by Chris Krupa
‘This ‘Mick’ you mentioned? What’s his full name?’
‘Michael Le Mat. He’s Philip Le Mat’s boy. He’s a big-time distributor around Nowra.’
I made a note in my handbook. ‘Michael and Rob were mates?’
‘Yeah, mate, peas in a pod, them two. They got up to some shit together.’
‘What about Amanda Hotchkiss? Was she here?’
‘Who?’
‘Rob’s fiancée.’
He squinted and shrugged.
‘Doesn’t matter,’ I said.
Damo crossed his arms and smirked. ‘I’ll give you a nickel’s worth of advice. Steer clear of Michael unless you want to end up in a barrel. His old man is high up in the Hell Spawn hierarchy. Have you heard of him? He’s a local now.’
I shook my head. The Hell Spawn carried a less than savoury reputation as a motorbike club, whose members had a penchant for the odd disemboweling, or assault with a dangerous weapon. Some of it might have been urban myth, but I wasn’t willing to test it.
‘You know Michael personally?’
He shrugged. ‘Me and Phil go back, so I was just looking out for his son. Nothing wrong with scoring some brownie points with the boss man. Stay good with the right crowd, that sort of thing. Those blokes aren’t all bad, you know. They look after the businesses around here when they roll in.’
‘You know Rob’s brother, George? Was he here that night?’
He shrugged. ‘Never knew Rob had a brother.’ He leaned on the table and shook his head. ‘Rob copped it sweet. That’s karma for you, ain’t it? I mean, no bastard deserves to die, but if you go out looking for shit, it’s going to come back to you.’
I handed him the other fifty, and threw in another one for god measure.
His face lit up and he pocketed the money. We shook hands, and he made a beeline for the TAB machine.
Chapter 10
Finding people requires legwork. You need to go to the places people frequent the most. In a place like Sussex, that left only a few options. I went online and counted half a dozen hotels, a pub called The Oxley, which seemed to be a popular venue with a regular turnaround of live cover bands, and a dozen or so cafes and restaurants.
I hit the hotels first and asked patrons and staff members if they knew, or had heard of, Michael Le Mat, the proviso being I was a private detective acting on behalf of his family worried for his well-being. I feigned the required amount of concern and allowed people the time to rack their brains. After two hours, the shaking of heads and shrugging of shoulders started to wear thin.
I found The Oxley just off the main road and went in. Two men in their sixties watched a harness race live from Victoria, talking spiritedly over a couple of middies. I walked over, and one of them introduced himself as Brian. Besides balding and being stick thin, he had veiny arms, many missing teeth, and a habit of punctuating his sentences with a rasping laugh. When we shook hands, his excessively strong grip surprised me.
His colleague, Rog, had a hangdog face and a solid build. He regarded me with more than a hint of distrust.
I flipped open my phone wallet and showed them my credentials.
Brian gripped my arm, laughed his raspy laugh, and raised a finger. ‘Loyalty is a fickle beast, mate. You can buy loyalty. Look at Canberra! Look at the White House! D’you think Trump got there because of his talent? You don’t know which way people are swingin’ these days.’
‘You got a gun?’ Rog murmured.
‘I don’t carry.’
‘Can you rough people up?’
‘It’s my obligation to carry out questioning and inquiries within a legal framework.’
‘Bullshit!’ Brian rasped his laugh. ‘Look at you! You’re a rouser! You’re on the take! You’re a glorified copper!’
I couldn’t help but like Brian, but I wasn’t winning points with Rog. I noticed with some bemusement that my presence didn’t mark the slightest change in his demeanour. In his favour, I wasn’t privy to the amount of beer he’d drunk up to that point.
Brian reminded me of the men you see in those old black and white photos of tree cutters in the Australian bush of the early twentieth century—roughhewn and weather beaten
I asked if either of them knew Michael or Philip Le Mat.
Brian straightened up. ‘I don’t know this Michael Le Mat bloke, but I’ve heard of Philip. You remember, Rog? Wasn’t he the bloke who reeled in the biggest blackfish year before last?’
Rog remained unresponsive and sipped his beer. Perhaps his relaxed face was also his recollection face.
‘Oh Jesus,’ Brian said. ‘You can’t talk to Daryl when he wants his poddy mullet traps pulled in.’
The conversation paused, and I really didn’t know how ‘Daryl’ had entered the conversation.
‘And that Philip bloke,’ Brian continued. ‘If it’s the same bloke you’re thinkin’ of, brings in a nine-pound flathead on a tuppence of poddy mullet, he does.’
Rog smacked his lips and muttered, ‘He trawls the canal, by the bridge, every Saturday, at Badgee, he does. He’s got about half a dozen poddy mullet traps set up there. Live poddy’s the ticket. He brings them in at over nine, ten pounds.’
Brian threw up his hands. ‘That’s what I said, you dickhead. Philip Le Mat landed the biggest blackfish off the Badgee jetty, year before last.’
‘He did,’ Rog said to no one in particular. ‘Biggest tailor, he caught.’
I thanked them both and braced myself for another one of Brian’s excruciating handshakes.
As I walked away, Rog made a gun with his hand and cocked his thumb a few times. ‘Pshew. Pshew. Pshew.’
The day was windy but pleasant, and I remained determined to find Philip Le Mat. I located the canal on the northern side of Sussex, nestled by a reserve full of mature stringy barks. I came across a small boat hire shed where a row of six horsepower runabouts bobbed in the water, no doubt resting from the summer season. I wondered how many inexperienced seamen had fallen out of them. A gust of wind rippled the water, which stirred up a melancholic wave of nostalgia in me, of better times kicking a ball at nearby Jervis Bay with my cousins, and barbecuing with uncles and aunts, something that hadn’t happened since my Nonna passed some years back.
Mannaggia, how times have changed.
I walked along the inlet, gazing into the shallow water at the shells and seaweed, marveling at how the baby fish startled whenever the wind changed. I ignored the specially built bike path and stuck to the grassed reserve. A small retaining wall ran along the shoreline, a vain attempt to delay coastal erosion. The wall and the line of jetties, each in various states of decay, barnacled or rotting, reminded me of the impermanence of everything—we can build the biggest and strongest structures, yet they’ll all crumble to dust against the forces of Mother Nature, given enough time. Jetties of various shapes and types lined the inlet, each carrying a plaque with some description and a Crown licence number. The jetties weren’t the property of the rich. I saw no fancy catamarans or luxury boats, just modest tinnies and runabouts cluttered with old transistor radios, rusted oars, and faded, fraying nets. Most needed serious attention, with ropes soaked and barnacled, and the motors salt-encrusted, with faded decals.
I ran into the occasional retiree walking their Shi Tzu, or riding a scooter laden with groceries, and stopped them to make enquiries. None had seen Philip Le Mat. Most of them wanted only to enjoy the location or to eat their ice creams. If they knew anything, they weren’t talking.
I continued north. From time to time, I inspected the water and saw baby stingrays in the shallows, coasting a hairbreadth above the sand, nibbling on seaweed that swayed in the wake of passing boats. I came to a stainless steel tabletop bench installed for public use.
A sun-kissed woman in her sixties wore a faded blue cap and busied herself cleaning a catch with a fillet knife. She’d laid out four flatheads in a neat row, three of which were undersize. She also had a leatherjacket—a weird-looking fish, and bad e
ating at the best of times.
A pair of pelicans paddled in the water nearby and eyed her carefully, eager for a mouthful of fish guts.
She saw me approach and continued to scale the fish.
I introduced myself, and she said her name was Betty. We made small talk about the catch and the water conditions, and debated the advantages of live bait versus dead.
She said she had a line of poddy mullet traps in the water, little bowls filled with bread, used to entice and trap small mullet.
I asked her which bait was best.
‘Depends what you’re hunting,’ she said. ‘Different methods yield different results. I use meat. Fresh blood drives them barking.’ She shrugged. ‘Different folks, different strokes.’
‘I’m here because of a murder that happened last Monday, just out of town.’
‘Yeah’, she grunted. ‘I read about it. That was a good news day.’
‘Excuse me?’
She looked at me as if I were a bit dense. ‘That was a matter of the rubbish taking itself out.’ She furiously ran the back of the knife blade along the body of a particularly small flathead.
I held back what I was going to say, reminding myself I hadn’t known my cousin. From what people had said about him so far, including his own brother, Betty might have had a point.
‘Did you know Mr. Demich personally?’ I said.
Betty used her knife to point to a smartly dressed couple in their sixties at a boat ramp fifteen meters away.
The man busied himself strapping the back of a runabout onto a long trailer, and the woman asked him what he’d like for lunch.
‘You go ask Bob and Margaret Fisher about that bloke,’ Betty said. ‘That devil Rob Demich got their boy hooked on ice. Neither have been the same since. They live on a tightrope, not knowing if he’s going to come home in a body bag or not. Cops are always knocking on the door. Demich was a degenerate and a low life. Poor Maggie’s been a basket case ever since.’
‘How do you know Rob sold their son ice?’
She put the knife down and wiped her face with the back of her hand. ‘Look, I don’t want to upset anybody. You can’t say a bloody thing these days without some princess being offended or someone taking it the wrong way. I heard things about his family. You know what I mean? Things that I don’t want to go into.’
‘What you say stays confidential.’
‘Well, I’ve only got your word on that, and I don’t know you from a bar of friggin’ soap.’
‘I’m a writer, if you want to know the truth. I read about the murder and thought I’d come down and check it out—get the juicy details, try to knock off a murder novel. You know?’
‘Where are you from?’
‘Wollongong.’
‘I used to be chair of the Lions Club at Woonona. Fancy that. Small world, isn’t it? My husband and I came down here from Camden, originally. He worked construction for over thirty years, then retired. This place was a good place back then—safe. Now? You can’t blink without running into some dickhead on ice. It’s a full-blown epidemic, and I heard the Demich family was one of the major suppliers.’
She raised a finger. ‘But none of this comes back to me, you hear? I don’t need that lunatic father of his coming after me for slander.’
I gave her my word that I wouldn’t transgress. She was eager to jump, and I wanted to give her enough rope.
‘That mother had loose morals,’ she said. ‘Do you know what that means? Do you know what I’m saying? What’s your vintage?’
I gave her an age ten years younger than my actual age.
‘Your lot won’t remember it, but when all those migrants came here, they were pretty free and easy, if you get what I mean—all those Greeks and I-Ties. They weren’t shy of a good time. I reckon if you come to this country, you gotta play by the rules. You speak English and you go to church.’
She went back to the fish and made an incision along the length of the belly of the leatherjacket.
‘Are you inferring that the behaviour of Robert Demich’s mother contributed to his death?’
‘What do you mean, his mother? Look, I don’t know anything about it, and I don’t want to know.’
She went silent and I took stock.
‘I’m looking for Philip Le Mat,’ I said. ‘I believe he fishes around these parts. D’you know him?’
‘I think I saw him coming in around noon. The tide’s in and the sun’s high, so the fish are off the chomp. Head down the end of the bike track, and he should be down that way at the last jetty.’
‘Thank you, Betty, it was a pleasure.’
She grunted and picked up the leatherjacket.
I scooped up one of the flathead fillets and eyed it carefully. ‘What’s the legal size for flatheads, Betty?’
She froze, and her gaze flashed between the fish and me.
I gathered the other three flatheads and threw them in the water.
One of the pelicans paddled over and gobbled them up, and swallowed them in three shakes of its head.
I dusted off my hands. ‘I agree, Betty. If you live here, you most certainly have to play by the rules.’
***
The sun was getting low and the wind had picked up by the time I reached the last jetty, a short, t-shaped affair. On the t-section, someone had fitted a sink with a prep area on the left, and bolted a bench seat to the jetty on the right.
A woman sat on the bench and cast her line into the dark water.
I nodded hello and she nodded back.
A man with fair hair filleted a large dusky at the sink. He wore ex-police issue blue pants, a heavy metal singlet, and a Steelworks cap. Faded, murky tattoos adorned his arms. Two large buckets under the sink held a dozen flatheads, one so large its head and tail hung out at either end. Only females got that big.
The man looked up skeptically. ‘Help you mate?’
I introduced myself and asked if he knew Philip Le Mat.
‘Who wants to know?’
I showed him my licence.
He scrutinised it intently before continuing to fillet the flathead. ‘I’ve already spoken to you blokes. You don’t communicate with each other very well, do you?’
‘I’m not with the police, Mr. Le Mat. I’ve been hired to check up on the welfare of Michael.’
He put the knife down and placed both palms on the table. ‘I told you, I have no idea where he is.’ He picked up the knife and turned the fish over. It hit the table with a hard, wet slap.
‘I’ve come to understand the police have evidence against Michael in relation to the murder of Rob Demich,’ I said
‘They think they have evidence,’ he muttered as he slowly carved a long, smooth fillet. ‘But they don’t.’
‘His phone was found at the scene.’
Philip put the knife down and turned to me. ‘Who the fuck said that?’
‘It’s in the police report.’
He grimaced and braced himself against the table. ‘Jesus, fuck.’
‘That puts him at the scene. It’s damning evidence, Philip, and unless you have an idea how it got there, Michael’s up on murder charges.’
‘Yeah, I have an idea how it got there, but I’m not telling you jack shit, not without my solicitor.’
I looked at the sky and thought about George. Time was running out.
He picked up the knife but I grabbed his wrist. He glared at my hand but didn’t pull away.
‘Look,’ I said. ‘There’s been a serious turn of events today. My patience is wearing a little thin. I haven’t got time for this bullshit song and dance routine. I need to know if your son was involved in this because he is now in over his head. I know you blokes have your own code, but this is personal.’
I relaxed my grip a fraction.
His eyes never left my face but he took in my words. ‘He didn’t fuckin’ do it,’ he murmured.
I released his arm.
He glared at me longer than was necessary, then took a step cl
oser. ‘Don’t you ever... fuckin’ touch me... again.’
I held his gaze. ‘If you really think Michael’s innocent, I’m your best shot at clearing his name.’
He ran a hand through his hair, then turned his head and looked into the water. ‘I don’t understand it. Michael doesn’t sleep. He doesn’t eat. One time, he told me he stayed awake for nine weeks.’ He looked at me, and I saw the hopelessness in his eyes. ‘Mate, I’ve tried some shit in my time, but nothing that fuckin’ potent. And they mix it with bleach and chemicals and all sorts of shit....’
He turned his attention back to the fish, and started to scale it with quick rough strokes. ‘They reckon you take enough of that shit, you turn into a zombie—kills the fuckin’ pleasure centres in your fuckin’ brain. Michael’s nearly there. I can see it. He’s not my Michael anymore. It’s all he does these fuckin’ days—smokes and roots everything he fuckin’ sees. I wish to Christ he’d never touched it.’
I nodded. ‘Philip, if the police get to Michael, he will go away for a long time. Do you see anyone else trying to get to the truth of the matter? Do you see anyone else on his side?’
He rubbed his stubbled chin. ‘I’ll get some people to talk to him. How do I get in touch with you?’
I produced my card.
He wiped his hands down his shirt and took it. ‘I got your word on this?’
I nodded. ‘Get him to call me. I only want to meet him and ask him a few things. No harm, no foul.’
Philip pocketed my card and retrieved another flathead from the bucket. ‘If you check out, you’ll be seeing me sooner than you think.’
Chapter 11
I walked two blocks back to my hotel room. When I opened the door, the room was empty apart from the lingering scent of Annette’s perfume, stale sweat, and sex. I booted up my laptop and recalled a particular saying: you can either tell the truth, or say something nice. In Rob’s case, there were no two ways about it—he took joy inflicting misery on others. I opened a folder on the desktop, launched Word, and wrote down suspects names into the document. At the end, I realised I had too many names, and decided to focus only on those events four weeks prior to Rob’s murder.
