaps, on his way, he would do some police work: running collections from nefarious enterprises.

  Palmer Street stank that day. Or at least, to Alan Livingstone it did. Grubby little kids were running around without shoes on their feet. A nearby refinery was pumping out noxious fumes that smelled something like rotten vegetables. The bins hadn’t been collected. He’d spotted several women emptying chamber pots onto the street outside. The place had all the class of an old tin of sardines. The poor, in Livingstone’s eyes, were a virus. One that threatened to spread unless kept in quarantine.

  He took little pleasure from walking the Darlinghurst streets, he was more of a beachfront kind of man. What little pleasure he did derive from the experience, directly correlated to the growing stack of paper in his pocket. His last stop was an inconspicuous Palmer Street terrace house. It was neither clean nor dirty, new nor old, and neither decrepit nor maintained. On an average street, that house almost stood out as startlingly average. Except of course there was nothing remarkable about it. Unless of course, you knew who live and operated a business inside. You see, Tilly Devine didn’t like her businesses to stick out. She’d learned that the hard way. When the taxman comes to your door, your house will look like a poorhouse forevermore.

  Tilly, on the other hand, well there are few places on earth where she would not have stood out. Having heard his hammering on the door she came to her balcony like a Juliet well past her sell-by date. Her slimy Romeo looked up at her and gasped as he saw all the way up her inappropriate nightdress, past her milky thighs, and directly into the well-worn crevice between her legs. “Get your fucking haggard arse down here, Devine.”

  As he waited for the door to open, shockingly, he yearned for James Harris. Or rather his ability to perform this manner of task. Things hadn’t run smoothly since the day he had left Major Crimes. There are some men you can say no to, and then there was James Harris. His current batch of pitiful excuses for detectives were the former type, and definitely anything but the latter. For months, money had turned up late, or it simply hadn’t turned up at all. No one Livingstone turned to had inspired the fear that Harris had commanded so expertly. Half of Major Crimes was either well overweight or washed-up.

  When the door swung open, Livingstone realised just how inappropriate that nightgown of Devine’s was. It was tight in places it shouldn’t have been. It was loose in places it should have been tight. Her pendulous breasts were not threatening to escape, at times they were succeeding. She was in her sixties by this point. She’d had a hard life, and she’d taken to eating rich food and drinking fine brandies to cope. All of that catches up with a person. So, to put it politely, it was quite a fucking sight.

  “What the fuck are you doing down there, you arsehole? I’m trying to sleep in here.” The Cockney in Tilly’s accent was still prevalent, but the longer she spent in Sydney, the stronger the Australian element became. It sounded quite strange.

  “Let me in, Devine. Quickly.” Livingstone was on edge. A police operation was underway on the street. It seemed a car had crashed into a pedestrian just moments earlier. Livingstone recognised several of the uniformed policemen nearby. He was fairly sure they would recognise him, a Chief Superintendent trying to enter a well-known brothel belonging to Tilly Devine.

  Devine’s Palmer Street brothel was more than a business to her. It was her home. She’d owned and run that tiny den of iniquity for the best part of four decades. When all else had failed, when her husband abandoned her, and the tax man ha
d come to have his way with her, Palmer Street was all that was left. It mattered little to her that she had taken back much of her former empire. Palmer Street would always be the place she’d call home.

  And my God, it was disgusting. Tilly had a massive hard-on, or I guess you’d call it a wide-on, for the imperial power that was Great Britain. She’d never forgotten her roots. There were pictures of the monarchy all over the place. Because that’s what a paying punter needs to get him into the mood, pictures of the Queen Mother and the rest of her in-bred Germanic clan.

  Poor Devine. She would have loved nothing more than to be a fancy sort. But she could have hung her hat in Buckingham Palace, and her presence there would have made it feel instantly more like a grotty little council-hovel in Lambeth.

  “I like what you’ve done with the place,” Livingstone lied, “It’s looking really classy.”

  “If I wanted smoke blowing up my arse, I’d sit on the fucking chimney. Now what do you fucking want?”

  Livingstone looked strangely tempted, before thinking better of it. “I’m doing the Darlinghurst collections today.” Livingstone unbuttoned his suit jacket and sat on a Chesterfield. “What have you got for me?”

  Devine walked over to the bar and began pouring drinks. Livingstone stayed quiet, he’d said enough. The next time he spoke would be the moment that she pushed a fat envelope into his hand. Devine strutted back to the sofa and handed Livingstone his drink and the envelope. All would have gone according to plan for dear old Alan, had the notorious madam not sat down next to him, far too close for comfort. She smelled of moth balls and creme de menthe.

  Her urges from earlier in the day had lingered. Still she hungered for sexual stimulation. If Livingstone had known what was good for him, he’d have taken the money and run.

  He didn’t know what was good for him. “It’s shy.”

  “I had no idea,” she lied. She’d withheld money to massage the flow of conversation towards a very, very sordid destination.