Davo's Little Something Read online

  ‘Shit! What happened here?’ said Detective Blackburn, flashing his torch over the ghastly crumpled figures on the road.

  ‘Dunno,’ replied the young paramedic working on Wayne. ‘Looks like there’s been some sort of a fight. They’re both in a bad way. This one . . .’ The paramedic shook his head. ‘I dunno. I don’t seem to be getting a pulse at all.’

  ‘It’s no good us rooting around here, Phil,’ said his partner. ‘We’d better get them straight down to St Vincents.’

  ‘Yeah you’re right. You want to give us a hand to get ’em in the ambulance?’ said the first paramedic, looking up at Detective Blackburn.

  ‘Yeah sure.’ He had another quick look before he turned off his torch and jammed it in the waist-band of his trousers. ‘Jesus, whoever did it wasn’t muckin’ around. They’re a mess alright.’ Detective Middleton nodded his head grimly in agreement.

  As quickly as they could the two paramedics got the stretchers out of the ambulance and the four of them bundled Wayne and Davo in; they were a bit rough but they knew the two of them weren’t feeling anything. The cab driver offered to help but they waved him away. The paramedic named Phil closed the doors on his partner, who had stayed in the back to immediately start applying oxygen and IV drips, then ran round and got behind the wheel.

  ‘We’re going to St Vincent’s,’ he called out from the driver’s window.

  Detective Middleton waved in acknowledgement. ‘We’ll have a look around here and be straight down.’

  The paramedic hit the siren and the ambulance screamed straight out into the Thursday night traffic.

  As the noise from the siren faded off up the road Detective Middleton turned to the cabbie.

  ‘Are you the driver who radioed the police?’ The cabbie nodded in agreement. ‘Could you tell us what happened?’

  The cab driver made a futile gesture with his hands. ‘There’s not that much I can tell you.’

  The still visibly shaken taxi driver related what he had seen to Detective Middleton who took down notes while Detective Blackburn flashed his torch across the scene of the assault; he picked up the blood splashed across the door of Wayne’s car.

  ‘Is this the vehicle he was lying next to?’

  The driver nodded his head. Detective Middleton took a note of the registration number while Detective Blackburn flashed his torch inside.

  ‘I’d better radio the base, Greg.’ Detective Middleton nodded his head as Detective Blackburn walked briskly back to the Ford Falcon.

  ‘Hello VKG. This is 1-21.’

  ‘Go ahead 1-21,’ was the crackling reply.

  ‘We’re at that Barker Street call. There’s been a serious assault. Possibly a homicide. Look for six, possibly eight youths. Skinheads. Early twenties. Wearing denim jackets, jeans, boots. They’ll more than likely have blood all over them. Last seen heading in the direction of Central Railway.’

  ‘We copy 1-21. Do you require assistance?’

  ‘No. We’re here getting a statement from the cab driver then we’re going straight to St Vincent’s. Over and out.’

  ‘Over and out.’

  The dark-haired detective hung up the receiver and returned to his partner. ‘Anything doing?’

  Detective Middleton shook his head and flashed his own torch over Wayne’s car. ‘I’d say at a rough guess—this is their car and they sprung whoever did it trying to steal it. And got a hiding for their trouble.’ He paused for a moment as he shone his torch around the immaculate interior of Wayne’s car. ‘Though it appears to be more than just an ordinary bashing. The paramedic said that dark-haired bloke’s almost dead.’

  ‘Do you think they were poofs?’

  Detective Middleton shrugged his shoulders as he continued looking into Wayne’s Alfa Romeo. ‘Dunno. But if they were, that’ll be about twenty for the week.’

  ‘They’re game bastards aren’t they?’

  They took a note of the cabbie’s name and address, thanked him for what little help he could give them then let him go. They stayed at the scene a few moments longer, looking at the other cars, flashing their torches up and down the cold, dark lane, then went back to their car.

  ‘At least I don’t feel like eating now,’ said Detective Middleton.

  Detective Blackburn picked up a piece of newspaper and wiped some dark red, almost inky, blood off one of his shoes before he climbed into the Falcon. ‘No. Me neither,’ he said, as he tossed the piece of paper away.

  Seconds after the ambulance screamed up the lane alongside the Casualty Ward at St Vincent’s Hospital, the thick soft perspex doors burst open as the two paramedics quickly wheeled Davo and Wayne inside. Having radioed the seriousness of the situation ahead a team of doctors and nurses was waiting when they arrived.

  ‘This one’s the worst,’ said the paramedic with Wayne.

  The triage sister—Sister Kenyon—ran around from behind the back desk as the director, Dr Newell, and the residents and nurses carrying fistfuls of tubes and IV plumbing, descended on the two stretchers.

  Dr Newell flashed a small pocket torch in Wayne’s eyes; there was no reaction at all to the light. ‘Cardiac massage—and hurry,’ he snapped, noticing the mass of blood that had dried in Wayne’s ears.

  They were hurriedly wheeled into separate resuscitation cubicles and placed on beds, one nurse applied IV cannulas, another helped pump the blood, while others removed their bloodsoaked clothes and cleaned their faces and bodies.

  After a few minutes one of the residents working on Davo walked into the cubicle where Dr Newell and the nurses were still working frantically on Wayne. ‘The other one’s going to be alright,’ he said, as he brushed back the curtain. ‘He’s taken an awful beating and he’s still unconscious but he’s breathing alright. I’ll notify the neurosurgeon and we’ll whip him straight up for a CAT scan.’ He took a look at Wayne’s pallid face. ‘How’s this fellow?’

  Dr Newell looked up at the cardiac monitor and the blood pressure machine alongside. He didn’t say anything but just shook his head grimly as he continued pounding away at Wayne’s chest.

  About ten minutes later the two detectives arrived. After identifying themselves to Sister Kenyon she handed them the boys’ belongings in two separate plastic bags.

  ‘That was the dark-haired guy’s car,’ said Detective Middleton, checking the registration papers against the number in his notebook. ‘Wayne Howard St Peters. Bondi.’

  ‘The other guy lives in Bondi too. Robert Richard Davis.’

  By going through the two wallets they soon established who Wayne and Davo were and where they worked and lived.

  ‘They’d been to that Santana concert too,’ said Detective Middleton, showing Detective Blackburn the stubs of the two tickets still in Wayne’s wallet.

  ‘Bloody lot of good it done them,’ was his partner’s blunt reply.

  In twenty minutes it was all over. Dr Newell walked grimfaced from the resuscitation cubicle as Sister Kenyon drew the curtains. ‘I’ll notify the priest, doctor,’ she said. Newell, his face a mask of abject disappointment, nodded his head as he watched them wheel Davo off to Intensive Care. He walked over to the detectives; with a quick handshake they introduced themselves to each other.

  ‘The dark-haired one—St Peters—he didn’t make it?’ asked Detective Middleton.

  ‘I think he was dead when they put him in the ambulance,’ replied the tired doctor, rubbing his eyes with his fingers. ‘He’d taken a dreadful beating but it was a severe extra-dural haemorrhage of the posterior fossa that killed him.’ The two detectives looked blankly at the head doctor. Dr Newell ran his hand across the top of his head. ‘Besides the obvious kicks and punches he’d taken one hell of a blow with something across the top of his skull. This ruptured the arteries and caused bleeding into the skull—which compresses the brain and . . .’ Dr Newell made an open-handed gesture as he slowly shook his head. ‘Anyway, the autopsy will reveal exactly what happened.’

  ‘What about the
other one?’ asked Detective Middleton.

  ‘He’ll be alright I think. He’s terribly beaten of course. A lot of lacerations, fractured fingers and ribs. But there doesn’t seem to be an excessive amount of damage behind his ears. The CAT scan will show any contusions to the brain or cerebral irritation.’ The despondent doctor watched the two detectives absently picking at Wayne and Davo’s possessions for a moment. ‘You two feel like a cup of coffee?’ he asked.

  ‘I’d love one,’ said Detective Blackburn.

  ‘Yeah, me too,’ added Detective Middleton.

  ‘Come on. I’ll shout.’ The two detectives followed Dr Newell to a small room behind the resuscitation cubicles where a shiny, stainless steel urn was steaming softly next to a tiny spotlessly clean sink. From somewhere under the sink he produced three chipped mugs and a large jar of Nescafe; by the time the coffee was made they were all on a first-name basis.

  ‘Jesus, I’m getting sick of these pointless assaults, Greg,’ said Dr Newell, as he slumped back into a cheap vinyl chair and placed his elbows on the armrests. ‘Every bloody night it’s the same. The only thing that varies is the ferocity.’ He shook his head sadly as he reflected looking down into his coffee. ‘That poor bastard in there. How old would he be? Twenty-five? Twenty-eight?’

  ‘You should see it from our side, Bernie,’ said Detective Middleton, with a scornful laugh. ‘We catch the bludgers, put them inside and some bleeding heart social worker has them out in less than a year. And they’re straight back into it again.’

  Dr Newell shook his head in disgust. ‘And with this AIDS thing, every shitpot little thug in Sydney thinks he’s got a licence to go out and bash any poor bugger walking down the street who doesn’t look like John Wayne.’

  ‘Do you think those two were gay?’ asked Detective Blackburn.

  The doctor shrugged his shoulders tiredly. ‘I don’t know. It doesn’t make that much difference to the gangs. Just that gays are easier marks, that’s all. I do know that once they only used to roll them and take their money and watches—now they’re not happy unless they kick them half to death. Or . . .’ Dr Newell shifted his gaze out to the cubicle where Wayne lay.

  An orderly with a clipboard in his hand pushed his way through the curtain separating them from the cubicles and handed it to Dr Newell. ‘Excuse me, doctor,’ he said. ‘Would you mind signing this so I can take him down to the morgue.’ Dr Newell scribbled his signature disconsolately across the piece of paper and handed it back without saying anything.

  ‘Evidently he was a hairdresser,’ said Detective Blackburn.

  ‘A bloody hairdresser eh,’ Dr Newell snorted. ‘I’ll bet he’d have put up a real hard fight.’

  ‘Here’s another thing,’ said Detective Middleton. ‘We caught a bunch belting a bloke one night. Arrested them, took them back to the station. The ringleader got a bit stroppy so Ray gave him a quick smack in the mouth—and he started crying. Threatened to have us up for police brutality.’ The tall detective gave a derisive laugh.

  ‘Yeah, they’re game bastards alright,’ said Detective Blackburn. ‘Till it starts coming their way, then it’s a different story altogether.’

  They finished their coffee then drifted back outside. The two detectives stayed a little while longer, taking down a few more notes, finally they got Wayne and David’s wallets off the triage sister, said goodbye to Dr Newell and walked out to their car.

  ‘Do you think we should go and notify the next of kin?’ said Detective Blackburn, as they climbed inside.

  Detective Middleton shook his head. ‘We’d better go back to the station and type this up first, and see if there’s anything else there for us. Then we’ll see how we’re going for time.’ He started the engine. ‘The uniform boys can do that first thing in the morning anyway.’

  ‘Fair enough.’

  They moved off into the traffic and drove slowly to the station.

  As they walked into the detectives’ room at Central they bumped into a couple of hardnoses from the drug squad who were just finishing typing up a report. The two enquired what had happened at Barker Street as they’d heard the memo flash over the radio. Greg and Ray told them briefly what had happened.

  ‘So. Another couple of poofs bit the dust eh,’ said the biggest of the two drug squad detectives. He was a solid six-footer with a scraggly black beard and an earring in his ear. He added a derisive laugh.

  ‘I don’t know for sure if they were gay,’ replied Detective Blackburn. ‘One of them may have been. Jesus, you wouldn’t say that if you saw the mess they made of these two poor blokes.’

  ‘Ah serves half of ’em right,’ chimed in the bearded detective’s partner. ‘They all want to run around pantsing each other and any one that’s normal is a friggin’ square. They’re kidding.’

  ‘Yeah, but you can’t just go around killing people for it,’ said Detective Middleton.

  ‘The skins are only saving them from getting AIDS,’ said the bearded detective. ‘They’re doin’ them a favour.’

  ‘I don’t know about that,’ said Detective Blackburn.

  The bearded detective stopped in the doorway and grinned. ‘If you ask me,’ he said. ‘Poofs are nothing but a pain in the arse.’

  ‘Yeah—literally,’ grinned his partner.

  Detective Blackburn was going to say something but shook his head as he and Greg settled down behind their typewriters. It was almost two am when they finished the paperwork.

  David had taken a sedative not long after Wayne left for the Santana concert so he slept soundly through the night and didn’t know whether Wayne had come home or not. The two young uniformed officers had been knocking almost five minutes before he answered the door. David was still a little groggy when he opened it and stood there blinking for a moment without his glasses. As soon as he focused on the blue uniforms and the grim looks on their faces he was immediately filled with dread. When they left about fifteen minutes later he was sitting on the edge of his bed looking at Wayne’s bloodflecked wallet; tears streaming down his face, almost numb with grief. And the police would be coming back in an hour to take him to the morgue to identify the body.

  At the supermarket butcher shop, roughly two kilometres away, Len Thompson was bent over a block full of freshly cut lamb loin chops looking humourlessly from his watch to the telephone on the wall.

  ‘That’s unusual for Davo not to ring up if he’s going to be late for work,’ he said to Dutchy. ‘He generally rings even if he’s running a few minutes late.’ The head packer nodded her head in agreement and shrugged her shoulders.

  ‘Some of Wayne’s poof mates might’ve got him and bunned him,’ suggested Kathy.

  ‘Yeah. They’re all probably still in bed together now,’ laughed Eddie. ‘Can’t say I blame them though,’ he added. ‘It’s colder than a well digger’s arse outside.’

  About fifteen minutes later they were still discussing Davo’s non appearance and Len was going to ring him as soon as he had finished what he was doing when Mr Brinsden the store manager appeared in the doorway: looking just as pompous but noticeably more serious than usual. There also seemed to be another look on his face which the crew in the butcher shop couldn’t quite make out.

  ‘Mr Thompson,’ he said quietly from the doorway. ‘Could I have a word with you out here for a moment?’

  ‘Yeah, sure, Murray.’ Len gave his hands a quick wipe on his apron and followed the supermarket manager out to the cabinets.

  The others, their curiosity aroused by Mr Brinsden’s strange manner, continued working but watched avidly through the window. In a few minutes Len returned. As he walked back into the butchery he had that same look on his face that Brinsden had had: the one the others couldn’t at first work out. It was sorrow, mixed with angry disbelief. As if the words were burning in his throat Len slowly told the others what had happened. There was a stunned silence for a few moments then ironically the first one to burst into tears was the unsinkable Kathy Ferguson.


  Elizabeth, the head girl at Vermillions, arrived at the salon to find Wayne not there and the other girls waiting patiently out the front. She opened the salon with her own set of keys, but an hour or so later she was starting to get a little bit concerned about Wayne’s lateness and no phone call. She was just about to ring him when the same two sincere young police constables appeared in the doorway. Fifteen minutes later she apologised to the two customers as she locked the salon up again. There was no way the four girls could even attempt to cut and style hair with their eyes all puffed up: tears and make-up streaming down their faces. The brief note she attached to the door when they left read simply ‘Closed due to unforeseen circumstances’.

  So, within less than an hour, three separate cells of unsuspecting people, due to the mindless ferocity of a bunch of hooligans, were experiencing the same emotions. Shock, deep sorrow and angry disbelief.

  Another person inexorably drawn into this web of tragedy but in a more sober rational way was Dr Joseph Connely of Bondi. Dr Connely had been Wayne and Davo’s GP for years and, although not exactly a close friend, had acquired over those years an excellent rapport with the two men. He understood Wayne’s position and was aware of the circumstances surrounding the breakup of Davo’s marriage.

  Oddly enough, of all the people Dr Connely might have resembled, it was Dr Charles Winchester of the TV series M*A*S*H—noticeably balding on top, with the same full face and corpulent figure of an epicurean bon vivant. But whereas Winchester gave the appearance of being pompous and at times snide, Joseph Connely was witty, caring and warm as an open fireplace in a country home.

  Dr Connely replaced the receiver and stared absently at the phone in his surgery, shaking his head in disbelief for a few moments before buzzing his attractive Italian wife Gina in the waiting room. She came in and stood in front of his desk puzzled at the strange look on his face. After he explained to her what had happened she put both hands over her mouth and stared at him in equal disbelief.