THE DEVIL IN THE RED DIRT: DIVIDED IN LIFE. UNIFIED IN MURDER Page 19

  Harris stepped backwards in the hope of creating a little breathing space between himself and the overly friendly pathologist. “I don’t like the Queen all that much. Given recent history, I struggle to understand why a German family sits on the British throne.”

  “What cologne do you wear?”

  “Excuse me?” Harris was taken aback.

  Cooky smiled as though his behaviour was normal. He seemed to be taking in Harris’ scent. Harris turned his attention to Lescott. “When we inspected the car on the street, the keys were still in the ignition and there was a newspaper on the passenger seat. That was it.”

  “Not to mention the two dead kids,” Cooky chipped into the conversation in his chirpy manner. Harris placed his face in his hands.

  “The keys are in the glove box. The Bible’s on the back seat.” Lescott looked concerned by that fact.

  “Forensics checked it for fingerprints at the scene,” Cooky jumped in to defend his department. “Nothing.”

  “Still, it seems like something that should probably have been filed in evidence by Major Crimes.”

  “The investigating detective wasn’t exactly Hercule Poirot and he wasn’t on the case long,” Harris combatted his embarrassment with self-deprecation.

  “The newspaper isn’t here. Is that significant?” Lescott spoke quietly, he was distracted.

  Harris looked at the rolled-up newspaper under his own arm, he’d stolen it on the way there. “Doesn’t seem like much to go on.”

  “No. It doesn’t.” Lescott was barely listening. He was staring into the rear-view mirror. In its reflection, on the back seat of the car, a young woman was sitting with an infant. A beautiful pair whom he knew at once weren’t really there. The woman and child he’d spotted on the street outside the Fortune of War all those months ago. A pair who’d been following him, haunting him, for months. “Yesterday, upon the stair, I met a man who wasn’t there. He wasn’t there again today, oh how I wish he’d go away.”

  “What was that?” Harris asked casting a curious glance at Lescott. He heard the words. He saw the glance in the mirror. He couldn’t quite understand what he’d just seen. “You think he’s been up here?”

  Lescott turned to look at the car’s backseat. Nothing. “I’m not sure. The car’s still here after all.” Lescott climbed out the vehicle. “I think it’s possible he went into the morgue and retrieved the bodies. He enjoyed the thrill of it. Not like when the car broke down, that was a problem, it wasn’t on his terms. Though it did exhilarate him. Now, he’s got a taste for the theatre of it all… Hence the old man.”

  “So, it’s just an old newspaper missing? That could just as easily have been thrown away. That could be little more than coincidence.” Cooky tried once again to put a lighter, less troubling spin on the conversation.

  “There’s no such thing as coincidence. Just cause and effect. Nothing happens of its own accord, behind every event there is an author.” Lescott thought back to the criminology textbooks he’d studied in his teens and early twenties.

  “Could there have been prints on it?” Harris hypothesised, somewhat desperately.

  “No. I was there when they brushed the interior down. There were no prints anywhere.” Cooky answered. “If I remember rightly, it was just an old copy of the Bulletin from a week before the incident.”

  Lescott was preoccupied, a little nervous even. This incident had turned a little darker in his mind than he wanted to verbalise. A psychopath was on the loose, a man of means who could enter police stations and impound lots without raising suspicion. “Could he be a policeman?”

  “I don’t see too many Darlinghurst bobbies driving rollers…” It was Harris’ turn to cut the other man’s idea down.

  “The Commissioner drives around in a Jag.” Lescott was playing devil’s advocate.

  “A Jag isn’t a Roller.” Harris was unconvinced.

  “He knows how to leave no evidence. At all. He seems to have a working knowledge of embalming and…” Lescott blew air through his teeth while he looked for the words. “Posthumous skeletal manipulation.”

  “Doctor?” Harris questioned.

  “You can’t think a medical professional would have anything to do with this?” Cooky was grossly offended at the suggestion.

  “They’re prone to the same mental diseases that we are,” Lescott reasoned.

  “Belsen…” Harris said. “There was this SS doctor who’d been performing strange experiments on Jewish subjects. They’d had dyes injected into their eyeballs, organs removed, organs added, limbs removed, limbs added. Frankenstein’s monster shit. There wasn’t a hint of anaesthesia in sight. But there was a wall full of medical degrees.”

  “You know what the scariest thing is?” Lescott asked. No one answered. “This guy chose to come back for two rotting bodies over this car. This car is worth more than most streets in Darlinghurst. Yet he places more value on the corpses. And he refers to a collection.”

  Harris felt out of his depth, this was beginning to feel more and more like the crime of the century, and less like something he could navigate. He was flustered. “You’re sure it’s not a priest?”

  Lescott looked over at Harris suspiciously, “I’m not sure of anything, least of all why you keep talking about fucking priests.”

  Chapter 21

  Lescott kept a close eye on Harris leading the way down the ramp. It was a strange sight. His car was so old, and in such bad shape that it seemed to slip and slide its way down the spiralling descent. The brakes must have been old and worn out, because when he came to the guard post, it took the barrier’s presence physically to prevent the car moving.

  Once more, the guard was buried in his newspaper. It didn’t take much for a man like Harris to misplace his patience and this man was making great strides towards just that. He was the kind who’d take a bribe to let you in, and then demand another just to let you out. After a moment, he looked up from his newspaper and over at Harris

  “I don’t suppose you’ve got a log of the people who’ve inspected lot 482?” Harris asked. The guard shook his head. “Remember anyone suspicious coming in or out? In the last couple of months?” Harris questioned further.

  “Just you and your little friend.”

  “Excuse me?” Harris didn’t like the man’s tone.

  “You heard me. Bent copper.” Harris tried to ascertain whether they’d had any dealings in the past. He couldn’t place him. That didn’t mean much. Harris was a heroin addict. They’re not renowned for paying attention to details. “No one’s been in, no one’s been out, except you and your crooked pal back there.” The man threw his newspaper at Harris. Harris looked down at the front page of the paper. His picture had found its way onto the front page once more. Tommy Clarke had written a follow-up article.

  The guard lifted the barrier and shooed Harris through. Lescott, unaware of what was going on, did his best to tail Harris as he careered through traffic. Horns blared, brakes screeched, tyres kicked up dust, and angry fists were waved. But Harris saw and heard nothing, he was gone.

  Lescott never really got the opportunity to put his feat of German engineering through its paces. Ordinarily he was stuck in Sydney’s bumper-to-bumper traffic, or just too loaded to remember putting his foot on the throttle. He enjoyed darting and weaving through traffic to keep up with the angered Englishman. When Harris’ clapped-out banger screeched to a halt outside the inner-city offices of the Bulletin, his mood darkened with worry.

  The Darlinghurst mob was famed for its grasp on organised crime throughout the city and indeed the land. It was said that they were more organised than the five warring families in New York. Its operations were seedier than those that corrupted souls in Soho, London. But this was bluster. A narrative peddled by the shadowy powers that be. In reality, the mob had a stranglehold - not a strong one, either - over an insignificant and superficial segment of the city’s commerce. They couldn’t touch the revenue of the city’s real criminals. The banki
ng houses, law firms, construction companies, or those damn political parties. Those criminals, who operated under the ruse of respectability and lawfulness, were half as honest, twice as corrupt, and innumerably more powerful than all the gangster faces of Darlinghurst combined. I guess some things just don’t change.

  Harris didn’t bother looking for a parking spot, he veered onto the pavement and burst from his car in an explosion of unhinged anger and misdirected wrath. As he made for the building’s lobby, Lescott stopped him. The Englishman was on the verge of doing something stupid, something poorly thought-out and in the cold light of day. Perhaps something he would not be able to come back from. “What are you doing?”

  Harris pushed the newspaper into Lescott’s chest and shoved the smaller man to one side. This time Lescott physically grabbed his makeshift partner by the wrist. “Take a breath and remember your Confucius.”

  Harris smiled through his anger. Lescott, the clever operator he was, had taken to speaking Harris’ language. Harris took a breath, “Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves?”

  Lescott scanned the front page quickly. He knew he didn’t have much time. Harris was about to take a shoot first, shoot later approach. It wouldn’t work, this wasn’t Darlinghurst. The picture upon the front cover captured an on the street meeting between Harris and Prince. It was a well-chosen shot, the two men looked angry, they looked menacing, they looked like dangerous thugs. Harris, with his usual glunch half-obscured by a cigarette, was seemingly being berated by Ronnie Prince.

  Where the first article had concentrated on Harris’ gross incompetence, his dreadful extracurricular behaviour, his ties to the criminal element, and his penchant for heavy drugs, this article made a far more troubling assertion. The headline read:

  “THIS LITTLE EX-PIGGY SQUEALS…”

  The body copy was creative, to say the least. It was more like a short story than it was a piece of investigative journalism. Its entirely fictional narrative contended that Harris had been ratting on his fellow criminals in order to advance his own criminal career. It declared that Ronnie Prince had been feeding Harris information to pass on to NSWPOL. This had supposedly led to countless arrests and convictions. To top it all off, and add insult to injury, Clarke’s latest article also claimed that Harris was a closet homosexual and that he had formerly run a Bondi bed and breakfast with his long-term life partner, a bent copper named Frank Warrington. That was just petty. Whoever was pulling Clarke’s strings really wanted to give it to Harris with both barrels.

  Lescott looked up, “Is any of this true?”

  “Is it fuck. I don’t talk to the police. Not even when I was the police.”

  “And the Frank Warrington thing?”

  “Who’s Frank Warrington?” Harris seethed.

  “Did you read the entire article?”

  Harris snatched the paper from Lescott to find out what the hell he was talking about. “I need to go in and sort this out.” Harris growled and ground his teeth as he spoke.

  “Let’s be sensible,” Lescott began to think the situation through aloud, “You’re not going to get very far when they’ve got you splashed all over their front page. You won’t make the second floor before you’re mobbed with security. You need a retraction, not a follow-up article.”

  “We’ll be executed in the street for this.” Harris’ thoughts moved to Prince. Prince wouldn’t believe a word of the article, Harris had been in his employment for over a decade. They were close. Then he remembered his conversation with Gallagher at Fitzpatrick’s. This was the first sign of blood in the water. This was the weakness upon which Prince’s enemies would pounce. Prince was done. He’d be in the ground before the week was out. Harris would likely follow.

  Before Lescott entered the building, he straightened his hair, tucked in his shirt, and buttoned up his collar. As he strode across the ostentatious foyer, towards the reception desk, he made efforts to disguise the faint limp that had been plaguing his gait for years. Harris, in that environment, would have stood out like a sore on a shorn scrotum. Fred Lescott looked quite at home. There were no accusatory eyes following him around. In fact, those coming and going tipped their hats in his direction. It was all very respectable. The only individual who didn’t grant Lescott a warm welcome was an overworked receptionist, who hurriedly went about her business answering phones and juggling calls. The productive and cyclical nature of her work was quite staggering. She’d answer the phone while punching another call through to an extension upstairs, then she’d put that through to its destination while she answered the next call in a profoundly professional manner. Working the switchboard was perhaps the purest of artforms conceived in the 20th century. “Excuse me, I’m looking for Thomas Clarke.”

  The woman barely looked up from her switchboard operation to answer. She’d been warned about this. It was a likelihood given the explosive nature of the article. “I’m afraid Mr Clarke isn’t taking meetings today. If you’d like to leave a name and a number, I’d be happy to arrange an appointment for you.”

  “I’m going to need to see him today… Well, now, actually.” This was a crucial moment for Lescott. He needed to get upstairs. If he couldn’t, he wouldn’t be able to stop Harris entering by force. That wasn’t going to end well for anyone involved.

  “I’m afraid he’s busy. Did you happen to see the article on the front page today?”

  The receptionist tapped on a copy of the Bulletin that sat on top of her desk. Lescott pulled out his warrant card in response.

  “I did. That’s why it’s of the utmost importance that I see him right now.” Lescott wasn’t giving up that easily.

  “He won’t be taking meetings with the police today. If you’d like to leave your details, there’s going to be a press conference held tomorrow. I’d be happy to reserve you a seat.”

  “Mr Clarke has cast some pretty damning aspersions against some very powerful people. The ramifications of his allegations could lead to arrests, convictions and quite possibly the execution of several gangland figures.” The woman remained unmoved by Lescott’s thinly veiled threats, so he decided to remove the veil altogether. “An anonymous tip was called in to the station earlier. It suggested one of the people Thomas Clarke labelled…” Lescott peered down at the newspaper, “‘Demons walking Darlinghurst’s cobbles’ was going to come to your office and shoot him. In the head. Now I got caught in traffic on the way over, so time’s a wastin’. Otherwise, tomorrow, you’ll be publishing an article tomorrow that reads ‘having shot the journalist, the detective and the receptionist dead on the spot; the anonymous assailant disappeared onto the CBD’s busy streets.’”

  Lescott had won. The woman couldn’t be sure if he was a rival journalist looking for an exclusive, a policeman looking to protect the journalist, or a mobster who’d walked in off the street. It didn’t matter. She couldn’t not let him up. She checked through a booking sheet on her desk. “He’s on the top floor in the conference room.”

  “You’ve made a very good decision here today. You might have saved a man’s life.”

  “I didn’t catch your name.”

  “Detective Chief Inspector Alan Livingstone,” Detective Sergeant Fred Lescott lied. He walked over to the elevator and got inside where he was surrounded by newspaper men and women. From his spot in the middle of the journalists, he could see the receptionist panicking as to whether she had made the right decision or not. She picked up her phone in a hurry, presumably to call ahead. Lescott gave her a cheeky wink to confirm her worst fears. When he noticed one the newspapermen looking at him, he smiled. “Fucking what?”

  One by one, the journalists exited the elevator. Lescott did the last leg of the trip up by himself. It gave him plenty of time to consider the situation he found himself in, or rather the situation Harris had dragged him into. Though it felt poorly conceived, and about as far outside his comfort zone as he could imagine, it was quite thrilling.

  Lescott steadied his nerves as
he stepped out of the elevator on the top floor. He didn’t know how much traipsing around he would need to do in order to find the conference room, and he needed to go unnoticed while he did it. He needed to blend in. It suddenly occurred to him that he didn’t even know what Clarke looked like. That made locating him without making a scene quite difficult. “Fuck it,” he mumbled to himself. “Thomas Clarke?” He shouted at the top of his voice.

  Reporters at their desks turned around to investigate this unexpected intrusion. Lescott stopped at the desk of a reporter who was preoccupied with his phone. “I’m looking for Thomas Clarke?”

  “Ummmmm.”

  “Ummmmm doesn’t help me.” Lescott picked up a letter-opener from the journalist’s desk and began playing with it. The journalist couldn’t take his eyes off the shimmering blade as it caught the overhead lights. Lescott brought the implement down where it dug into the soft wood surface of the desk. “Where… is… Thomas… Clarke?” The man pointed off in the direction of a large meeting room covered in frosted glass. “Good lad.” Lescott looked down at the damaged desk, “Bit of varnish and that will come right out.”

  When Lescott stepped foot within that frosted glass façade, it was clear he’d reached the murk at the top of Sydney’s journalistic world. The room was filled with suits drinking brandy and smoking pipes. These were educated men. Men with a mind for business, culture, psychology, and manipulating the masses. You could tell that by the way they wore those ghastly beards when everyone else had a clean jaw. Not to mention the appalling elbow patches on their tweed jackets.

  What met him there was a show of tasteless backslapping that verged on mutual masturbation. Circulation was the word; the early numbers suggested the incendiary article had gone gangbusters. In fact, they were discussing the Excellence in Australian Journalism Awards. All for the web of lies they had spun on a whim.