Shore Leave

by David Whish-Wilson

  ‘What time’s your shore leave end? You can probably see the port from the back windows. Get one of these fuckheads to drop you back. You could even walk from here. Don’t know why you want to hang out with these morons but I guess it’s a free country.’

  Devon put out his hand, but Barry ignored it. ‘I got until nine am tomorrow morning,’ Devon answered. ‘That gives us two days until the officers’ party. Just make sure you got the van there, unlocked. I’m gonna want my money, right away. If it ain’t there, I don’t leave the M16s.’

  ‘We’re cool, kid. You call us beforehand to get the van licence plates, we’ll do the rest.’

  Devon put out his hand again, and this time Barry Brown shook it, the pressure fierce.

  The Monaro chugged down the hill. Devon waited until its tail-lights were gone before flicking his cigarette and knocking on the door. It was answered by a shirtless kid about Devon’s age but ten pounds lighter. Devon had made sure to push up his polo shirtsleeves to show his ink, and the boy’s eyes wandered over his arms and across his face.

  ‘You got the sulphate?’ was all he asked, still not moving aside or inviting Devon in.

  Devon was still powered up on the crank and decided to play the role. He put a little pimp in his voice and smiled. ‘Suurre, brother. If you got me a cigarette? You Aussies call that a durry, am I right?’

  There were footsteps in the hall and the skinny kid moved away. A taller, meaner version took his place, head shaved and shirtless beneath the red braces, wore the bleached jeans and boots, swastika tattoo over his heart; the whole nine yards.

  Devon put out his hand. ‘You be the daddy bear, am I right? Barry Brown’s nephew, Antony?’

  The skinhead looked at Devon’s tattoos and nodded. ‘Come in, Yank.’

  ‘Don’t mind if I do.’

  Devon followed the two men down the hallway into a lounge made by knocking out a brick wall. The work had been done recently, judging by the dust on the floorboards and the jagged bricks beside the kitchen sink. The sledgehammer was stood in the corner on a mound of swept drywall.

  It was quiet in the house but out in the backyard Devon could see a group of young men gathered around a sawn-off drum, fire shooting sparks up into the sky.

  The truth was that Devon had hoped to meet some women. He’d been told that the local women were crazy for Americans, and was hopeful that with a bit of charm he might get lucky – something that would shut up the clowns he worked with. Lenny and Marcus had been teasing him all week about it. Saying, hell, even Devon Smith could get laid in the Australian port. ‘All you got to do is smile and ask ’em to dance. They beggin for it. Don’t even have to pay. They so desperate for some chocolate candy bar. Though Devon got his happy sock, so he alright. Devon you know you go into port you got to leave your happy sock behind?’

  Devon was so deep into the memory that he hardly noticed when the taller skinhead told him that he needed to be searched. Devon just nodded and put his hands up. The taller man was silent while the smaller man searched Devon, patting him down and rifling through his bag. The smaller kid didn’t even notice the compartment at the bottom of the bag that contained the Glock. He handed over the bag and focussed instead on the packet of speed that Devon waggled in front of their noses.

  ‘Night’s old, fellas, not long till dawn. US Navy’s in town though, yo! Booyaa!’

  He said it with just the right amount of swagger, but it didn’t go down like he hoped. The taller man gritted his teeth, took the packet of powder and said nothing. Nodded with his head toward the table made of a door placed over two tea chests. The smaller skinhead returned with a black plastic box and a spoon. Opened the black box and took out two syringes with orange caps. Offered Devon a third, who shook his head.

  ‘Naw, I don’t do like that, fellas. I gotta be back at base in a few hours and I ain’t gonna sleep as it is. But you go right ahead.’

  They already were. Neither of them had spoken, but they exchanged glances. Devon got that anxious feeling again, rising up through the fake speed confidence. He tried to clear his mind, focus on what was happening. It wasn’t that the two Australian skinheads were any kind of threat. There was nothing in their postures or in their silence. They didn’t appear to be jonesing either. There was something else going on that Devon wasn’t privy to, some kind of secret that he didn’t know. That was a good thing, he realised. He didn’t want in with any kind of cowboy outfit. He was looking for real players. He decided to let the two men take their shot before breaking into their silence. If they were the right kind, then he’d reveal his trump card – the Glock in his bag. He hadn’t decided whether he’d charge them or present it as a gift, with the offer of more. The latter, most likely. He wanted them to get some girls around, to liven things up before his artificial mood wore off and he was due on deck.

  23.

  The morning sun rose to the rim-line of the brick wall above them. Swann and Webb sat in its shade, waiting for Cassidy to arrive. The boxing gym was open but only Blake Tracker could be heard inside; the steam-press hisses of his exhalations as he worked the heavy bag, the thudding of his sixteen-ounce gloves hitting leather, and the bag creaking on its chain. Swann had set up the card table outside and made a pot of filtered coffee for Lee Southern, who’d been up all night working the door at Kerry Bannister’s brothel.

  Lee Southern lit a cigarette and exhaled sideways, aware of Swann’s sickness. That morning, Swann had gone to his GP’s home and received the first injection of the chelate solution that would bond to the lead in his bloodstream. Swann had taken three months worth of glass vials home with him. The solution wasn’t covered by Medicare, and it was expensive, but he didn’t have much choice. Daily injections for a fortnight and then weekly after that. He looked forward to the first sign that the poison was abating. Right now he hadn’t noticed any difference. Even the smell of coffee made him want to hurl.

  ‘This is your place?’ Webb asked, genuine surprise in his voice.

  ‘Long as we keep paying the rent. Everything else is donated. An old friend and I started it up a few years ago. Philosophy’s simple. Make it the kind of place that we would’ve liked when we were kids, but didn’t have. Better to work it out in here, than out there.’

  ‘Amen to that. Shall we begin?’

  Swann nodded and Webb turned over the crime scene and autopsy photographs, spread them on the card table. Cassidy had done a good thing by sharing them. He’d left the file with Webb for an hour while he went to canvass Kerry Bannister’s staff, who’d all been summoned for that reason. Webb had worked as a county detective before joining the navy. Swann had worked homicide too, but not for many years. The two men looked closely at each of the photographs, which were in turn photographed by Lee Southern. Webb picked up the fifth photograph and pointed out the bruise to Swann. It wasn’t a big bruise, but it was clearly visible on Francine’s lower back.

  ‘That’s the first odd note,’ he said. ‘She’s been strangled from behind.’

  ‘Odd for a crime of passion, which is what we’ve been assuming.’

  Lee Southern put down the Minolta, scanned the picture with his grey eyes. ‘What do you mean?’

  Swann pointed to the bruise. ‘We know that Bernier and Francine were intimate. Most cases where a man strangles a woman he’s familiar with, particularly if he’s angry, he does it from the front, usually with his hands. You strangle someone from behind when your attack is a surprise. It’s as impersonal as such a horrible thing can be.’

  ‘What if he was ashamed? Couldn’t bear to look?’

  Webb leaned forward. ‘That’s possible, but unlikely. Why do it at all then? As far as we know, Bernier doesn’t have a motive. Crime of passion, fit of rage, men usually revert to impulsive methods like attacking with a blunt object, or choking from the front. This, however, suggests a degree of planning, which in turn suggests a degree of coldness – the kind of coldness that doesn’t usually look away. Wants to look. The whole point
of doing it, for such men, is to look.’

  Lee Southern met Swann’s eyes. He’d picked up on it too – the hopeful note in Webb’s voice. If Bernier was involved in the murder of a civilian ally, then the murder was also political. It would therefore be politically expedient if Bernier could be ruled out.

  ‘That’s all true,’ Swann agreed, still looking at Southern. ‘But it doesn’t put Bernier in the clear. And we still don’t have the ligature used to kill Francine. From the bruising on her neck, it doesn’t look like a wire, or even rope. The bruise is too diffuse. There’s no broken skin. She suffocated, slowly. Not the work of a professional. More like a first-timer.’

  Webb flicked through the autopsy photographs until he came to closeups of Francine’s hands. He put the two photographs in front of Swann. None of her artificial and painted nails were damaged.

  ‘We’ll have to wait for the bloodwork,’ Swann said. ‘To find out if she was already unconscious, on the nod, or knocked out with something stronger.’

  ‘There’s always the other explanation,’ Webb added, passing the photographs to Lee Southern, that hopeful note in his voice again. Lee scanned the images and looked to Swann.

  ‘What, it was accidental? Part of some sex act?’ Lee asked.

  ‘No, this wasn’t accidental. It took too long, and there’s the knee at her back. What else is odd in those photographs?’ Swann prompted.

  Lee nodded. ‘There were maybe two people. One holding her hands, so she couldn’t fight back.’

  ‘Precisely,’ said Webb. ‘But like Frank said, we’ll have to wait and see.’ Webb looked at his watch, began to read deeper into the autopsy report, the gruesome truth of Francine’s surgery at the coroner’s office hidden behind language describing stomach contents, dental anomalies, the size and weight of organs.

  Lee’s friend Blake Tracker emerged from the gym, lathered with sweat, peeling off his leopard-skin wraps. He looked over at the table and did the Noongar hand gesture, little curl of the wrist, indicating a question. Swann shook his head. Blake’s mother had been murdered by an abusive boyfriend when Blake was still a child. It was Blake who’d found her, crumpled in a bedroom corner. Blake didn’t need to see the contents of the folder, and he nodded and turned back into the gym.

  The sound of tyres on the steep driveway, coming too fast. Swann and Webb stood, Lee taking up the Minolta. Cassidy’s Commodore, driven by one of his underlings, speared into the small carpark and slammed on the anchors when the driver saw their table. A cloud of dust rose over the skidding car.

  Cassidy cracked his door and stood one foot on the cement, the other on the chassis. ‘I got to go. They’ve found another murdered woman. Strangled. In the city. Sounds like our man.’

  Swann necked the rest of his coffee, nodded to Webb. Gone was any sign of hope in his eyes.

  24.

  Tony Pascoe looked at his reflection in the rear-view mirror of the Toyota van. He was parked across the road from Mark Hurley’s home in suburban Floreat Park. It was a two-storey affair made of faux-limestone bricks with pale blue cornices and black tiles. The front lawn was bowling-green quality. The soil in the garden beds that skirted the house looked good enough to eat.

  Back at the Sannyasins’ house in Fremantle, Pascoe had sat on milk crates with a shower curtain draped over his shoulders while Sarani, her baby sleeping in a crib beside them, had taken the shears to his head and face.

  The front page of the West Australian was laid on the floor beside her feet. It contained a blown-up image of the last mugshot taken of Pascoe, back in ’70, when his beard was red and his hair was long. Pascoe’s beard was now white and his hair had thinned out, and Sarani wanted to disguise him the best that she could. She carefully ran the shears over his scarred scalp, moving down through the blades until he had a buzz cut. She removed his beard altogether and shaved him with a disposable razor. When she held up the mirror to his face, he got a shock. Despite the weathering on his face he looked twenty years younger.

  He had said too much at the party. The drug that they’d given him seemed to open his lungs and bring energy into his old body. He hadn’t danced, unlike Ryan, but had been effusive for most of the night. Now however his voice was gone and his lungs were congested and painful. He remembered telling the men and women gathered at his feet the reason why he’d broken out of gaol. None of them seemed to judge him, perhaps because he hadn’t told them the full truth. Sat Prakash, the bearded bricklayer, had offered Pascoe the use of a van that he’d recently bought from a house-painter. It had Bill the Painter in large letters on its sides, and a picture of a clean-shaven old man. Pascoe now looked like Bill the Painter, complete with his government-issue Buddy Holly–like prescription glasses. The likeness was pretty good. Sat Prakash had filled the van with old buckets and sheets, and a couple of rollers and tins of paint. The van was part of his disguise and it ran well enough. If Pascoe was arrested, then Sat Prakash would claim that the van was stolen from the street. There was no way to prove otherwise.

  Pascoe ran a hand over his cold smooth chin. He was used to hair on his face and now his skin was soft and pale. He could feel his cheeks burning in the thin sunlight of late afternoon, parked under a gnarled old bottlebrush. His ribs hurt and his lungs crackled every time he breathed, and he sipped water and timed his hits on the oxygen bottle to once every fifteen minutes. There would be another fresh bottle for him back in Fremantle when he returned, assuming that he didn’t finish the job tonight.

  There was no sign of Mark Hurley inside the front rooms of the house. It was a condition of Mark’s parole that he live with his father for the next six months. Mark’s father was a builder and was likely out at a site. There was no condition placed upon Mark’s work, and it was probable that he was working for his father too. It wouldn’t do Mark much good in terms of the problems he now faced, but it might take his mind off things.

  The kind of business that Mark Hurley was imprisoned for, and was being forced back into, was part of a night-time economy. Mark’s problem was both the buying and selling sides of the equation. He didn’t have a stake, and he didn’t have the trust to receive credit. He’d lost all of his contacts due to the time he’d served. Mark would have to start near the bottom, where it was always more dangerous. Unless something could be done. The reason Pascoe was there, waiting.

  He didn’t have to wait any longer. A small convoy of trucks and vans rose over the nearest hill. A bobcat on a flatbed truck and another carrying pallets of corry iron. One van was being driven by Mark Hurley, sitting beside his father, a thin-looking man in overalls, already climbing out, dusting his boots in the gutter before stepping onto the pristine lawn. Mark Hurley looked around the street, but didn’t see Pascoe’s van. He looked healthy. His bulked-up prison-body had worn down to what was useful to do real work. He was tanned and his face was rimed with plaster dust. He kicked off his workboots and like his father walked in his socks to the front door. His father, according to Mark, was a good man, but didn’t know the kind of trouble that Mark was in. Hurley Snr pointed to a bucket by the front door. Both of them stripped down to their jocks and tipped their clothes into the bucket, before slipping inside.

  25.

  Swann parked the Brougham in the Northbridge alley, behind what used to be the Zanzibar nightclub. He used his police radio to monitor the arrival of police and ambulances to the alley across the other side of William Street. Not many people knew about the alley beside the Brass Monkey pub, mostly used by punters eager to smoke a joint, or by couples looking to engage in a good old-fashioned knee-trembler.

  Swann and Webb stood at the edge of the crime-scene perimeter, along with print and TV journalists and locals keen to rubberneck. Down the end of the alley they could see forensic staff in their white jumpsuits, hovering around an unseen figure; a photographer flash-lighting the scene so rapidly that the figures of the police, ambulance officers and forensic staff appeared like characters in a clumsy animation.

  Web
b had changed into civvies – jeans, boots and a windbreaker. Sunglasses and a Chicago Cubs cap. He and Swann weren’t talking, in case one of the nearby journalists got too curious. Not many people knew that the Vinson had its own Shore Patrol and investigative officers in the city, and that was how Webb wanted it to stay.

  Cassidy’s great silver head rose above the crouched forms of the forensic team, his face bleached by flashes of light from the photographer’s camera. He looked down the alley and saw Swann and Webb, but didn’t acknowledge them, knowing that this would set the journalists off. He looked angry, however, muttering to his junior colleagues who stood against the wall and took notes. Now Swann could see the tipped-over wheelie bin and the rubbish strewn across the rough paving. The pale form of a young woman, still dressed in a platinum disco singlet and leather skirt. Black leather boots and silver bangles up her arms. Peroxided hair covering her face.

  ‘Holy shit,’ said one of the journalists beside them, a young man peering into a long-distance lens. He passed the camera to the young woman beside him. ‘Is that what I think it is?’

  Webb raised the Minolta to his eye, dialled in the focus. Swann saw his Adam’s apple pump as he tried to swallow. Webb shook his head grimly, passed the camera to Swann.

  Swann spoke for the first time since they got to the alley. ‘What am I looking at?’

  Webb leaned close, whispered. ‘The ligature around her neck. It’s a midshipman’s neckerchief.’

  Swann saw the neckerchief tight under the woman’s purpled face. He saw movement beside her and took the camera from his eye. It was Cassidy, approaching them, removing something from his pocket. The anger in his eyes and the set of his jaw made the journalists begin to snap and film. He arrived at the perimeter tape and ignored Swann and Webb. He stood in front of the flashing cameras and held up the photograph of US Midshipman Charles Bernier.