Quota (24 page)

‘I do.'

‘He made no mention in his evidence of any bloodstain or other human biological material at markers three and four, did he?'

Patrick shrugged. ‘No, he didn't.'

‘And, in fact, he said the marks later turned out to be fish guts, didn't he?'

‘Well, it's a fishin boat, innit?'

‘The markers weren't placed there to indicate anything you're telling us, because back when the crime scene examiner was doing his work, you of course were telling everyone that you weren't there on the night—isn't that right?'

‘I was, yes.'

‘And now that you've changed your account and you're saying you were out on the
Open Quest
on that night, well now you're using those yellow plastic markers as though they indicate your brother's final resting place.'

‘They were just something I could point to. I coulda said in front of the winch or whatever, but it was where those card things are. It's a coincidence, I get that, but that's where he fell.'

‘The problem is, Mr Lanegan, the pathologist who will give evidence shortly, is going to say to this jury that your brother lost a lot of blood. A massive amount of blood in fact. Now just accepting for a moment that that's right, you tell this jury, Mr Lanegan. You tell them, where's all that blood?'

‘I don't know. I'm not a scientist. Is it in the photo?' And with that, Patrick took up the photo booklet again, and began rotating it before his eyes like a street map that wouldn't yield its secrets to him. Ocas waited long enough for this pantomime to look as foolish as possible.

‘Well, I suggest to you that's just not a good enough answer, Mr Lanegan. Not only do you want this jury to believe that a man with a wound that should be instantly fatal is running around yelling; you also want them to accept that the massive amount of blood that he lost is just…missing! How, Mr Lanegan? How?'

Patrick had put the book down on the small shelf in front of him. Charlie was trying not to look at him, but he knew he was isolated, helpless up there. ‘I've said I can't explain it,' he offered feebly. ‘But I'm telling you the truth.'

Ocas laughed. ‘Well, we've heard that line before. Right above where you put your signature onto a police statement that was crammed with lies. Where's the blood, Mr Lanegan?'

Patrick didn't answer, couldn't answer. After the silence had hung long enough in the air, the Basque began again.

‘You disagreed often with your older brother, didn't you?'

‘I disagreed with him sometimes, yes. Don't all brothers?'

‘
Often
, Mr Lanegan. Not just now and then. I'm saying that it was a common spectacle in the town that the Lanegan brothers—you and him—would be shouting at each other, complaining about each other, even coming to blows.'

‘That's an exaggeration. He was a straightforward person. If he disagreed with you, he told you pretty clearly. We had our dust-ups along the way.'

Just say you loved him, you fucking idiot
, thought Charlie. This was no time to be blokey about it, but Charlie knew Patrick wasn't going to resort to that kind of candour. Not even now.

‘Wrestling, scragging each other, giving each other bloody noses at the hotel, the…Normans Woe?'

‘Scragging? What's that? Is that a rugby thing?'

A ripple of laughter emanated from the jury box. Ocas silenced it by jabbing a hairy forefinger into the air in Patrick's direction.

‘Did you and your brother engage in a brawl in the hotel, in front of everyone there, approximately three weeks before the eighth of August, the day he died?'

‘Yes. He said something unkind about my'—Patrick's eyes wandered until he found Kate in the gallery—‘about my partner. I told him to apologise. He wouldn't. I'd had a bit to drink and I did, I threw a punch at him. It missed anyway, for what it's worth, and we wound up having a pretty stupid wrestle. It was embarrassing more'n anything else.'

‘You had been in business with him for at least three months that we know of, transporting over-quota abalone?'

‘I wouldn't call it “in business”. He was organising it all with Skip Murchison. I just gave him a hand or went along with him if he needed me. But the money he was getting for doing it, it was all just going back in the kick for the family. Same as the fishing money, the money we were getting for the hay here and there, selling a couple of poddy calves…we were in it together trying to keep things going.'

Ocas tilted his head and stuck out his lower lip to indicate that he was struggling with the plausibility of this idea. ‘That's one explanation,' he ventured after a while. ‘And I'll suggest another one to you—you and him were engaged in a lucrative trade in illegal substances: the abalone, the cannabis. There was quite a bit on the line and sometimes serious disagreements arise in such circumstances.'

‘They might. They didn't here. I don't even agree it was all that lucrative.' Charlie knew when he heard this that Patrick had lost the will to fight. But Ocas would continue the assault.

‘Oh come on, Mr Lanegan. These courts are filled with stories of people who fall out with each other over drugs. You know that.'

‘I don't work here mate,' replied Patrick, his voice faint with apathy. ‘You tell me.'

‘I'll tell you this, if you like. You and your brother Matthew Lanegan had come into conflict over this little trade you were doing, and you had come to a point where you had to do something about it.'

‘That's rubbish.'

‘You'd spent a lifetime in his shadow, the big brother who always knew better, always running things, lording it over you…'

‘You even want me to answer this?'

‘Yes I do, Mr Lanegan.'

‘Well, it's rubbish.'

‘Something had triggered it for you—he'd gone too far and you decided to take action…'

‘I don't know what you're trying to prove here. None of this stuff is right.'

‘You decided to arm yourself.'

‘I did not.'

‘You broke into the Murchison family home, three streets away from your own, at some unknown time prior to the first week of August…'

‘No I did not.'

‘You have a history of break and enters, though?'

‘I've got two, if that's a history, and they were years ago.'

‘But you don't lose those kind of skills, do you, hey?'

The judge barked loudly as soon as the question was out of the Basque's mouth. ‘
Mister
Ocas! Kindly keep to the rules of cross-examination. That sort of questioning is well beyond the pale.'

‘I'm sorry, Your Honour. Mr Lanegan, I put it to you that you armed yourself in the period prior to this particular night.'

‘I've never had a gun in me life.'

‘And you lured your brother out onto the boat somehow, the
Caravel
, I mean.'

‘I didn't lure him out, I offered to come out with him because I was worried about him goin out alone to meet Murchison.'

‘You lured him out, and once out at sea, either in the course of an argument or simply by ambush, you produced the rifle and you shot your brother.'

‘Absolute bullshit. I never—'

‘Mind your language, Mr Lanegan,' came the sharp rebuke from the bench.

‘It gives us a plausible explanation for where all that blood should be, doesn't it?'

‘You've just made it up! Go test the boat! There's no blood on it!'

A sly grin escaped from Ocas. ‘Well, we
would
test it, but you set it on fire.'

‘I did not! This is ridiculous!'

‘You set it on fire, and then, as described in the only truthful passage in your evidence, you swam to shore and surreptitiously returned to your home before making a false statement to police regarding your whereabouts.'

‘None of that is true.'

‘Well, the swimming part is, according to you. And we seem to agree the statement was false. You've already told us you concealed the wet clothes. It doesn't really leave a great many dots to join, does it now?'

Patrick appeared exhausted.

‘And while we're discussing fire, Mr Lanegan, am I right in saying that the hotel in Dauphin burned down in April? The er, I keep getting the name muddled up—the Normans Woe?'

‘It did.'

‘Now that hotel was owned by my client's parents, wasn't it. Mr and Mrs Murchison.'

Delvene and Alan Murchison sat side by side in the public gallery. Both sat erect, dignified and deeply aggrieved.

‘Yes it was.'

‘Destroyed the place completely.'

‘Yeah, I think it did.'

‘Well you
know
it did. You know it did. There's nothing whatsoever standing on the site, is there?'

‘Nah. There's nothing left.'

‘Hundred-and-fifty-year-old pub, burnt to the ground.'

‘Is that a question?'

They locked eyes for a long moment. No one in the huge room spoke or moved. As the seconds elapsed, Charlie wondered why Weir hadn't objected. Patrick was dead right—it wasn't a question at all. Eventually Patrick gave up and answered.

‘I don't know how old it was. It was bloody old.'

‘And the fire occurred during the very week you had spoken to Mr Jardim over there'—he gestured at Charlie—‘and had decided to change your evidence. Am I right?'

‘I don't know,' said Patrick wearily. ‘It was around that time.'

‘Now it's pretty well common knowledge, isn't it,' Ocas looked from side to side as he said it, and then straight down at his notes while he continued, ‘that the fire was deliberately lit.'

‘Put it to him!' roared Weir without rising from his seat.

The judge's face bespoke an obvious reality: he was an old man with a short temper. ‘Mr Weir's right, Mr Ocas,' he barked. ‘If you have something to put to this witness, then put it. None of us are assisted by your setting of the scene.'

Again, Ocas made a brief show of contrition, a hand raised in mild apology. ‘Mr Lanegan, I suggest to you that
you
lit that fire.'

Patrick rolled his eyes, raised his hands at his sides and slammed them back down again.

‘I didn't light the fire. I didn't shoot me own brother. I didn't… fuck, what else?'

The judge let the profanity go. The
fuck
seemed to live in its context. Its excision would've been churlish.

‘It's part of a campaign against these people, isn't it Mr Lanegan. It's not enough that you've blamed them for your own misdeeds. It's not enough that their son has languished on remand because of your accusation…'

‘Mate, I didn't torch the pub. I've already told you that.'

‘You've told us a great many things, Mr Lanegan, but I suggest you haven't taken us to the truth of the matter at all.'

‘That's just your opinion. Everyone's got an opinion, eh.'

Ocas waited a long time, shuffled through many pages of his notebook, casting them aside as he went, as though they each disappointed him, the way this young man had disappointed him.

‘You had a motive to kill your brother, I suggest to you, and you had opportunity. By your own admission, you were in the pernicious business of drug trafficking along with your brother. And you were on the
Caravel
alone with him on the night. I'm not making any of that up, am I?'

‘No, you're not. That stuff's true, but I don't agree it was drug trafficking.'

‘Okay, let me rephrase that. You were moving quantities of cannabis up the highway to Melbourne, to a specific location that you still haven't disclosed: what would
you
like to call it Mr Lanegan?'

Again, Patrick failed to answer.

‘So I'll continue. Your actions after the event suggest a guilty conscience: the discarded weapon, the hidden clothes, the false statement… and that's leaving aside the gaping holes in your evidence here in this court. Mr Lanegan, I put to you again that
you
, not my client, shot your brother.'

‘I've told you again and again. I didn't. There's things that are hard to explain, and there are parts that I agree don't look so good, but I did not.'

‘Not only was there no blood at the point on the deck of the
Open Quest
where you've indicated it should be, but I suggest to you—and Mr Weir will leap to his feet if I'm wrong about this—I suggest to you that there is not a shred of scientific evidence that you or your brother were ever on board the Murchisons' boat that night.'

‘I can't comment on that, can I…'

‘Not a fingerprint, not a bloodstain. Not a footprint, nothing. Not a single hair from your head or his. And that's because you were never there.'

Ocas glared at Patrick, having worked his way over the edge of the bar table, leaning forward and resting his fists on the shiny timber. Patrick had dropped his shoulders, was now wearing an expression of abject defeat. Again, he appeared momentarily to search for words. A stutter or two escaped him before he gave up and shrugged.

Ocas swept his robes around his back, shuffled his chair towards the table and sat down.

A murmur ran through the room and gradually subsided. The judge finished writing and addressed himself to McVean's counsel who had been scribbling furiously throughout the cross-examination.

‘Mr Rhodes, your cross-examination?'

Franz Rhodes remained firmly seated. He looked at Patrick, standing shaken and pale in the witness box, and he turned slightly to take in the Basque, who was contentedly closing his notebook and wrapping it with a series of rubber bands. He cast a sunny smile towards the judge.

‘Your Honour, I haven't got a single question for this witness.'

WEIR WAS ON his feet, and the twelve jurors were staring at him, sceptical children at a magic show. Charlie hunched forward, trying to sink into his robes. He stared at the open notebook in front of him, absently weaving the pen over the page in a charade of note-taking. Weir had to establish the bones of the offence before he could crank up the theatrics. Charlie had always considered him a frustrated defender, lacking the forward locomotion that prosecution required, just as likely to wander off down aimless backroads of allegory, strike up a rhetorical conversation with himself. Having read his notes of this closing address in advance, Charlie had little confidence it would go according to script.