Chapter 36

THE STATION DOOR clicked closed, a sombre sound, desolate and solitary. Fyfe motioned with the gun barrel, directing his new prisoner to the tearoom. On their way, he turned the knob, locking the station entrance.

The back of Manolis’s neck began to sweat. His stomach felt greasy. He fell voluntarily into a garden chair.

‘So,’ he said. ‘Now what?’

Fyfe took up position a metre away, handgun still drawn. He stared blankly into the space behind Manolis’s head.

‘To be honest with you, city mouse, haven’t given it much thought. I never pictured us here. You were s’posed to be Rexy’s assignment.’

Manolis couldn’t help but smile painfully.

‘He burnt your car, cut your brakes,’ Fyfe added. ‘But Rexy was only tryin’ to scare ya off. Not kill ya. He’s no killer.’

Pressing his hands together, Manolis interlocked his fingers, breathed. ‘Either way, this has gone far enough, don’t you think…? Don’t make it worse by acting irrationally against an officer of the law.’

Fyfe looked down at his steeled hand, the weight, admired it. ‘Mate. I don’t think you’re currently in any position to tell me what to do.’

He added a light whistle of approval.

‘Nice. Solid, cold. So this what they give you in the city, eh? Bugger me. Stop a bull with this. Stop a truck. Out here, we’re still usin’ muskets.’

He aimed it above Manolis’s head and pretended to pull the trigger.

‘Bang!’

He laughed, a demented kookaburra, the pink fat under his chin wobbling uncontrollably.

They sat for a moment, tense silence, listening to each other breathe. Manolis couldn’t tell whose respirations were shallower.

He thought again about the tourist park, about young Sparrow. His arse was on the line too, a situation of Manolis’s engineering. It would be the wrong way to die, so impotent, so inconsequential. Being beaten to death was more worthy – abiding by his true self. Christ, the kid’s bruises hadn’t even healed yet.

‘So how’d you get the detention centre to go along with it?’ Manolis asked.

Fyfe grabbed his own piece of outdoor furniture, plopped himself down. Resting the piece comfortably on his hip, he re-pointed it squarely at Manolis’s heart.

‘Now the reffo, Omari, well, he was startin’ to be a problem. Onions said he was becomin’ a troublesome and dangerous figure among the other reffos.’

Manolis struggled to comprehend. This description of Ahmed didn’t at all sound like the self-effacing young man he’d interviewed twice.

‘How exactly?’ Manolis asked. ‘Was he threatening them?’

‘The opposite.’ Fyfe snorted a laugh. ‘Omari was becomin’ vocal, political, argumentative, which began to fire up the other detainees. Onions was worried about his authority bein’ undermined, about the peasants stormin’ the gates, about a mutiny, bad press, and his arse bein’ fried.’

The sergeant explained that Ahmed had been stirring the pot, talking to his colleagues, plotting, protesting, rioting.

‘And for that, Onions blamed our darling schoolteacher cos she was actually encouragin’ Omari to speak up.’

Manolis nodded subconsciously. He’d have been speaking up too. And loudly.

‘On top of that, I gave that prick Onions no choice,’ Fyfe said proudly. ‘I threatened to blow the lid off his little operation.’

Manolis looked at Fyfe blankly.

‘What, you think I don’t know what’s been goin’ on up at the brown house all this time?’ Fyfe added.

Without warning, he slumped forward. He pinched the bridge of his light-bulb nose and squeezed his temples, deep like irrigation ditches. Exhaling, he began to mutter. He spoke of a young girl, unkempt, bare feet, big black eyes. She’d one day run into the station and into his very arms, her slick, teary face leaving a wet imprint on his work shirt. This hadn’t been long after the detention centre opened. He gave her food, water, wiped her snotty nose and moist cheeks. She stayed silent for a long time, unwilling to speak, not even to share her address.

‘But she didn’t have to tell me where she lived,’ Fyfe said. ‘I could tell.’

He returned the girl to the centre, met with her mother, asked her what had happened. Her daughter had needed to use the toilet, but the woman feared to take her there after dark. So she’d taken her outside and pulled down her pants, holding her in a squatting position near the ground. A security guard on routine patrol shone a torch at the young girl’s vagina. Embarrassed, she was unable to finish. The guard then refused entry to the staff toilets. The girl later wet herself.

‘Pretty traumatic for a little kid,’ said Fyfe.

Manolis nodded solemnly. He eyed the gun barrel, still aimed at his vital organs.

‘The woman told me another guard asked to see her daughter havin’ a shower,’ Fyfe continued.

The guards had offered the woman dope in exchange for sex. When she said no, they offered her extra shower time. When she said no again, there was nothing more they could offer, so they raped her. They then told her that rape was very common in Australia and that perpetrators didn’t get punished, so there was no point reporting it.

‘The same thing happened in the town a while ago,’ Fyfe said. ‘With some truckies flyin’ through.’

Manolis nodded again. ‘Sparrow mentioned that. His sister.’

Fyfe coughed hard, avoiding his hand. He said ‘that military fuckwit Onions’ had given him seemingly sincere assurances that ‘all complaints would be thoroughly investigated in a timely and sensitive manner’. In every instance, the end result was assured: ‘Insufficient evidence to warrant further investigation’.

‘Onions reckons the incidents are cooked up,’ said Fyfe. ‘That they’re all just hype.’

‘And what do you think?’

Scoffing, Fyfe waved a dismissive hand. ‘Mate, I gave up listenin’ yonks ago, gave up carin’.’ He breathed, heavy. ‘Grew immune to the horror, like in war.’

Manolis considered his colleague. And Fyfe was still his colleague, even with a gun between them. They were all one force, fighting the good fight. But this was an unfair fight, rigged from the outset.

‘What about the Bowie knife?’ Manolis asked.

‘My little touch. Wasn’t sure the plan would work, so it was insurance. If it all went to shit, we could just pin it on that lowlife scumbag Joe.’

‘Did Onions know who killed Molly when I was summoned to Cobb?’

‘Nah. He genuinely wanted some outside help after the arson attack.’

Manolis rubbed the bristles on his chin. ‘Omari. They stuck him in solitary.’

‘Fuck Omari.’ Fyfe’s eyes grew wild. ‘Fuck all reffos. They’re no angels either. They lie, steal, riot – we’re called to clean up fifty shades of shit. Guards do bugger-all, only fan the flames.’

He described detention centre workers who’d been caught robbing local shops, starting pub fights, crashing cars, all with impunity.

‘Ya can’t touch ’em, can’t do nuthin’,’ Fyfe spat. ‘They get sent home on medical advice or compassionate grounds or stress leave or some bullshit before we can get to ’em.’

He leant forward, menacingly.

‘Can’t blame the reffos. They’re desperate, only fightin’ back. Can’t blame the guards, they’re idiots, boys pretendin’ to be men. So what was I s’posed to do? This is where Rex’s stupid idiotic plan actually started to make sense.’

Manolis furrowed his brow. ‘Made sense…?’

Fyfe was tugging an ear, a dried apricot. ‘I tried to do things by the book. Fuck the book. It all adds up to a pint of warm piss. Better to take care of business yourself.’

His gunmetal eyes smiled. Manipulating his fat clumsy fingers, he cocked the weapon.

‘I’m really sorry, city mouse,’ he said, shaking his head lightly. ‘I can’t. I just can’t let this shit get out.’

Manolis swallowed hard, his throat dry, working noisily. His breath quickened, pulse surged, heat radiated from his cheeks. Should he rush at Fyfe? His muscles twitched at the thought, began to prime themselves. He would likely overpower him, push him backwards, crash to the floor. But the gun would flash, fire, the chamber would empty, smoke, hot lead. Was he prepared for a bullet tearing his skin, burrowing through arteries and veins, and embedding itself deep inside his internal organs? Or it might sever his spine, exit his back, drag viscera in its wake, and leave him paralysed. That was, of course, if he didn’t first slowly haemorrhage to death.

Manolis hadn’t been shot before. Cops who had said the pain was unimaginable.

‘Can’t,’ Fyfe repeated. ‘Just can’t…’

The hollow in his voice, his repetition were unconvincing. Manolis sensed he was trying to persuade himself.

‘Then don’t,’ Manolis said calmly. ‘Don’t. Don’t make this any worse.’

Their eyes locked, debated, wrestled. This was how animals solved conflicts, through imperceptible adjustments and complex micro-movements. Psychological warfare, more with self than with other, the physical act secondary, less important.

Fyfe’s eyes were full of blood, his stare weak. He looked weary, like he wanted no further part in this, but also unhinged. The gun trembled in his hand.

‘Don’t,’ Manolis repeated. ‘Give it to me. We’ll go arrest Rex.’

Fyfe blinked. ‘And then what? He goes down, I follow. This isn’t some pissy traffic offence.’

He was right, of course. But Manolis couldn’t admit that. He sat up, bent forward, prepared to deliver his sales pitch.

Fyfe thrust the gun, met his advance. ‘Back. Get back.’

Manolis got back. The gun seemed to hover between them, growing in size. He felt himself falling, losing what may have been simply the illusion of control.

‘Okay,’ he breathed. ‘Relax. We’re just talking here.’

Standing up, Fyfe shunted his chair back. It tipped onto its cheap plastic side. ‘Enough talk. You’re fucking with me.’

‘No, I’m not. I’m trying to find a solution, a way —’

‘There is no solution, and only one way out. You die, I disappear, this all gets forgotten.’ He extended his arm a final time.

Manolis tightened his hamstrings, tensed his calves and prepared to charge headlong into certain death. The air in the room was as tight as a held breath.

And then, from the near distance, over Fyfe’s shoulder, came a sound. Barely audible at first, it grew ever louder, tapping, moving swiftly across the linoleum floor. Distracted, Manolis glanced. Not wanting to fall for that old trick, Fyfe didn’t, until it was too late.

A swift swing and a firm blow were delivered with the fattest part of a baseball bat. It clipped the lowest point of the chin, sought to maximise the shaking of the brain in the skull. Separated from his senses, Fyfe’s eyes rolled back into his head. Losing consciousness, he crashed to the floor. The liberated gun landed easily at the feet of its rightful owner.

Kerr was suddenly hyperventilating. The surging adrenaline had caused her body to visibly pulse. Her words came out staccato, in broken pieces.

‘Two cars… out front… doors open… knew there was trouble. I keep a bat in my boot for emergencies, and sometimes for everyday errands, when the men of Cobb try to express their undying love for me.’

Manolis struggled to find his own air to breathe. ‘Jesus. Sweet Jesus Christ. How much of that did you catch?’

She fell onto the sofa, clutching her chest. ‘Enough.’ She had station keys, of course, one of only two other people.

They went quiet a while, watching Fyfe’s unmoving body, collapsed onto itself in an awkward origami.

‘Dear God,’ Manolis said. ‘Thank you.’

She looked at him. ‘No rest for the wicked. Next stop, the detention centre.’

He met her gaze. ‘Indeed. Omari’s still in solitary. But it’s not just him who needs us now.’