The Coterie

Chapter 5

Chapter Five

Finally, the heavy rain had eased. Now, only light intermittent showers fell across the city. Chap knew it would not stay that way. He had spent every winter of his life so far in Adelaide, and he knew that any respite from the freezing, drenching rain, typical for this time of the year, was only temporary. Dark, bulbous clouds suspended low in the sky promised an approaching night similar to the previous one.

Chap hated winter. He felt numb, confused and sad. He knew, however, it was not just the weather that stirred these emotions within him. It was the memories. Old memories which had lain just below the surface of his consciousness hit him every winter. Now, those memories flooded back and bathed him in a hollow sadness. A sadness accompanied by an emptiness that burned deep within his chest.

He knew he should have returned to the murder scene to check on his team’s progress. From there, he should have returned to Police Headquarters to follow up on the latest developments, if indeed there were any. He did none of those things. Instead, shrouded in a fog of lethargy, he drove home. He needed a hot shower and a change of clothes. He needed a couple… no, more than a couple, of strong whiskies.

In his front room, Chap sat on an aging crushed velvet settee that had exhibited tell-tale signs of wear for longer than he could remember. He had showered and changed into a comfortable tracksuit. A phone call to his partner revealed that there were no new developments requiring his immediate personal attendance. He instructed Francis to dismantle the cordon around the crime scene, and he promised to explain his non-attendance when he returned to the office in the morning.

Chapman Bouttell was not a heavy drinker; not these days, anyway. There was a time when he could put the booze away with the best of them, but that was a long time ago. Nowadays, it was an occasional beer or two with colleagues, or a glass of warming whisky on a cold winter’s night. This was one such night.

He took a long, slow slip from the glass, and the amber liquid burned his throat as he swallowed. He swirled the whisky in the tumbler, listening absently to the tune the ice cubes sang as they clinked against the glass. With his free hand, he rubbed his eyes in a futile attempt to wipe away the tiredness and the overwhelming feeling of depression threatening to overcome him.

The war in Vietnam was such a long time ago, over forty years. Chap had always imagined that those who were fortunate enough to survive the savage, senseless war, those just like himself, would live long, peaceful lives, dying only after attaining the respectability of very old age. That was the very least they deserved after surviving that hell-hole. It was what he wanted for himself and, up to this point, his life seemed to be heading in that direction. But, he knew a normal, happy, fruitful life post-Vietnam War was not something that came easy for many returned veterans. The suicide rate amongst Vietnam vets was disproportionately high, given the numbers who served. When compared to that of the general population, he remembered reading somewhere that the life expectancy of a Vietnam vet was approximately seventy-three years. How would they know that, he wondered? Only a handful of vets would have yet reached that age, even without the intervention of premature death.

Chap took another sip of his drink. Not so for Eddie Dickson. Like so many others, Eddie was never going to be one of those to make it to the estimated life expectancy.

He leaned back, his head resting on a worn, faded cushion, and he remembered.

The last time Chap saw Eddie Dickson was at Sydney’s Mascot Airport in 1970. It was a long, slow flight on a military Hercules aircraft from Tan Son Nhat Airport in the city then known as Saigon. They spoke very little during the flight home. Mostly they slept, or pretended to, as each man dealt with his own mixed emotions. Mixed because they were going home alive, but six of their mates were not.

At Mascot, safely on Australian soil at last, they shook hands, exchanged awkward, uncomfortable embraces, and went their separate ways. The next time Chap saw his old friend was just a few hours ago, face-down in a suburban Adelaide park with a bullet hole in the back of his head.

Only four of them survived the war, four out of ten. A forty percent survival rate was hardly what Chap would have called acceptable. Had he known the odds beforehand, he might never have volunteered for the specialist unit. Now, and many times since, with the benefit of hindsight, he wished he never had. Given the nature of the duties they were required to perform, the attrition rate should have been obvious and predictable. But they were young, keen, and busting for a fight. The prospect of not coming home never entered their heads, or if it did, they never spoke about it.

He closed his eyes and allowed his thoughts to drift back across the years and linger for a moment on those who never made it home alive. He concentrated on their faces. Their images rose and ebbed in a hazy, disjointed slideshow. The images were not of men in their sixties, but young, ambitious, hungry soldiers, eager to play their part and take the fight to the enemy. Had they lived to reach his age, or that of Eddie Dickson, their faces would have changed with the passage of time, but their names would be forever etched in his mind.

Chap would never forget their names. ‘Fergy’ Ferguson, John ‘Billy’ Bunter, Ray Porter, ‘Jock’ McAndrew, David ‘Girly’ Galway and ‘Big Fella’ Colin Lewis. All dead. Six young, vibrant lives once filled with hope and promise, snuffed out in a few minutes of chaotic madness. These men came home in cold, grey caskets, strapped in the even colder cargo hold of a C-130 Hercules transport aircraft. They were robbed. Deprived of the chance to marry, raise families, and grow old with peace and dignity.