Nobody's Fault, Derek Haines [mobi reader txt] 📗

in his life he was having trouble keeping his erection. He did not know the meaning of the word humiliated, let alone heard of it, but that was the word for the way he felt. As his erection gave up, he stood back from the screaming bitch and was about to find his jeans. Her ranting stopped instantly. As he fumbled to get his jeans on, she stood up from the bed and slapped him across the face with stinging force. Just in case he didn’t notice the first time, she did it again with equal ferocity as the first. He ignored the blows. Steven had few scruples, but to hit a woman was below even his standards of behaviour. In this case he may as well have. It would not have made things worse. Without saying a word, he slipped his sweater on over his head. As he did so, she kneed him in the groin. He crumpled to the floor in agony.
‘Get out! Get out! Get out!’ she screamed, as Steve made his way to the front door. The agony of the blow to his balls still welling up in his stomach. He managed to make it down the driveway to the street as he heard the front door slam shut. He fell to his knees and bent over and waited for the pain to subside. With the remnants of the blow still in his gut, Steve walked slowly, no idea of where he was, but worked on the assumption that he would find a major road to give him an idea of where he was. After walking for a little over half an hour, he found Stirling Highway. As he had spent nearly all his money that evening on his drugs, cover charge into the Pink Cockatoo and a few beers, he didn’t have anywhere near enough to pay for a taxi. He didn’t know what time it was, but thought he would be lucky if the buses were still running. They weren’t. It was 1.15a.m. He missed the last bus by fifteen minutes. The last thing he felt like doing was walking half way across the city tonight. In a service station, he noticed a church clothing bin. He would spend the night there. He knew his luck was out when he found it was already occupied!
He decided that as he wanted to catch a bus, and it was a warm night, he may as well sleep on the seat at the bus stop. The first bus at 5.20a.m. woke him up as it roared by. He waited for the next one. It arrived an hour later.
He arrived at his mate’s place where he had been staying on and off for a few weeks. He went to bed. Had he known who he had fucked the night before, or known that he was seen and easily recognised by his contact leaving the Pink Cockatoo with her, he might have made a wise choice to continue travelling east instead of going to bed. As he slept, two men where dispatched to find Steve. The two men were employed by the owner of the Pink Cockatoo who just happened to be the husband of the woman who kneed Steve in the balls the night before. He was Steve’s contact’s boss. He, amongst other things, was one of the major drug dealers and organised crime bosses in Perth.
Steve had been in the wrong place at the wrong time. The wrong place was the Pink Cockatoo and the wrong time was just after the aforementioned drug dealer had had a bitter argument with his wife. She had been told he was having an affair with one of the waitresses and had confronted him with the fact.
The dealer had arrived home the previous evening only minutes after Steve had left. Had Steve looked over his shoulder then, he would have seen the second Mercedes pull in the driveway. The dealer found his wife crying in the bedroom. She was naked, and the bed was dishevelled. He didn’t need a degree in rocket science to work out what had happened.
At around 3.00p.m. that afternoon, Steve slept soundly. Had he not been asleep, he would have heard the commotion as two men entered the house. Ignoring the protests of Steve’s mate at them being uninvited guests, they marched through the house until they located Steve. Steve did not normally wake in a hurry. He liked to ease into his days. He liked to doze for an hour or so before starting a new day. Today he was going to miss his doze. Today he was woken by a large fist slamming into his temple. Before he knew what the hell was going on, he was upright, being held up under his armpits and behind his neck in a full nelson hold, while two fists pounded into his stomach. As his ability to breath stopped, his ability to vomit took over. When he fell limply to the floor, a large shiny black shoe made contact with his nose, spreading it liberally across his face. Another large shiny black shoe launched into his stomach with even more force. His ability to vomit now lost, he shat himself instead. If any other blows were landed Steve did not know about them. He was unconscious before he had finished shitting himself.
Steve woke up in hospital. He was to discover later that he had been in a coma for seventeen days. He was told by the doctors and nursing staff that he was lucky to be alive. He was moved from intensive care a little more than two weeks after he had regained consciousness. He was moved to a single ward bed, and told that he would be allowed visitors in a day or so. Had he known who his first visitors would be, he would not have smiled so sweetly at the nurse who informed him.
‘Good afternoon Steve.’ said a hulking police detective and then introduced himself and his partner. Steve didn’t catch the names, but he did hear detective sergeant, and detective constable. ‘We have a few questions we would like to ask you Steve.’
‘Do I have any choice? replied Steve. The detectives didn’t answer his question. They started with their own questions. Steve had a feeling that this was going to be about the bashing, so he prepared himself to tell them he could remember nothing. He feared the police, but he was shit scared of people who handed out bashings like the one he received.
He was thrown off guard when the questions had nothing to do with the bashing. They started with questions about two girls he had had sexual intercourse with. And did he know that they were fourteen years old. His head was reeling, and continued to reel as the questions changed after some time to questions about robberies, drug dealing and car theft. Steve was mumbling. His answers were making no sense. It seemed that he hadn’t recovered enough from the beating to be back to his sharp lying self. At the end of three hours of questioning, Steven Peter Sharp was placed under arrest. The next day, the two policemen returned and formally charged Steven with two counts of indecent sexual assault of a minor, seven counts of robbery, one count of fraud, two counts of theft of a motor vehicle and one count of possession of heroin. Steve did not need anyone to tell him he was in very, very deep shit.
It was of little consequence to Steven at that time, as his head was reeling with the events of the recent weeks, but later he would wonder how all the information was gathered to lead to his arrest. He would discover that his beating wasn’t the end of one man’s retribution. Two men with the shiny black shoes had visited his sister and his mates during his coma, and extracted in less than gentle fashion, information about him from them. He didn’t know, and would never know that the detective sergeant who arrested and charged him was on the payroll of the owner of the Pink Cockatoo.
His first court appearance was made in his hospital bed. He was not granted bail, and was remanded in custody. He was moved to Fremantle Hospital where there was a secure ward. Steven could clearly see Fremantle Prison through the bars on his ward window. When he was discharged from hospital he was moved to the remand section of Fremantle Prison. The high limestone walls of this prison were a fearsome sight. From the inside they were twice as fearsome. He recovered from his beating with only a very crooked nose to remind him of its brutality. He was in remand for a period of nearly eighteen months due to the length of the court proceedings he faced. The final result was a nine year sentence. He was eligible for parole in 1991. The depression he felt at first was replaced with acceptance. There was little he could do about it. But he did do one thing. Within three months of being moved from the remand section to start his official sentence, Steven enrolled to take courses to be able to sit for high school exams. Within three years he had passed all his subjects. He then enrolled to do his tertiary entrance exams. He passed with exceptionally high marks in 1990. At twenty three years old, Steven had ideas about going to university to study business.
Steven’s behaviour and application to his studies during his sentence earned him his parole at its earliest opportunity. The parole board considered his application for only a short time before granting it. It was an easy decision. Upon release, he made enquires with his parole officer about the possibility of him moving from Perth to be able to get a fresh start to life. Arrangements were made for him. He was given the details of his new parole officer in his chosen new home town. He arrived in Sydney in early 1991, and reported to his parole officer within two days of his arrival.

VII
Guilt

David ran away to Sydney in 1985 with his young and attractive girlfriend. He had gained a transfer with his new employer to their Sydney branch that gave his most recent urge to run a degree of decorum and reason. It was dressed in the guise of a promotion. His girlfriend wasn’t entirely pleased about cutting short her working holiday, as she was enjoying Perth, after what had been a less than happy teenage life in Sydney. David knew little or nothing of this part of his girlfriend's life. David ignored her seemingly luke warm response by assuring himself that she would be happy to be close to her family. Justifying the continual urge to run was becoming easier for David.
It was a wet Sydney that greeted its newest inhabitants. One new, one returned. It rained on one hundred and seventy six days out of the first six months after their arrival. In his terms of transfer, David’s employer had offered to assist in relocating. This covered the cost of furniture removals, airfares, car transport and related moving costs. What it didn’t offer was assistance in finding somewhere to live. In 1985 there was a rental shortage. The vacancy rate for rental properties was minus point five per cent. This meant having to find a flat or apartment that was going to be vacated within a month and be lucky enough to win the agents favour and obtain a lease. It was not unusual to be greeted at the door of a run down, filthy flat by a unsmiling property manager from the local real estate company, who was normally a woman and an utter bitch to go with it, asking at the front door, ‘And how much