On Cringila Hill (2 page)

‘
What?
'

‘I fucken told ya. You're going down into Warrawong …'

‘What if he's there?'

‘He? He who?'

‘The guy, the popper? What if he sees me?'

‘Friend, if he wanted us dead he'd have been shootin' at us. Believe me, no one's gonna come up to you, say, “Good evening, I'm the guy just done that to Abdul, up there on the hill.” It's about what happens next now. So you're goin' down into Warrawong and buy a kebab …'

‘I'm not hungry.'

‘I don't fucken
care
if you're hungry. You're gonna buy a fucken kebab
and
eat
it.'

Jimmy blinks and rubs water from his forehead. Piggy lowers his hands from his face, then blinks up at the cloudy sky. ‘Okay.'

‘Now. Go now.' Jimmy says. ‘I'll wait here then go up to the highway, walk the long way round to Cringila. Come up home later if you want.'

Piggy nods. ‘Alright.'

They wait awhile before Piggy pushes himself off the wall.

‘And,' Jimmy says, ‘I didn' see nothin'. You be clear on that. I didn' see nothin'.'

Piggy stands, hunches over, then nods and walks along the alleyway.

Jimmy leans back against the brickwork and closes his eyes. He hears the sound of rain and, from different directions, the noise made by several television sets all tuned to the same show. He thinks that he's about to vomit but breathes deeply and fights back the impulse. Then he thinks that he's going to cry but fights that away too. He looks back along the alley where raindrops bounce and burst on the asphalt.

Aloud he says, ‘Well, fuck me.'

Chapter Two

There's only dull pain around the spine but the throb in Gordon's right thigh is getting worse. He suspects it will improve if he changes position but fears the sharp stab he'll feel in his back. He checks his watch. There's forty more minutes to pass before he can take another painkiller. He waits, undecided.

He hears the clack of shoe heels on polished floorboards, and then gets the good, warm smell of the woman as she comes up beside him from behind. ‘How're you doing,' she asks, the tone intended to sound encouraging.

‘If anything,' he says, ‘I think it's gotten a bit worse. I'm sorry. Could you get under my right shoulder? I'd like to move.'

She crosses behind the armchair, stoops. He circles her shoulders with an arm.

‘There,' he says.

‘Better?'

‘Yeah, good. Thank you.'

‘Cup of tea?'

‘That would be wonderful.'

He listens to the rush of rain across the iron roof, the wet whooshing of the foliage of the tall gum trees, the hiss of gas burning in the fireplace. He jumps, startled, at a sharp burst from the telephone. The woman calls, ‘I'll get it.'

He watches her lift the handset. ‘May Winter,' she says. He sees her frown. Eventually she says, ‘Edna, look, truly he can't. He's in really serious pain.'

‘Is that Edna?' he asks. May waves a hand to dismiss him. ‘I'll speak to her,' he says, and pushes weight down onto the arm of his chair, bites his bottom lip, stands, then shuffles to the telephone. He can see the seriousness of May's displeasure as she hands him the receiver and leaves the room.

‘Edna. Gordon here.'

‘Gordon. How are you?'

‘No good.'

‘Ah. I want to ask you to do something.'

‘Edna …'

‘Just listen. We've got a corpse in Warrawong, which I'm told is almost certainly a homicide.'

‘Warrawong.'

‘Just down from Cringila Hill.'

‘Ah.'

‘We have a preliminary identification that people are confident about.'

‘Do we?'

‘We think it's Abdul Hijazi.'

Gordon looks out into the darkness beyond the front windows. He says, ‘Oh, dear. Oh dear oh dear oh dear oh dear.'

‘Exactly.'

‘What happened?'

‘No idea whatever. All we've got is a corpse with a hole in its head on the footpath in the rain. We've done a bit of a doorknock. To this point, no one saw anything, they were making their tea, they were watching television.'

‘Yes.'

‘So, someone's going to need to prepare some comments for the papers and the talkbacks.'

Gordon thinks he knows what she's going to say next but doesn't know what he hopes to hear. Eventually Edna says, ‘I was hoping you'd take a bit of a look at the scene for me.'

‘Who's got it at this point?'

‘Peter Grace. Now, hold on. Listen. Let's assume this runs on awhile, which it feels like it will. They'll form a team from homicide in Sydney and they'll come down. That would be nothing to do with you. I'd like it if you'd look around. You'd report only to me, officially but independently.' She chuckles. ‘This, do you see, would be an innovative detecting technique.'

‘Of a type for which you are justly famous.'

‘So I'm told.'

‘Edna …'

He can tell that she's talking quickly to get through her points before he can object.

‘You are down as being “on leave” so anything you did would be from unallocated resources, which is how this would need to proceed. Any time you could give it … an hour here, two hours there … I'd have you regarded as on duty for a day and recredit a day of your sick leave. That's all I can do, but I can do that.'

‘Who would be your local liaison?'

‘Peter Grace.'

A pause. ‘I'm surprised you'd want that.'

‘I don't, but it's the way it's worked out. I could maybe have it changed but that might cost me a lot more than it's worth in the overall scheme of things. A homicide team will probably be led by Sean O'Shea, detective sergeant, solid man, but that would be nothing to do with you. You'd report to me, how it all was going, whether there was something building in Cringila, whether any situations are being manipulated.' She pauses. ‘I'd be able to trust what you told me. You wouldn't be putting together any nasty parcel of surprises for me to unwrap. I wouldn't ask this unless it was important. Abdul Hijazi – it might be crucial – how this plays out. I've got David Lawrence here with me. I can send him up to Austinmer to collect you. Now, if you like.'

He waits awhile, until he knows what he's compelled to do. ‘Send him. I'll get ready.'

When he turns May is at the doorway to the kitchen. Her arms are folded and she's scowling at him. ‘Tell me I didn't hear you say what you just said.'

‘May …'

‘Gordon. The weather!' She shakes her head bitterly. ‘Tell me,' she says. ‘What can you do for me? What is the best gift you can give me? I'll tell you.
Get bloody better
. Get
better
. So I can just get on with the other issues I have to deal with, which happen to be considerable, as I'd hoped you'd have noticed.'

‘May …'

She gives a sort of snarl and goes back into the kitchen, but then she comes to the doorway again. She says, ‘You know why you're doing this.'

‘Well …'

‘Edna has said “roll over” and you think you might get your tummy tickled.'

‘I doubt she'll be able to do much for me. I think The Boys are going to get her.'

‘That doesn't matter to you. It's not the rewards. It's
praise
! It's praise from someone in an important job. It's what you live for.'

He shrugs. He says, ‘I'll take it easy. I won't walk very much.'

He makes his way into their bedroom, lowers himself slowly to sit on the bed, looks forlornly at his lace-up shoes against a wall. There's water in a glass on the bedside table and a sheet of foil with ridges where tablets are held. In a quick movement he removes a lozenge, washes it down with a drink. With eyes closed he waits then for the pain to dull. When he blinks them open May is in the room watching him.

‘You've taken a pill,' she says, accusing. ‘It isn't time. It isn't
nearly
time.'

‘It's really hurting, May.'

‘Yes, and it's so unfair, isn't it? You take such good care of yourself!'

She kneels, removes his slippers, places shoes on his feet and laces them, brings a white shirt, tie, jacket, heavy coat from the wardrobe. She dresses him slowly, with difficulty. Gordon is determined not to grunt no matter what pain he experiences. As she adjusts his trouser legs he says to her stooped head, ‘I love you, May.'

‘Oh, Gordon. Gordon, I know you do. That's not it. That's not the issue.' She rises. ‘Tea will be ready.'

After the tea he fetches an umbrella and his walking cane and makes his way onto the verandah. Black bunches of leaves toss under the storm. Raindrops burst and stain dark the floorboards. In time the darkness in the street below him is broken by shafts of light from headlamps. A Commodore turns into their driveway. He calls, ‘I'm going,' and makes his way, step by slow step, down the front stairs.

‘Chilly.' The driver who greets him is a young man, slender. He wears a well-pressed suit, crisp white shirt, a striped tie.

‘Good evening, David.'

They sit a little time in the front of the car. David Lawrence peers up at the dwelling illuminated in headlight beams. He says, ‘Nice-looking house. How can you afford a house like this up here?'

Gordon smiles. ‘Been in the family a long time. You'd be surprised what you can have if it's been in the family a long time.'

David backs the car into the street, then through beating sheets of rain they drive, with occasional murmurs of information from the police radio. They reach Wollongong's northern distributor, go along it, turn left and ascend to a bridge across the Princes Highway, head through town to the flame and steam of the steelworks in production. At Warrawong they turn right, head up Cowper Street towards Cringila Hill. Along all of that way neither man speaks.

On Flagstaff Road they are waved down by a young policeman in uniform who holds a light cone. Sheltering under his umbrella, gripping tightly to his walking cane, Gordon makes slow progress to the stretched, blue-checked tape that marks out the crime scene. Beyond, there's a huddle of spectators beneath umbrellas and heavy coats. Police have made a gesture of sensitivity by erecting a screen around the corpse. As Gordon pushes past, a little boy stooping on the footpath turns to call to the crowd behind him, ‘I can see his hand!'

Gordon enters the barricaded area, past a policeman who says, ‘Eh, Chilly.' Gordon does not respond, as is his habit when distant acquaintances use his nickname unbidden. He walks to where white-clad technicians prod and measure. The dead youngster lies chest down, his face pressed to the concrete.

A worker raises his gaze, nods. ‘Chilly,' he says. Rain splashes on his hood, rolls across his weatherproofed shoulders.

‘Roy,' Gordon replies, and squints his eyes in the cold glare of the floodlights, ‘anything so far?'

‘Very little more than you can see. It's quite a hole, the exit wound. If it's a single wound it's of tremendously heavy calibre.'

‘We haven't got a bullet?'

‘Not yet. Probably it will be in that yard, assuming he was shot from the street, which would appear to be the case. And if it's more than one shot I can tell you this – this is someone who really knew what he was doing.'

Nearby are three men who wear white shirts, ties, heavy raincoats. Gordon joins them. ‘Peter,' Gordon says, and a heavy-chested man nods in greeting.

‘I was warned you'd be here,' Peter Grace says.

‘Warned.' Gordon raises his eyebrows.

‘Oh, well. Told. By the Empress.'

The two gaze at each other under the rain, keeping all expression from their faces.

‘So,' Gordon says. ‘What have we got?'

‘So far, a corpse and, in addition to that, just about SFA. When we got here there was a big puddle of blood but most of that's gone in the rain. We're confident it's Abdul Hijazi.' Peter nods at a knot of onlookers. Someone's holding an umbrella above the head of a heavy, dark-clad woman who cups her hands, rocks back and forth, her mouth open and working. ‘That's his family,' he says. ‘They heard, and came down.
They
say it's him. We'll get the prints and all that and be certain in the morning.'

‘Can we talk in a couple of days?'

‘I'm told that's the way that things are going to be.'

As Gordon turns to go back to the car a tall man breaks from a group and approaches him. Gordon nods and waits. ‘How are you, Ned McKenzie?'

‘Cold and wet.'

‘Yes. And wasting your time just now, I'd have thought. One look, you know what we've got. There isn't going to be any more.'

‘I've been over talking to the family. “Always a good kid. Our lives are over.” That'll be my piece tomorrow. The fact he's there and dead, that's already been filed by someone else. What's this with the stick?'

‘I've pulled something in my back.'

‘Ah. Why you haven't been at golf. You should be home, warm and dry.'

‘You're as bad as May.'

‘Any theories?'

‘What, me? I'd say he's upset someone.'

‘Abdul Hijazi, upset someone? Fair guess. There's going to be quite a queue. One thing for you blokes, there'll be no shortage of suspects.'

Beyond Ned, a young man has approached and stands, blatantly listening. Gordon runs an eye over him – tall, slender, early twenties. He has a small floral-patterned fold-up umbrella and a greasy-looking trenchcoat. He is bald across his crown and has combed his hair from the side of his head over the area.

‘Ned,' Gordon says, ‘who's this?'

‘This, it appears, is a colleague of mine who is doing work experience at a local television station.'

‘Work experience?'

‘This is what he's told me.'

Gordon rolls his eyes. To the young man he says, ‘Who are you?'

‘Ian Battle.'

‘How long have you been doing work experience?'

‘Eight months.'

‘Have they paid you anything yet?'

‘Not yet.'

‘Ah. Great world, the world you're trying to get into. Now. I'm having a private conversation with a friend of mine. Go away.'

Ian Battle looks at the policeman for a while with no expression on his face, then turns and goes back to the group of onlookers.

‘I'm moving on,' Gordon says to Ned. ‘My back hurts.'

Back at the car, Gordon asks David Lawrence to take him to Port Kembla command.

After a moment, David Lawrence says, ‘Whatever you want, Champion.'

Back at command under fluorescent lighting police tap at computers, read files, talk and listen into telephones. A plump, middle-aged woman with stars across the shoulders of her uniform rises when Gordon and David reach the door of her office. She has sheets of computer print-out on her desk, a large diary open at a middle page. Gordon lowers himself into a chair across from her. David sits by a wall.

‘Well, how are they going?' Edna asks.

‘They're confident it's him. That's about all there is at this stage. Whatever hit him, if it was one shot it was big – you know, donkey shot out of a shotgun or something, the skull is a terrible mess. If it's more than one it was done by a marksman, because all you can see is the one wound. Nothing I can see on his back, arms, in the neck, nothing like that.'

‘How much do you know about Abdul Hijazi?'