Pride’s Harvest

‘We try not to. How long was the stack when you started up this machine Tuesday morning?’

The lines didn’t smooth out. ‘Bugger! I didn’t think of that.’ He looked at Baldock. ‘Sorry, Curly.’

‘It’s okay,’ said Baldock, but looked as if he had asked the question, and not Malone.

Malone said, ‘What was your first reaction when you found the body?’

Liss shook his head, shuddered again. He looked tough, as if he might have seen a lot of blood spilled in pub brawls, but obviously he had never seen anyone as mangled as Sagawa must have been. ‘I thought it was some sorta incredible bloody accident – how the hell did he get in there? Then that night, the night before last, they told me the Doc had said he was murdered. Shot. If they’d shot him, why let him be chewed up like that? If they knew anything about the works here, they’d have knew his body was never gunna go right through the system and be chopped up like the green bolls and the hulls and that.’

Malone’s smile had no humour in it. ‘That’s pretty graphic.’

‘Eh? Oh yeah, I guess it is. I just think it’s a bloody gruesome way to get rid of someone, that’s all. There was nothing wrong with him, he was a good bloke. He expected you to work hard, but you wouldn’t hold that against him. Most of us work hard out here in the bush, right, Curly?’

‘Right,’ said Baldock; then saved the face of the city bludger. ‘But down in Sydney the police are flat out all the time. Right, Scobie?’

‘All the time,’ said Malone.

‘Well, I guess you would be,’ said Liss. ‘From what I read, half the population of Sydney are crims, right?’

‘Almost.’ Malone wasn’t going to get into a city-versus-country match. ‘Well, thanks, Mr Liss. We’ll be back to you if we have any more questions.’

‘Be glad to help. Hooroo, Curly. Give my regards to the missus.’

Liss went back into the gin, adjusting his ear-muffs as he opened the door and the noise blasted out at him.

‘He’s all right?’ said Malone.

Baldock looked surprised. ‘You mean is he a suspect? Forget him. He’s a tough little bugger, but he’d never do anything like this.’

‘Who’s the government medical officer? He got a mention in the running sheet.’

‘Max Nothling. He’s got the biggest practice in town, but he doubles as GMO. He’s Chess Hard-staff’s son-in-law. He told us he’d had Sagawa’s body on the table in the hospital mortuary for an hour before he woke up there was a bullet in him, that it was the bullet in his heart that’d killed him, not the chewing-up by the spikes in the module feeder.’

‘I’d better have a talk with him.’ Malone looked at the huge module feeder slowly, inexorably eating its way into the slab-sided glacier of cotton. He did not like coming on a trail as cold as this; he preferred the crime scene to be left as undisturbed as possible.

‘Did your Physical Evidence Section get everything before you let them start up the gin again?’

‘We got the lot, photos, everything. They sent a Fingerprints cove over from District Headquarters. Their reports are on my desk back at the station, they came in just before I left.’

‘You said there was no sign of the cartridge.’

‘The Ballistics guy went through the office, all around here, right through the gin, he went through the lot with a fine-tooth comb. He found nothing.’

‘Who was he?’

‘Constable James. Jason James.’

‘There’s only one man better than him at his job and that’s his boss. Who, incidentally, is three-parts Abo.’

Baldock didn’t react, except to say, ‘It’s a changing world, ain’t it?’

Not out here, thought Malone.

They walked away from the gin shed towards the office a couple of hundred yards away. It was a silver-bright morning with patches of high cloud dry-brushed against the blue; one felt one could rub the air through one’s fingers like a fine fabric. A moon buggy rumbled by with another load of cotton, raising a low, thin mist of dust. Life and work goes on, Malone thought: profits must be made, only losses of life are affordable. Crumbs, he further thought, I’m thinking like a Commo: I wonder what they would have done to me in this town fifty years ago?

‘You got any suspects?’

They had reached the police vehicles and Baldock leaned against his car. ‘None. Or a dozen. Take your pick. It’ll be like trying to find a particular cotton boll in one of those modules.’

‘Any Jap-haters in the district?’

Baldock hesitated, then nodded. ‘Yeah, but I think they’re a bit too obvious to go in for murder. There’s Ray Chakiros. He’s president of the local Veterans Legion.’

The Veterans Legion all over the nation harboured a minority of ex-servicemen who were still consumed by a hatred of old enemies; they got more media space than they deserved and so were continually vocal. Moderation and a call to let bygones be bygones don’t make arresting headlines or good sound bites.

‘Chakiros?’

‘He’s Lebanese, but he was born here in Collamundra. His old man used to run the local café back in the days when we had only one. Now we’ve got coffee lounges, a McDonald’s, a Pizza Hut, a French restaurant, a Chinese one. Ray Chakiros owns the McDonald’s and one of the coffee lounges and he’s got the local Mercedes franchise. He’s got fingers in other pies, too – you know what the Wogs are like.’

Baldock wasn’t embarrassed by his prejudices; he was one of many for whom they are as natural as dandruff.

‘What’s he like?’ said Malone, wondering about Chakiros’s prejudices.

‘He runs off at the mouth about Japs or any sorta Asians, but I don’t think he’d pull a gun on any of ’em. He’s all piss and wind. He served in World War Two in New Guinea, but they tell me he never saw a Jap till the war was over. I’ve interviewed him, but I think he’s in the clear.’

‘Anyone else?’

Again Baldock took his time before answering. ‘There’s an Abo kid they had working here, but Sagawa sacked him last month. Wally Mungle knew him, they’re cousins. Then maybe there are half a dozen others, but we’ve got nothing on any of ’em.’

‘Where do we start then?’

Baldock shrugged. ‘Start at the bottom and work up.’

‘Who’s at the bottom?’ But Malone could guess.

‘The Abo, of course.’ Baldock said it without malice or prejudice. It struck Malone that the local sergeant was not a racist and he was pleased and relieved. Baldock might have his prejudices about Wogs, but that had nothing to do with race. Malone did wonder if there were any European Jews, refugees, in Collamundra and how they were treated by Baldock and the locals. He hoped there would be none of those on the suspect list.

‘His name’s Billy Koowarra,’ said Baldock.

‘Where can I find him?’

‘At the lock-up. He was picked up last night as an IP.’ Intoxicated Person: the all-purpose round-up lariat.

Malone saw Clements and Mungle come out of the office, where they had been questioning the office staff. He said delicately, a tone it had taken him a long time to acquire, ‘Curly – d’you mind if I ride back with Wally? You go with Russ.’

Baldock squinted, not against the sun. ‘Are you gunna go behind my back?’

‘No, I promise you there’ll be none of that. But you’ve had some trouble with the blacks out here, haven’t you? I read about it in a quarterly report.’