Sirius Rising

By David J Knight

A mysterious dog named Sirius with apparent supernatural abilities who saves the life of a man with a dark past. A double murder from long ago and an older man's efforts to solve it. A drug kingpin and a drug heist gone bad. A determined indigenous copper who seeks the truth. A terrible drought induced by climate change.

 

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• Language: English
• Publisher: David Knight Novels
• Release date: May 31, 2021
• ISBN: 9780648305361

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David Knight

Sirius Rising

To my children - Andrew, Mark, Josh and Julia

Copyright © 2021 by David Knight

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission.

First edition

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Contents

SIRIUS RISING

Author’s Note

Chapter 4

Son et Lumière

Death Comes Calling

Wild Dog

5 Pets Galore

6 Cop Shop

7 Family Ties

8 Up Sticks

9 Puppy Love

10 Greed

11 Past Secrets

12 Bad Lad

13 Bikie Business

14 Game Plan

15 Coke and Cash

16 In the Wind

18 Party Town

19 Escape Artist

20 Bloody Hicksville

21 Dry as Dust

22 Hot to Trot

23 Cops with COPS

24 Fire Starter

25 Burn, Baby, Burn

26 Petrol Sniffing

27 Enemy Action

28 The Good Life

29 An Old Friend

31 Doggy Dream

32 Gone Dog

33 Ups and Downs

34 Potato, Potato

35 Bail Out

36 Divergence

37 The Plot Thickens

38 Pit Bull

39 Omens

40 East Coast Low

41 Then There Was One

43 Into the Lion’s Den

44 Vengeance

Epilogue

SIRIUS RISING

A novel about a man and the dog

that changed his life

David Knight

This book is a work of fiction. All characters, names, dialogues, situations, events and incidents, and places are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

First published by David Knight in 2021

The moral right of the author has been asserted

Copyright © David Knight

This book is copyright under the Bern Convention

And the ‘Copyright Act 1968’ of Australia.

No reproduction without written permission of the Author.

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Author: David Knight

Title: Sirius Rising / David Knight

Edition: 1st ed.

ISBN: 978-0-6483053-5-4

ISBN e-book: 978-0-6483053-6-1

Subjects: Suspense/thriller fiction.

Book cover design by KRD Print, Mayville, NSW, Australia

Also by David Knight

The Diabolicum Series

The Stalking Horse (fiction)

Skin for Skin (fiction)

Sea of Secrets (fiction)

Non-Fiction

The Other Jersey Boys

Author’s Note

Having been the proud owner of three dogs in my life, each one quite special in their own way, I felt an urge of write a book that explores the bond between human and animal. In this case the dog in question, named Sirius, has some admittedly mysterious abilities which probably transcend most mutts going around.

I’d like to say Sirius is modelled on my own dog but that is unfortunately not true. Rather, Sirius’s character and idiosyncrasies are an amalgam of a few dogs I have come across. By necessity for the plot line, Sirius is brave, bold and determined. The closest my dog gets to being determined is in search of food but she is loved, nevertheless.

A few thanks are in order. Firstly, to Michael and Genevieve who agreed to have their characters besmirched under the names of Mikey and Evie, two of the ‘baddies’ vital to the plot. Much gratitude to Genevieve as well for her first class editing of the manuscript. Nothing escapes her.

Secondly to Diane my wife for her patience and understanding while I sat at my computer for hours on end.

Finally, to my four children. This one’s for you.

David Knight

Prologue

Sirius, the Dog Star, the brightest star in the sky

Twas the season when the vault of heaven bends its most scorching heat upon the earth, and Sirius the Dog-star smitten by Hyperion’s [the Sun’s] full might pitilessly burns the panting fields.

Statius, Silvae 3. 1. 5 (trans. Mozley) (Roman poetry circa 1st A.D.)

Prologue

Tamworth 1953

The vehicle stopped and the teenager peered out the window at what was to be his new home. The first thing he noticed about the place was the distinctive arch-like shape of the doors at the main entrance as they opened to allow the vehicle he was in to pass through. On the face of the doors under the arch were sixteen evenly spaced hollow squares, eight on each door, almost like picture frames. Above the doors were the numbers 1879, the first two and last two on opposite sides of the surrounding brickwork. The lad took that to be the year this place was built. That was so, but at the time it was an adult prison and remained that way for well over half a century. After that, following a spell as an army facility during the second world war, its use had morphed into incarcerating recidivist youths, considered by child welfare authorities in New South Wales to be the worst of the worst.

He shivered: the place looked foreboding, like it would swallow him up and he’d be never seen again.

‘Eyes front,’ commanded the guard driving the car. Another guard with him in the front turned his head around and shouted, ‘You heard him. You stupid, or what?’

The youth cowered back in his seat and looked at the floor. He didn’t want another beating; the guards had laid into him when he tried to make a run for it a few hours earlier when they stopped for a piss. He wasn’t about to disobey them again.

The van moved forward through the gates into a short tunnel like space then back into daylight. It stopped. Despite the warning, the lad looked up. The van was in a courtyard. He waited until one of the guards opened the back door and beckoned him out. He avoided the half-hearted slap which passed harmlessly by his head and took in his surroundings. High walls, a guard tower on the corner of the wall to his right, two brick buildings in front of him, one of which was larger than the other.

‘This way,’ one of the guards ordered. Obediently the youth followed. The man strode to another set of closed gates, these inside the compound. A small door opened, and the man beckoned him through. Inside it was gloomy and the adolescent saw the set of gates he had first seen in front of him. They were closed as well.

The guard pushed him through a doorway into what appeared to be an office. Two men in uniform, who were sitting behind desks, ignored him. ‘Sit,’ the guard who accompanied him said, pointing to a chair. The boy sat and waited.

Eventually a door opened, and a middle-aged man formally dressed in dark clothing appeared. He had a stern air about him and instinctively the lad shrunk back in his chair.

‘Come here,’ the older man instructed in a no-nonsense voice and the youth reluctantly did his bidding, the guard by his side. The youth kept his eyes downcast.

‘Name?’ the older man asked abruptly.

The youth, who was tall for his age, looked up to meet the man’s eyes and gave his last name.

Without warning the older man punched him in the stomach. ‘You call me sir when you address me. You got that?’

Bent over in pain and winded, the boy nodded.

The man smiled. ‘Welcome to the Tamworth Institute for Boys,’ he said, parroting what was obviously a well-used speech. ‘I’m the governor. You’re here because you’re a dingo.’ This was the slang term for runaway, the youth having absconded several times from the Mount Penang Training School for Boys near Gosford on the NSW central coast, thus earning him a trip to Tamworth.

He continued, ‘This boys’ home is well equipped to deal with your sort.’ The governor studied the youth with disdain, noting his dark skin. ‘What, you got a bit of darky in you?’

‘My parents were Lebanese, sir,’ the lad replied, his eyes again downcast. ‘They died.’

‘So, a wog,’ the man said in a contemptuous tone. ‘That explains it. Your parents probably died of shame.’

‘No sir,’ the adolescent said with a flash of anger and defiance, ‘they died in a fire’.

At this the man swung his fist at the boy’s head, knocking him to the ground. ‘Don’t talk back to me, wog,’ he warned, ‘I’m the law here and don’t you forget it.’ He looked at the guard. ‘Take this wog and put him in the cell block. And make sure he knows the rules.’

The boy got to his feet and wiped blood from his mouth. Luckily for him, the look of pure hatred directed at the governor wasn’t noticed. Silently he followed the guard back the way they had come. He was taken back into the courtyard and into the smaller of the buildings inside the walls, the one that housed the cells, and put in one on his own. He was given neither food nor water that night and he quietly cried himself to sleep.

It took him a week of repeated bashings to learn the many rules that applied to the inmates of the Tamworth Boys Home. No talking to other inmates, asking, ‘Sir, I report to you’ every time he needed or wanted something like a piss or a shit or even to scratch himself. The guards, or ‘screws’ as the inmates called them, would use any excuse to hand out a beating or other penalties such as a ‘bounce’, loss of food, all meted out with brutal indifference.

He got called every derogatory name under the sun, but the label ‘the Wog’ stuck. That he might be offended by this wasn’t of interest to anyone; what he thought didn’t matter. The aim of the system was to grind him and his fellow inmates down, to make them feel worthless, lower than shit on their boots, and it worked, mostly.

The physical routines were devised to be punishing, to make the youngsters incarcerated in that hellhole so tired that they wouldn’t get up to mischief. Pushing heavy sandstone blocks around the exercise yard and then pushing them back to their original position. A regimented routine where every waking moment was regulated. It was designed to make the inmates so shit scared they would never come back to the Tamworth Boys Home.

Trapped in a world of fear and loathing many of the inmates didn’t hesitate to dob in another inmate to the screws in order to score brownie points. The system pitted boy against boy. Only exceptionally did an inmate help another inmate. The youth did it only once and he was made to pay.

Getting caught talking to each other was punishable by a bounce or time in solitary pushing an iron bar across the bars until it became so heavy the culprit was unable to lift it anymore. As so many found out, they actually could because the beating they got made it possible. Even so, inmates found ways to communicate.

One day as the youth they called the Wog was helping to push a large sandstone block across the courtyard he heard the solidly built youth next to him mutter in the quietest of voices, ‘How old are ya?’

He took a risk and, lying, replied, ‘Seventeen’. He was actually two years younger.

‘Jeez,’ the voice whispered, ‘ya look younger’. A pause. ‘I’m Ernie. The screws call me Maggot. Who’re you?’

Before he could reply a screw suddenly appeared beside them. ‘Who spoke?’ he screamed, spittle coming out of his mouth.

Silence. The screw grabbed them. ‘On yer knees,’ he commanded. The boys immediately obeyed.

‘If I have to ask again, you’re gonna suffer,’ the screw announced warningly.

Something made the youth speak. ‘Sir, it was me, sir,’ he piped up, catching the look of astonishment on Maggot’s face. To take the blame for someone else was unheard of in this place.

The screw studied him with hatred. ‘Ah, the Wog! Get up, Wog, and come with me. It’s solitary for you.’ He waved at Maggot. ‘You! Get up and get on with pushing that rock. Thank your lucky stars you ain’t gonna be joining him.’

Three days later, after enduring a series of bashings and living on a solitary piece of bread and a cup of watery milk a day, the youth was released back into the general population. He was treated like a hero by the other inmates after that. And the older boy, the one called Maggot, never forgot.

When he was released from Tamworth two years later the youth born in Lebanon made good on his pledge to never go back. While for many boys Tamworth broke them in mind and spirit, for him it only served to make him stronger. The Tamworth Institute for Boys was built on violence, and many of the inmates turned to violent crime in their adult years, the product of the systematic regime of degradation from the screws and the governor.

The boy grew into a man and turned to serious crime, but he resorted to violence only when it was absolutely necessary, and hardly ever personally. He had others for that. By the time he turned twenty no-one dared to call him by the derogatory nickname, the Wog. And, as his illicit business empire grew so did the respect bestowed on him by others in the same game. He was a player and he wanted it all.

PART ONE – DOG DAYS

Old Wounds

Sydney, NSW, Christmas Sixty Years Later

The casually but tastefully dressed man who looked younger than his mid-sixties age carried his drink out onto the balcony of the rooftop suite in one of Sydney’s most expensive hotels. It was mid evening with clear skies and a cooling north easterly breeze which took the edge off the warm, balmy conditions around one of the most beautiful harbours in the world. Down on the water, bow waves cast by ferries and other harbour traffic splashed creamily against the dark waters. The skyline was a myriad of twinkling lights dotting the land.

Rain was forecast for the Christmas period; the remnants of a decaying severe cyclone that had hit Western Australia’s Kimberley coast a few days earlier. The weather to date on their six-monthly trip to Australia had been hot and dry and, while Harry Jameson didn’t mind those conditions, the rain would be good for the countryside. Harry occasionally missed Australia, the land of his birth, but circumstances had taken him overseas to live and work and he didn’t believe he would ever dwell in his homeland again.

Lin, his wife of twenty-five years, was already on the balcony, sipping the last of a gin and tonic in a tall glass and gazing out across the water to the glistening oyster shell sails of the Sydney Opera House. She, too, was dressed informally, in a sleeveless full-length shift which complemented her still slim body. Age definitely had not wearied or weathered her.

They were due to meet friends and work associates shortly in one of the downstairs bars. A mix of pleasure and business, a final meet and greet before the holiday shutdown. It was then Harry, known to his friends as H, would announce his retirement at the end of the following year as Managing Director of Trumper Risk Management, a multinational company that was among the world’s top ten in personal, information and asset security.

Hearing Harry, Lin turned and began to smile until she saw the expression of sadness on his still unlined face. ‘Darling, what’s wrong,’ she asked in her American accent.

‘Tomorrow is the anniversary of my parents’ death,’ Harry answered solemnly.

Lin moved quickly to him and kissed his lips. ‘Oh, darling, I’m sorry. I’d forgotten.’

‘I don’t blame you,’ Harry admitted. ‘It’s been forty-six years. A long time. A lot of water under the bridge.’ He sighed and took a long pull of his glass of red wine. ‘What makes it frustrating is that, despite turning over every rock I could, I still don’t know for certain who caused their deaths.’

‘But I thought-’ Lin interjected.

‘Sorry, love, I meant the real brains behind their murders. The actual perpetrators got their just deserts, but I mean the person behind those guys. I know it in my bones that the real mastermind is still out there, but I have only suspicions, and even though I’m not looking for a court of law verdict here — I’d have no hesitation in dealing with them personally if I knew for sure — I want proof. Then I’ll act.’

His wife shuddered. ‘If there is one thing I know about you, you definitely will. I wouldn’t like to be in that person’s shoes.’ She looked away, remembering a night long ago when Harry had saved her life. ‘I can speak from personal experience.’

Harry nodded, recalling the desperate knife fight for survival in a disused Washington DC warehouse against two armed thugs who had abducted Lin and were planning to rape and kill her. The thugs had lost, thank goodness. But forty-six years ago, so had his parents. ‘Well, I’m going to find those shoes and the person who is wearing them. Then …’ He didn’t need to finish the sentence.

‘Darling, let’s not talk of revenge,’ she implored. ‘Not now. We have people to meet and you have your retirement to announce. That will create a few waves, I’ll bet. Have you given any thought to what you’ll do after? You’ll need a hobby; something to occupy your time.’

He grinned wickedly. ‘Maybe I’ll just chase you around the kitchen.’

Lin pressed herself against him and kissed his lips. ‘I promise I won’t run too fast, but that aside, what will you do?’

‘I’ll think of something,’ Harry shrugged. ‘Maybe I should try to find my godson.’ Harry was godfather to the son of a former work colleague named Charlie Black. The son’s name was Bowie, named by his Irish born mother as the name meant yellow-haired, although technically Bowie’s hair colour was white-blonde. The family had encountered some trouble a while back and Bowie had changed his name and disappeared. One of Harry’s old ex-special forces mates had warned off a man who was looking for Charlie Black and his son.

‘Maybe he doesn’t want to be found,’ observed Lin. ‘Oh, I know with the resources available through the company, you could track him down, but perhaps it’s better to let sleeping dogs lie.’

‘Hmmm,’ said Harry noncommittally.

‘Well, I’m going to touch up my lipstick, Lin said. ‘See you inside.’ She carried her glass in through the sliding doors and disappeared into the bedroom.

Harry stood still, his thoughts turning from his godson back to the incident in which his parents died. ‘At least the bastards could have spared my dog,’ he said to himself. ‘But no, they wanted to kill everything, including my future. Well, they didn’t succeed.’

Harry drank the last of his wine and placed it on a table before going inside. ‘Come on, it’s time to party,’ he called to his wife.

Son et Lumière

Brisbane, Queensland, New Year’s Eve

Sunbeam, a luxurious ninety-metre-long motor yacht dominated the flotilla of smaller boats anchored upstream of Brisbane’s Storey Bridge; its stern pointed towards where the midnight firework display would soon erupt in a spectacular son et lumière show. The craft’s ultra-sleek lines were complemented by the dark blue hull and white superstructure, although the fifty handpicked guests were well past noticing that. They had partying on their minds, aided and abetted by the loud beat of the band playing on the top deck and the champagne flowing like water, served by smiling attendants who circulated through the throng of people dancing on the main deck at the stern of the yacht.

The theme for the party was noir. Guests were invited to wear something black and they did. The balmy weather helped those in skimpier outfits. In keeping with the theme, the women wore everything from cocktail gowns through slacks and tops to little black numbers. The standout was an out there thirty something female with the figure of an eighteen-year-old who wore only a cheeky jet-black bikini with a miniskirt made of diaphanous material. Needless to say, she was a big hit with the male guests.

Up forward beyond the band on the top deck a group of scantily clad people lounged in the open-air spa sipping champagne. Inside, on the main deck level, other guests, naked this time, were soaking up the heat in a steam room, occasionally throwing water onto the hot coals to induce more superheated air into the enclosed space. Several couples, not necessarily previously known to each other, were enjoying more vigorous pursuits in the half dozen private cabins.

But the majority of those onboard were dancing in the open air on the main deck. In the crowd were politicians, senior police officials, members of the judiciary and a small band of high-class escorts, mainly but not all female. Regardless of occupation, everyone was having a wonderful time.

Earlier in the day the guests had been picked up from various riverside locations by tender and transported to Sunbeam which then motored sedately along the sinuous Brisbane River out into Moreton Bay where a long buffet lunch was served up in the large lounge area. The sea breeze had strengthened soon after midday, so most stayed inside to eat and drink, and drink they did, into the afternoon and evening. Some, the wiser ones, took a break during the afternoon. But most continued to sip, chat, argue, make love, dance, and congratulate their hosts, Mikey and Evie Chammas, a wealthy couple who had hired the yacht for the occasion, on their hospitality and excellent taste. Mikey’s standard reply was that their own motor yacht, named Evie, was at forty metres far too small to accommodate such a party.

It was said Mikey and Evie had made their money from a variety of diversified and successful businesses, although inevitably there were whispers that drugs might have something to do with it; a rumour always strenuously denied by the couple.

As the time to midnight and a new decade went under sixty minutes the host excused himself from a group of hangers-on, caught his blonde wife’s eye and motioned for her to follow him to their private suite. She did so, slipping away unobtrusively.

Evie shut the door and turned to face him. ‘You’ve got that headache again,’ she intuited.

Mikey nodded tiredly. ‘Can you get some paracetamol, darling? I just need a few moments.’ He sat on the bed and held his head.

Evie picked up her purse and fished out a box of tablets before extracting two white pills. She filled a glass of water and handed it and the pills to her husband. Mikey put the tablets in his mouth, took a sip of water and swallowed. Then he lay back on the huge bed.

‘I’ll leave you to it,’ Evie said, not unkindly. After all, they had been married for a long time, and despite his unpredictable temper and philandering ways, she still loved him, mostly. And he had a lot of money. She shut the door quietly behind her and returned to the party.

Mikey Chammas lay still, letting his mind relax. The annual event was going well, even though one of the lesser profile politicians had to be physically restrained from trying to take off the bottom half of the bikini worn by the woman with the amazing body in the spa a few hours earlier. He was now sleeping it off and she had been promised a new sports car to keep her mouth shut. It wouldn’t do for the politician to face charges and lose his seat in parliament, not with the amount of money Mikey had invested in him. Political favours seemed to be getting more expensive these days.

However, that wasn’t the cause of his headache. For a week now he had been having a recurring dream which in some mysterious way appeared to be linked with certain events in his past. Events that Mikey Chammas didn’t care to dwell on. Events that had been necessary to put him on the road to where he was today - on top of the pile.

Strangely, in this recurring dream he was being chased by two exceedingly angry and savage dogs, both reddish in colour, one older than the other. Trailing along behind them, moving like zombies, were human figures, some with flesh hanging off, others almost skeletal. Some of the faces he recognised. Disconcertingly, he seemed to be running in slow motion which was not only frustrating but terrifying. Each time he had the dream the younger dog with blood red eyes, nippier and bigger, with bared fangs, seemed destined to catch him. Then he would wake up, covered in sweat and screaming in terror.

He didn’t quite know what the dream meant, although he had a horrible suspicion. Was his past catching up with him? It had gotten to the point where he wasn’t able to sleep until exhaustion took him.

Mikey rested for another twenty minutes then got up, rinsed his face and went back to the party. It was almost time for the fireworks to start and he had to keep up appearances despite how he felt. Returning to the main deck of Sunbeam he accepted a glass of champagne from a passing waiter and made small talk with a group of acquaintances until the skipper of the boat started the countdown to midnight. On the stroke of twelve his wife joined him, and they kissed and cheered along with everyone else as the spectacular display of pyrotechnics burst into life, lighting the sky and sending clouds of smoke drifting over the river. Afterwards they danced until it was time for Sunbeam to up anchor and move serenely down river to disembark its mostly drunken and well satisfied clientele.

After all the guests had departed Mikey and Evie retired to their suite and prepared for bed, another successful networking event over and done with. As Mikey lay next to Evie, listening to her quietly breathing, his mind ran backwards in time, to an event in a country town in north western NSW that had given him the boost he needed to expand his business. An event that had resulted in murder and mayhem.

Death Comes Calling

Tamworth, NSW, December Fifty Years Before

It was a busy Saturday night close to Christmas and business was brisk at the Settlers Arms Hotel, one of the many in the small regional town of Tamworth in the New England district of northern NSW. There was a good crowd in the hotel bars and in the dining room. The night was warm, and insects were buzzing around the neon lights at the front of the hotel and in the Bottle Shop driveway.

One of the main topics of conversation in the public bar was the attempted firebombing of the main entrance to the notorious Tamworth Boys Home the previous night. A lighted home-made Molotov Cocktail had been thrown from a speeding car. It made a lot of noise but not much damage. Police were on the lookout for a stolen VW Beetle. According to the rumour mill, given the bad reputation the place had, there were so many suspects that unless they were lucky enough to find the Beetle and its passengers it would take the coppers quite a while to narrow down who it might be.

Whilst his father managed the busy public bar nineteen-year-old Harry Jameson was working in the hotel’s drive-through Bottle-O. It too had been busy — so busy that Harry had no time to let his mind dwell on his recent decision to enlist in the Australian army. In doing so he would be following in his father’s and grandfather’s footsteps, although in their case they had served Britain through the Scots Guards, his grandfather in the Great War and his father in World War II. Harry’s father Bill and his mother Dorothy had migrated to Australia in 1947 when Harry was two years old. His younger brother Sam had come into the world in that year as an Australian, something that the remainder of the Jameson family would achieve a few years later.

Five years after coming to a new country, Bill and Dorothy Jameson had purchased the freehold of the Settlers Arms and through hard work and persistence had steadily built up the business until it was one of the success stories of the growing town. Bill, a fit forty-one-year-old and Dorothy, who remained youthful and attractive in her late thirties, were now enjoying the fruits of their labour.

It hadn’t been easy. Most of the hotels in NSW were owned by the two major breweries, Tooths and Tooheys, and the licensees of their pubs were obliged to sell the beer of the brewery that owned the hotel. The Settlers Arms was what was called a free house, not tied to the breweries, so Bill could sell whatever beer he liked. There weren’t a lot of independent pubs in the state, and the owners had banded together to form an association to ensure their interests weren’t swamped by the dominant breweries. Bill was in the vanguard of the association and his word carried a lot of weight amongst the independents.

Not that this was of much interest to Harry Jameson, H to his friends. Harry had already decided that he wasn’t going to follow in his father’s footsteps in every aspect of Bill’s life. No, the pub life wasn’t going to be for him. And neither would it be for Sam, who wanted to study law in Sydney. Sam was the studious one, his head stuck in books, while Harry and his best mate Gordie Lodge, an Aboriginal lad the same age as Harry and a naturally talented sportsman, were playing rugby league or shooting rabbits.

The army interested Harry — the chance to see places and do things that the average bloke wouldn’t — but again he didn’t see it as a career. No, he’d sign up for a stint and then move on to something different, something that didn’t involve being stuck in a small town for the rest of his life.

His mate Gordie, who had left school at fifteen and worked as a builder’s labourer, had decided to join the army as well. That decision had not made Gordie’s father Leon, particularly happy. Leon was a former rugby league star who had played first grade in the tough Brisbane competition before becoming one of the first Aboriginal people to go into business in Tamworth, opening a sports store that was doing well despite the usual racial intolerance. Gordie’s mother Grace, a white woman who had had