Blood Is a Stranger (7 page)

‘Maybe my network will help out with airfares and things. I would have to speak with . . .”

‘I only want a break from this tomorrow,' Cardinal said, ‘It's Harry's cremation.'

Rhonda took Cardinal for a meal in Chinatown and insisted that he join her for one drink at a nightclub in Kings Cross. He agreed after much cajoling to stay for an hour. They were joined by several friends of Rhonda and soon there was a convivial table of ten. The occasion looked like developing into a late night. After about an hour and a half, Cardinal stood up to leave.

‘You'll excuse me?' he said. ‘Busy day tomorrow.'

A silence fell over the group. Rhonda walked him out into the street.

‘I'll find a cab,' he said, shaking hands, ‘You go back in and enjoy yourself. You've earned it.'

There were no taxis in sight so he began to walk. A prostitute startled him by stepping out of the shadows in his path. Cardinal shook his head. She persisted and began to follow him. Cardinal swung around in time to see her turn and run. A late model Holden car cruised his way. Cardinal saw a rifle being angled out of a window. He dashed for an alley. He reached the end of the alley and tried gates leading to terrace houses. They were locked. He slapped a hand on an intercom and fell against a doorway. The Holden blocked the alley entrance. A figure had climbed from the vehicle. A shot echoed down the alley. The gunman was moving his way. Cardinal bashed the intercom. No one answered. A light went on in the upstairs of a house between him and the gunman. A window went up. The gunman hesitated, fired down the alley once more, and then retreated to the Holden. It
was already moving away when the gunman jumped into the back seat.

A high-powered rifle cracked and several docile buffalo threw up their heads in alarm as one of them was hit below the right eye. The five hundred kilogram beast buckled at the knees and fell dead. Magpie Geese took flight, and other buffalo lumbered off in different directions, their massive heads and wide horns bobbing as they built speed to a charge. Despite the sun's blinding wash of gold in the first hour of dawn, O'Laughlin managed to pick up the hunters in an open-top jeep as it sped from its ambush position in a paperbark grove.

O'Laughlin and two of his men watched from a car as Richardson stood like a charioted Roman conqueror, one hand on the roll bar and the other pointing at his victim. He was, in a way, Northern Australia's Caesar. His reign began two decades earlier when he discovered what was then the world's biggest uranium deposit. Richardson had flown over the Bididgee areas in the Arnhem Land Aboriginal reserve when he was caught in an electrical storm that forced him down. When he landed, a geiger counter in the cabin of his light plane sounded like a machine gun. He had stumbled on a rich uranium ore-body close to the surface.

Within twenty-four hours he had staked several claims. A few years later they were earning him millions in mining royalties. Buoyed by this, Richardson tried to develop more grandiose schemes, but the federal government would not back them. He wanted to use nuclear charges to blast his mines. The goverment said no. He wanted to build a railway from Darwin to Alice Springs for commercial and military reasons. Again he was rejected. Richardson fought to lift restrictions on his uranium exports. Whatever his motives, Richardson preferred to do deals with business people and governments outside
Australia, some of whom tended to think like he did. He wielded power with a pragmatic brutality. O'Laughlin, as the Territory's chief legal man, above all knew the problems of dealing with a man who considered himself beyond the law.

O'Laughlin asked his driver to pull up a few metres from the jeep, and he approached Richardson who had been forewarned of his visit.

‘What can we do for you, Chief?' Richardson asked, as he climbed down from his perch.

‘The Bididgee people came to see me,' O'Laughlin began. ‘They claim that you have been on sacred land at Brockman.'

‘Any specific charges?' Richardson asked.

‘You were seen on Brockman two mornings ago.'

‘I did happen to be in the area,' Richardson acknowledged, ‘but I was nowhere near Brockman.'

‘What about your guest – someone from that Indonesian trade delegation? Did he go on Brockman or the Green Ant Boulders?'

‘There was no Indonesian with me.'

‘You did have the Indonesian trade minister at your property that day.'

‘There were about forty people in the entourage. He stayed at my home apart from a quick flight over the property. I used the chopper in the morning and my plane for him in the afternoon.'

Richardson looked over at his men about twenty paces away as they hacked and sliced into the buffalo. Strip after strip of thick steaks destined for human consumption from Tehran to Hamburg were piled in a metal box.

‘Chief,' Richardson said, lowering his voice so that the conversation could not be heard by his or O'Laughlin's men, ‘I'm very disappointed in you. Get your facts right. You can't start wrongly accusing a member of the Indonesian cabinet of desecrating Aboriginal sacred land. It could precipitate a crisis, especially with that crazy
General Utun as its president. He has so many problems at home, he would just love to have an incident to focus on abroad. You know, a little scuffle on the frontier with Papua New Guinea or Malaysia, or with us . . .'

‘I don't need a lecture from you on international affairs,' O'Laughlin said. ‘The Aborigines have what sounds to me like pretty legitimate grievances.'

‘They're all full of shit!' Richardson bellowed. His men stopped work. ‘The whole fuckin' lot of them have had one corroboree too many!'

‘You've been seen on Brockman,' O'Laughlin said, pointing an accusing finger. ‘You destroyed an Aborigine's telescope. Many tribespeople have seen your people on the sacred sites at night. It's my job to investigate their accusations.'

O'Laughlin was concerned to maintain his authority without going too far. To be seen to crumble in front of Richardson's men would be to invite anarchy in Darwin.

Richardson's temper dissolved as quickly as it had come. He smiled and put a hand on O'Laughlin's shoulder.

‘Tell old Jimmy Goyong we'll pay for his telescope,' he said in a conciliatory tone, ‘and if any of the boys have strayed onto the sacred areas, I'll see it doesn't happen again. With the big drill coming, there has been a bit of excitement around the place.'

O'Laughlin glanced at the team of moustached butchers who had resumed their work.

‘I wanted to talk about the drill,' he said. ‘The Bididgee fear you are bringing it to start a mine under Brockman. If they find evidence that this is so, then there is no way I can have my men escort it onto the reserve.'

‘No one is going to take the word of a demented old booze artist.' For the benefit of his bruisers he said loudly, ‘Everyone knows Jimmy's a booze artist.' This elicited the obligatory guffaws.

‘I haven't made myself clear,' O'Laughlin said. ‘I won't let you take that drill onto the reserve if evidence is
found. Is that clear enough?'

Richardson's expression contorted into a mock frown. ‘How can there be any evidence, Chief? No one, especially a black, is allowed on the sacred sites. Who's going to collect non-existent evidence?'

His men had finished their handiwork and were cleaning knives.

‘You know the trouble that can brew if the Aborigines believe you've been on those sites,' O'Laughlin said. ‘Just keep your bozos off! I will not allow confrontation on my watch in this territory! Understand?!'

Richardson nodded almost imperceptibly. O'Laughlin held his gaze for a moment and then grunted a farewell. As he strode back to the police car, dingos and wild pigs were gathering not forty metres away ready to devour the buffalo's remains. O'Laughlin told his men to get in. Just before he slipped into the driver's seat, he glanced up at the sky. Black birds of prey were circling.

A thunderstorm crashed over Sydney bringing torrential rain and hail from a black, frenetic sky. Cardinal stood at the window and watched as the Harbour, which hours earlier had been tranquil enough for the myriad sails, was turned into a whirlpool that halted all shipping except for irrepressible tugs.

Cardinal wanted to get the cremation over with and leave Sydney. He had no doubts now that someone planned to kill him.

He looked at his watch for the umpteenth time and reached for a tie. It was time to go to the crematorium. He dreaded it.

The taxi took forty-five minutes to make the trip. The wall of rain, driven by a north wind, swept towards the city and made it difficult to see cars more than twenty metres ahead. Even the police were halted for five minutes. The rain turned to hail and drummed car roofs. They
reached the tiny crematorium at McMahon's Point just north west of the Bridge with a few minutes to spare. Cardinal waited in the taxi and watched elderly mourners leaving the little chapel.

Everyone has a right to die but not at twenty-five, he thought as he paid the fare and hurried to a concrete area next to the chapel where wreaths were laid. There was a big wreath from Rhonda. The large flower arrangement from him was also there. Cardinal had to bend down in the bucketing rain to read the card inscription he had found so tough to compose: ‘Always treasured, forever in my heart. All my love, Dad.'

It brought tears to his eyes when he wrote it and again as he read it. Another wreath caught his attention. It was from the American Embassy. Nothing from Kim Lim. He had tried to contact her again and had sent her a telegram with the funeral details. He read the inscriptions on four other wreaths but recognised no other names.

He entered the chapel dripping wet and was surprised to see ten people already seated. Cardinal was greeted by an ageing minister with a white mane who chatted aimlessly with him and showed him a recorder with the US national anthem in it. It was the best he could do to fulfil Harry's wish that it should be played.

The service began. Cardinal didn't really hear, and would never remember, the minister's ramblings, which were interspersed with his chronic coughing.

The mercilessly short service ended with the scratchy rendition of the anthem. It boomed out from the recorder held aloft by the minister.

Cardinal felt very much alone as he left the chapel. Other mourners chatted briefly and then moved off. Someone touched his arm. It was Rhonda.

‘I didn't expect you,' Cardinal said.

‘I was due to fly out this morning,' Rhonda said, ‘but the storm was so bad they cancelled all flights.'

‘Who were they?' Cardinal asked, as he pointed to a
group of mourners getting into two cars.

‘They were from Lucas Heights,' Rhonda said. ‘I tried to talk to them, but they were not going to tell me anything.'

Cardinal watched forlornly. Rhonda scribbled down car number plates as the vehicles were held up by a funeral line coming in the front gates. ‘I should have tried to speak with them,' Cardinal said.