For the Coven

  The past is never dead. It’s not even past.

  William Faulkner

  1.

  Early September in Sydney, but summer was muscling in. This Sunday morning was hot and windy, and the man with the clerical collar kept a hand on his Panama hat.

  He stood alone on a dirt path, watching a group of workmen dig holes with spades. Although the site was cluttered with every sort of earthmoving machine, what these men were doing had to be done the old-fashioned way.

  Their labour represented the final stage of preparing for the new airport. Everything else was ready: land levelling complete, powerlines repositioned, environmental impacts sorted, heritage sites preserved. Only one delicate job left: extracting dead people from a disused cemetery and relocating them in their new home at Luddenham.

  Consultation about these graves had gone on for a year. Management, freaked by environmental protests, trod carefully. They gained written approval from all the descendants they could find and then at the last moment had to fend off a medium who claimed that even if the bodies were moved, their spirits would remain and would attack aircraft flying above. Now, finally, the way was clear. They cordoned off the area, crossed their fingers and got on with the job.

  They’d scheduled work on the weekend because the dead should be lifted quietly, without the roar of equipment and hi-vis vests and yelling from team to team. Most of the graves had been evacuated yesterday, Saturday, and now the diggers were collecting the final half-dozen coffins.

  They tackled the job grave by grave, two men to a grave. They were all locals. The contractor was Iraqi, but the Anglican Church was in charge and had insisted so he’d pulled together a gaggle of hard and mordant white guys from who knows where. All had signed declarations to say they’d completed the Certificate III in Funeral Operations. The Church might not have believed this because they’d sent a representative in a Panama hat to see the dead exhumed with respect.

  The earth was softened by August rain and they emptied the first two graves without incident. Holes were dug and squared, webbing manoeuvred under coffins, the coffins lifted carefully to the surface and carried to a waiting transfer van. The third grave was different. They were a little short of a metre down when one of the diggers, a red-headed nugget in a wife-beater, gave an animal grunt.

  His companion, stringy, with a mullet and a tattoo sleeve, looked across.

  ‘Something,’ the nugget said. He used the blade of his spade to scrape away soil. Then he recoiled. ‘Fuck me dead,’ he said calmly, and crossed himself. He’d exposed a small patch of dirt-encrusted orange stuff and, angled on top of it, a skeleton hand.

  Both men scrambled to the surface and stood looking into the open grave. The church official, hand still on hat, strolled over. He – the three of them – gawked. Then the official remembered himself and pulled out his phone.

  An hour later, a couple of local cops arrived. They squatted, elbows on knees, considering. One of them, a woman, pulled herself upright and away and drew her partner back with her. Behind her hand, she whispered, ‘Don’t laugh, but I think that’s Belle Fitzgerald.’

  2.

  In 1987, a year before her murder, Belle Fitzgerald sat with Narelle Docherty on the front step of Narelle’s terrace, chatting and smoking in the sun. Narelle was telling Belle about the Battle for Victoria Street. Belle had heard the story before. She hadn’t told Narelle why she wanted to hear it again, but Narelle was more than happy to oblige. She’d lived through it, after all.

  ‘That bastard Theeman thought he’d like to knock all our houses down and build high-rise towers, toffs only. It was the view, and how close we were to the city.’ She waved a hand towards the harbour, as if Belle couldn’t see for herself.

  ‘Didn’t care what happened to us,’ Narelle went on, ‘the renters and the little people.’ She spat on the pavement to show what she thought of that. ‘He bought up some houses over there –’ she pointed down the road as if they were in Victoria Street right now ‘– and reckoned he could just kick us out and buy the rest. Had everyone in his pocket, pollies as well. He paid thugs to threaten us, to smash our houses and beat the shit out of the ones who wouldn’t go. The cops came too, but Theeman got them for free.’

  Narelle took a drag of her cigarette, carefully pinched the tip between thumb and forefinger and stowed the remains in a skirt pocket. ‘We showed him, but.’

  ‘Have the pack,’ said Belle, handing it over.

  ‘Ta, love. As I was saying, we showed the nasty buggers. You know what? They even kidnapped one poor sod and locked him in a motel for a week. Would you credit it?’ She gave a sodden chuckle, ran out of air. Wheezed in more, coughed. ‘In the end, the unions came to the party. Slapped green bans on the place and Theeman went away, tail between his legs.’ She placed a hand on Belle’s knee. ‘Gotta go, love. Pension day.’ She tried to struggle to her feet, but fell back. Belle rose and helped her up. Narelle grinned, patted Belle’s arm, and shuffled back into her house.

  Belle walked next door to number 250, her own terrace. She leaned her back against the brick wall and lifted her face to the autumn sun. She was thinking of Narelle’s story and at the same time of the picture she made standing there, what someone passing would see when they looked at her. She adjusted her pose, bent one leg and rested the sole of her foot against the wall. She had good legs, she knew that. She hoped someone would see her because she liked being looked at. Why shouldn’t she? She was young and beautiful and she knew it. She despised those women who pretended they didn’t know how attractive they were just so they could force other people to tell them.

  She finished her cigarette, stubbed it out on the wall and thought again about Victoria Street. She walked along it daily, but yesterday she’d made a point of examining each building carefully. Fifteen years after the famous campaign and the street looked sad. The residents stopped the developer, sure, but afterwards nobody had money to fix the damage left behind, and some of the houses were still boarded up, broken roofs and kicked-in doors allowed to rot. Others languished behind chicken-wire fences, also a legacy of the Battle, as the locals called it.

  Her own street, Catherine Street, a couple of streets away, had fared better. Most of the houses had been converted into low-rent flats, but their Victorian bones remained. It wouldn’t take much to restore them and Belle was surprised the area hadn’t been marked for gentrification sooner, because Catherine Street was even better positioned than Victoria Street. It overlooked both harbour and city and was a ten-minute walk from Hyde Park.

  Belle fell in love with Catherine Street, and the neighbour­hood, the first time she saw it. The closest thing, she felt, to Montmartre in Sydney. Run-down, sure, but beautiful and romantic and alive. Most of all, she knew that wanting to live here would drive her father mad. She was right, and at first he refused.

  ‘You said! You promised you’d buy me a place.’ She could hear the petulance in her voice.

  ‘I did. But the Cross is a slum. The whole area, full of strip clubs and prostitutes and drug addicts and the scum of the earth.’

  Which was precisely the attraction. Belle hungered for it. The Cross – Kings Cross – was as far away from home as she could get, far from leafy Turramurra and the private all-girls school and the tasteful homes and tennis courts of her childhood.

  She pleaded. ‘Just have a look. There’s something for sale.’

  Belle watched as her father, Huntley Adair, stood in his suit, arms folded, and surveyed Catherine Street speculatively. She knew he’d give her what she wanted in the end. He’d never been able to refuse her. They’d had a rocky past, but he’d always come around. He accused her of being headstrong. Just like him, she retorted. He’d coughed up plenty of money to get rid of the boy she’d married in England, although she thought Huntley would disown her when she insisted on keeping her married name. But no matter how much her father complained, he’d promised, and they were alike in that both kept their promises.

  In the end he hadn’t argued as much as she’d expected. He’d agreed to buy the draughty, poky terrace for her, and she’d been installed for two years now. She was part of the neighbourhood. She knew everyone and they knew her, the black-haired girl from Catherine Street.

  Belle saw it was late. She gathered papers and books from her dining table and shoved them into the black leather shoulder bag that never left her side. She locked the front door and headed off to East Sydney Tech, where she’d scored a part-time teaching job. The Dip. Ed. forced on her by her parents had come in useful after all.

  She walked up Catherine Street and turned into William, past a couple of working girls looking the worse for wear. They waved and she waved back but her thoughts were still far away, with Narelle and the battle the residents of Victoria Street had had with the developers. Because she knew something Narelle did not. She knew they were up for the same war again. And this time, unless Belle could do something about it, the bad guys would win.

  ***

  East Sydney Tech was shoehorned into what had once been Darlinghurst Gaol. Not the first jail in the colony, but certainly the most imposing. In it, the city forefathers had achieved more than just a jail. They’d achieved the idea of a jail, a building that spoke of power and Old Testament retribution. Its high sandstone walls and tremendous fortressed entrance enclosed six cell blocks radiating from a central panopticon like spokes fro
m a wheel. The effect was so successful that although it hadn’t been used as a jail for decades its spirit lingered, hovering over the students who milled inside it and the people in the streets outside, including the male prostitutes lining its eastern wall, just behind the Darlinghurst Courthouse.

  Belle found it romantic. She thrilled to the old morgue with its carved skull and crossbones, trembled under the spot where the gallows had been. Some nights she looked up and imagined she saw people hanging there, twitching from ropes, hooded, hands trussed.

  It didn’t matter that the staffroom was overcrowded, that pigeons sometimes got in or that there was one phone for twenty teachers. It was exciting to be here. This was the heart of the city and she was young and alive and doing something that mattered.

  She taught English literature to adults returning to finish high school. Her students’ ages ranged from very young to very old, and each of them had a story. Nobody ordinary came from Darlinghurst: they’d migrated here. A few of them were refugees from the wealthy Eastern Suburbs but most were survivors, hanging on by their fingernails. All of them had lived lives unimaginable in the WASP world of Belle’s childhood.

  Her fellow teachers, too, were interesting. She shared her corner of the staffroom with three others: Nigel, the closeted art teacher; David, the stick-thin history teacher who did his best to emulate his hero, David Bowie; and Margie Solon, who, like Belle, taught English and who’d taken Belle under her wing.

  Margie was a scattergun activist. She embraced every cause that presented itself, as long as that cause leaned left. She was older than Belle, a dumpy, dishevelled woman in droopy skirts with sparse dyed-black hair and deep charcoal shadows under her eyes. She was becoming something of a friend and it was from her that Belle sought advice about the Catherine Street development.

  A couple of days before, Belle had steered Margie outside and explained over cigarettes that she’d heard a developer, Oliver Richter, had plans for Catherine Street. He wanted to turn it into a five-star precinct and that, of course, meant the hardscrabble renters who lived in its historic houses would be forced to pick up sticks and go somewhere else.

  ‘It’s Victoria Street all over again,’ said Margie, galvanised. ‘What we need to do is form an action group. And we need to protest. You sure about this, though? It’s really on the books? Don’t want to piss our energy away for nothing.’

  Belle assured her the rumour was true. She was grateful Margie didn’t ask how she knew about it. Margie assumed Belle wanted to stop the development to protect the residents and Belle did, she really did. But she also felt responsible for what was going to happen. If she hadn’t asked her father to buy her a terrace she wouldn’t have brought him to Catherine Street and he wouldn’t have seen its potential. He wouldn’t have discussed it with his friend Oliver Richter, and Richter wouldn’t have come up with his vision. This, he declared, would be no crude demolition job. It would combine renovation and replacement. The resulting precinct would be discreet, tasteful. It would respect the street’s heritage. In fact, according to Belle’s father, Richter claimed the project was in essence restoration, not development. Yes, it would be luxurious. That was the point, after all. And yes, the current renters would have to go. Where? Not his problem.

  Belle kept these details from Margie. If she disclosed her source, she’d be forced to explain her father. Luckily she’d kept her married name, Fitzgerald, because anyone hearing her maiden name would make the connection. Old money and a famous family, the Adairs. Once people knew that, her credibility would be shot. They’d accuse her of slumming, mocking them by being there at all. So she kept shtum about her origins, and in answer to Margie’s question said she’d try to get hold of the plans themselves.

  They discussed strategy. First things first: they agreed Belle would find out all the details she could and Margie would talk to her contacts. And then they’d form an action group and gather troops to fight the Battle for Catherine Street.

  ***

  Belle was in class, answering a question about Othello and Desdemona, when someone knocked at the door. Vague shapes outside, three of them. She finished the point she was making and went to see who they were. Jeanette Davidson from office admin, with two men. Jeanette must have needed to show them the way because the college was a warren.

  One of the men, fat with watery eyes, stepped forward. Despite his lack of uniform, it was obvious he was a policeman. It was in the set of his face, his wide-legged stance, the cigarette smell of him. He didn’t move to shake hands. ‘Inspector Penney,’ he said, then, cocking a thumb at the other man, ‘Sergeant Rose.’

  Sergeant Rose stood slightly behind and to the left of Inspector Penney, as if in his wake. He was younger, tall and blue-eyed, with creases bracketing his mouth and thick brown hair swept across his forehead. He had an air of watchfulness. He inclined his head in greeting, as if to make up for Penney’s rudeness.

  Jeanette Davidson said nervously, ‘I’ll leave you to it,’ and scuttled towards the iron staircase.

  Penney watched her go. He turned back to Belle. ‘You’ve got a student, Nelson Guthrie?’

  Belle’s class had been following the exchange. Although they were silent, she felt them stiffen. Cops were the enemy in Darlo. Would Belle betray them?

  What should she say? Yes, Nelson was one of her students. Around twenty, he was pale, slight, often tired-looking. It had taken Belle time to memorise his name because in the beginning he’d been self-effacing, sitting in the back row and watching rather than participating in class discussion. His first couple of assignments were lacklustre, but then he’d pulled himself together and presented an essay on Ted Hughes that blew her away. She called him back after class to tell him how much she’d enjoyed it and could see his pleasure and excitement. After that he came alive. He made a couple of friends in the group and his work improved. If he kept going like this, Belle told him, he’d have no problem getting into uni.

  She said, ‘Yes. Nelson’s in this class.’ Disapproval, like a force, emanated from the students behind her, but Belle knew Penney could find this out from the records, in fact must have already got it from Jeanette in order for her to bring him up here. She added, ‘But he hasn’t been here since last Friday. See for yourself.’ She crossed to her table where her roll book lay open. Penney and Rose joined her and she traced Nelson’s non-attendance, in crosses against his name, along the days. It was Wednesday now and he hadn’t been in since the previous week.

  Sergeant Rose followed Nelson’s attendance back through the term. ‘He didn’t miss a class before that,’ he said. ‘You aren’t worried?’

  Belle shrugged, shook her head. ‘This isn’t school,’ she said. ‘Students here are over age. They’re free to come and go as they like.’

  Penney and Rose seemed at a loss. Then Penney grunted, said, ‘You let us know if you see him, okay? Kings Cross Station, not Darlo. That’s closed for good. Goes for you, too.’ He gestured at the students.

  He left. The tall cop, Rose, stayed where he was for a beat. His eyes met Belle’s and suddenly she was certain, without knowing how or why, that he would be important in her life.

  3.

  Acting Inspector Jackie Rose wasn’t far away from the gravediggers, just a couple of suburbs over. But while they were finding bones, she was facing a dilemma.

  She’d started her day in the dark, driving. Talkback radio was playing when she set out, but the problems of the sad and sleepless got on her nerves and she switched it off. She preferred driving in silence in any case. It gave her time to think, a short, sweet sanctuary from the mad world outside. Now she put her foot on the accelerator and enjoyed the sense of sweeping along an almost deserted M4. The beauty of a Sunday. On a weekday, even this early, traffic would already be picking up.

  Jackie was a homicide detective, but for once she wasn’t heading to a death. She was on her way to State Crime Command at Parramatta, to make up numbers in the new mega strike force, Strike Force Hawk. Hawk was composed of Strike Force Raptor plus ring-ins from other areas, including Counter Terrorism and Special Tactics and Homicide. It had been formed to crack a seemingly unending drug war. Two families fighting over turf, using bikies to do their business. The result was a spate of drive-by executions which had gone on far too long. Ten dead this year alone, one an innocent bystander. The cops had tried persuasion, then pressure, making sure the families and their associates knew they were being watched. It wasn’t working.