THE DEVIL IN THE RED DIRT: DIVIDED IN LIFE. UNIFIED IN MURDER Page 10

  Harris looked around the room and took note of those who had come along for the ID parade. There were several high-ranking police officers and a mob of lawyers who Harris hadn’t yet had the displeasure of meeting. It was a sea of grey and faceless men who puffed away on expensive cigars. They spoke among themselves in hushed voices, lest one of the plebs nearby caught wind of whatever sinister, and corrupt scheme they were devising. Several of the stern men didn’t approve of Harris’ less than immaculate appearance. Or at least, that’s what Harris guessed from what little he could see of the facial expressions hiding behind those ghastly moustaches. One by one he cast his eyes upon the men in that room, one by one they showed him nothing but the contempt born of snobbery by raising their noses at him upon eye contact.

  Harris could take their silent derision. After all, he’d spent time in the British Military. On more than one occasion, high-born men had simultaneously maligned his standing and apathetically risked his life to serve their own egos. What he couldn’t take was the morbid curiosity radiating from a man in the corner. A tall, thin man who was about as well-groomed a chap, as one might lay eyes on, anywhere.. His suit? Savile Row, without a doubt. His shoes? Imported from Milan. His lip was decorated with a matchstick-thin moustache that matched the slicked black hair on his head, it was long and waxed into a Salvador Dali style affair. And if that wasn’t bizarre enough, he had similarly waxed his bushy eyebrows into points that arched up on his forehead. Though his hair was a shade just shy of midnight, it was clearly dyed. He was doing his best to look like a young man, but the greying of his skin belied his declining years. He’d probably been a handsome man in his younger years, but his features were stretching as the unforgiving hand of senescence scratched at him. His nose was wide, his ears were long. He looked like Lon Chaney in one of those old horror films, like a face made up of parts that didn’t quite fit together. Harris recognised him from the papers as a private citizen with no official interest in this situation. But money muddies the waters. He was a magnate; a captain, or rather a titan, of industry. He was into gold, or opals, or steel. His business was raping an ancient and beautiful land, taking every last bit of value it offered him, and leaving it a barren pile of upturned rocks that offered nothing to anyone. He was the very picture of old money. To him, this was entertainment. In this puppet show, he was both the puppeteer and the audience. Harris was little more than a gaudily dressed marionette dancing a humiliating jig. Livingstone, who was of considerably better breeding than Harris, was a peasant next to this man.

  The suits were joined by two others. Two individuals who didn’t look at home surrounded by the shadowy world of Sydney’s powerbrokers. Harris placed these as the witnesses. They had to be, otherwise there was simply no way they would have merited an invite to breathe the same rarefied air as the rich and influential.

  The first was a desperate looking middle-aged man in a cheap brown suit with a dastardly mustard shirt. That is to say, his shirt wasn’t the colour of mustard; it bore the stains of it, and of several other condiments. He was a pig. Harris recognised his dark features. He was a Kiwi detective who’d spent decades as a dogsbody, shifting from department to department. As Harris understood it, no one could knew how he had lasted as long as he had, given how hapless as he was. But those doing the firing were far less competent than him. This man looked excited to be here. Harris assumed Livingstone had offered this pig a ticket out of Palookaville. All he would have to do in return? Offer unquestioning cooperation.

  The second sore thumb amongst the well-manicured fingers was an elderly woman who looked like she should have been getting her weekly blue rinse. Actually, she looked much like she’d actually been physically dug out of the ground to take part in the ID parade. She was all grey hair and deep wrinkles. The frame of her spectacles was filled with some of the thickest glass that Harris had ever seen. She looked nervous and fidgety, like an unprepared understudy called on at the last minute. Harris concluded that she was trying to calm her nerves and remember her lines.

  “This isn’t right.” Harris spoke abruptly, to no one in particular. His voice lacked any kind of bedside manner. He didn’t mean to unsettle the room, but that’s exactly the effect it had. Harris felt shame rising within him. This was a farce. “This spectacle. It’s wrong.”

  “Shall we start?” Livingstone quite physically slid his way into the front of the room, he wanted to paper over the cracks appearing in Harris, and he wanted to run the show; he wanted his slimy hands all over it.

  “Everyone but the first witness and the typist out.” Harris opened the door and gestured for the faceless suits to leave the room. Livingstone looked taken aback by Harris’ unexpected show of initiative. If this was a test that Livingstone had set up to measure Harris’ trustworthiness, then Harris was largely failing. “You too, Chief Inspector.”

  “Don’t you think…”

  “Wait outside Alan. I don’t want to put any unnecessary pressure on the witnesses. It would be terrible if we got our man and the whole thing fell over in court.” Harris cut Livingstone off, stone dead.

  Livingstone’s face dropped, how do you disagree with a statement as professional as that? He couldn’t very well point out that Harris was little better than a bagman, and a common criminal, because that wouldn’t have reflected very well on the department. He was stuck. “Excuse me?”

  “Get. Out…” Harris spoke sternly. The suits looked over at Livingstone for confirmation. Livingstone reluctantly nodded and the men joined him in walking outside.

  “Right… I’ll leave you to it, Detective.” Livingstone mustered as much courtesy as he could in an attempt to save face. His efforts fell flat when Harris slammed the door in his face.

  Harris looked to the elderly witness. “Are you ready for what’s about to happen?” His question was loaded. It echoed around the room, hanging in the air before it draped itself on the old woman’s shoulders. It weighed her down with guilt and shame. Little did she know, he was speaking to himself.

  Slowly, unconvincingly, she nodded. As she did, the typist reached up and pulled at a cord to open the curtain. She was a clumsy woman and the cord seemed to evade her grasp, her fumbling at the drawstring only served to heighten the tension in the room. The curtain dragged across ageing rails. It slid and it stuck, it rattled and it clanked. Nothing about this process would run smoothly. It seemed the universe itself was delaying the inevitable, giving Harris more and more time to ponder his sins. Harris moved forward and tore the heavy curtain down altogether. Casting the material in a heap on the floor, he took a look through the glass. Standing before him was as sorry a line-up as you’d ever see. Five men who bore the tell-tale signs of complete disenfranchisement. Five Aboriginal men who looked like, between them, they didn’t have a single pot to piss in. It was to be believed that one of them had been leisurely driving around in a Rolls Royce? Those poor gentlemen looked uncomfortable under the harsh lights that shone down upon them. They looked like they’d agreed to something without fully understanding the nature of what they’d consented to. They looked like they were realising their mistake, knowing full well it was too late.

  Harris loosened his tie and rubbed at his eyes. The room was stuffy and devoid of air. Everything was coming together to agitate DC Harris in body and mind. A cloudiness sank over his mind while his skin began to tingle and itch. His situation was unbearable.

  Pushing through the mire in his mind, he looked over to the witness. “You’ve given a statement suggesting you saw the car break down on the street earlier? Yes?” He knew the answer to the question, it didn’t stop him hoping she might come to her senses and back out.

  She didn’t. She nodded.

  “I’d like you to look at the men on the other side of the glass, and I’d like you to identify the man you saw today.” Every word he spoke distressed him. He found the entire charade so contemptible that the words themselves seemed to weigh an inordinate amount. By the time they’d risen from his che
st, travelled through his throat, and exited his mouth they had sickened him to his core.

  The woman cast her eyes over the line-up several times. To Harris, it seemed like she’d picked her man but didn’t want to appear to blurt the number out without thinking. She was acting. “Number…” She paused as she looked over the line one last time, she was overdoing it. “Number four.” The tone of her voice was strange. It sounded more like a guess or a question than a statement bearing the courage of her convictions.

  “You’re sure of this?” Harris questioned.

  “I am.” The woman took off her glasses and rubbed at her eyes.

  “Would you like him to step forward for a closer look?”

  “No, I’m sure.” The woman steeled her resolve.

  “Might I ask, how’s your eyesight?” Harris asked the question scornfully.

  “Without my glasses, it’s no good, but that’s why I wear them.” The woman was defensive. She could feel Harris questioning her credibility, it was unexpected and it didn’t feel good.

  “Thank you very much. You’ve been most helpful.” Harris opened the door and let the woman out.

  Livingstone took the opportunity to poke his head inside, “All going well I take it, Detective Constable?” Harris’s answer was profound. He shut the door in his face.

  On a table in the observation room lay a key piece of evidence. The woman’s witness statement. He studied it, hoping for something to spring out of the pages to help him fathom her reason for partaking in this sham.

  When the car broke down, she had been sitting at her desk by a window on the second floor of the police station at Darlinghurst Road. That floor played host to the Burglary squad. It had been hot in the office, so she had opened the window. Within seconds, she had been shocked to hear a deafening bang on the street outside. Thinking a shot had been fired, she had cowered under her desk for a moment. When the shrieking began, she’d peered over the windowsill to see the broken-down Rolls Royce, steaming and smoking. Importantly, she could clearly make out the man running from the scene, barrelling into shell-shocked pedestrians. He was of average height, and of average weight. His hair was medium in length. He had some facial hair, possibly a full patch beard. His clothes were dark, tattered and soiled through overuse.

  The story was overwhelmingly generic. It would allow the Police Force to fit up just about any Aboriginal man they could lay their hands on at short notice. What was remarkable, was that she had seen this generic man, of generic height, build and clothing from around 100 yards away, when those on the street couldn’t recall who had been driving the car. Remarkable. Harris recalled the thickness of the lenses in her glasses. She looked like she wouldn’t have been able to see a brass band playing on the end of her nose. When she’d peered through the glass and over at the line-up no more than 12 feet from her, she’d squinted. She couldn’t even see in the fucking fantasy they had concocted.

  Then it became apparent. Towards the end of the hastily prepared document, there was a short, succinct section intended to establish her fantastic credibility as a witness. Mrs Gloria Evans was a long-term employee of the New South Wales Police Force. She’d joined the typing pool when Kate Leigh, Tilly Devine and Emily Prince had been waging their razor wars on the streets of Sydney. After WWII, she had become the personal assistant to a young, and ambitious Major Crimes detective: Alan Livingstone. She had worked on his desk for eight productive years before his increasing influence led to an increasing workload, at which point Mrs Evans had been put out to pasture; Livingstone had sought administrative assistance from younger, more flexible women. No doubt the Detective Chief Inspector remained ingratiated with the ageing clerk. This didn’t so much raise questions of her credibility as a witness, it smashed it to smithereens. Her story, of which Harris assumed Livingstone had complete authorship, would see an innocent man locked up without the prospect of release.

  Harris stared through the glass at the man holding a placard with the number four upon it. He looked uncomfortable, to be sure. He didn’t, however, look like he knew his life was perilously close to slipping between his fingers. The next witness would confirm the ruse. The suspect would protest. He would deny his involvement. Who the hell would listen? The institution saw them as no better than subhuman and an impediment to progress. They represented a past that the country was trying to leave behind. That’s precisely why Livingstone did this. In the narrative he was writing, the savages were turning upon themselves. There would be no sympathy for this falsely accused man.

  But lies, unlike the truth, are so easy to unravel. All it takes is a single solitary pull at a loose thread. Livingstone, thinking his grim construction would remain unquestioned, had left a thread hanging quite tantalisingly.

  Harris turned to the clerk. “Write this down.” Pressing on the button that turned on the intercom, Harris ran his eyes across the line-up. “Could number two and number four swap places? Please?” The two men, who looked nothing alike, they shrugged their shoulders and they swapped places. Harris was springing his own trap. “Actually, do you mind swapping shirts too, lads?” The men looked at each other in confusion before reluctantly complying. They’d do anything to get this inexplicable experience over with.

  When Harris reopened the door, he was met by the sight of the second witness on his feet and raring to go. The well-to-dos had lost interest in the events inside the room, they had turned Major Crimes into a backroom club with dirty gags, sycophantic laughter, smooth whisky and pungent cigars.

  “Detective, you’re up.” Harris assessed the man as he approached. He had a swagger that just couldn’t be accounted for. He was a funny-looking, balding, overweight man. He was wearing far too much cologne, and he likely had a tiny, mostly flaccid, prick. So why the swagger? He didn’t look intelligent. He didn’t look like he could handle himself in a fight. He looked like his wife had to wear an eye mask to have sex with him, and even then, she would only do so in the dark, for fear of the eye mask slipping. Harris sensed the man was enjoying confidence born of the fact that he knew something. Something that he believed no one else did. Livingstone cast a concerned glance in Harris’ direction. The Detective Constable’s timing was impeccable. His superior had been dragged into a conversation far above his station, and so he simply could not recuse himself.

  “I didn’t catch your name, Detective…” Harris spoke curtly.

  “Kyle. Detective Constable Kyle.” Detective Kyle stared at Harris aggressively. He didn’t like the Englishman’s tone.

  “Who are you with, Fraud?” The Fraud department was just about as far a Detective could sink at the time. This was a dig on Harris’ behalf. It was a cheap shot. He wanted the man to dislike him. He wanted the man to hold on to the fact that he felt he knew something Harris didn’t, and to slip up.

  “Murder Squad.”

  “Your lot must want this done as quickly as we do?” Harris spoke through gritted teeth.

  “Everyone comes out of this well if we lock this bastard up quickly.” Kyle met Harris’ stare with one of his own. He wouldn’t be intimidated. Or so he thought.

  “Not the kids, DC Kyle.”

  “What?”

  “There’s no happy ending for those kids.” Harris reminded him.

  “Oh well, I guess not.” The smug look was beginning to melt from Kyle’s face. He’d expected to breeze in, point the finger, and breeze straight back out. He’d do his day in court, and maybe he would get his picture in the press like he was some kind of hero. Livingstone had probably promised to grease the wheels and get him a promotion so he could spend his days hanging shit on some hapless twat at the bottom of the ladder, instead of being a hapless twat himself. This felt like something different.

  Harris looked at the line-up and went to speak…

  “Four.” Kyle, without looking, had jumped the gun. He had fallen into the trap without so much as a glance at the line-up.

  “Just for the record,” Harris shook his head, “You’re ident
ifying number four as the man you saw fleeing the scene? And you’re quite sure?”

  “Positive.” Kyle’s mouth let his eyes do the heavy lifting, they said: “I don’t appreciate being second-guessed. You Pommy cunt.”

  “You can leave. Tell DCI Livingstone I’ll be out in a minute.” Kyle left the room, not before a lingering look of distrust was shared between the two detectives. Once he had exited the room, Harris pushed on the intercom. “Can you gentlemen tell me why you are here?”

  “We saw some fella running from that broken-down car. The Boss fella said he’d do right by us if we helped him out.”

  “Did he say how you were going to help?” Harris was curious how the hell Livingstone had pulled this off.

  “Nah.”

  Harris released the button. “Course he fucking didn’t,” he muttered under his breath. Allowing yourself to be framed for murder was an entirely unappealing prospect. “What did you see?”

  “Just a white fella, wearing a suit.” The bravest of the men answered. The suit didn’t narrow things down. It was a respectable time. Or at least, on the surface of things it was. Or rather, we dressed respectably back then. If you weren’t wearing a suit in those days, you were a factory worker or a tradesman at work. And even they wore suits when they were off the clock. Even the fucking homeless population wore shirts and ties. “Oh, and he had blood all over his face.”

  Harris pondered that for a moment. Perhaps the man’s head had hit the wheel when the car had come to an abrupt stop? No. Cookie hadn’t found any blood in, or near the driver’s seat. This detective work was new to James Harris, but something about that statement didn’t sit comfortably with him.