A Different Turf. Jon Cleary

backfire.’

      ‘Let’s hope it does it next time they try to shoot someone … Well, if it’s got such a distinctive fingerprint, at least we’ve got something to go on. Now all we have to do is find the bastards who are using it.’

      ‘Console yourself that they’re not using a Smith and Wesson. They’re so bland they leave practically no individual characteristics.’

      Peeples patted his hip holster. ‘I must remember that next time I feel like shooting the Minister.’

      All three grinned. The Police Minister was also the Premier, Hans Vanderberg, a Dutch immigrant who had come to Australia fifty years ago and seen the opportunities in State politics for a man with drive and a total lack of conscience. Good, honest men had come and gone and some were still around, but The Dutchman had been a permanent fixture, in and out of government, for so long that it had been suggested, in the current quest for a new flag, his image should replace the Union Jack on the upper left-hand corner. The prospect of Hans Vanderberg’s evil grin fluttering from a flagpole had raised the possibility of a rush for emigration by monarchists and other conservatives.

      When Binyan left the station Malone walked out with him. Ballistics was on the fifth floor of Police Centre; for all his easy-going affability, Binyan ran his unit like a tribal elder. The two men stood in the afternoon sun outside the main entrance. For some reason there was never much foot traffic into and out of the big building; it was almost as if the fortress was too forbidding.

      ‘Clarrie, are there many Koori homos?’

      ‘Some, I guess.’ Binyan himself rarely used the politically correct terms for the indigenous; his people were either blacks or Aborigines or, occasionally but always with a dig at the whites he might be talking to, Abos. ‘There are Chinese homos, probably Eskimos, too.’

      ‘How are they treated?’

      ‘From what I hear, not too well. There’s a lot of homophobia amongst blacks – they think being gay or lesbian is a white man’s disease.’

      ‘Do they bash them up?’

      ‘I haven’t heard of much of that, but maybe they do. The community would keep it to itself, in any case. The other side to it is that I’m told being an Abo in the gay community isn’t all beer and skittles, either. The homos have got their prejudices, just like the rest of us. Are you uncomfortable in this scene?’

      ‘How’d you guess? But I feel sorry for the poor bastards, the ones who get bashed.’

      ‘How d’you feel about the kids who are being shot?’

      Malone wobbled his hand up and down. ‘Ambivalent. I met a kid this morning, the one who led the gang that beat up the feller on Saturday night, Bob Anders. I don’t think I’d shed any tears if he got the next bullet. But the kid who was shot Saturday night … I met his family this morning, saw where he lived, heard about his mother’s boyfriend sexually abusing him. I never knew the kid, but somehow I don’t think he deserved a bullet.’

      ‘You’re gunna have some problems before this is over, mate. I’m just glad I’m upstairs, in Ballistics. All I deal with are instruments, all you ever have to be with them is objective. Guns, bullets, knives, you never have a moral problem with them.’

      ‘What if some day we bring in a boomerang mat’s killed someone?’

      Binyan grinned. ‘My granddaddy killed a man once with a boomerang. Said it just slipped out of his hand. Look after yourself, mate. If you come out of the closet, let me know.’

      Malone was afraid there would be a spate of jokes like that over the next few weeks. Homophobic humour had never been subtle nor did it have the sardonic dryness of normal Australian wit. He would have to take his own preventive care, put a condom on the jokes.

      He had been back at Homicide half an hour when the second call came in. ‘Inspector? Well, what do you think now you’ve met the poofter-bashers?’

      ‘How do you know who I’ve seen? Have you been spying on me?’

      ‘Let’s not use the word spying, Inspector – that has a sneaky note to it. Surveillance, isn’t that what the police call it? That leader, Les Coulson, he’s real shit, isn’t he?’

      ‘You’ve talked to him?’

      Malone was flicking through his memory. Who had been in the park besides the youths, the children and the mothers? At the far edge of his memory there was an indistinct figure – a man or a woman? – hovering there like a blurred passer-by in a photo focussed on the youths.

      ‘I’ve listened. They make no secret of their feelings towards gays. You must have realized that, Inspector. We are doing a public service, you know. Why don’t you recognize that?’

      ‘I might, if I could meet you and talk it over—’

      There was a soft laugh; then the line went dead. Malone put the phone back in its cradle, then signalled through the glass wall to Clements. The big man came into Malone’s office, went to flop down on the couch, paused when Malone waved a hand.

      ‘Stay on your feet. I’ve just had another call from the vigilante, the same feller. Get a warrant, I want a tap put on my phone. I’ve got a feeling he’s going to call again. Tell the Phone Interception Unit you’re getting the warrant. Try Judge Bristow, he’s always on our side. Tell them I want them here this afternoon.’ Then as Clements went to go out the door, he said, ‘The bugger’s been spying on us. He knows I went out to Erskineville this morning.’

      Clements had stopped in the doorway. ‘You think someone is tipping him off from inside?’

      ‘I don’t know. Maybe there’s a network of homos in the Service, I just don’t know. I’ve been looking up some figures – and I had a talk on the phone with the Gay and Lesbian Liaison Unit at Headquarters. There are eighty-one gay liaison officers throughout the Service – twenty-seven in the bush, fifty-four in the city. Not all of them are gay themselves – twenty-five percent of them, they reckon. But whether there’s a network …’ He shrugged. ‘If there is, maybe it’ll be a help. Right now all we have to go on are a dozen garbled descriptions and a voice.’

      ‘I’ll get the warrant. I’m taking tomorrow morning off, okay? Romy and the baby are coming home.’

      ‘So soon?’

      ‘They don’t waste any time these days. Next week she’ll be back at work in the morgue.’

      ‘You’re macabre. The kid’ll be helping her, I suppose?’

      3

      ‘Where are you going?’

      ‘Out.’

      ‘I guessed that. You wouldn’t be dressed like that to have a shower. Where’s Out?’

      ‘Dad, I’m seventeen – don’t you trust me?’

      Maureen had always been the one who might be a rebel; now, it seemed, her time had arrived. She had grown from a tomboy into a pretty girl; no beauty, but attractive. Her dark hair was cut short and had a fringe; what Jan Pretorius, the old movie buff, called the Louise Brooks cut Her figure was hoydenish, she did not have the curves of her sister or her mother; but clothes hung on it well and she wore them with a certain style. She was sitting for her Higher School Certificate and, if all went well, next year she would be going to university to do Communications. She wanted to be a public relations consultant, as Lisa had been after her stint on the diplomatic circuit in London where she had been the High Commissioner’s private secretary; Malone could see Maureen being successful in the PR field, though, and he had never told his daughter this, he thought most public relations was bullshit. Maureen got on well with everyone; with everyone except himself, it seemed. The friction, which he didn’t understand and which hurt, had been gradual over the past three or four months.

      ‘Yes, I trust you.’ They were alone in the living room. Lisa and Claire were out in the kitchen and Tom was in his room doing