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  FRESH BLOOD

  A Danny Arbor Investigation

  Calder Garret

  Independently published

  ISBN: 9781702644860

  Copyright © 2019 by Calder Garret

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Created with Vellum

  With thanks to Val, Ali and Sandra

  I acknowledge the Noongar people as the traditional custodians of the land on which this novel is set and was written, and the continuing connection that Aboriginal people have to land, waters and culture. I pay my respect to Elders past, present and emerging.

  This is an entirely fictional work. The views of the characters in this novel are not intended to offend and do not represent my own views, but rather reflect the reality that we, as a country, still have some way to walk together on our journey towards reconciliation.

  Contents

  TUESDAY

  WEDNESDAY

  THURSDAY

  FRIDAY

  SATURDAY

  SUNDAY

  MONDAY

  TUESDAY

  About the Author

  TUESDAY

  This time as the blow landed, Salim Rashid felt a tooth shatter and his mouth fill with blood. He forced open his one good eye and glared at his blond assailant.

  ‘Don’t you dare look at me like that, you Paki prick,’ the man said.

  Rashid spat what remained of the tooth onto the man’s shirt and then steeled himself for the next blow. But, instead, he heard the clatter of an iron door. A ray of sunlight hit the blood-covered straw on the floor around him.

  ‘Any luck?’ said the assailant.

  ‘No,’ came a reply. ‘But we found this instead.’

  Rashid heard the muffled but terrified cries of a woman. A woman he recognised.

  ‘Amira? Amira?’ he called. ‘Is that you?’

  ‘Abba? Abba?’ Amira replied. ‘Help me! Please!’

  Behind Amira’s cries, Rashid could hear the men laughing.

  ‘We were thinking,’ said one of the newcomers. ‘We might have some fun with it later.’

  ‘Yeah, I’d be up for that,’ said the assailant. ‘She’s quite a looker, isn’t she? All things considered. What do you reckon, Rashid? Do you want us to have some fun with your little girl?’

  ‘Oh, no, please,’ said Salim Rashid. ‘Please. Please don’t.’

  ‘Then I reckon you should give us what we want, eh? Fair’s fair. Go on. Spill. Tell us all you’ve been up to.’

  ‘But I beg of you,’ said Rashid. ‘I can’t. I swear.’

  ‘Fine, then,’ said the assailant. ‘If that’s the way you want it. I’ve just about had it with you, anyway.’

  The man stepped out of view, leaving Rashid with just shadows and the whimpers of his daughter.

  ‘Have faith, Amira,’ he called. ‘We will survive this.’

  ‘You’ve got Buckley’s chance of that, mate,’ said the man, returning. ‘Because if you won’t spill your guts, then I’ll spill them for you.’

  Salim Rashid glimpsed a flash of steel, and then a sharp movement in the air above him. He felt a searing pain in his belly, and then he sensed no more.

  WEDNESDAY

  Arbor felt the draught of the air conditioner as soon as he opened the door. From the rasping wind outside, it came as a cool relief, but it meant that O’Reilly had beaten him to the punch and was already at work. He cursed himself, for he knew that a reprimand would follow in short order. O’Reilly’s response to his tardiness would be yet another sermon, peppered with the sergeant’s cumbersome wit, and, no doubt, a list of menial chores to complete as punishment for his crime. Not that O’Reilly bore him any ill feelings; he would be surprised if the sergeant bore him any feelings at all. This was merely the state of play between the sergeant-in-charge and his only, most lowly, junior officer.

  Sure enough, O’Reilly was sitting near the small kitchen at the back of the room. He had his fat arse parked in the only decent chair and his feet on another. He was watching the cricket.

  ‘What time do you call this?’ he said. ‘Fucking lunchtime?’

  ‘Yeah, sorry, Sarge,’ said Arbor. ‘How’s it going?’

  ‘As slow as,’ said O’Reilly. ‘They’re trying to bore us to death, I reckon. And this crowd … Have a go at it, will you? Trumpets for bloody breakfast. Fuck me. Ah, shut up, you …’

  The Indian supporters didn’t respond. They just continued with their Boxing Day antics.

  O’Reilly helped himself to another can from the beer fridge, cracked it and guzzled it with a sigh. It was only twenty to eight. Arbor could see the kind of day the sergeant had planned for himself. But he concluded that O’Reilly would be safe in his cocoon. What with the post-Christmas wind-down and a forecast of over forty degrees for most of the day, the town of Chatton would be at a standstill. Any of the local hotheads still chasing excitement would be miles away, burning off their hangovers by burning up the back roads. Someone else’s problem.

  ‘Any visitors, Sarge?’ Arbor asked. It was code, for any prisoners in the one-cell lockup out the back. It was a regular occurrence. Living just next door, O’Reilly often swept up the hotel’s drunks.

  ‘No, we’re empty,’ said the sergeant, his eyes still trained on the telly. ‘It was a quiet night.’

  Arbor sat at his desk and shuffled a few papers, without method and without intent.

  ‘You’d better get that assault file seen to,’ O’Reilly continued. ‘It was due away Monday.’

  In the silence, Arbor could hear it coming.

  ‘Oh, and yeah,’ O’Reilly said, shifting his weight and taking another sip of his beer. ‘You might want to clean out the filing cabinets. Yeah, there’s a job for you. There’s twenty years’ worth of crap in there and I want it all sorted for New Year. But before you do anything, nip down and get us a pie. A pie and chips. And do it pronto. The only things moving out there in an hour or so will be the wind, the flies and the stupid farts running away from them.’

  So Arbor was outside again, in the heat, on the dry parchment that was Palm Street. He took shelter for a while in the small sliver of shade that skirted the station, his eyes drawn to the procession of trucks approaching the silo on the other side of the railway line. This pageant, he knew, would continue well into February, until all the farms had completed their harvest. That harvest, he suspected, remained the town of Chatton’s only reason for being.

  Above Arbor, the crows’ cawing was hard and grating, as if intended to wake the more lethargic townsfolk. But it wasn’t working. The power lines’ song was soft and hypnotic and Palm Street remained empty, save for the odd parked car roasting in the sun.

  Arbor eyed the paddy wagon. For a moment, he considered taking it, making the trip to the delicatessen a quick up and back. But like the rest of the vehicles, it would be an oven inside. It was simply not worth the effort. Uncomfortable though it would be, the only option was to walk. He headed east, laughing to himself. At least walking would give him a chance to gauge the damage done to the town by those for whom Christmas had been a less than silent night.

  He wasn’t entirely certain, but Arbor felt it likely that it was the rail line that had spawned Chatton, not the other way around. The town had probably begun as a depot rather than a community, a pick-up and drop-off point for the growing number of farmers in the area. Palm Street, the main street, ran alongside the rail line, mirroring the line as it stretched westwards towards the city and eastwards into the desert.

  Palm Street, Arbor understood, w
as a place where tourists rarely slowed down. And if they did, it was not to see the sights. There were none. It was only due to the hazards posed to their cars by children and livestock. Named for a former town clerk rather than for any flora that might adorn its margins, the street was a colourless expanse of asphalt and dust, a street built exclusively out of function and necessity. And in both winter and summer, the prevailing easterly wailed down Palm Street like a feral cat. In winter, it cut the locals to the bone, and, in summer, it peeled the skin from them.

  The railway line and the wheat silo, that cold grey colossus that stood both to define and to dwarf the rest of the town, were all that marked the other side of the street. On this side, lying side by side in idle repose, were the post office, the police station, the one and only hotel, the bank (now closed) and the few other shops on which the town depended. Jack and Jill’s Deli, the only fast food joint in town, together with Rashid’s Newsagency, lay just beyond the bend at the far end of the strip. The entire street, the heart and soul of Chatton, was little more than a hundred metres long.

  And if Palm Street was the heart and soul of Chatton, the Chatton Hotel was the heart and soul of Palm Street. Large and yawning, Federation in style, the Chatton dominated the north side of Palm Street in much the same way as the silo did the south. It functioned as both watering hole and meeting hall, a place of solitude during the day and a source of mayhem during the night.

  Arbor noticed as he passed that a billboard had been torn away from the hotel’s western wall and a colourful tag added in its place. And although he had been in town only six weeks, he already knew what was coming. Ronald ‘Rusty’ Piper, the publican, would be quick to deliver his complaints to O’Reilly, and O’Reilly would send Arbor out to gather up the usual suspects. O’Reilly would give them all the sharp end of his tongue and the culprits would walk away sniggering and eager for more. O’Reilly would return to his lair and Piper would mumble something about police ineptitude. He would conveniently forget about the underage drinking that went on behind the hotel, and the shuttle service of takeaways that kept the juveniles’ creative juices flowing.

  Arbor did not take issue with the drinking or the tagging. So long as there was no trouble and the graffiti remained out of the way, he was happy to let it slide. His bigger concern involved the pub itself.

  Things were changing in Chatton, he thought, but not fast enough.

  The Chatton Hotel, he had been quick to learn, was, like its fading facade, stuck firmly in the past. Unlike other pubs in the area, it still chose to operate under a three-bar system. It had a public bar, a lounge bar for the ladies, and – Arbor cringed every time he passed it – a back bar. Designed originally for use by the town’s indigenous population, the back bar, a bare concrete box with entry through a weather-beaten door off the main drag, remained a convenient receptacle for any customers who failed to meet Rusty Piper’s standards.

  But Piper’s standards were outlandishly exact, and by insisting on strict dress codes and outdated notions of propriety, he was making it plain. He was continuing to draw a line between his white and Noongar clientele. Arbor could tell. There was an unwritten law at work at the Chatton. If you were indigenous and thirsty, the back bar was still where you drank. And for the rest of the townsfolk, the bar remained like a third ear. You knew it was there, but you didn’t talk about it.

  And of course Piper, always smiling, always willing, he said, to give everyone a chance, would hotly deny any racism on his part. And he was difficult to argue with. He had been here forever and he knew it all.

  And while the décor of the public and lounge bars had recently been updated, the furnishings and fittings of the back bar remained a stark reminder of an old Slim Dusty song, something one might find in an outback Territory pub or in the deepest recesses of an underground inner-city nightclub.

  Arbor forced his way along the street. Things are different out here, a voice inside him said, but the voice wasn’t his own and it angered him. But, as a probationary constable, he was powerless to make any changes. The law in Chatton, such as it was, had its feet up in the station and was watching the Aussie bowlers do battle with the Indian top order.

  How long does it take to walk a hundred metres? The hotel’s verandah merged with the bank’s, then the co-op’s, then the hairdresser’s, then the butcher’s, each offering Arbor a little cover, until he came at last to the bend in the road which signalled the end of his travels. By now he was stinking of sweat, his shirt was sodden and he could feel his head pounding as his cap rim clutched tightly to his brow. He looked at the butcher’s shop window for a reflection and felt a touch of shame at what he saw. Pride in the job, pride in your appearance, he had told himself … and felt. But not today.

  It was a little odd, he mused. Despite it being Boxing Day, and although the sign on the door said ‘Closed’ and ‘Butch’ Paterson was missing from his usual station, the lights inside the shop were on. Arbor laughed. Butch, he had soon learned, was never one to miss out on a dollar. He was probably out back, dressing a lamb for a cashie or for a few slabs of beer. Arbor continued around the corner.

  What surprised him most was the silence. The crowd, at least twenty strong, was spilling out onto the street and into the sun. Butch Paterson was among them, his bald ostrich dome shining like a beacon, high above the rest. Their attention was drawn to something outside Rashid’s, something hidden from Arbor by the weight of numbers.

  ‘What is it?’ he asked. ‘What’s going on?’

  His standing as a cop carried little sway with the locals. He knew that. Six weeks was hardly enough time to make an impression. But at least he could try. He pushed forward.

  Several of the townsfolk cast their eyes on him, deep and mistrustful. Then, slowly, grudgingly, they peeled away from the crowd to allow him entry.

  It was the festive season and he had expected something different. He had expected, perhaps, a residual Santa, happily handing out lollies or presents to the kids. At worst, he had expected a smashed window or a drunk using the pavement as a pillow. What he didn’t expect was the drunk to be the devout Muslim, Salim Rashid.

  ‘Back off,’ he said to those still edging close to the man. ‘Give the poor bugger some space.’ He placed his hand on the newsagent’s shoulder.

  ‘Hey, Salim,’ he said.

  Rashid didn’t move. As he’d suspected, thought Arbor. The man was dead to the world. This close he could smell the whisky. He gently rolled the man onto his back.

  Salim Rashid was dead to the world, all right. Quite literally. By the looks of it, the poor bastard had been split from neck to navel and then bled dry. And by the look on his frozen face, it had happened quickly.

  ‘Stand back, all of you. Clear a space,’ Arbor heard himself say, as seven months of training kicked in. ‘Mrs Sullivan, get those kids out of here. It’s not a peepshow. And has anyone got a sheet or something? Butch, you must have something back there.’

  He knew O’Reilly would ignore his call.

  ‘Ronny Miller, run up and get the sarge for me, will you?’ he said. ‘Let him know what’s what. And Kev … For Christ’s sake, Jason, get your paws off him … Kev, do us a favour and ring Doc Phillips.’

  The butcher reappeared with a handful of aprons.

  ‘Will these do?’

  ‘Not really,’ said Arbor. ‘But hell, I suppose they’ll have to, won’t they?’

  The butcher dropped the aprons at Arbor’s feet and returned to his shop. He flipped his sign to ‘Open’, obviously keen to catch some of this passing trade. Arbor was only too aware of the huddled throng and their still-gawking eyes.

  ‘Ah, come on, you lot,’ he said. ‘The show’s over.’

  A few of the onlookers moved away, slowly making their way about their holiday business. A few more lingered, among them the three Jones boys. Drew had hair as sharp as his tongue and more sunspots than a chocolate freckle. Jason seemed to have his finger permanently up his nose. Compared with his bro
thers, little Shane seemed almost normal.

  ‘Come on, boys,’ Arbor said. ‘Off you go.’

  ‘Hey, Danny,’ said Drew. ‘Can I take a selfie first?’

  ‘No, you fucking can’t,’ said Arbor. ‘Off you go.’

  A selfie. In retrospect, photos weren’t a bad idea. He took out his own phone and began snapping. He knew it would be a day or so before Major Crime Squad detectives came up from Perth, if they came at all, and any evidence might be long gone by then. Besides, Doc Phillips, the only medical examiner within a bull’s roar of Chatton, wouldn’t want the body to get much riper.

  Just as his thoughts turned again to O’Reilly, Ronny Miller came panting around the corner.

  ‘Where’s the sarge?’ said Arbor.

  ‘He said he’d be down after the next wicket,’ said Miller. ‘He said in the meantime you should do what you’re paid for.’

  ‘That’d be right,’ said Arbor. ‘Fuck.’

  Miller passed Arbor the station evidence kit, never opened, sealed with a fine film of dust.

  ‘He said you’d need this.’

  ‘Cheers,’ said Arbor. ‘Thanks a bundle. I can take it from here, I guess.’

  ‘Do you need an off-sider?’ said Miller. ‘I’ve seen CSI.’

  ‘No, I’ll be fine,’ said Arbor. ‘Run along … Come on. The rest of you, too.’

  He returned to the body.

  This wasn’t his first corpse. He had attended one or two fatals, had seen his fair share of blood, and had been on the scene when old Mr Smith had collapsed at the car boot sale. But it was his first murder.

  He found it impossible to look at Rashid’s greying face, so he focused on what he thought would interest the detectives. Some loose straw had attached itself to the man’s clothing. Arbor peeled it free and bagged it. Then he pushed his shirt apart for a better view.