Sharko

By Ben Borland

Gangsters and sharks and the hunt for a serial killer in Depression-era Sydney. This fast-moving thriller combines love, lust and murder in the heat of an Australian summer. Take some ruthless gangsters, a fiendish murderer and an onslaught of man-eating sharks and you have a breathless page-turner that will make you think twice before booking that holiday Down Under.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ben Borland
• Release date: Jul 11, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476181783

Ben Borland

My name is Ben Borland. I'm a newspaper journalist living in Glasgow, Scotland, although I'm originally from south of the border in Lancashire.I'm married to Fiona and we have two fantastic children, Katie and James.

Book preview

Sharko

By Ben Borland

Copyright Ben Borland 2012

Published at Smashwords

Prologue

It began with a whisper in the darkness.

Put down the shotgun, said the hushed, rasping voice. Do it real slow.

Gunn cursed under his breath, halfway up the stairs. The unmistakable turn and click of a revolver being cocked persuaded him to do as he was told.

He had been as quiet as the grave. In the sepia pre-dawn light he had rolled his car down the hill with the engine off; he had closed the garden gate without a rattle and ducked low under the jacaranda bush that guarded the front door; sweated quietly in the heat as he stood, barely daring to breathe, hunched over his lock-pick.

Finally, Gunn had swung the door open and stepped into the silent house, suddenly becoming aware that the reek of smoke was still clinging to his clothes. It would wash away, he knew, but the horrors he had witnessed tonight would never leave him.

The stairs had not creaked as he had climbed towards his destiny, but here he was nonetheless, neither up nor down, with an unseen killer holding him at gunpoint.

Where’s Evie? Gunn asked. What have you done with her?

This is your only chance, the man hissed, stepping forward out of the gloom, allowing Gunn to see his face. Turn around and get the hell out of here.

No’ likely, said Gunn, knowing turning his back on this son of a bitch was a sure-fire way of getting a hole in it.

Then suddenly he realised the significance of the man speaking in a whisper. He did not want to wake Evie up, which meant that she must be asleep – and alive! Why would he lower his voice if she were already dead? Elated, Gunn climbed another step and…

BAM!

There was a sledgehammer blow to his shoulder and he fell backwards down the stairs, landing heavily against the wall by the front door. Gunn opened his eyes and saw his feet twitching on the thick Persian rug, the red and green and gold weave swimming before him.

Everything about this house was so familiar, he thought, but he had never noticed the rug before. It seemed like months since he had come here for the first time, in the early days of the investigation, before the true horrors of the case began to unfold, but he knew that it was barely a fortnight ago.

He realised that he could feel no pain, which scared him. Surely he should be in screaming agony? Instead of which he felt as though he was sinking helplessly into a deep, warm hole filled with cotton wool. He knew that he was about to die, and his mind seemed to be shutting down, section by section, like a factory closing down for the summer.

A light came on somewhere high above him, although he was unable to lift his head towards it. Then finally, as his field of vision began to narrow, the colours of the rug now a swirling maelstrom, he heard a heavy tread descending the stairs towards him.

And then nothing…

Sydney, Australia - January, 1933

Chapter One – The First Day

I

Rose Wright knew it had been mistake to bring the kids along to see the tiger shark, even before the horrible thing vomited up a severed human arm.

It had all started to go wrong earlier that afternoon, when the kitchen door crashed open and Alan and Sally charged in from the garden.

Mum, mum, guess what! Cliff says there’s a shark at Coogee.

Rose, who had been chopping an onion for meatloaf, put down the knife and wiped her eyes on the hem of her apron.

Cliff reckons it’s as big as a whale, said Sally.

It’s a shark, stupid, not a whale, Alan scoffed, frowning at his sister. A tiger one.

Rose noticed their obnoxious playmate Cliff, lurking by the door and looking immensely pleased with himself. It’s got stripes, that’s why it’s called a tiger shark, he explained. That means it’s a man-eater.

Alan’s eyes opened even wider. A man-eater! Can we go and see it, mum, pur-lease? he begged.

Yeah, can we mum, pretty please?

No, you certainly cannot, said Rose, before attempting to stem the problem at its source. Have you seen this shark, Cliff? she asked, sceptically.

Yes, the little so-and-so replied. Twice.

Alan and Sally regarded him with awe for a moment, before launching a renewed bout of energetic pleading, jumping up and down on Rose’s new black and white linoleum.

Canwecanwecanwe...

Oh, anything for some peace, thought Rose, as she told the cheering kids to go and get washed.

Coogee was one of Sydney’s smaller beaches, dwarfed by once-fashionable Bondi to the north and wild Maroubra to the south, the graveyard of many old sailing ships.

Still, the beach was always popular, with its gentle crescent of white sand, deep seawater baths cut into the rocks at the foot of the cliffs and breezy parks on the cliffs above. It also boasted one of Australia’s first shark nets, thick hemp webbing held in place with lead weights and marked by orange buoys, strung from a semi-collapsed wooden pier down to the southern end of the bay.

Of course, after the shocking events of the past summer the shark net was bringing more day-trippers than ever to little Coogee.

Today, at the height of the January summer holidays, hundreds of people were crammed into the protected southern end of the beach, leaving the northern half almost totally deserted.

With three fatal attacks on bathers in as many months, the city was in the grip of shark fever, a communal fear that had been eagerly embraced as an alternative to worrying about wool prices, hungry stomachs and the never-ending Depression.

While the politicians debated the relative values of warning bells or a mass cull, more solutions were being bandied about every day in the newspapers, including shark repellent tablets and even chain mail bathing suits. Most people, however, just decided to stay out of the water altogether.

In the midst of this chaos two local fishermen had struck the equivalent of saltwater gold, trapping a tiger shark in their nets while trawling a mile or so off Coogee Heads. By a further stroke of good fortune, one of the fishermen just happened to be related to the owner of the city’s most popular aquarium.

For the past fortnight people had been paying a penny a time to gawp at the shark. Despite a rumour going around that it was already at death’s door, the holiday crowds were still pouring in almost faster than the aquarium could cope with.

Roll up, roll up. He’s incredible, he’s insatiable, but don’t forget he’s educational. Feast yer eyes on the tiger shark, before he feasts on you!

A sunburned teenager, standing on an upturned Fiji banana crate, was yelling into a loud hailer at the corner of Beach Street and Dolphin Street.

Rose was doing her best to tune out the bluster as she waited with Alan and Sally in the queue. (Cliff, having seen the shark twice already, had already been sent home.)

The Coogee Bay Palace Aquarium was a three-storey building in the fashionable art deco style, with a blue and white dome on the roof. On Friday and Saturday nights it was used as a dancehall, the twirling couples illuminated by fairy lights and watched indifferently by the shoals in the enormous glass tanks.

Rose found the idea about as enchanting as an evening at the fishmonger’s, and she and her husband had rarely ventured down to the dances even before the children were born.

Come on now, folks, only a penny. Roll up and see the grinner that’s killed more blokes than Uncle Joe Stalin!

The man in front of Rose and the children chuckled heartily, but several other people shook their heads and a murmur of protest passed along the queue.

Undaunted, the teenager tried again: He’s not a kipper, he’s Jack the Ripper.

At that moment a man dressed like a circus ringmaster, in a cream blazer and a straw hat with a cheery red ribbon, emerged from the aquarium and dashed down the street.

Knock it off, he hissed at the youth. There’s been three men killed, you dope, show a bit of respect.

The ringmaster shooed his errant hawker off the banana box, climbed up in his place and grabbed the loudhailer.

Thanks for your patience, folks, he called. The previous viewing party has left the building so if you’d like to start making your way inside we can get this show on the road. And no pushing please, we’ve got room for you all.

Rose, despite some last-second misgivings, was relieved to finally get out of the sun and into the cool, briny darkness of the aquarium.

The tiger shark was in the largest tank, a glass-walled pool that took up the entire back wall of the building. A man on a stepladder was dropping chunks of bloody meat into the water but the shark was not displaying any interest, allowing the titbits to simply drift past its nose.

Rose, who had been secretly worried about the shark lunging ferociously at paying customers, was relieved to see it circling the tank so listlessly and decided that the rumours about its poor health must be true.

Still, there was no denying the size of the thing; it was at least 15 feet long and as sleek as a submarine, with vertical stripes emblazoned on its flanks. Under other circumstances it’s crow-black, scavenger’s eyes would have been spine chilling.

The dance floor had filled up and there were more people standing by the bars and amusement stalls at the aquarium’s beachside entrance, but the mood of hushed expectation was slowly changing to one of disappointment.

That thing’s crook, somebody shouted after a few minutes.

What did you expect? Somersaults? retorted the ringmaster, who Rose now recognised from his photograph in the Sydney Morning Tribune as the Coogee Bay Palace’s owner, Sam Gordon.

I’m tellin’ ya, it’s as crook as Rookwood! said the heckler, referring to the city’s largest cemetery.

Why not jump in for a swim then, see how crook he is? replied Gordon, sweating profusely and dabbing at his gleaming red face with a handkerchief.

This is a con! somebody else yelled from over by the bar. We want our bloody money back.

Rose locked eyes briefly with a fellow mother in the crowd and shook her head at the bad language. Come along you two, we’re leaving, she said to the children.

But mum, look, said Alan, pointing at the shark. It’s shaking all over.

Sure enough the tiger shark had stopped swimming and was quivering violently. A flutter of panic rippled across the aquarium as the shuddering became steadily more and more dramatic, until the shark gave a convulsive jerk and hacked up a jet of yellowish fluid that hung in the water like egg yolk.

There was a sudden rush of people making for the exits and Rose winced from an elbow in the ribs as she held on to Alan and Sally. Over by the fish and chip stall, an elderly lady was knocked to the ground and a fistfight almost broke out as several men tried to help her up.

Wait ladies and gents, wait please! Sam Gordon was yelling. It’s perfectly safe, no need to panic!

One by one, the crowd turned back to find the shark had indeed swum on as though nothing had happened, dispersing the slime in its wake and revealing a thin, crooked object that was sinking slowly towards the bottom of the tank. One end of this strange and pale thing looked raw and was reddish-brown in colour, and at the other end were five finger-like digits, like a squid or a cuttlefish or a…

Stone the crows, said a man, his voice high and strangled. I told yer he was crook.

… or a human arm.

All hell broke loose in the aquarium and Rose gathered Alan and Sally in her arms and fought through the melee, elbowing her way to safety.

II

Three hours later, Detective Inspector William Gunn was sitting on the beach wall at Coogee, gratefully watching the sky as a mile-high wall of cloud mugged the sun, promising thunder and cooling rain.

Rain had been very different at home in Scotland, he thought. It blew in from the Atlantic and fell steadily for hours, sometimes days. Here in New South Wales, the storms built quickly and unleashed a brief but torrential downpour so heavy that you could not see across the street. Afterwards, gutters ran like mountain streams and gardens steamed like Turkish baths.

The beach was now largely deserted, studded with empty deckchairs, half-finished picnics and abandoned towels flapping in the wind. The sunbathers had all come running when the pandemonium began and most were still gathered behind the police cordon strung around the aquarium.

The Sydney newspapers and radio stations were already tumbling over themselves in their desperation to get the scoop, although Gunn was pleased to see the uniforms on guard duty were all studiously ignoring the parrot-like squawks and calls from the assembled galahs of the press.

Still, it was quite a story. A shark choking up a severed human arm – this would never have happened back in Glasgow. At least, never on a weekday.

Although his suits were usually creased, his blue eyes bloodshot from long hours and late nights, and his sandy hair unkempt and greasy from being squashed beneath his felt fedora, Gunn still cut an imposing figure.

He was a heavy man in his late 30s, tipping the scales at 17 or 18 stones, but – as many a Sydney criminal had found to his cost - his size was a powerful legacy of the days when he played at lock and boxed at heavyweight for City of Glasgow Police.

Gunn grew up north Glasgow, where his father had been a foreman at the gigantic whisky distillery at Port Dundas. But on leaving school he had not taken up the job his old man had arranged for him, enlisting instead as a police constable and working the tough streets of the city’s East End.

It had not gone down well and his position as the family’s black sheep was cemented when he met and fell in love with Cathy, a Roman Catholic girl. They were married within a few months, paying no heed to the bitter divide that was rife in the west of Scotland.

Then came the Great War and, shortly afterwards, his young wife’s untimely death. Gunn did not dwell on his time in as a military policeman in northern France or that terrible night when their tenement building was set on fire during a sectarian riot, the blaze claiming three lives. But he had never forgiven himself for not being there, for being out manning the barricades as the smoke poured up the stairwell and into the tiny flat where Cathy was waiting for him to come home.

He fled Scotland for New York on a Union line steamer, just like tens of thousands of other young Glaswegians during the ripping Twenties. A succession of jobs followed, some legal, others perhaps less so, as he drifted across the continent to California, where he decided to keep on running and boarded another Union ship across the Pacific to Australia.

Gunn had stepped ashore in Sydney drunk and destitute, but like many lost souls before him he found that the Lucky Country smiled upon him. Finally, at the other side of the world, he had been able to pick up the pieces of his life and move on, his time as a Glasgow bobby allowing him to get a position with the New South Wales Constabulary.

He was intelligent and hard working but it was his maverick streak, largely hidden in the days when he had pounded the beat in Glasgow, which had caused his stock in the force to rise so rapidly, propelling him to his current position as one of the most successful detectives in Sydney.

Gunn was toying with the idea of a quick beer at the Coogee Bay Hotel – said to be Australia’s busiest pub – when he saw his partner, Detective Sergeant Alf ‘Snapper’ Spiroza, emerge from the aquarium. He spotted Gunn and waved him over, so with a wistful glance towards the pub, the detective heaved his bulk off the wall and followed Spiroza back inside.

The cavernous building smelled of seawater and spilled beer, and with the ballroom lights turned off it took a few seconds for his eyes to readjust to the gloom. The tiger shark was manoeuvring sluggishly at the bottom of its tank and looking – to Gunn’s untrained eye – rather pleased with itself.

Spiroza was talking to the owner of the aquarium, a worried-looking character named Sam Gordon, and some of his staff. Several more uniforms were gathered around, looking as though they were hugely enjoying themselves. Everyone turned to face Gunn as he approached.

For the best part of half an hour, Gordon had been balancing precariously on the top rung of a pair of ricketly stepladders, trying unsuccessfully to scoop the arm from the bottom of the tank using a long-handled fishing net. After several near misses where he had almost lost his balance and fell into the water, Gunn had suggested they all take a breather before the man became a complete nervous wreck.

I’m not going back up on that ladder, Detective Gunn, and that’s final, Gordon was saying now. The other aquarium employees were all shaking their heads as well, and Gunn knew it was pointless asking any of his men to do it. This was too good a show to ruin by getting the job done quickly.

It’s no good, Bill, Spiroza said. We’ll have to drain the tank.

That’s going to take too long, said Gunn. Here, give me that net. I’ll hook the bloody thing out.

They trooped over to the tank and Gunn climbed the protesting rungs of the ladder all the way up to the rim, suddenly feeling uncomfortably close to tipping over into the water.

A constable quickly screwed together the wooden sections of a long pole with a green mesh net attached to one end. He passed it up to go Gunn, who lowered it quickly to the bottom of the tank, almost twenty feet below.

How am I doing? he called out, as the net poked about on the sandy bed of the tank. Gunn could see the arm but the water was distorting his view, making it impossible to judge the distance between it and the net.

Left a bit, Bill, yelled Spiroza at ground level, his face pressed up against the glass of the tank. The movement had roused the shark and it swam in to investigate, blocking Gunn’s view of the arm completely.

He gripped the ladders tightly, staring down at the enormous creature. He was suddenly struck by an image of those fairground games where you had to grab a prize with a small mechanical crane, and he wondered whether the arm, if he ever got it out, would have a shilling note attached to it.

Nearly there Bill, yelled Spiroza, as the net missed the arm again. The shark made another pass, bumping into the net and nearly knocking it from Gunn’s grasp.

Christ Almighty, he yelled. He’s a big bugger isn’t he?

It all happened quickly after that. The arm seemed to move in the shark’s wake and almost tumbled into the net. Gunn heaved the limb out of the tank and lowered it, dripping, onto the floor.

He wiped his brow, as one of the constables gingerly lifted the severed arm and carried it over to a table that had been covered in old newspapers.

Bravo, shouted a voice, and Gunn turned to see the police pathologist George Bayliss applauding from the aquarium doorway.

Thanks George, Gunn called, after he had descended from the stepladder. But we could have done with your steady hands here about five minutes ago.

Spiroza patted him on the back as they walked over to greet Bayliss, saying: Good onyer, Bill.

G’day fellas, said Bayliss as they approached, regarding the ballroom with a nostalgic smile. I haven’t been here in years.

I never had you down as a dancer, said Gunn

I wasn’t much cop. Didn’t stop me trying to impress the sheilas though, said Bayliss, laughing.

I was usually at the bar, admitted Gunn. Two left feet, y’see. Come on twinkle-toes, let’s go and see what my little fishing expedition turned up, shall we?

They returned to the makeshift examination table, where a small crowd had gathered around the arm.

Clear some room, folks, said Gunn, as Spiroza rifled in his pockets for a packet of Lucky Strikes and handed them around.

Gunn took a cigarette and lit it, tasting the smoke gratefully, before studying the appendage once again. It was a left arm, bitten off just above the elbow and seemed remarkably well preserved, considering where it had been. It was difficult to tell for certain but going by its size and slender shape, it appeared to be a woman’s arm. There was no watch or wedding ring, but a large mole on the back of the hand would help with identification. The final aspect of note seemed to be some curious mottled bruising around the wrist.

Bayliss, donning a pair of wire-framed spectacles, leaned in for a closer look.

Can you tell us how long it was in the stomach, George? asked Gunn.

Hard to say without knowledge of a shark’s digestive process, he replied. You’d need a zoologist for that, I’m afraid.

Two weeks? A month? suggested Spiroza.

The shark has been here for a fortnight, we know that for certain, said Bayliss, glancing at Gordon.

Came in exactly two weeks ago yesterday, the aquarium owner said, nodding his agreement.

Spiroza gently poked the flesh of the arm with his pencil. After a split-second of resistance, the skin gave way like a well-steamed black pudding and the point of the pencil disappeared with a slurp.

Sorry, he said, as Bayliss fixed him with a ferocious glare. I thought it would be firmer than that...

Ten minutes later Gunn walked over to join Spiroza by the bar, where he had taken refuge after being shooed away from the makeshift mortuary slab.

Never mind, Snapper, said Gunn, clapping him on the back. There’s plenty more pencils back at the station.

Alf Spiroza was short and stocky, his nickname coming from a supposed resemblance to a snapper turtle. He was a second-generation Greek immigrant from Melbourne, and he and Gunn had been paired together out of nothing more than old-fashioned racism. They were known as the Jock and the Wop among their fellow Sydney cops.

Now, though, Spiroza’s normally happy-go-lucky features were creased with a frown. How are we goin’ to check for more body parts in that bloody thing? he asked.

We’ll worry about that in the morning, I guess. We can’t go slicing open a shark on Coogee Plaza today, not with that crowd out there.

Gunn shook out two cigarettes and lit them both, before handing one to Spiroza.

Anyway, we should see what Bayliss can do with the bit we have got first, he went on. He’s having the arm packed in ice so it can be taken to the morgue at Randwick for a post-mortem. Get it done as quick as possible.

Looks like a woman’s arm to me, said Spiroza. What did Bayliss say?

He’s not said anything yet, really. You know what he’s like.

Spiroza nodded, looking unconvinced.

But aye, it looks like a woman’s arm to me too, admitted Gunn.

So its not from one of the three recent shark victims. said Spiroza. They were all blokes.

Gunn raised his eyebrows. Maybe there’s been another attack we don’t know about, he said. Some poor girl goes for a late night dip, no witnesses and then whammo. Shark bait.

Jeez Bill, said Spiroza, grimacing. Could be, I guess, but most Sheilas I know won’t even look at the sea nowadays, never mind go swimming on their own.

Gunn stubbed his cigarette out in one of the ashtrays on the bar. I think we deserve a drink, Snapper, he said. Where’s that fellow Gordon got to?

III

Eddie ‘Rat-a-tat’ Gattuso was born and raised in the helter skelter streets of Balmain, Sydney’s toughest suburb. The mines and shipyards provided jobs for working kids who left school in their early teens but Gattuso and his pals had learned a different trade. The overflowing factory yards were easy targets for nimble thieves, scrambling up drainpipes and across lead slate roofs. As they grew bigger and bolder, Gattuso’s gang progressed to knifepoint robberies, roughing up sozzled sailors and well-to-do strays from the city.

His partner in crime was Jack ‘Loony’ Mooney, who earned his nickname at the age of 15 after the brutal pool hall beating which also brought him his first stretch in jail. Gattuso set his sights higher, quietly building his protection rackets and legitimate front firms, pulling off occasional, well-planned robberies and establishing himself as a new face on the Sydney gang scene.

Gattuso, the son of Sicilian immigrants, was a handsome, brooding character with hooded eyes. He aped the style and language of the American gangsters he idolised and, from the Prohibition era of the early 1920s, he had never missed a newsreel showing Al Capone’s latest outrage in Chicago or the bloody rise of ‘Dutch’ Schultz’s Syndicate in New York.

The older villains thought the young upstart was a hoot, always dressed to the nines and wasting money on champagne, Sheilas and flash cars. ‘All mouth and no trousers,’ they declared, and christened him ‘Rat-a-tat’, after the sound of a child playing with an imaginary gun.

But this opinion, as it turned out, was way wide of the mark. As the 1930s dawned, Sydney’s mobsters became engulfed in the most vicious turf war since the Victorian era, when dockside gangs like the Forty Thieves, the Iron House Gang and Bristley’s Mob had slit throats over bushels of wool.

Eddie Gattuso missed the worst of the bloodshed during a two-year stretch in prison but joined the fray with renewed vigour when he came out. His remaining rivals were shot, stabbed, bludgeoned to death or simply disappeared, as Gattuso established himself as the undisputed king of Sydney, his once ironic nickname acquiring an unpleasant ring of truth.

Gattuso pushed open the door from the living quarters of the Hollywood Hotel in Glebe, a busy district to the south west of the city centre, and strolled into the public bar.

Afternoon boss, said Mooney, looking up from the racing papers that were