The Broken Ones (6 page)

“It’s my job, Sabine. You knew when we—”

“When we started going out blah-de-blah, I don’t care! It’s not a job, it’s a life! It’s
our
life, and it sucks! You’re either at work or you’re writing a work report or you’re home and making calls about work. Why do you need to work this hard? Look at you.”

He gritted his teeth. “I’m trying to get—”

“You’re getting fat! You’ve got no time to exercise, you’ve always got a cold. I can’t remember the last time you got me off; Christ knows what you’re doing for yourself.”

He glanced at his watch. It was five to nine. He was due to meet Jon and the new informant at nine. She saw him check the time.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake.” She sagged away from him, shaking her head.

“It’s Haig, Sabine.”

“Haig, fucking Haig, fucking Haig! What about me?”

He pushed her aside and strode out the front door, slamming it hard behind him.

He drove too fast, running orange lights, the speedometer nudging eighty. His heart hammered in his chest, pushing angry blood uselessly behind his eyes, into his forearms. But inside he was cold. It didn’t matter. What mattered was Haig. What mattered was that finally, after a nine-month investigation that had been teetering on the brink of exhaustion, he and Jon had found someone willing to go on the record about Geoffrey Haig.

Rumors that Haig was on the take had been rife long before Oscar joined Conduct and Ethical Standards, but there seemed no live soul willing to give a hair of evidence against him. Rumors spread like a virus, infecting the body then keen to jump further. When the media began implying that Haig, then head of the state’s Organized Crime
Group, was turning a blind eye to certain criminal actions in return for who-knew-what, the commissioner ordered Ethical Standards to investigate. It took Oscar and Jon six months of delicate cozening to uncover a picture as old as time: steal a little, go to jail; steal it all and become king. And Haig was king. A very wily monarch who chose his vassals carefully. These were men and women who were in equal turns smart and intimidating, and who all knew the drill: if you’re caught, don’t squeal, because squealers vanish. Three informants and one cop had disappeared in the preceding two years. Nothing—
nothing
—was ever found of them. No one knew if they’d been paid off or put down. Well, that wasn’t true. Some people knew, but they were smart or scared or rich enough to say nothing.

Oscar had pushed for permission to bug Haig’s home and cell phone. Rather than put another officer at any risk of retribution, he had planted the bugs himself. But Haig’s conversations and telephone calls were benign to the point of stultifying: kids’ swimming lessons, roof repairs, chats with his elderly mother. Perhaps Haig knew that his home was monitored, or perhaps he was naturally suspicious and played it smart. His finances were even more benign, but behind the trust accounts was a Gordian knot of investments that curled in on themselves, offering teasing glimpses of blandly named banks in the Channel Island Bailiwicks and the Cayman Islands.

The break had come with Jon receiving a call from an aggrieved narc. He hadn’t been paid properly, and one of Haig’s people had put the word out that he couldn’t be trusted. He was angry, and willing to go on the record. He wanted to meet Jon and Oscar somewhere private, to sound them out. And now Oscar was running ten minutes late.

The main street running north through Fortitude Valley was four lanes wide; two were jammed with nighttime traffic and two packed tightly with the parked cars of patrons visiting Chinese restaurants, massage parlors, tattoo parlors, pubs, nightclubs, strip clubs—a colorful tinsel world of shadow, blinking lights, mirrored glass, and fake gold. Oscar steered his car into a side road where the lights were fewer and the shadows deeper, and then into a back street where there were hardly any lights at all. He knew the alley the informant had chosen. It was a smart choice: a spot behind a bar frequented by Chinese Australians, older men who liked to gamble and knew how to keep secrets. In daylight hours, the alley was choked with delivery vans stocking cold
rooms with bok choy, Tsingtao beer, and slaughtered poultry; at night, it was empty except for the raucous hum of a dozen massive fans in heat-exchange units. Impossible to bug.

Oscar saw Jon’s Ford sedan; by training and habit he parked a good ninety feet or so distant. He locked the car and walked quickly. Spring had arrived, but the air was still and cold. Gutters smelled of cabbage and spoiling fish. Oscar’s footsteps echoed off brick buildings. He checked his phone; no messages, no missed calls. From the mouth of the alley came the filtered hubbub of men’s voices inside the building, and the electric hum of cooling fans. The alley was barely ten feet wide, a canyon of darkness.

“Jon?” Oscar called.

No answer. He reached into his suit pocket and found a thin pencil flashlight. He flicked on its beam.

A large rat scurried from a hole in the lid of an industrial Dumpster. Ahead, a row of washing machine–size boxes that rattled, blowing fetid air around the alley. On the cold asphalt between two Oscar could see a dark lump of clothing, a motionless crescent of face, a pale hand.

He ran.

“That’s it?”

The General Duties senior constable who’d been first on the scene after Oscar’s call looked up from his notepad.

Oscar nodded. “That’s it.”

The officer closed his notepad.

“I’ll need a copy of your report,” Oscar said. “And Scenes of Crime’s when they’re done.”

“No problem.” The senior constable stood. “Good luck.”

He left Oscar alone in the Emergency Department cubicle. Three bays down, a child wailed. Burned, Oscar had gathered from the whispers of nurses; flannel pajamas and a bar heater. He stared at the floor of the empty cubicle. Jon’s bed had been wheeled away to the operating theater more than an hour earlier. No one had come yet to mop up the spatters of blood. He was amazed that his partner had any left to spill; the alley had seemed awash with it. Eight stab wounds.

“But nothing vital,” the paramedic had said as they bounced along in the back of the ambulance. Jon’s shirt was open, and his bearlike chest was a patchwork of adhesive bandages. His head was wrapped in white gauze. “He’s lucky.”

Oscar’s phone rang shrilly. He checked the screen. Sabine. He stared at it a moment, then rejected the call.

It was two in the morning, and the alley now glowed like a striplight in a darkroom, almost too bright to look at. To Oscar, it seemed smaller, plainer, unmysterious. Scenes of Crime officers in blue overalls prowled the gutters, emptied the industrial bins, dusted broken bottles, photographed every square inch. The senior officer came up to Oscar, shaking his head. No weapon, no prints. Oscar paced and watched. Men and women in blue uniforms entered and exited the bars and clubs nearby. He waited another two hours, and learned nothing.

It was after four, and kookaburras were laughing in the dawn. Sabine rolled toward him as he slipped into bed. Her arms closed around him. He wondered if it was out of love or habit.

“Your inspector rang,” she said. “Told me.”

“Sorry. I got caught up.”

“Poor Jon.”

Then she rolled away.

When he rose at nine, she’d already left for work.

Oscar was allowed in at lunchtime. Jon was pale but awake; tubes and hoses ran in and out of him, and a clear plastic oxygen mask covered his nose and mouth. Leonie held his large hand. Oscar had first met her the week that he and Jon were partnered in Ethical Standards. She was as petite as Jon was big. Where his footfalls shook rooms, she moved with fairy-fine steps. He bellowed; she giggled silently. They
were perfect opposites, and always seemed genuinely delighted to see Oscar and Sabine. Seeing him now, Leonie rose, kissed Jon’s cheek, squeezed Oscar on the arm, and left the partners alone.

Jon lifted his big face to look at Oscar and forced a smile. It made Oscar feel like crying.

“I’m so sorry,” Oscar said.

Jon shook his head, and the lines on his monitor danced.

“Was it your narc?” Oscar asked.

Jon lifted a finger with a VO
₂
monitor attached and pointed at his bandaged head. “Didn’t see.” His voice was a dry whisper behind the mask. “Whumped me. Wallet’s gone. Left the gun.” He shrugged.

Oscar nodded. The attacker wasn’t likely to be the informant. Why risk an assault for a few bucks in a wallet when, as a grass, he could make hundreds or more? No. Most likely this was just another stock-standard assault and robbery. Shamefully preventable.

“I should have been there,” Oscar said.

“Glad you weren’t,” Jon said. “Could have been both of us.”

But Oscar saw the look in his eyes.