Crooked (6 page)

Gus and Agostini stepped out of the Royal Arcade into a butterball of sunshine. They were looking for an unclaimed 1958 FB Holden to match the keys found at the Latin Quarter under O'Connor's right hand. So far three hours of grid-searching had yielded nothing but parking tickets. They headed down George Street, turned right into Liverpool Street, and wandered off through the slow sprawl of the docklands between the Trocadero and the Harbour. They passed a gold Sprite, a pink Mustang, three Falcons and a Bluebird. Then, with the plate-glass windows of the commercial district firmly behind them, a two-tone pink and plum Holden sprouting tailfins and minus four hub caps.

‘Okay,' said Agostini. ‘What do you reckon?'

‘I reckon that car hasn't gone anywhere for a very long time,' said Gus.

‘You reckon?'

Gus kicked the side of the Holden and a bit of rusted metal dropped out from under the chassis and clattered hard in the gutter. ‘Yeah, I reckon.'

Gus and Agostini walked on, across ridges of old cobblestones forcing their way up through the asphalt. They passed the barred wooden gates of the warehouses lining Kent and Sussex Streets, walking alongside the chain-link fence that ringed the bricolage of coastguard huts, nightwatchmen's cottages, union
ticket offices and rail sidings replete with abandoned carriages, nudging up to Cockle Bay. The silos of Glebe Island stood shimmery in the distance, and a thick line of smoke lay like a wet rag along the horizon.

Agostini stopped, hands slung low to his hips in the middle of the footpath. ‘Do you reckon it's true then? What they're saying about the prints?'

‘Yeah,' said Gus, and scuffed up some gravel. ‘I got it off Driscoll. The guns were wiped.'

Agostini whistled. ‘Who do you think it was?'

‘I dunno.'

‘Do you think it was a copper?'

‘Maybe,' said Gus, and shuffled his feet.

‘Somebody in the squad?'

Gus felt the prickle of gathering heat through his shirt. ‘I dunno …' he said, and shook his head slowly. ‘They're all good coppers.'

‘Sure.'

Gus turned away. ‘I owe Tanner. He helped pull me out of a whole pile of shit.'

‘Yeah, and maybe I got it wrong then, maybe you were this blind about what Harry was up to as well.'

Gus opened his mouth to say something, then closed it again. The Darling Harbour goods yard draggle-tailed along the foreshore in front of him. Cats preened themselves in the dark hatches of shipping crates, or under mounds of stacked tyres. Dust and wheat chaff fell through the sunlight.

From somewhere deep inside this maritime waste, a toothless old geezer in a muddy brown raincoat staggered out of a shadow, hauling a string-bag packed with loose cans of Reschs. He jumped off a crate, reared back and swung the bag cross-ways.

‘Oi!' shouted Agostini. The old man cringed as Agostini lunged forward.

‘Leave him,' moaned Gus. But it was already too late. The tosspot ran, and Agostini was off running after him.

The old man was clambering over a corrugated iron fence, making for the water, when Agostini grabbed hold of his coat, dragging him down. ‘I'm arresting you for drunk and disorderly and assault on an officer.' He snatched off the man's hat, and kicked him methodically. The old man staggered and mumbled, and kept falling over.

Gus caught hold of Agostini. ‘Jeez,' he said, swinging him around. The old man chucked up, and Gus caught the load straight down his shirt front. ‘Jee-suss,' he swore, holding his arms out and stomping his feet.

‘Oh, shit!' Agostini started laughing. ‘Oh, mate, I'm sorry. God, you smell bad.'

Gus left Agostini to take the old man to the station, and strode angrily over to the pub on the corner. Weather and age having erased the first and last letters, the sign running across the awning flashed ‘OTE' in rotating red neon.

Agostini had never perfected the outward appearance of deep inner cynicism that was regarded by most coppers as a pre-requisite for getting on in the force. Though Gus tried not to let other coppers' judgments weigh with him, as he walked into the Gents it struck him that Agostini was lacking in certain manly qualities. He didn't want to be like that.

Gus took off his glasses, laying them carefully to the side of the washstand. He peered at the half-moons of sweat under his eyes. The conversation with Agostini hadn't been pleasant, but it had set him off thinking, particularly after what Driscoll had said about the prints on the guns. The more Gus thought about it, the more he convinced himself that Agostini was wrong-headed, and quite possibly bitter. Besides, there was a distinct possibility that forensics was wrong. Quite simply, he believed in Tanner. Nothing anyone could say could touch the core of this loyalty.

Gus took off his jacket and yanked down his tie. He stuck his head under the cold tap and turned it full blast. He smeared soap over his face and shirt and looked back into the mirror, blinking. He flashed on a memory of his old partner, Harry, with his long blue nose and slouchy potbelly, and the way he had of blinking rapidly as if the whole world around him was just a little too bright.

Gus remembered the night they began raiding the terraces up and down Palmer Street, closing down brothels, pushing out street molls, forcing the spivs and the hoons out of business. Treatment was rough, money was confiscated as evidence. Hundreds of arrests were racked up in a handful of weeks. It wasn't until maybe six weeks along that the problem got noticed, that the brothels were being bought up almost as soon as they closed them. It wasn't just bungling. Somebody was taking advantage of the crackdown – and Dolly Brennan was the name that got mentioned.

Gus had seen Harry and Dolly together often enough. Dolly, parked in her pink Valiant at the bottom of Palmer Street. Harry, leaning into the window, mumbling something. It never crossed his mind there was anything in it. He'd always pictured Harry as a family sort of man, doing his fair share of the washing and cooking and laundry. Then he didn't know a thing. Not for sure.

Dolly had a problem. She gambled. All the money she made went straight back through the tables, so nobody was particularly surprised when she stepped off the deep end, drastically in debt, and running wild with it. Telling off street cops. Tearing up traffic tickets. Telling her creditors that it was Harry who owned all the brothels on Palmer Street. That she was a small cog in Harry's wheel, kept on a retainer of around fifty a week. Of course, the creditors didn't believe it. In any case, they had Dolly declared bankrupt and dragged before the court. Next morning, the whole sorry episode was splashed over the papers. Gus remembered Dolly caught in the glare of a photograph. Tearful, turning away from the cameras, a hat made of split ribbons
pulled over platinum curls, masking her face with a copy of the morning's newspaper, which said, ‘Askin Ahead' (it had been the middle of the State election).

That night Harry had turned up on his doorstep, looking like he hadn't slept in a week. His voice was thick, his speech shambolic. He'd said Dolly had gone missing and asked Gus to help.

It had taken them a little over three hours to find her, though she hadn't gone far. As things turned out, she'd holed up in a flyblown motel in the backstreets of Enmore, the kind with a pink cupid shooting neon arrows through a sign, put a penny in the slot for the radio, and washed down a bottle of sleeping pills with a half-pint of gin. Dolly had been packed off to hospital to have her stomach pumped. Harry resigned from the force and disappeared. Allan ordered a high-profile comb put through Darlinghurst Station, and Tanner was assigned to carry out the inquiry.

Gus wiped his face on a grubby yellow handtowel, throwing it down on the floor. Five minutes later found him hunched over the basin, the bright eddy of his memory swirling around him.

Gus made his way back into CIB, checked his messages, and shoved his notebook and holster into the bottom drawer of his desk. He changed into the fresh blue cotton shirt that he kept in his locker, then worked his way down the linoleum-covered corridor, barging in through the swing doors marked Scientific Investigations. Inside, the walls were lined with pea-green glazed tiles, six stainless steel benches marched in two rows down the room, and a stack of repackaged cartons labelled ‘Arnotts' sat by the door, bulging with sinister exhibits on their way to the courtroom. Balancing on top, a battered tin wireless was tuned to the ABC World Service.

‘Wally,' said Gus, as the doors swung shut behind him. Then, shouting a little louder, ‘Oi, Wally!'

Driscoll was standing with his back to the far wall, gun cocked in hand. He was wearing pink-tinted goggles. ‘Oh, it's you,' he said, and the gun-arm flopped. ‘I've been taking another look at this O'Connor thing.'

‘I've heard rumours Ducky shot himself by accident,' said Gus, a little too brightly.

‘Have you?'

‘Yeah, on account of it being close range.'

Driscoll pointed at the paper target strung on a wire in front of him, with black powder burns fanning across it in every direction. ‘That close?'

‘Just about,' said Gus, fidgeting nervously. ‘I've heard it's likely that somebody got up and grabbed at him, and Ducky got himself shot in the struggle.'

Driscoll took off his goggles and replaced his bifocals before making his way to the end of the lab. Here, strip lights shone down on a stainless steel bench covered in shrapnel and shell casings, tagged and bagged and laid out on trays.

‘Let me show you something,' he said, picking up a small automatic weapon from the edge of the bench. ‘This is the Colt that was found at the scene of the shooting, cocked but not fired.' He put the Colt back and picked up a much larger pistol. ‘This is the Dreyse that was also found at the scene. It was a shot from this weapon that actually killed him. Now the Dreyse is a German gun,' he went on, ‘maybe souvenired from the war. Old, but in pretty good nick and the mechanism is, well … beautiful. Only, when this gun was found under the table, the slide was jammed open with two bullets stuck in the chamber and ejector way. So I'm asking myself, how do I account for these facts?'

Gus offered, ‘It jammed when it hit the floor, right?'

‘Yeah, that's the first thing I say to myself. I say that the Dreyse must have jammed when it dropped to the floor. Only I've dropped this gun a hundred times on hardboard and concrete and it hasn't malfunctioned, not even once.'

‘So you checked the ammunition, right?'

Driscoll scowled, ‘Why are you asking me if you know all the answers?'

‘Sorry,' said Gus, and grinned.

‘So the next thing I do is I check the ammunition. And I can tell you I've shot all kinds of ammunition out of this gun, old and new, in good nick and bad, including ammunition that went through the washing machine and is greening from soapsuds. But not once was I able to replicate the jam in the gun as it was found at the scene of the shooting.'

Driscoll opened a drawer and took a swig from a half pint of Vickers. He offered some to Gus.

Gus shook his head.

Driscoll went on, ‘Fact is, there's only one way I can account for this particular malfunction. First up, I guess you've got to understand that the Dreyse is a semi-automatic weapon and the semi-automatic weapon is loaded and cocked manually for the first shot only. Once the first shot gets off, the mechanism automatically loads the next cartridge from the magazine into the firing chamber, and cocks itself for the second shot, and the third shot, and so on … until the magazine is exhausted. Now it's my experience that crooks, being generally untrained and incompetent in the maintenance and discharge of firearms, don't understand this. Such persons will, after the first shot is discharged, treat such a gun as a bolt-action repeating weapon. Hence the magazine is loaded –' Driscoll picked up the magazine and clipped it to the Dreyse. ‘The gun is cocked –' He cocked the gun. ‘The first shot is got off –' He pivoted suddenly, firing the gun into the trap behind him. ‘Then, instead of the second shot letting off automatically, the incompetent crook manually pulls back the slide, causing the cartridge on top of the magazine to move up with the cartridge being extracted from the chamber.' Driscoll pulled back the slide and gave Gus the gun. ‘You have a go.'

Gus took the weapon. He pointed and squeezed. Nothing happened. He tried again.

‘What did I tell you?' Driscoll let out an actual whoop. ‘See, the only way this bludger could've shot himself is if he was able to grab hold of the gun and manually pull back the slide, using, might I add, both of his hands, and all of this after his head was blown off with his brains on his face.'

‘Jesus,' Gus swore.