The Coterie | Next Chapter

Mar 9

Mar 9 The Coterie

Book excerpt

Prologue

Eddie Dickson knew intuitively he was about to die. From the moment his assailant stepped from the dark, shadowy recesses of the portico, suspended above the entrance to the South Australian Police Headquarters building, it was certain. The realisation that he was going to die sooner rather than later was not a conclusion he reached at that instant, but from the moment his normally ordered, structured life began to unravel just a few days earlier.

Strangely, as he waited for the inevitable, it was the compelling desire to see the faces of those sent to kill him, and not his imminent death or how he might avoid it, that occupied his thoughts. For the moment at least, the rain had eased to a light drizzle but still the road was awash with the remains of intermittent heavy showers. The dark, nondescript sedan skidded to a stop a couple of metres from where Dickson stood at the curb, sending a filthy, black wash of gutter water over the footpath, soaking his shoes and the cuffs of his trousers.

Suddenly, he felt himself propelled, forcefully, towards the car. He glimpsed only a shadowy outline of the driver, and even less of whoever it was behind him doing the propelling. This man was an anonymous force from behind. No image, no voice—just a sudden, violent shove in the middle of his back which sent him stumbling through the now open door and into the rear passenger compartment of the vehicle.

Pushed violently and uncomfortably to his elbows and knees on the floor of the back seat, the one thing Eddie Dickson did recognise was unmistakable: the cold, hard pressure of a gun barrel held firmly and steadily against the back of his head. One did not have to be a rocket scientist to know these people were not here to take him on a guided tour of the city. They were good, they were fast, and they were efficient.

Dickson knew he was dealing with professionals. He also knew what they had been sent here to do, and why.

Eddie Dickson might be many things, but defeatist was not one of them. Resistance, although desirable, would be futile in the circumstances in which he found himself. But, while he was still breathing, and as long as he maintained that most basic life-sustaining bodily function, there remained hope. Someone—he had long since forgotten who—once told him the secret to staying alive was to keep inhaling and exhaling. Simplistic in its logic, but well founded, he thought. At least until, and if, an opportunity to get free of his present predicament presented itself.

Eddie Dickson was not a young man anymore, but he was surprisingly fit and strong for a man of sixty-four. Unlike the majority of Australian men in his demographic, he preferred fitness to flabbiness, and he was not lacking in motivation when it came to regular exercise. As often as the prevailing weather conditions allowed, he rose early, often before dawn, and rode a pushbike. For two hours, he rode hard and fast around the many cycle paths that crisscrossed his home city. On days when the weather was not conducive to outdoor exercise, he followed a rigorous workout regime in a gym near to his home. Fitness was not so much an obsession as a desire to stay as healthy as possible, given his advancing years.

Dickson knew that in going one on one, he could handle himself with almost anyone, even someone many years younger than himself. These two characters, however, were very obviously not in the category of ‘easy-beats’. Still, he would love to try. He liked to think, given the opportunity, he was physically capable of doing considerable damage to his faceless captors before they finished what they came here to do.

Eddie Dickson had killed men before, albeit a long time ago. Some he had shot; others he had dispatched at close quarters with a knife. A couple he sent into the next life with his bare hands. Accordingly, the prospect of killing another human being, although unpleasant and not something he hoped he would ever have to do again, was not alien to him. Given his current situation, he knew that the opportunity to revive these long abandoned but not forgotten skills, was not about to present itself. At least not while he remained jammed awkwardly, face-down on the floor between the front and rear seats of the vehicle. All he wanted now was to see the face of the man sent to kill him. He was not overcome with feelings of anger or hatred, or even helplessness. This moment had been coming for some time; he just never knew exactly when. Now he did.

The car pulled away from the curb and the anonymous assailant jammed a heavy, sodden boot hard into the back of Eddie’s neck, forcing his face against the floor. A damp, musty odour flooded his nostrils. He hoped it wouldn’t happen in the car. He didn’t want to be found like that. If this is what it had come down to, he wanted his death to be, at the very least, dignified.

During the short journey, no one spoke. Any conversation would have been superfluous. These people knew where they were going and what was required of them. It seemed like they had been driving for only a few minutes when the vehicle slowed and came to a stop. He heard the rear door open, and a sudden gust of icy wind flooded the interior of the vehicle. As he was dragged unceremoniously backwards out of the car, he tried to turn and get a look at the man behind the wheel. He saw only a glimpse of a shadowy figure in a heavy coat with the collar pulled high and his face turned away, staring out at the darkness through the driver’s side window.

Eddie Dickson had never before had a gun pressed against the back of his head. But then, he didn’t need to see it to know what it was, or know it was the instrument by which he was about to meet his premature demise.

The prospect of dying had never been something Eddie feared to any great degree. It was more a case of the timing of his death that concerned him. He was not ready to die yet. In no doubt that it was about to happen, it was an immense sense of sadness rather than fear that accompanied him on the short walk to the centre of the park. There was more he wanted to do with his life. Places he wanted to go. People he wanted to see. Now, in his last moments of life, the realisation that he was never going to do any of those things filled him with almost overwhelming regret.

He peered into the cold darkness that engulfed the park ahead of him, hesitating for just a moment, briefly considering an attempt to turn on his attacker. If he was going to do it, it had to be now. Then, he felt a tug at his collar and he knew it was time. He began to turn and face the stranger tasked with the job of killing him. In the last few seconds that remained of his life, he wanted to face the man and tell him to go fuck himself and, if he got the opportunity, spit in his eye.

Then there was nothing. No sound, no pain, no awareness. Nothing. Just blackness. He never heard the footsteps as his killer walked briskly away towards the car that was waiting for him at the edge of the park. At that moment, as if by design, the heavens opened again and he never felt the cold rain as it fell on his back and soaked through his clothes. Eddie Dickson never did see the man who killed him.

Chapter One

The call came in the early hours of the morning, dragging Chapman Bouttell reluctantly into an unwelcome degree of alertness. Slowly, he surfaced from the shallow depths of what had been a fitful sleep. His mouth was dry and he needed the toilet. Fumbling blindly in the darkness for the telephone, something crashed noisily to the floor.

“Shit,” he mumbled sleepily.

Finally, after expending a couple more expletives he would never use in mixed company, he found the telephone, thankful to be able to stop the incessant ringing.

“Hello,” he groaned.

“Chap?” It was a female voice.

“Yeah.”

“Chap, this is Jenny Patten, from Communications. I’m sorry to disturb you, but I’m afraid I have to call you on duty.”

“Of course you do, Jenny. It’s the middle of the bloody night after all. That’s the only time anyone ever calls me,” he said, with undisguised sarcasm. “What time is it by the way? My bedside clock is on the floor somewhere.”

“It’s a few minutes after four o’clock,” she answered.

“That would be in the morning, right?”

The policewoman ignored the sarcastic jibe. “Why is your clock on the floor?”

“The display is too bright, it keeps me awake,” Bouttell lied. “What have you got?”

“It looks like homicide, Sarge. One of our patrols found the body of an adult male with what appears to be a single gunshot wound to the head.”

“Front of the head or back?”

“Back.”

“Then that wouldn’t just look like a homicide—it would be a homicide. It would not be a suicide, would it? Suicides don’t shoot themselves in the back of the head. None that I’ve ever seen, anyway. Where is it?”

“Heywood Park, on the southern end of Hyde Park Road. Do you know it?”

“Yeah, I know it.”

“We have officers there at the moment securing the scene. You have been assigned to take charge of the investigation.”

“Shit!” Bouttell spat. “It’s pissing down out there. Isn’t anyone working in Major Crime tonight?”

“There’s no Senior Investigator on duty. The Watch Commander nominated you.”

“And who would that be?”

“Sergeant Turner.”

“That would be right,” Bouttell scoffed. “That prick hates me, I’m sure of it.”

“Pardon?”

“Forget it, Jenny. Tell Turner I’m on my way.”

“Your partner has already been notified. He’s on his way to pick you up. He should be there shortly,” she advised.

“Okay, thank you.”

Bouttell reached for the bedside light, switched it on and dropped the receiver onto its cradle. He yawned, swung his bare legs over the side of the bed and slowly raised himself into a sitting position. He sat for a moment, silently cursing the arthritic twinge that burned deep in his hips and shoulders. He yawned again, ran his hands through his unruly hair and picked up the fallen clock.

“Shit!” he murmured. “Shit! Shit! Shit!”

Murder was bloody inconvenient. At least that was how Chapman Bouttell perceived it. The burden of being a Detective Sergeant, which in his case carried with it the responsibilities of Senior Investigator, did nothing to diminish this opinion. It wasn’t the first time he wondered why most murders seemed to happen at night. Statistically, the hours between six p.m. and six a.m. were those in which a person would most likely expect to die at the hand of his fellow man. By contrast, death as a result of an accident was somewhat more considerate, not so selective as to the hour of the day in which it occurred. Accidents had the courtesy to distribute their circumstances with some degree of impartiality with regard to day and night. Not so with murder, Bouttell mused. Murder was bloody inconvenient!

Nonetheless, murder and the investigation of it was his job, and had been since his transfer to the Major Crime Investigation Section, MCIS, ten years earlier. The utter senselessness associated with the killing of another human being, and the curiously bizarre novelty that murder scenes presented when he first came to his current position, had long since left him. Even after all his years in the job, he still found the whats and the whys of every homicide investigation fascinating. And, despite the unpleasantness of being roused from his bed in the middle of the night, it was his job. It was just that, to be summoned to duty at such an hour, on such an abysmally cold and wet night, was, he assumed not unreasonably, damned inconvenient.

* * *

It was July. In Adelaide in July, it was most definitely winter, and Chapman Bouttell found little comfort against the pre-dawn icy chill as he waited on his front porch for his partner to arrive. Hoping he would not have to wait long, he tugged at the collar of his heavy overcoat, pulling it high around his neck, trying to burrow deeper into it.

The street light in front of his house emitted a hazy, indistinct glow and cast an eerie shadow over the front yard and the unkempt garden within its borders. His lawn needed mowing; he would have to do something about that, he thought. Or, maybe he should just pay someone to do it. He looked up into the dark, starless sky. It had started to rain again, and a bone-chilling wind whipped the steady downpour into all too frequent gusts of numbing spray from which his small porch offered precious little protection. He pushed back further into the shadows of the porch and hunkered even deeper into his coat. Any warmth, even imagined, had to be better than none at all.

Bouttell had not had a cigarette for over three years, but, waiting here for his partner in the bitter, pre-dawn cold and dark, the desire returned. He found that odd because he had never really craved cigarettes once he had made the decision to quit. He comforted himself with the realisation that if he still smoked, he would have to take his hands out of his pockets to enjoy one.

Incongruous thoughts of a long-abandoned bad habit were interrupted by the arrival of an unmarked police sedan. As it slowed and stopped at the entrance to his driveway, he braced himself against the elements and stepped from his porch. “Time to go to work,” he muttered softly.

* * *

The car’s heating system was noisy, but at least it was working, albeit inefficiently. Tepid air from the engine compartment seeped from the vents in the dashboard and circulated weakly through the interior of the vehicle. There was a damp, musty smell to the air and, even though smoking in police vehicles had long been banned in the interests of the health and safety, the interior smelled of it.

Bouttell settled down in the passenger seat and welcomed what little warmth there was on offer, but not the familiar odour. He glanced across at his partner. At thirty-eight, Detective Senior Constable Anthony Francis was twenty-four years younger than Chapman and considerably junior to him in length of service. They’d been partners for almost a year, and there were those within the job who considered Francis worthy of admiration for achieving that particular milestone. A long time ago, someone, Bouttell had long forgotten who, had described him as being a morose individual. At the time, he remembered being unsure of whether or not he should feel offended. Mainly because he had never heard the word ‘morose’ and had absolutely no idea what it meant, other than a gut feeling that it probably wasn’t complimentary. By the time he had a chance to look it up and discover its meaning, it was too late to argue the point either for or against.

Chapman had seen many partners come and go, but none had remained with him for longer than a few months. Perhaps deservedly, perhaps not, he had earned a reputation of being often difficult to work with. It was not a reputation he enjoyed or encouraged. Rather, he lived with it in quiet tolerance. Needless to say, he was inwardly pleased to discover, a few months into their partnership, that Francis looked upon the relationship as a valuable learning experience.

Bouttell’s preference was to work alone, much to the chagrin of his superiors, but he reluctantly and silently accepted that these past months working alongside Francis had been mildly enjoyable. Indeed, that was about excited as Sergeant Chapman Bouttell was ever going to get about working with anyone.

The two were, however, like chalk and cheese in their respective attitudes with regard to ambition. Whereas Bouttell maintained a somewhat casual detachment directly relevant to his years of service, twenty-seven in total, Francis epitomised the very definition of a career police officer. Unlike his more senior partner, Francis decided early that his destiny, like that of his father before him, lay amid the ranks of commissioned officers and it was to this end that he channelled all of his energies. Marriage had never been something he seriously considered. It wasn’t that he didn’t believe marriage and subsequent parenthood to be satisfying and rewarding. He was sure it was. Indeed, he was himself a product of just such a marriage.

For him, it was simply a matter of priorities. His job took preference in his life and he had long ago fully committed himself to it. It would be wrong, he reasoned, to have a wife and kids waiting at home wanting, perhaps even demanding, more of him than he was prepared to give. Whenever he was reminded of the high marriage mortality rate amongst members of the police force, and that was far too often for his liking, he always came back to the conclusion that bachelorhood was not something to be taken lightly. A perfect example of that logic sat next to him in the car.

Bouttell’s marriage had gone the way of many others within the force. A once happy union had taken a slow, bitter and decaying spiral towards inevitable breakdown and ultimately, divorce. Francis decided early that there was no room in his life, at least in the foreseeable future, for external distractions such as marriage and the commitment it demanded.