THEY’RE A RAFFISH KIND of New Age rogue down at the spruced up Raffles. Not like the down at heel honest scoundrels and spendthrift sharks of yesteryear when the legendary pub was in the hands of the equally legendary Abe Saffron, off-shoot of Sydney society and purveyor of all manner of services to a discerning public. The old bar ran about half a mile along the Canning River waterfront with the most excellent of views as drinkers quaffed their choice of poison and wagered serious hard earned on Rocket Racer in the fifth at Rothwells Perth Cup. Behind the well chosen barmaids was a mural of an epic car journey across the Nullabor Plains in the days before the hardtop made it easy. A portrait of the owner, Mr Saffron, took pride of place in the artistic telling of the arduous trek across the continent when he first took over the stewardship of the Raffles from Jimmy West, gentleman Hotelier.
There was a plethora of entertainment at the Old Raffs and for many years it was the home of up and coming bands such as Dave Hole, The Jets, V-Capri, and The Frames which drew huge weekend crowds, their thumping bass rhythms intruding into the refined dignity of the yacht club just aways down river. In the bar and lounge deals were made, real estate shonkies liquored up potential clients, criminals hid out in public whilst off duty cops imbibed an ale or three with private dicks and others. Looking up river there was a convenient car park where differences of opinion were settled in a manly kind of way, no kicks to the head, none of this kung-fu stuff, just a good decent blue between mates, usually. Most importantly of all the Old Pub was the garaging place for Charlie 88 when the Old Tart was not actively engaged in combat of some kind. The front bar was the meeting place of the Perth based night shift detectives and those based in Fremantle town. The car park was much like a Sunday morning market. Contraband between the two towns was exchanged between the various vehicles of commerce in a barter system. Senior men after a Saturday at the races would be picked up by a Perth Charlie driver and conveyed to the Raffles. Other transport, including Charlie 88, was readily available to take them further afield.
Nowadays the Raffs has had radical cosmetic surgery and is elegantly unwrinkled and no longer height challenged, with a tower owned by Multiplex soaring some 17 floors into the clear skies above the five level terraces containing the revitalised pub. There are numerous notable residents including, somewhere up there next to Buddha, the irrepressible Kevin Reynolds, leader of the building union, and famous car dealer Brian Gardner. Saffron had a prime spot in Penthouse Row until his demise of old age a couple of years ago. The Raffles refurbishment was a masterpiece conceived and materialised by Ian Love, the silver haired energetic restaurateur of Cocos’ fame who has a penthouse there, keeping a weather eye on the bars and the refined first floor restaurant to which I was now headed. I was not disloyal to the gastronomic pleasures of Cocos, but merely expanding my culinary horizons. It was a balmy spring day with the sun glittering off the river as I entered the restaurant where I had arranged to meet with the scrivener, Senseye, who had given me sage counsel on some literary aspects of my burgeoning career as an author.
“Haha,” he haha’ed, “The sensational bon vivant,” he greeted me.
“A bon what?” I queried suspiciously, for he has been caught out several times trying to slip completely fictitious words into my work.
“Bon vivant?” He queried right back as the maitre d’ guided us to a window with water views across to the lesser palaces of the lower level miscreants of the Fifth Estate.
“Why Terence, that would be a cheerful bloke enjoying the good life at the dining tables of the better establishments around the twin rivers of this fair city,” he informed me with a touch of hubris. Warming to his theme he continued: “I heard that Maumill fellow on the wireless the other day actually telling his listeners that your sequel was a terrific read. He said you gave everybody a bit of stick regardless of their station. Must have boosted sales as the Fifth Estaters rushed out to see if they had made it to the next volume.”
As we settled down for a fine repast from the gifted hands of The Chef, I began to outline to Senseye my desire to raise the stakes to the heady heights of Parliament. I want McGinty to finally learn that ‘JUST US’ is actually spelt, Justice, as well as to understand what ‘Separation of Powers’ really means. Alas however, I fear it is too late for him after all of the cover ups in the many areas of his dual portfolios and especially for Hamburger Bob. These cover-ups covered many decades including the Gerrittsen A to G bombings, through the Micklebergs perjurous evidence and the Alinta Gas Dealings not even mentioning as to why Hamburger received such an armchair ride into a Ministry in the first place and which will never be beaten for audacity. As McGinty can never admit to all this, or do as the Coppers do and rebadge, he will appoint a loyal successor to continue the smokescreens and mirror tricks until the many and continuous transgressions are forgotten by the Public and the whistleblowers are dealt with behind the scenes by the ongoing members of the Fifth Estate. A charge here and there, possibly with a firebombing or two to discredit the truth. Those allegations are too old now, why don’t we all just move on? Well done Jim. The secret handshake, pick up a couple of million on the way out. The Fifth salutes you. Hamburger Bob salutes you. A to G salutes you.
“Geez, mate, shouldn’t you give that a bit of a rest? That Hamburger Bob bloke must be twitching in his tights with your exposures. Why not stick to funny stuff like Tatiana and that ex-copper that loved crying at stranger’s funerals and couldn’t stay awake on the job? Stories like that!” I was searching my thoughts for a somewhat scathing reply as I watched the quillster tasting a rather fine Riesling, or what I presumed was a decent quaffing wine from the way in which he was gargling it, for I was sampling a rather exquisite green tea with a soupcon of jasmine.
“It is an attitude like that,” I scathed, that makes you ‘below decks’ material. You’ll never get topsides unless you grasp the stinging nettle.”
“I’ve heard of grasping the hitching post but what’s this ‘stinging nettle’? Sounds like it hurts?”
“Precisely so, my cursive companion,” I said with a twitching curl at the side of the lip. “You have to take the tough calls. We’ll never nail the Wallies with an attitude like you just displayed.”
Senseye paled like a white man. “We,” he whispered hoarsely, grasping for his merlot with a wild eyed desperation. “What do yer mean, ‘we?’” he gasped with exclamation marks.
“I am indeed offering you a unique chance to rejoin me at the kill, the coup de grace against the graceless, the end of the beginning of the end of the hoons and dishonest denizens of the Fifth Estate and their carrion crawlers, the Fat Wallet Mob.”
As I made a little house with my fingers pressed together, elbows on the crispy clean linen of the restaurant, I stared across at Senseye. He’d changed colour like a chameleon. He stopped breathing. Perhaps he needed a bit of sun on his back to get him mobile again. I waited for him to return from the cave in the mountain. Nothing. I reached over and filled his glass with the blackcurrant riches of the merlot. Again, nothing. Hmmm. I unhoused my fingers and ran my right hand into my shirt pocket, freeing up a few pieces of the old folding matter. Waved a small wad of bills under his breathless nose. There followed a bone rattling shudder as he drew air.
“How much?” he managed to utter. Knowing his propensities for the grape, I replied, “A bit at a time.”
Bingo, I had his editorial abilities available yet again to assist in smoothing and soothing the pages of this present volume. I proceeded to elaborate, sipping my tea at frequent intervals for it was a thirsty telling.
We would, of course, include three or four chapters on Charlie 88 starting with an extraordinary gunfight in the streets with a shootout to the death. On a lighter note there was a highlight moment in the car park at the Raffs.
However, this book continues the general theme of life in the booming economy of the State of Excitement. The wheel of the Fifth Estate turns unmolested by the traps and beaks at law. Remember, every part of a Circle is bent. And just as America has its Mafia, Russia has its Mafya, China its Tong and Japan its Yakuza, so then does Perth have its Fat Wallet Mob. Yes, the feared and fearsome Wallies, scourge of offices of St Georges Terrace. Despite being outed in my first two tomes, The Fifth Estate and its sequel, If the Hat Fits, Wear It, the Wallies continue their path of economic piracy undaunted and untouched. Therefore we have devoted a couple more chapters about their wanton wickedness.
Of course, no book of mine would ever be complete without a yarn or two about Colin ‘Circles’ Pace, who has moved in and out and around and about like the circles of his mind to protect his offshore banking haven riches. Some of his cabalistic colleagues have garnered themselves fortunes upwards of $100 million. Some less successful carrion eaters work around the $50 million mark. Ah, what a town for enjoying boom times!
But I pause a moment for a reflection.
My main reason for this book is to explain how the old police guard uses crooked individuals to practice terror techniques against their targets. They use financial fear, physical and emotional terror, bankruptcy, business ruination, family disruption to demean the father while denying proper police assistance and the protection of law. I personally have been fire bombed with no effective inquiry, had my car burned to scrap metal with no inquiry, been grabbed on false charges only to have them withdrawn like the infamous allegation of having forged $100 notes. The arresting cops sounded Irish and had never seen a new note of such calibre and thought it must be a forgery. They must never have worked the Drug Squad. There, of course, were no apologies when the charge was dropped. My associate inquiry agent, Nigel Burch, now a senior member of the Tasmanian Attorney General’s staff, was literally kidnapped and held by mining boom crooks, but no inquiry ensued.
Perjury!
That is what is at the core of the system, unadulterated, unconscionable and unscrupulous lying on oath in all our courts and commissions. The list of high profile matters is lengthening by the day. In criminal law there is the serial police verballing in the jailing of Beamish, Button, Mallard and Mickelberg just for starters. Wholesale pork pies. And not one bent copper yet brought to heel. However, there are high hopes that the Corruption and Crime Commission might get it right this time and recommend a few senior coppers, prosecutors and lawyers be rapped on the knuckles and sent to bed without a warm milk. We introduce “The Mallard”, best explained as “The Accidental Verbal”.
In the civil jurisdiction on a daily basis lies form the basis of law, and that’s just the submissions from lawyers. Two Assistant Commissioners of Police and one Eastern state Judge are currently accused of perjury, in some form or another. One senior lawyer in WA is currently named as the prime suspect in a case of wilful murder. One ex-drug squad officer, rebadged as a PI, has just been sentenced for selling a copy of the drug squad’s daily raid list. This is to mention just a few of the miscreants who are still members of the legal fraternity. Still we are told that the force has changed. What for? The worse?
It is a shambles. Lying on oath is supposed to be the most dastardly of all threats to the effective functioning of the legal system but in the words of that famous old white bearded man in the big red suit, “Ho ho ho.”
I have listened in court regarding matters of my own as my enemies proffer up to the beak a tissue of complete lies, inconsistent with the factual evidence, only to have them accepted for the convenience of the court. I have talked with many litigants in the civil processes and almost to a person they relate losing actions because the opposite side had lied on oath inevitably at the coaching and collusion of bent lawyers.
“Bent lawyers,” I hear the Senseye rousing from his fine wine and fillet steak, very rare. “That would be either redundant or a tautology, Terry.”
I wonder what on earth he is rattling on about.
“Bent lawyer – you don’t have to use ‘bent’ because that’s excess verbiage, a tautology, means the same thing, redundant, don’t you see?”
Perhaps I should think of Senseye as redundant. I eyeballed the scribbler until he re-focused and appeared to give the impression of concentrating on my serious demeanour. I decided it was time for my first edict. I replied, “This time I will dumb it down a bit.”
Senseye was visibly shocked. “But Terry, you said the lowlifes and scumbags understood it all.”
“Yes, but this time it’s aimed at politicians, journos and lawyers!”