Jon Cleary - A Different Turf

‘That poofter in there, has he got AIDS?’ His voice was as rough as his looks. ‘The nurses won’t tell us.’

‘No,’ said Kagal and Malone marvelled at the younger man’s control. ‘He just has a bad case of assault and battery. Any more questions?’

Then he walked on and Malone was left with the bigot ‘No one deserves what that man has had done to him. Not even poofters.’

‘Speak for yourself,’ said the man and stomped back into the ward.

Outside, where the brightness of the November day mocked the misery and pain in the hospital, Kagal was standing by the police car parked in the section reserved for doctors. A hospital security guard was reading the letter of the law to him.

‘You’ll have to speak to the inspector,’ said Kagal. ‘He’s the senior officer.’

The security guard was a young man who took his duties seriously: ‘You know you can’t park here, sir—’

‘No, I didn’t know that,’ said Malone. ‘If you look up the Police Service Act, section seventy-seven – paragraph B, I think it is – you’ll find that police on duty can park anywhere they like.’

He said no more, got into the car, waited for Kagal to get in behind the wheel, men they drove out of the small parking lot, leaving the security guard staring angrily after them.

‘What does section seventy-seven say?’ asked Kagal.

‘I have no idea. But then neither does he. Let’s go up to the crime scene.’

They swung into Oxford Street again, passed the Albury Hotel where Anders had been heading last night, and drove the quarter-mile up to the entrance of Victoria Barracks and turned in. A uniformed sentry barred their way.

Malone introduced himself. ‘We’re investigating the murder last night, the one just down the road there. Can we park in here for ten or fifteen minutes?’

‘I guess so, sir. You don’t intend to arrest the GOC, do you?’

‘Not today. If he starts another war, we will. Were you on duty here last night around eight o’clock?’

‘No, sir.’ He was no more than twenty, fresh-faced under his digger’s hat: too young for war. But then, Malone remembered, though he had never been a soldier, it was the young who fought wars. ‘The guy who was, he’s on leave today. But he was interviewed last night by the police. I understand he saw nothing, heard nothing.’

So much for the defence of the nation ; but Malone didn’t voice the thought. ‘Righto, we’ll be back in a few minutes.’

Fifty yards down, on the lawn that ran below the high stone wall of the barracks, the Crime Scene tapes still fluttered in the breeze. A police van was parked on the footpath and as the two detectives approached, a uniformed cop stepped out of the van and began to take down the tapes.

‘You’re from Surry Hills?’ said Malone, introducing himself and Kagal.

‘No, sir.’ He, too, was young, no more than twenty; but his face had none of the fresh-faced innocence of the soldier. He had already seen the dregs of the life the other was supposed to defend. ‘We’re from Paddington, up the road. We were called in to stake this out. The job’s finished now – for us, I mean.’

‘Lucky you. Has anyone come forward with any information?’

The young cop shook his head as he wound up the blue-and-white tape: the gift tape, as Malone thought of it, that wrapped up a death. ‘Hear no evil, see no evil … You don’t get much co-operation, not in this street.’

After a few more minutes with the young officer and his colleague, a senior-constable, Malone and Kagal walked back up and in through the gates of the barracks.

‘We’ll be a few minutes,’ Malone told the sentry. ‘We want to compare notes.’

He and Kagal got into the car and wound down the windows. Malone sat gazing out at the scene before him. He had played in a charity cricket match here on the parade lawn years ago; before the game, because he was history-minded, he had looked up the story of the barracks. It was built in the eighteen forties by convict gangs and some of the first senior officers who came to occupy it had fought at Waterloo. Though it was named after the new Queen, the style was Regency; it was built in time to escape the heavy fashion of later years. He sat in the car and looked across the wide parade ground at the main building, the length of two football fields. This morning, a Sunday rest day, the barracks looked deserted. It was peaceful, no suggestion of what it was designed for, the training and accommodation of soldiers. The high stone walls even closed out the sound of traffic in busy Oxford Street A boy had died and a man had been almost kicked to death not a hundred yards from where he and Kagal now sat; but this, built for the military, was an oasis of peace.

‘What notes have we to compare?’ said Kagal, breaking the silence. He had sat quiet, knowing Malone had something on his mind.

Malone turned to him. ‘John, I’ve got to ask you this. You are a – a close friend of Bob Anders, right?’

‘Yes.’ Malone could almost see the young man close up, tighten.

‘I have to ask you this, too. Are you homosexual?’

Kagal looked at him sideways. ‘Does it matter?’

‘On this case, yes, I think it does.’

Kagal didn’t answer at once. He looked across the parade ground at some movement on the far side. A small detachment of soldiers was falling in; it was time for changing of the guard. A shout floated towards them, as unintelligible as all military commands, like an animal bark. The detachment began to march along the far side of the ground.

At last he turned back to Malone. ‘I’m half-and-half. Bisexual – double-gaited, if you want to call it that. Fluid is the in-word.’ He was silent a moment, then went on, ‘Okay, so I guess you can call me gay. I don’t like to be called homosexual.’

‘Why not?’

‘I just don’t, that’s all.’

‘I don’t like to use the term “gay”. You – you people took away a word that used to be one of the – well, one of the most evocative in the language. Nobody talks about Gay Paree any more or having a gay time, things like that What bloke would sing a song like A Bachelor Gay Am I these days?’

Kagal gave a small smile, though he was not relaxed. ‘I know quite a few guys who would.’

Malone didn’t return the smile; he, too, was uptight. ‘That’s why straights don’t use the word any more for fear of being misunderstood.’

‘That’s your – their problem, isn’t it?’

‘Have you ever researched the origin of gay as a slang word? I have. We’re taught as detectives to do research, right? The original slang use of gay was coined in the sixteenth century in London – maybe earlier. It meant the cheapest sort of whore you could buy in the alleys off the Strand, the up-against-the-wall knee-tremblers. An English poet and playwright named Christopher Marlowe—’

‘I’ve read Marlowe.’

Which was more than Malone had ever done; it had been enough while at school to plough through Shakespeare. ‘He used to use the gays, the women hookers. Whores were called gays up till about the end of the last century.’

‘You’re sure Marlowe didn’t use the word the way we do? The first speech in one of his plays, Edward the Second , is about as close as you can get to a male love song.’

Malone didn’t answer; his education went only so far.

‘You seem pretty interested, doing all that research.’

‘It was just curiosity. I’m not a closet queer.’

‘Is that the sort of word you’d prefer? Queer, fag, pansy? Maybe I can give you a lesson in etymology. You call yourself a heterosexual?’

Malone nodded.

‘That word was coined in the eighteen nineties – about the same time, I guess, that the word “gay” stopped meaning a whore. Heterosexuality was used to denote sexual perversion – “hetero” means “other” or “different”. How does that strike you? It was meant to describe someone like me, a double-gaiter. It was not until the nineteen fifties or sixties that the meaning was changed. And it was gays who gave it the meaning that’s acceptable to you now.’