The Midnight Promise: A Detective's Story in Ten Cases

by Zane Lovitt

  The tipstaff puts an open photo book in front of Spiros.

  The barrister asks, ‘Are you in the supermarket carpark by this time?’

  ‘Yeah. I mean, no. We’re on…Just on the street, like…next to it.’

  ‘How did you get to the carpark?’

  ‘I walked there.’

  ‘You walked there?’

  ‘Yeah. To get away from him.’

  ‘He chased you away?’

  ‘No. Yeah, but I didn’t run. I walked.’

  ‘What about your car?’

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘Surely, to retreat from Osman, the best thing to do would have been to get back into your car and drive away?’

  Spiros thinks about this using a thick line along his forehead. The prosecutor keeps going.

  ‘Isn’t it more likely, Mister Angelis—’

  Another man in a wig, Spiros’s defence counsel, stands and leans into the microphone.

  ‘The witness should be given an opportunity…’

  Justice Linehan, the one with the biggest wig of all, nods with a face of severe constipation.

  ‘Restate the question, please, counsel.’

  The prosecutor bows. ‘Certainly, Your Honour. Mister Angelis, why didn’t you retreat back into your vehicle when you realised Osman might be a threat to your person?’

  Spiros says, ‘Umm…I don’t know. I didn’t think of it.’

  ‘You didn’t think of it? Mister Angelis, isn’t it more likely that you produced the knife yourself and pursued Osman away from the car, into the supermarket carpark?’

  ‘Nuh. It was his knife.’

  ‘So you’ve said.’

  ‘It wasn’t mine. I don’t even own a knife.’

  ‘Isn’t it more likely, Mister Angelis, that Osman’s insults, whatever they may have been, enraged you? It enraged you that a man of Turkish origin had the temerity to call you names. It enraged you to such a degree that you produced a weapon with the intention of causing injury.’

  ‘Nuh. I didn’t care.’

  Silence.

  ‘Earlier, you gave evidence that Mister Yusedich was fat. That was the word you used?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Yet despite your obvious physical superiority, you’re asking this jury to believe that, in a footrace between the pair of you, you would not have easily outrun him?’

  This is just another salad of words for Spiros. He’s yanking on his tie, unconsciously, like it’s a machine that dispenses correct answers, only it’s not working properly and he really needs to pull that lever. What’s also unconscious is he’s showing everyone how bad he is at lying.

  Spiros’s brother, George, his head is bowed—he can’t watch anymore. The others in this handful of spectators are captivated, knowing that every answer Spiros gives is another year on his sentence. Which I suppose is why George can’t watch.

  Also, he knows Spiros never killed anyone.

  The prosecutor says, ‘You say he chased you across the carpark, whereupon the two of you struggled, you disarmed him and, fearing for your life, you stabbed him twice in the stomach. Is that accurate?’

  Spiros gives the vaguest of nods.

  ‘You need to speak your answers, Mister Angelis.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘That summary sounds accurate to you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘After you realised Osman was dead, did you call the police?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I didn’t…I didn’t want to get in trouble.’

  ‘But you claim to have acted in self-defence. Osman’s mother, Miresha, waited months without knowing the circumstances of her son’s death. In hindsight, do you regret not going directly to the police?’

  Spiros shrugs again. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Could you speak up, please?’

  Too loud, Spiros yells, ‘I don’t know.’ Then he shrinks at how the microphone has amplified his words, filling this massive chamber.

  All day, the prosecutor has been repeating Spiros’s answers. He doesn’t do that now. He lets the reverberation of Spiros’s voice do that for him.

  And again, Spiros is smirking. To everyone except me and George, it looks as though he finds it all so funny.

  McIvor’s is where you drink on King Street if you’re a cop. I’m hiking uphill, trying to remember where it is, hoping I’ll spot it among the strip joints and the places with beds that call themselves hotels. When I do, I push my way in and scan the room. There are no photos of police officers on the walls, no tributes or police colours or funny cop jokes scratched over the doorway. You wouldn’t guess a single one of these drinkers wasn’t just an ordinary guy having a beer after work. Which is actually what they all are.

  I beeline to the pale, black-haired one huddled at the counter. He’s tall and stringy and his eyes say I could shoot him in the face and he wouldn’t care. With him is another man of the same age but remarkably overweight, who appears to be telling a joke. I don’t wait for him to finish.

  ‘Is it true you’ve charged Spiros Angelis?’

  Detective Burke looks over his pointy shoulder, winces.

  I say, ‘You told me you were building a case against the brother.’

  He glances at his companion, a silent apology for the interruption, then turns back.

  ‘First of all, who the fuck are you?’

  This is him trying to put me in my place. To look tough in front of his colleagues. I might not have the most memorable face in the city, but he remembers it. I wave him away from the bar.

  ‘I need to talk to you.’

  His fat friend raises his eyebrows, purses his lips. I’m a ten-year-old who just challenged the sheriff to a gunfight. Burke simpers, pushes himself off the beer mat.

  ‘Well…I was just going out for a fag.’

  I follow him to the door, feeling the fat man’s eyes watching us go. When we reach the footpath I plant my hands on my hips, confrontational.

  ‘You said the investigation was all about George Angelis. Not Spiros. So you were just telling me what I wanted to hear, Detective Burke? It was all bullshit?’

  He lights his cigarette.

  ‘You should call me Dennis.’

  I take a breath. His face is a wall you couldn’t blast through with cannons.

  ‘I’m John Dorn. I’m the guy who found the car—’

  ‘I remember you,’ Dennis says, heading me off. ‘I remember we talked about George. You should know that who I charge isn’t up to me. In this case, the DPP made the decision.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because Spiros confessed and the DPP isn’t a fucking idiot.’

  ‘People confess all the time. Doesn’t mean they did anything.’

  ‘Fuck that. We’ve got him at the nightclub on the night, the car was photographed nearby, the knife with Osman’s blood still on it was under his kitchen sink and when I asked him he said, Yeah, I stabbed the Turkish guy. Let’s see you go tell the DPP not to charge him.’

  ‘But you didn’t even consider George—’

  ‘Didn’t consider him? Are you out of your fucking mind? You want to know what I found on George Angelis?’ Dennis straightens, squares off like we’re about to fight hand-to-hand. As he speaks, he counts the fingers on his left hand, the cigarette clamped in his mouth, forcing most of his voice through his nose. Faces from the peak hour traffic lurch past, watching him.

  ‘George’s got a prior conviction for unlawful assault, grievous bodily harm with a knife. And who was the victim? A Turkish goalkeeper George played against. There was also an incident on a freeway where a driver accused George of taking a cricket bat to their windshield, but then that complaint was mysteriously withdrawn. I found out George has got a pretty detailed history with methylamphetamine, so if he killed Osman, he was probably off his dial. And yeah…’ He pulls the cigarette from his mouth, his eyes weeping from the smoke. ‘He was with Spiros at the nightclub before the mur
der. I spent two months looking into George Angelis. But the evidence isn’t there, John. And I don’t decide who we charge.’

  ‘Did you mention any of this to the DPP?’

  ‘Yeah, I mentioned it.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘He told me he’s got every Turk in the southern hemisphere calling this a hate crime, and then he told me to go fuck myself. Listen…’

  Dennis puts a bony hand to his forehead and draws it down his cheek. For a moment, his face is melting. He lowers his voice.

  ‘Don’t put me on the other side of an argument I’ve been making for six weeks. If it was up to me, I’d put George on the rack and torture him until he confessed. God knows Spiros wouldn’t pull a knife, let alone stab someone, with or without his brother egging him on. But it isn’t up to me, and Spiros is going to stand trial. So get out from behind me, you arsefucker.’

  I slump against McIvor’s brick work, look up at the sky.

  ‘So you know Spiros is innocent?’

  ‘I don’t know about innocent. He was probably there, saw it happen, didn’t do anything to stop it. But Christ man, of course he didn’t do it. George was driving, cranked up on ice. A fat Turkish bloke crosses against the lights, cuts them off, gives them the finger. George insults him in Greek, Osman comes back in Turkish, George does his block, chases him, fights him, kills him, rinses the knife and hides it under their kitchen sink.’

  ‘So why is Spiros so happy to take the blame?’

  Smoke spools from Dennis’s mouth, ‘That’s the six-million-dollar question.’

  He watches a woman in a black leotard, a pole dancer at the end of her shift, skip across King Street to a waiting taxi. The driver opens his door, shoves his KFC box under the car, closes the door.

  ‘It’s like every conspiracy charge I’ve ever worked, right?’ He squares off again, eyes lingering on the stripper a moment more before coming back to me. ‘Every real-life conspiracy I’ve ever worked has been one bloke who doesn’t give a rat’s crack about anybody but himself, and another bloke who’s too weak to say no. George has gone to Spiros and said, I’ve got priors, I won’t get off on self-defence, you will. Tell them the Turk tried to kill you and there’s no one to call you a liar because no one else was there.’

  ‘Maybe. But George can’t really think that’s going to work.’

  ‘Maybe he doesn’t.’ Dennis stamps out his cigarette, exhaling a long breath. ‘Think about it from George’s point of view. Looking after Spiros all the time. Waking up every morning wondering, how is this retard going to fuck up my life today? Worrying if Spiros is going to somehow get George sent to jail. Maybe big brother doesn’t mind the idea of Spiros going down. Let someone else take care of him for a while…’

  I take a moment to appreciate that all of this must be true. Dennis makes a fart sound through his teeth.

  I say, ‘So you’re just going to allow that?’

  ‘There’s a billion people out there too dumb to protect themselves. I can’t spend my time on just one of them.’

  His skinny eyebrows make a deep V, mocking my disgust. The sun comes out from behind a cloud and the tavern’s bricks sting my head like ants trying to burrow in.

  ‘There’s got to be something we can do.’

  ‘Hey, maybe it’ll work. Maybe Spiros will dazzle them when he takes the stand.’

  ‘And what if he doesn’t? We’ve got to find something on George.’

  ‘If you think you can do better than what I did in two months, go for your life.’

  ‘There’s got to be something…’ I’ve run out of words.

  Dennis digs two hands into his pockets and pushes his shoulder into the door of McIvor’s. He stops there, looking at me.

  ‘You could try not blaming yourself. That might work.’

  ‘Why shouldn’t I blame myself? This wouldn’t have happened if it weren’t for me.’

  ‘Don’t think about it that way. Think about the money. All that work you did. They must have paid you a small fortune, right?’

  My face tells him the answer to that question. He scoffs.

  ‘No wonder there’s a wart on your fanny.’

  In this part of Frankston all the driveways lead up to bungalows, each with a couch on the porch that was never meant for the outdoors, each couch with a person or persons splashed across it like paint, made limp by the heat. They watch me without emotion as I drive by slowly in my Toyota Starlet.

  The white Mitsubishi Lancer is parked right there in the driveway. Its rear bumper is a black strip of hard rubber, dented in the middle, directly above the licence plate, perfectly centred so that it might be dented by design. But it isn’t. Over these last six weeks, I’ve looked at enough Mitsubishi Lancers to know precisely how they’re designed.

  I park at the kerb and stroll cheerfully towards the house.

  It’s no less ramshackle than the others along this backroad. There’s a stack of newspapers as high as my hip yellowing on the yellow lawn. The tip of a surfboard sticks out over the bungalow’s roof and there’s a mouldy bar fridge where the letterbox should be. About all that sets this one apart is the youth watching me from the couch: he’s holding a mobile phone instead of a beer.

  I grin at him, shielding the glare from my face, distracted by the rear bumper of the car, thinking to myself this trip to Frankston might actually have been worth the effort.

  ‘Hi,’ I say.

  His reply is a grunt. I think he meant to say hello but his throat was too dry. He clears it. On his head is a peaked cap advertising an American sports team. His eyebrows are enormous and below them are great pools of unease. I stop in the middle of the lawn, still grinning.

  ‘That your Lancer?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘I’m in the market. You selling?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The car.’

  He cranes, looks intently at the vehicle.

  ‘Nah. Not for sale.’

  ‘Why not?’ I ask, still friendly. ‘Has it got sentimental value?’

  ‘Um…’ He squints at me from the shade of his porch. ‘I know it’s got four cylinders and a six-stack CD player.’

  I point at the car, smiling. ‘How’d it get that dent in it?’

  ‘I backed into a pole. I was trying to park, and I just backed into a pole.’

  I’ve done this kind of patter more than a hundred times, but now I don’t know what to say. If I ramp up the friendliness, my bet is he won’t think it’s suspicious.

  ‘Hey, mate. My name’s John. What’s your name?’

  ‘Spiros.’

  ‘It’s really nice to meet you, Spiros. Hot one, isn’t it?’

  ‘Hot day?’

  ‘Yeah. I’ve just been driving around. My car’s the only place I’ve got with air conditioning.’

  I smile as broadly as I can manage and this pleases Spiros. He smiles back.

  He asks, ‘Do you play Call of Duty?’

  ‘Play what?’

  ‘Call of Duty.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘A game.’

  ‘A computer game?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘What do you do in it?’

  ‘You’re like this soldier in a war. And you get to choose between an American one or this other one. It’s good.’

  ‘I guess I don’t play it.’

  Spiros uses his whole neck and face to shrug.

  ‘That’s cool.’

  ‘Mind if I sit down? This heat is such a bugger.’

  His legs have been, until now, stretched across the whole couch, showing off the thick hair that grows on his shins. He shifts them, settles his feet on the ground, looks at me calmly, waiting for me to sit. When I do, an empty soft drink can digs into my arse. I remove it, settle back into the burst cushions.

  ‘I wasn’t allowed in to the army,’ Spiros says.

  ‘Yeah? You went to join up?’

  ‘They said I didn’t have criteria.’ He works his mouth
around the word like he’s sneering. But really he’s just trying to say it properly. ‘I do kickboxing,’ he adds as compensation. ‘Do you do kickboxing?’

  ‘I’m afraid not.’

  ‘Do you go to clubs?’

  ‘Nightclubs?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Sure. I love clubs. Do you go?’

  ‘Yeah. All the time. We should go one time. If you want.’

  He can’t be a killer, someone so open and determined to be friends. I’ve met two or three killers and I never wanted to ruffle their hair or generally improve their self-esteem.

  ‘That’d be good. You’re Greek, right?’

  ‘I was born in Australia. My mum and dad are Greek.’

  ‘What do you think of Turkish people?’

  Spiros makes a face like I just stuck him gently with a safety pin. ‘Nothing. I don’t know. Are you Turkish?’

  ‘What if I was?’

  ‘I don’t care. Are you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I don’t care. I can never tell.’

  He hugs his knees to his chest, his sneakered feet dangling in the air like they’ve been lynched. ‘My brother can tell.’

  I lean in. ‘Your brother can tell if someone’s Turkish?’

  His eyes seem to withdraw into his skull. For a moment I’m sure that he’s figured out why I’m here. Then, when he doesn’t look at me, when his gaze seems stuck on the lawn, I’m wondering if he’s forgotten I’m here at all. I lower my voice to its least threatening tone.

  ‘Does your brother live here with you?’

  Just as softly, not looking at me, he says, ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Where is he now?’

  ‘At the gym.’

  ‘What’s his name?’

  ‘George.’

  ‘Does George drive your car sometimes, Spiros?’

  ‘Sometimes.’

  I stop asking questions. With the car and maybe a little help from Spiros, the police can take it from here. I lean back in silence to enjoy the moment, one destined to become a perfect memory. What was that Turkish word Miresha called me?

  When I look back at Spiros I’m trying to hide my smirk. He’s staring at his dry, dying lawn, and for some reason he’s smirking too.

  ‘Just because Osman was Turkish doesn’t mean it was racially motivated.’