Snapshot

17

Mead showed Tessa around the detention centre, a tour that avoided any contact with the detainees, and took her back along an exposed path to the administration wing. ‘Coffee before you go? Tea?’

‘We haven’t finished, Mr Mead.’

‘Call me Charlie,’ he said automatically. ‘What else do you need?’

A chilly wind was blowing from the southwest, right off the bay. Tess shivered, as much from Mead’s indifference as the wind. ‘Some grave allegations have been made.’

‘There are always allegations. There always will be. But spit it out: what allegations?’

‘According to a nurse, a guard and a section manager who once worked for you, ANZCOR systematically defrauded the Department of Immigration to the tune of millions of dollars.’

‘Prove it.’

‘For example, you and your staff created artificial riot situations in which equipment and buildings were damaged, in order to submit inflated repair bills.’

‘Is that a question or an opinion?’

‘If any of your section managers raised concerns, they were threatened with the sack and their reports were censored or conveniently lost.’

‘Lady,’ Mead said, leaning towards her menacingly, ‘put up or shut up.’

‘Do you care to comment on these allegations, Mr Mead?’

‘Call me Charlie,’ Mead said, swinging around to face her again. ‘Will that be all? Good,’ he said, opening a side door. ‘Someone will show you out.’

As Tessa left the main building, a guard, bored and scowling, ran his metal detector over a steel door idly, listening to it squawk. He did it over and over again. No one else seemed to notice. In fact, a vicious kind of indifference was the pervasive atmosphere of the place, and Tessa wondered if that was all down to Charlie Mead: who he was and who he had been.

She stopped dead in her tracks. Why continue to look at who he was now? He’d be leaving soon, and she continued to run into brick walls. Why not look at who he had been and where he’d come from?

Andy Asche was driving: Natalie Cobb back from the city. He marvelled at how great she looked, despite being stuck in court all morning holding the hand of her fucked-up mother, followed by an afternoon ripping off gear in South Yarra. He told her so.

‘Thank you, kind sir.’

‘Straight,’ Andy continued, ‘but sexy.’

Eighteen years old, still at school, but she could pass for a yuppie chick out shopping for her yuppie pad in Southgate, where all the yuppies lived, and that’s what mattered to Andy and Natalie.

It went like this: the people they worked for owned pawnshops in the city and a discounted homewares outlet on the Peninsula, which made for a two-way flow of stolen gear. Andy liked the neatness of it: goods from the city ended up on the Peninsula, goods from the Peninsula ended up in the city. The Chasseur frying pan that he and Natalie might shoplift in South Yarra went straight to Savoury Seconds (frying pan, savouries, get it?) in Somerville. The cops weren’t likely to venture outside of the city to look for a stolen frying pan, even if it did cost $300. Meanwhile the pawnbroking stores in the city sold gear burgled from homes on the Peninsula. A retiree down in Penzance Beach isn’t going to stumble by chance on her VCR in a barred shop window in Footscray. The people that Andy and Natalie worked for weren’t too worried by tax audits or CIU inquiries either. They had ‘paperwork’ to prove that the new Chasseur frying pan in Savoury Seconds had come from a bankrupted shop in Cairns, the VCR in Footscray pawned by a waitress in Abbotsford.

Andy’s and Natalie’s first hit today had been Perfecto Coffee, in Chapel Street, the shelves stocked with coffee pots and machines, filters, ring seals, milk frothers, you name it; Bialetti, Gaggia and other big names. Coffee beans, too, but the order was for espresso machines, percolators and plungers. Natalie, in her long, loose woollen overcoat over tailored pants, leather shoulderbag and artfully tousled hair, browsed the shelves while Andy chatted up the shop assistant. No security cameras that he could see. Then Nat was at his elbow, doing her sulky look-’Can we go now?’-as if shopping, and Andy, and this shop, made her dangerously bored, not something you wanted to see in a beautiful woman. Andy slipped the shop assistant a wink-she sympathised-and followed Natalie out of the shop, Natalie’s overcoat barely registering the spacious hidden pockets that were now full of top-end coffee making machines.

They hit a couple more places, had lunch in a bistro, and now, mid afternoon, were nearly home, Waterloo free of fog at last. Andy dropped Natalie outside the tattoo parlour next to the railway line. She had a fistful of money in her pocket: most would go to her mother, but she wanted a new tatt, a butterfly, high on the inside of her right thigh. Then she was going to score some dope. Andy didn’t do dope, or booze, or anything else. He’d saved twelve grand so far, down payment on a BMW sports car.

‘Tomorrow, yeah? You up for it?’

‘Yeah,’ she said.

He drove to the McDonald’s on the roundabout for a Quarter Pounder, and read the local newspaper while he waited. Turned to ‘Police Beat’ on page 10. He liked the irony: here he was, a thorough crook, reading about the work of other crooks while sitting just across the road from the cop shop. Unimaginative crimes, too. A ride-on mower stolen in Penzance Beach. A woman robbed at syringe point outside an ATM in Mornington. A purse snatched here in Waterloo.

Andy Asche glanced up from his paper. The noon-to-four shift cops coming off duty, heading across the road for their Big Macs. And fuck me, there was John Tankard, his footy coach, getting out of a Mazda sports car with some female cop.

John Tankard and Pam Murphy logged off, deeply fatigued with one another, the only distraction during the long afternoon having been their encounter with Lottie Mead. They separated, showered, changed, then happened to meet in the staff carpark afterwards, Tankard noticing the gear that Pam was wearing: black lycra shorts, sweater and trainers. Great legs, notwithstanding the goosebumps from the cold air. Great body.

Suddenly the elements of his personality, fractured after he’d shot dead that farmer, were clashing inside him. He’d had counselling, and told himself he was a better person for it, but before he could stop himself he felt a carnal tug deep inside and was touching her smooth behind and pulling her towards him, and then he was crying wretchedly.

‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry,’ he gasped.

She pulled away angrily. ‘What’s got into you?’

‘I’m sorry. Don’t report me.’

‘You deserve to be reported.’

‘I know, I’m sorry, I feel all…all…’

She folded her arms and said, with vicious reasonableness, ‘Yeah, I can see how that would work. Give me a quick grope, and if I object, you can blame it on stress.’ She unfolded her arms. ‘You’re pathetic, John.’

‘Pam, I’m sorry, I don’t know what got into me.’ His hands pressed against his cheeks. ‘I’ve stuffed up big time, haven’t I?’

The look she gave him then was weary and disgusted, but not angry or vengeful. ‘You came back to work too soon,’ she said.

‘Mate, I was going stir crazy at home.’

‘If you touch me again, I’ll flatten you, and then I’ll report you.’

‘I know, I know. I’m really sorry.’ He made an effort and said, without looking at her thighs, smooth in their lycra sheaths: ‘Where’re you going?’

‘Training.’

‘For what?’

‘Triathlon.’

‘When?’

‘January.’

‘That’s six months away.’

‘Exactly.’

The new Tankard struggled, finally remembering that she’d been in a bad car smash at her last station, so maybe she was trying to get fit again.

‘What about you?’ she said, more out of politeness than actual interest.

Tankard said shyly, ‘I’m coaching footy this season.’

Pam went slackjawed. ‘You’re joking.’

‘Nope.’

‘Good for you.’

Good for me, good for the kids, Tankard thought. He was a copper, so that gave him some clout to begin with, but he was trying to be more than copper and footy coach. Like he’d intervened in this dispute between the club and the Fiddlers Creek pub. Some of the guys would get legless after training or a game on a Saturday and walk across the road from the clubrooms to the pub, where they’d get even more loaded, and brawl, swear, trash the bar or the men’s room, reverse into patrons’ cars on the way home. It had got so bad, the pub withdrew sponsorship from the team and banned club members from drinking there. John Tankard had a quiet word with the pub management, and then with the players, and now everything was sweet again.

‘Well, gotta run,’ he said. ‘See ya.’

She shrugged and walked to her car. He got into his old station wagon-chosen because he could cart a lot of kids and gear around in it-and drove to the clubhouse, where he got kitted out before running a few gasping laps of the oval to warm up. Soon the kids were arriving, some straight from school, others driven by their parents, a few dropped by their girlfriends. And Andy Asche; that was a change. Half the time the guy failed to turn up. Tankard waited until they were all kitted out then called them to run a few laps of the oval.

Nathan Gent had spent all day smoking joints and sinking cans of Melbourne Bitter, but his anxiety wouldn’t go away. Yeah, there’d been a heavy fog this morning, and no cars about, only that fucking taxi, but had the driver seen anything? Would he come forward when the shooting hit the TV news and tomorrow’s newspapers?

Nathan had been paid, and he intended to stay clear of Vyner, but he’d crossed a divide this morning. Accomplice to a murder. Plus the kid had seen him. That little face, maybe six years old, sees her mum shot down in cold blood.

Nathan wanted to go, ‘Whoa! Stop the world, I want to get off.’ But he’d crossed the divide. He was no longer his old self, a simple sort of bloke, likes to sink a few beers at the pub, watch the footy, see if he can use his missing finger to pull a chick at the Krypton Klub in Frankston. Choof on a bit of weed occasionally.

Three things gnawing at him: murder, the look on the kid’s face, the car. Particularly the car. ‘No worries,’ he’d assured Vyner, ‘it’s stolen, can’t be traced to us.’ In fact, stealing a car had been harder than Nathan had expected, and he’d left it too late, and so he’d used his cousin’s Commodore. Except it wasn’t really Nora’s; when she got the job in New Zealand she’d sold him the car for $975, leaving the paperwork up to him, the roadworthy certificate and the registration and insurance and stuff-which he hadn’t got around to yet.

Fine, except when he’d dropped Vyner off after the shooting this morning, Vyner had thumped the Commodore and said, ‘Burn the fucker.’

Nathan had driven away, saying ‘No worries,’ his mind racing.

Even if he burnt the Commodore, didn’t the cops have ways of tracing ownership? Even if he removed and destroyed the numberplates, wasn’t there some number on the engine block or something? What if someone came along while he was trying to set fire to it? He’d have to get rid of it some other way. Besides, he was kind of sentimental about the Commodore. He’d borrowed it off Nora stacks of times, and Nora was a good sort, and he hated to think of her car-his car-as a blackened ruin on some back road. Obviously he couldn’t keep driving around in it-Vyner might see him, the vicious cunt-so he’d cleaned everything out of the car, wiped it down, and driven it to a wrecking yard in Baxter, still wearing his gloves (which hadn’t raised any eyebrows because the weather was shithouse). What he did was, he drove past the yard for a few hundred metres, removed the oil filter and tossed it into a culvert at the side of the road, then drove back to the yard, by which time the engine had seized. He pushed the car into the yard, removed both plates, and walked out with $120 in his pocket, saying of the yellow door: ‘That’s a good door, no rust.’

But the kid, her little face.

Murder.

Nathan Gent went to the pub with his last ten dollars, downed a couple of pints, and fired up the jukebox beside the men’s toilet, trying to decide what his next move should be.