Dark Summer. Jon Cleary
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want to get him cleared up first, if only for Lisa’s sake. She’s very cranky about her routine being upset.’
‘So would I be, and I don’t have any kids.’
He made it sound as if Malone were to blame, though the latter said nothing. Guilt made him dumb.
They drove back into the city and down to the head office of the Wharf Labourers Union near the waterfront. It was housed in one of the few narrow-fronted colonial warehouses, converted to offices, that had managed to survive the development of this part of town. Huge glass monoliths towered on either side of it, reflections of huge debts: For Lease signs were plastered on all façades, like great Band-Aids trying to hold the building together till better times returned. The WLU building sat amongst them looking smug and old-fashioned. Once it had stood right across the road from the wharves; now it peered under an elevated bypass at a car park and, beyond it, a sliver of water that looked narrow enough to hold only a canoe. A union flag hung limp as a dishcloth from a pole on the roof, a banner of other, more militant days.
Roley Bremner recognized them for cops as soon as they appeared in his office doorway, but he forgave them as soon as Malone mentioned he was Con Malone’s son. ‘Salt of the bloody earth! He was a cantankerous old bastard, even when he was young, but a real good union man. Never let anyone stand over him. I remember him telling me when you become a cop. Never felt so ashamed in his life, he said.’
He was short, only a little more than five foot high and almost as wide; one got the impression that he had been rolled into a ball of muscle and bowled out into life. He had a round head, bald but for fringes of ginger-grey hair along his temples, and his face seemed to be a collection of smaller balls fitted in as cheeks, brows, nose and chin. He had a hoarse gravelly voice and bright blue eyes that looked as if they could see right through any fog that blew up from the harbour.
‘Normie Grime? Yeah, I knew him. Not well, but he come up here once or twice to pay his dues while I was here. He’s dead? Murdered? How? In your swimming pool? You mean, at your home? Jesus, that don’t bear thinking about!’ He sat back in a battered old swivel-chair. The office was small, its walls plastered with posters of old battles, like regimental battle-flags. The whole building creaked with the arthritis of militancy that had outlived its time. A fan, standing on a filing cab, whirred slowly and metallically, like a pacemaker trying to keep the spirit, if not the place, alive. Bremner said, ‘In a way I’m not surprised. I mean, Grime being done in.’
Malone and Clements had sat down on chairs as rickety as Bremner’s own. ‘What do you mean by that?’
‘I just didn’t expect it to get so drastic so soon.’ Bremner seemed to be talking to himself, collecting his thoughts like lottery marbles in the ball of his head. ‘I didn’t think Grime was connected to it. He never struck me as the political type, not even a good union man. Or was he a crim?’
‘Yes.’ Malone showed his usual patience. ‘Connected to what?’
‘Oh, you wouldn’t know about it, would you?’ Bremner focused his gaze on the two detectives, coming back from his reverie. ‘There’s a union election coming up next month.’
‘You think Grime might’ve been mixed up in that?’
‘If he was, he never give me any hint.’
‘How’d he get a ticket to work on the wharves?’ Malone knew, from what his father had told him, that a union ticket to work on the wharves was almost an inheritance, handed down from father to son in many cases.
Bremner hesitated a moment; then: ‘Word come down from United Unions Hall, we had to find a job for him.’
United Unions Hall was the secular Vatican; its alumnae were spread throughout union and political offices in the State. Con Malone, when he was still working down here, used to bless himself when its name was mentioned. It had led the fight for labour in the past, but its power had waned in recent years. There were, however, still powerful men in State and Federal Labor politics who had learned their skills in the corridors and offices of United Unions Hall.
Malone looked at Clements. ‘The little bugger had more clout than I thought.’ He looked back at Bremner. ‘Had he worked on the wharves before?’
Bremner got up, went out of the room and in a couple of minutes was back with a manila file. ‘We got computers, but I don’t trust ’em, they’re always breaking down. Besides that, outsiders can hack into ’em, you’re not careful.’ He opened the file, looked at the one page it contained. ‘Yeah, here it is. Grime worked on the wharves in Melbourne nineteen seventy-two to nineteen seventy-four.’
So up here was Sydney and down there was Melbourne, not Port Botany. ‘Do the initials S.W. mean anything to you?’
The balls of Bremner’s face rolled together, then the eyes lit up; but with alarm, it seemed, not excitement. He sat up, the chair cracking under him like a gunshot. ‘That’d be Snow White! His name’s Dallas White, but he’s known as Snow. He’s one of the ex-Melbourne push, he’s running against me for secretary. He’s spending money like water, Christ knows where he gets it from.’
‘The Melbourne push? Who are they?’
‘They started drifting up this way six or eight months ago. They worked on the Melbourne wharves, they’re crims every bloody one of ’em. They’ve all got records. I done me best to keep ‘em outa Sydney, but like with Grime, the word come down from Unions Hall, our Federal headquarters stepped in and I was told to pull my head in.’
He abruptly got up, came round past the two detectives, shut the door and returned to his seat. The small room was suddenly thick with secrets, like long-dormant dust that had been disturbed.
‘It’s building up to be a re-run of the old days, like it was when your old man worked down here, Scobie. I thought them days were gone forever . . .’He stared into space again for a moment, as if forgetting he was not alone. Then he looked at Malone and Clements again. ‘It used to get pretty ugly in them days sometimes, but you knew what you were up against. It was either the Commos or the Groupers, the Catholics, or you were up against the bosses. Now I dunno who I’m up against. This bunch of crims from down south want to take over the waterfront up here, but someone’s organizing ’em and we dunno who.’
‘Where could we find White?’
The balls rolled into a smile full of cheerful malice. ‘I keep tabs on him. He’s working on Number 9 wharf. He’s there with The Dwarf.’
‘A dwarf?’
‘Wait till you see him.’ Bremner stood up, the chair cracking once more like a gunshot, and held out his hand. ‘Don’t tell Snow White I sent you. But if you arrest the bastard, lemme know. It’ll make my day. Give my regards to your old man. He was a real terror in his day, y’know. Drop a crane hook on a boss or foreman, soon as look at him. Great union man.’
Malone and Clements drove round to Nickson Road. The wharves lined the western side of the roadway; on the eastern side were the hill and cliff-faces that led up to the central business district. There were few major cities in the world where the country’s imports were dumped on the doorstep of those expected to pay for them; in the glass castles along the top of the hill executives stared morosely down at their growing debt. Champagne had been drunk in those castles two or three years ago; now they were drinking mineral water. Domestic, of course.
Malone flashed his badge at the gatekeeper on Number 9 wharf and they drove on to the big expanse, like a concrete field, where containers were stacked three storeys high like townhouses in which the builders had forgotten to insert doors and windows. Three large container ships were moored dockside, stretching through to the neighbouring wharves. A giant yellow mobile crane, looking large enough to lift the national debt, loomed over the police car as it came round the corner of a stack of containers. Clements braked sharply, throwing Malone against his seat-belt. Two men abruptly appeared from between the containers: Malone’s quick impression was that they had been lurking there like muggers.
‘Where