Shane Maloney - The Brush-Off

The money felt a little uncomfortable at first, but I got used to it. It’s extraordinary how much cash you can carry on your person, I thought. Almost as extraordinary as the number of times you put your hand in your pocket and find nothing at all. I got in the back seat and Detective Senior Sergeant Webb got in beside me.

The ride into town was almost nostalgic. The only other time I’d been driven to the station in the back of a police car was the trip from the Oulton Reserve to the Preston cop shop. As the major offender in the affray, I had the prestige vehicle. The Fletcher twins rode in the back of a brawler van. Geordie Fletcher was driven off to hospital blubbering about an unprovoked attack and calling the cops cunts. Spider, who’d managed to weasel his way out of the whole thing, had been sent home.

On the way to the station, they told me I’d be charged with attempted murder, aggravated assault, going armed with an offensive weapon, possession of intoxicating liquor in a public place while a minor, assaulting police, hindering police, disorderly behaviour, offensive behaviour and resisting arrest. At fifteen, it sounded like a lot. I’m not 100 per cent on this point, but I think I may have burst into tears.

But nothing the cops said was as demoralising as the look on my father’s face. After an hour’s solitary in the lockup, I was ready for anger. What I got was silent, unanswerable disappointment. It wasn’t the brawling. That was bad but not unprecedented for a boy my age. It was the liquor. The bourbon could only have come from one place. And that meant guile and deceit.

‘I ought to give you a hiding,’ Dad said when we got home. I wished he had. There was no getting out of the Brothers, though. I was back at St Joey’s before you could say muscular discipline. It was either that or boarding school, so I considered myself lucky. From then on, my rebellious instincts were channelled into joining Young Labor and handing out how-to-vote cards at council elections. The police, needless to say, were never heard from again. This was less out of mercy for me, I concluded, than consideration for the tribulations of a recently bereaved publican. Either that or Geordie Fletcher-guided by some sharpie code of omerta -had refused to make a formal complaint. I never saw him or his brothers again.

Spider Webb’s mind must have been turning over similar ground. He sat there for a while, chewing his cud and practising his thousand-yard stare. Then, as we passed the Arts Centre, he spoke. ‘So,’ he said, as if making a commonplace observation for no other purpose than to break the silence. ‘Still a fuckwit after all these years.’

The money was sticking into my bottom rib. I straightened up a little and hoped that it didn’t look like a summoning of my dignity.

‘Remember that night in the park when you tore that Fletcher kid’s pants with a piece of broken glass?’ said Spider, smiling to himself at the memory. ‘Him and his brothers were just fooling around, having a bit of fun, stirring you. All of a sudden, you went ballistic. Tried to take them all on. I’ll never forget the look on Geordie Fletcher’s face when you ripped his precious strides. If they hadn’t been so baggy, you’d probably have cut him.’

You’d think a detective sergeant would have more highly developed powers of recall. ‘I did cut him,’ I said. ‘There was blood everywhere.’

‘Yeah,’ said Spider. ‘Yours. You gave yourself a blood nose when you fell on the ground. You always were a loose cannon.’

‘Yeah?’ I jerked my thumb back over my shoulder, back the way we’d come. I didn’t remember any blood nose. ‘I suppose all that was my fault? I suppose it was my fault that Eastlake tried to push me off a balcony?’ Actually, it was. I’d practically begged him to do it. But Noel Webb wasn’t to know that.

‘If you hadn’t stopped me talking to the Fleet woman yesterday,’ he said, ‘there’s a fair chance that we’d have questioned Eastlake by today. Possibly even charged him. I doubt if he’d have tried anything under those circumstances. Even if you’d given him the chance.’

Now I was being taken to task for my gallantry. ‘How was I supposed to know you were a cop? The way you were coming the heavy, flashing that gun of yours. I thought you were up to no good.’

‘If I remember correctly,’ said Spider, remembering correctly, ‘you were the one throwing your weight about. I merely suggested that you refrain from involving yourself in matters outside your authority. When you refused to take the hint, I emphasised my point by showing you Eastlake’s gun.’

‘I thought it was your gun.’

‘What would a chauffeur be doing with a pistol?’

‘Why would I assume it was Eastlake’s gun? I thought you were his bodyguard.’

‘It’s not all that uncommon for rich men to own a weapon,’ said Spider, like he was stating a self-evident truth. ‘Eastlake had three. All licensed, of course. But he always kept them at home. When I found that one in the Mercedes on Saturday morning, it was unusual enough to make me think he might be getting unstable.’

We were crossing Princes Bridge. A pair of sculls came gliding out from beneath the pilings and raced each other upstream in the direction of the Botanic Gardens, the water flashing at every dip of the oars. I turned my head and followed the rowers’ progress until a truck in the next lane blocked my view. ‘I thought you were working some sort of scam on Eastlake,’ I said.

‘Yeah?’ Spider shifted his gum from one side of his mouth to the other. ‘What gave you that idea?’

‘That,’ I admitted, ‘is a very good question.’

We rode the rest of the way in silence. It was preferable to having Noel Webb tell me how many ways wrong I’d been. As the car pulled up in front of police headquarters, Salina Fleet was coming down the steps. She was back in her serious costume. Beside her was a balding middle-aged man in a dark suit carrying a briefcase. They didn’t look like they’d just won Tattslotto.

I got out of the police car, fluffed up my kaftan and wondered what Salina and I might say to each other this time around. We didn’t say anything. Salina’s mouth was just starting to open when Noel Webb stepped onto the footpath behind me. Salina’s jaw snapped shut like a trap. She and her companion executed an almost perfect left turn and the two of them wheeled off down the footpath together.

‘You were always wasting your time there,’ said Webb. ‘I could have told you that all along.’

If I hadn’t been standing in front of police headquarters, I might have made some appropriate reply. As we entered the building, Spider stuck his sunglasses in his shirt pocket, screwed off his pinky ring and spat his gum into a fire bucket. His ears seemed less prominent.

‘Wait here for the present,’ I was told. The present was a long time coming. I waited ten minutes. I waited fifteen minutes. Seven-thirty came and went and it still hadn’t arrived. I began to entertain serious doubts that I’d get Red to the airport in time, even with a force-nine gale behind me.

‘Here’ was an interview room on the fifth floor. It had a little window in the door, a narrow laminex table fixed to the wall, a tape recorder and two plastic chairs. For some reason, I half-expected the door to be locked. Maybe all that padding around my waist was weighing on my conscience.

Next to the interview room was a sort of open-plan office. The sign on the door said Fraud Squad. It was deserted. Except for the tireless DSS Webb and his Hellenic sidekick, the bunco team was clearly a nine-to-five sort of outfit. I picked up a phone. Nobody jumped out of a waste paper basket and demanded to know what I thought I was doing.