Kooragang

Tamara Nguyen never meant to return to Newcastle. Not after the job on Kooragang went sideways. Not after her partner Jason vanished into the night with two murderous men chasing after him. And certainly not after her Vietnamese parents found out. They’d left Vietnam to escape crime. They’d sacrificed everything. Only to see their beloved daughter swim in those deep waters and take a white boy as her lover. So Tamara left, seeking gainful employment in Sydney. A receptionist. Answering phones with a sweet smile and a sweet, lightly accented voice. She told herself that the thrill, the rush that used to pulse through her veins was gone. Left behind. But the thing about thrills, the adrenaline – it leaves ghosts. They hover. They wait. They whisper. And sometimes, they call you back.

A sea breeze of iron, salt and diesel curled over the harbour as Tamara stepped off the night train at Newcastle station. The station lights flickered like they were ashamed to be working. Just past the platform lay Customs House, the usual throng of nightlife pouring through doors onto the street. Honeysuckle was beginning a great renovation, a mass of construction, an empty set of streets. But still the woolsheds clung to the edge of the harbour, one a charred and blackened mess, the old bones of the place. Tamara tugged her carry bag closer and scanned the dark. He won’t be here, Jason’s gone she reminded herself. The taxi smelled of booze, body odour, vomit and a sickly-sweet air freshener meant to hide the sins of the many. It didn’t work. But it was transportation. As the lights and sounds of late-night revelry passed by the window, she thought more on Jason. Everyone had agreed on it. He’d simply vanished after the Kooragang job exploded into blood and bullets. Tamara had been dragged from her hospital bed by the unusually enthusiastic cops. But they couldn’t prove anything, tossing her back out onto the street.

A couple of years hiding in the anonymity of Sydney has a funny way of changing your perspective. Debt has a funny way of changing your thinking too. And the knowledge of a stash of diamonds, safely tucked away, eats away at the memory of a promise to never return. Tamara hadn’t come back to find Jason, or even to find a decent ending of that chapter. It was simply gone, no conclusion. She’d come back to pay respects to her parents. And for the diamonds. In particular, three pink Argyle stones. Beautifully cut. Beautifully set into a necklace. The real reason they’d done the job. Tamara chuckled to herself. Disaster. And in the chaos of the shootout she’d hidden them behind a panel in an engineer’s hut.

Originally the plan had been to go back to the spot, a tin shack on the dunes near Stockton. Let the heat die down over a few days. Jason had family there, the kind of community that never welcomed outsiders. Many murder investigations were stonewalled once they led into Stockton. But a bullet saw Tamara to the hospital. Jason vanished. When she escaped the hospital, the cops, Tamara vanished too. But all the time, those pretty pink diamonds kept whispering. Every time a bill was late, the rent was past due. Whispering. If she could get them, she could get ahead, maybe drag herself up the ladder a little. Live a little.

The taxi left her in a half-lit Carrington carpark. Her boots crunching on gravel. Her eyes and ears on alert. A figure leant on the chain-link fence on the far side. Well-worn leather jacket. Work boots. Cap pulled low. Her heart spiked and she paused. Watching, waiting. Then the figure stepped forward into the light and she recognized him – Ryan Dent. A detective. The detective that had grilled her in that interview room.

“Nguyen? You’re long gone.” Ryan frowned at her.

“Visiting. Family” Tamara lied.

“Where? This is a long way from Sandgate”

She plastered on her fake receptionist smile “Good to see you too, copper” twisting the last word.

Ryan was far from a bad man. Just another detective that had pulled too many bodies from the Hunter River, preferring a pound of prevention over an ounce of blackmail and extortion. How he ended up in Newcastle was anyone’s guess. His last case, Benny, the carved-up dockworker was troubling him. Officially solved, put to bed. But then he got word a Tamara was back in town. A woman who always left trouble in her wake. Somehow tied into his case he felt. Ryan slid his gaze over her. Not predatory, but definitely not friendly either.

“Look, just stay out of trouble. This town has enough ghosts” he said.

Tamara didn’t disagree. She watched him walk back to his unmarked car, then stepped into the Seven Seas pub to get a room.

Kooragang Island on a weekend evening was a colourful, boisterous procession of hotted up cars and hotted up women. All manner of perversive entertainment was permitted. The unofficial party for the unscrupulous types, well away from regular people. A total contrast to the week nights when Kooragang was cold and quiet. Concrete silos. Rusted cranes and tracks. A voice would echo loudly. All corrugated iron sheds and razor-wire fences. A ghost waited there. Not a real ghost, Tamara didn’t believe in the supernatural like her parents. But that’s what the stevedores called him. A ghost. The man who collected knowledge, of things shouldn’t, or couldn’t possibly know. The man who saw things that nobody else did. The man who appeared when the tide was turning against you, holding out his seemingly supernatural hand. Sometimes it was fortunate. Sometimes unfortunate. But he always profited.

His real name was Luke Smith. Or at least that’s the only answer he’d ever given. Middle-aged, heavy around the shoulders and the midsection, always smelling of iron and diesel. Word was that he’d once been a union rep, before the Patrick Stevedoring riots and half the workforce got the sack. A story that might be true, probably wasn’t. At least, anyone who might have been able to verify it was pushing daisies now. Luke drifted in and out of the shadows. Twisting and worming people. Oozing money from them before disappearing back into the dark.

Luke was one of the few people who knew some of the truth about the Kooragang diamonds. One of the few people who hadn’t tried to kill Tamara for them. And he correctly surmised that her sudden reappearance on the docks meant that she was back for them. In her time away they’d become almost mythological, a ghost story in themselves. He was standing in the shadows of an old freight lift when she approached, his battered thermos steaming in the cold air.

“You came back” he said.

“I came for what’s mine. How did you know?” she asked.

Luke ignored her question. “You think Jason hasn’t already come here for them?”

The name cut her more than she expected. “He’s gone” she said sharply.

Luke paused, taking a swig from his thermos. “You better pray he is”.

He turned, walking towards the water’s edge. Tamara found herself following, needing to know – something. Anything. She didn’t know what.

“Look, after the dockworker business these last few weeks, things have been rather strange”

“Ryan’s case? The one he made the paper for?”

“Yeah. Benny Marshall. You didn’t know him?” he looked at her quizzical face “But he definitely knew you. Saw the handoff. The blood. The shootout.”

Tamara’s stomach tightened. This guy Benny had been there? And now just as she decides to come back, he gets killed? No wonder Ryan was following her. Who else could know?

Luke continued “A little while ago he told me about Jason killing a man, near the engineers hut a few months back.”

“A few months? Jason disappeared a couple of years ago”

Luke looked at her, steady and calm. “No, he didn’t. Benny wanted to go to the cops. He was a good boy that one. Before he could, he turned up dead. Stabbed. Carved up. Wrapped in a tarp. Dumped down near the Dry Dock”

“Jason wouldn’t” Tamara’s words caught in her throat.

Luke shook his head “Do you ever really know someone? He is from Stockton, right?”

She didn’t answer, looking at her feet, trying to make sense of it.

“You’d better hope you can get the diamonds. Buy your way out,” said Luke.

The engineer’s hut was a very forgettable structure. A squat, corrugated iron shack, barely big enough for a desk and a fridge, half swallowed by weeds. A part of the railway switching or maintenance or something, but had long been forgotten. To Tamara it was a handy spot out of the way. A place nobody would look. Her pulse pounded as she pushed on the door. It screeched open. Dust. Spiderwebs. The faint tang of long departed oils. She walked to the back wall, counting the panels – one, two, three – and knelt at the fourth. Her fingers pushed at the bottom edge. Worked at it. Then the panel shifted. Her breath caught in her throat. She reached inside.

Nothing.

Her heart hammered in her chest. Her breath dried up. She shoved her arm further. Searching, groping, scraping against the metal. But it was empty. No, no, no, they were here. They were right here! Her breath hoarse, panicked.

Luke crouched beside her “Jason got here first”

She stared at him, wide-eyed “You don’t know that”

“Who else could’ve found them?”

“Until a few seconds ago, only one person on the planet knew where they were”

Luke looked at her, thinking “Jason’s not dumb. He would’ve known you had to stash them. And this is a pretty likely spot, given the gunfight”

“An interesting story, so Jason survived the shootout after all. And he has the diamonds?” Tamara and Luke look to the door. Standing in the doorway was Ryan. He didn’t look triumphant. He looked pale. Eyes hard. His face beading with sweat. He locked eyes on Luke “I need both of you to come with me now.”

Luke stepped between Ryan and Tamara “what’s going on mate?”

“There’s been another body.” He whispered “Dry docks. Same as Benny. A message”

Tamara gasped. “Message?” asked Luke.

“It’s for her”.

The morgue smelled like bleach, copper and fear. Ryan shouldn’t have brought either of them in. Procedure forbade it. But Newcastle wasn’t exactly a shining light when it came to following procedure. On the table was a man. Early thirties. Wiry. Covered in deep, deliberate knife marks. Not random slashes. Purposeful. Symbolic. Repeated patterns carved into the skin. Luke swore under his breath.

Ryan spoke “Same patterns as Benny. Only this time he left this” Ryan handed Tamara a clear evidence bag. In it was a scrap of material. On it, scrawled in blood, was the message: BEFORE YOU RUN RETURN WHATS HIS

A cold shudder rippled through Tamara’s spine, her mind leaping to conclusions. Drawing links and connections, despite the more rational part of her mind pleading with her to take a moment. “It’s not Jason” she said quietly.

“Strange that’s your first thought. Why not Jason? Only a few minutes ago he was missing, presumed dead. Now he’s back and you’re pushing him out of the frame for this?” said Ryan, staring hard at Tamara.

“No, no, Jason was many things. A killer even. But this ritual stuff? He’d never do this” she murmured, trying to convince herself.

Luke folded his arms “So someone else is hunting the diamonds.”

Ryan, still looking at Tamara, said “or hunting you”.

The room tilted. Tamara gasped for breath. There were only a handful of people who knew anything about the diamonds. The people at the shootout. The two men in the room with her, Jason and apparently Benny. Jason unaccounted for, come back from the dead. And Benny, who was still ritualistically carved in a drawer in the morgue, waiting to be buried. That only left the two men Tamara had seen chasing Jason on the night of the shootout. Perhaps one was Benny. She was still turning over the list of suspects in her mind when Ryan spoke.

“Tamara, tell me where the stones are”

“They’re gone”.

He froze “Gone?”

Luke spoke before she could “Jason must’ve taken them”.

“Then we need to find him before whoever did this finds you,” said Ryan.

Tamara backed away from the table “No, I’ll find him first”.

That night, Tamara slipped under the fence at the Dry Dock. Where Benny was found. Where that other man was found. At least I know he comes here. Luke was reluctant, to put it mildly. Coming up with all manner of reasons, but Tamara was determined. Their boots crunched the gravel as they walked. Puddles reflecting the sodium lamps, the dry dock yawning open into blackness. The air was cold. Too cold. Then they saw him. A figure dragging something at the far end of the dry dock.

“Jason” Tamara breathed. The figure turned around as they approached. It wasn’t Jason. Someone else entirely. Tall and bulky, wearing a coat smeared with mud and oil. His face glowed strangely in the orange light. He looked at Tamara, dropping the thing he was dragging. A tarp. It hit the ground with a sickening, wet thud. Tamaras chest seized. No, it can’t be! Ryan rolled out of the tarp. His body carved, slick with blood. But alive. Somehow. Before she could move to hear his words, the stranger lunged. Luke shoved Tamara aside. The impact was brutal. The stranger slammed Luke into the railing. Over and over again. Tamara grabbed a rusted pipe and swung with all her might, connecting with the stranger’s shoulder. He roared, stumbling and fleeing into the shadows. Tamara dropped the pipe and crouched by Ryan.

“Nguyen?” said Ryan

“Don’t talk. Luke, call an ambulance”.

“No,” Ryan wheezed, “he said, he said he stole something. From him”

Ryan’s eyes fought to stay open, but his strength left him. Tamara froze. The diamonds. This wasn’t about her. Or them. This was about Jason. Something he’d done, something after disappearing that night at the shootout. She looked at Luke, who was nursing his wounds.

“He’ll go after Jason,” she said.

“If he hasn’t already” Luke replied.

They made it to Jason’s hideout just before dawn. The tin shack in the dune city. Tamara and Jason had holed up there many times waiting for the heat to die down. It always reeked of stale sweat and old cigarettes, even with the cooling ocean breeze. Jason was there. Alive. Barely. He slumped against the far wall, bloody bandages wrapped around him, a revolver hanging limply from his hand.

“Tamara. I knew you’d come” he said quietly.

“You took them,” her tone more accusatory than she wanted.

He laughed, a harsh, broken sound that made him cough blood “They were already gone sweetheart. Someone else figured out where you hid them.”

Luke stepped forward “Who?”

Jason looked up, “Colin, I think. Benny’s mate”

“The longshoreman? The one who went missing?” said Luke

“Yeah, he didn’t skip town. He knew everything. Figured out your hiding spot. Then he started killing anyone involved. I guess he’s cleaning house.”

Tamara sank into a chair “so those symbols?”

“Colin’s a Maori, like Benny. He twisted those symbols into something else. Called it justice. For the afterlife”

A sound creaked outside, all three froze. Slow, deliberate footsteps approaching the entrance. Jason pushed himself to his feet, pushing his pistol into Tamara’s hand “You always had the steadier hands, my love”

The metal was hot in her hand. The door slammed open. Colin stepped in, massive, filthy. His eyes wild. His presence filling the room. He held a bag knife. A long, sharply hooked knife. For a moment nothing happened. Then the fight exploded. Luke charged first, a wild swing with the rusty pipe. Colin caught it and threw him backwards. Tamara fired, barely missing Colin. He lunged for her, but Jason tackled him, both men crashing to the floor. The knife hooked and slashed, Jason screamed, blood spraying.

“Tamara! Run!”

But Tamara didn’t run. She kicked the knife out of Colin’s hand. He backhanded her, she crashed into the wall. Luke swung again, the pipe landing sharply on Colin’s skull. He roared, unintelligibly. And Tamara aimed, and fired. Twice.

Colin slumped to the floor. Tamara dropped the pistol, holding Jason in her arms. “I never needed the diamonds. All I ever wanted – was you” he said

Tamara’s heart raced, her throat tightened. She kissed his forehead. He exhaled. And didn’t inhale again.

Two days later the police investigation was wrapped up. The usual mix of disbelief, paperwork, quiet warnings for silence with Colin the handy patsy. Luke refused hospital care and vanished into the night. Ryan was buried with full honours. Colin was cremated without ceremony. Jason was buried in a pauper’s grave at Sandgate. Newcastle moved on as it always did. Ghosts swept back under the rug. Tamara walked alone down Kooragang to the engineer’s hut. The thrill hadn’t left. Hadn’t even faded. It burned hotter now. She opened the panel. Still empty. No diamonds. No clues.

Jason’s last words replayed in her mind. I never needed the diamonds. Which meant someone else had them. Someone comfortable in the shadows. Someone who always knew about all the skeletons in the closet. Her eyes narrowed. Luke. He knew everything. He’d disappeared while she was in hospital, never answered a single question from the police. A slow, vicious smile crept over her face. The thrill was back. Stronger. Burning brightly. And with nothing left to lose, she made a choice.

“Alright Luke, let’s dance”.

She zipped up her jacket and stepped out into the Newcastle night. Ready to chase the diamonds, the danger and the rush that had once destroyed everything she held dear. Because Tamara Nguyen wasn’t running anymore. She was hunting.