....anyway, those boys, led by master 'Swiftly'....so they would come in and basically take control of the bar. And this would happen every day, as regular as clockwork, at around 4:45. You'd hear them coming down the street, in high spirits, shouting at each other. It made you stop and wonder why four flash salesmen like these guys were, in their expensive suits and designer sunglasses....why they would have any interest in our place, eh? You know...our bar has always been a very quiet place. Aside from the clientele, little clues of human inertia are evident everywhere: a piece of last year's Christmas tinsel still dangling cheerlessly over the bar, dead flies collecting in hard to reach places and the taste of stale air recycled back through the AC unit. We are talking about zero atmospheres. I had no idea why those boys came in every day.
Actually, that's not entirely true. There were several obvious reasons, ya? It was right around the corner from their office building and the manager of the pub, Derrick, would put up with their bullshit because they spent money. And I mean, a lot of money, you know? Princess, the girl who worked behind the bar during the week, she was a pushover as far as those hooligans were concerned. What did you expect? She was one of these young girls with a bubble for a brain. Swifty had her wrapped around his little finger. You know how the young girls are these days? With their cell phones and their need for validation.
Anyway, these guys, Swiftly and his mob, they'd come in shouting and shoving each other around, carrying on like school boys. And they would instantly change the atmosphere of the place. Us regulars, we would just keep our heads down and do our best to ignore the dickhead comments about the bar being an old age pensioner home. 'God's waiting room' was an expression they kicked around quite a bit, saying we were a bunch of 'old soft cocks', you know? 'Drooling old jokes'. Those boys had fucking endless smart-ass comments about our half strength beers, our prescription reading glasses and our chicken shit two dollar bets lining the bar. I'd just smile and think to myself, wait until it happens to you sunshine. If you live that long, eh?
Listen, I had two teenage boys, ya? So I know. Just like my Angus, these guys were constantly testing our boundaries, seeing how much they could get away with, you know? So the only way to deal with them was to not to play their game, ya? Simple. Ignore them. And I know Swifty. I mean, I have met men like him before. His type. Swiftly is the kind who will push the joke to the very limit, ya? He is the classic sadist hiding in the guise of a joker. If you can read people, like I can, you'd pick up on this the moment you met him. He was very charming and intelligent but he had the curling smile of a sadist. He was alert to human weakness like a shark can smell a drop of blood in the ocean. Swifty would lead you in one direction, getting you all upset and bent out of shape, and then he would switch gears, you know? He would say, 'Just joking mate' and 'What's the matter with you? Eh? You can't take a joke?' So he will put it back in you, as if you were the sensitive, and therefore weaker party. As if you couldn't take a little bit of teasing.
Like I say, these boys didn't bother with me. No. You know I am from South Africa. After Apartheid ended my farm was robbed twice. At gun point. So this level of intimidation? This schoolyard stuff...it doesn't bother me. I just don't rate it is something worth getting upset about. It's all comes down to perspective, eh? Because there is something very important you have to keep in mind: these guys, these local guys, they grew up in this big, empty, sprawling state, ya? So what I am saying is, nothing has really happened here apart from a gold rush followed by the mining boom. Sudden spurts of economic growth. Transient population. A few local celebrity millionaires made good. Otherwise, it's track housing stretched to the horizon, empty streets and parks. Shopping centres. They don't know what intimidation and violence are really like apart from what they see on the telly, eh? For them, it's all schoolyard bully stuff. Playing war. And you know what amazes me? I mean, I understand why but it has to be this way but...instead of being thankful, of appreciating that you have this relatively peaceful history, these guys have something to prove, ya? There is a big chip on their shoulders. And like I say, I get it, you know? Young men who are untested feel like they're living a half a life. It's just human nature. Or at least for males. Why do you think little boys run around with guns, shooting each other?
Anyway, these guys never bothered me. All you have to do it ignore it. The problem is exasperated when you to react to them. This is what the bully wants from his victim, eh? A reaction. Plain and simple. And they got under Grant's skin alright. That much was obvious from the start. When they realised that me and Sven weren't going to take the bait, they focused pretty much exclusively on Grant. They'd wind him up every single day. It was sport for them. It was fun. It started with little digs, you know? Little comments and jabs. Nothing too serious. But then it got worse. Much worse.
And Grant was....well....Grant was Grant, eh? We all knew Grant was a bit special. A bit of a sad and lonely guy. There was something not right with the poor bugger upstairs, ya? He wasn't playing with a full deck of cards. It was very subtle but the longer you knew him, the more you'd notice it. I would describe this psychological flaw as an emotional disconnect. A dead spot in his personality. Basically, he had trouble communicating his feelings and relating to other people, eh? He was a state licenced investigator-security consultant. Or at least that's what his business card proudly proclaimed. What he really did wasn't exactly like a James Bond movie. Or, what was that old TV show? Magnum PI? No red Ferraris, no beautiful babes. Grant just sat around, watching people scamming the government. He would collect information for caseworkers to use as evidence. He filmed these people, these scammers, in shopping centres and on the street. He had little cameras. Tiny little cameras that he would conceal in his clothing and in a gym bag. Grant was very good at blending in. He was like a chameleon. Just another face in the crowd. He had a pair of dark sunglasses which reflected what was happening behind you, over your shoulder. Gadgets like that, ya? He would show us all this spy stuff that he bought online. He was a real gadget guy. That was the Grant we all knew. The Grant who showed up at the bar every day. In his private life, he would post photos of himself on Facebook, holding a pair of brass knuckles and replica guns. Like that, you know? Action man. Always in the background of these photos, you could see the same sad little one bedroom apartment in Mount Lawley. Brick walls. A kitchenette.
Anyway, adding to his woes, Swifty and his boys would pass the time teasing Grant and he would take the bait. Grant took it all so personally, ya? I'd pull him aside, say to him, 'Grant man...just chill out. Don't worry about it'. I'd say, 'Listen....you're a middle-aged man. Do you really put any value on what these guys are saying? You can't let them get to you. These guys are young and stupid and all they can think to do with their time is come here, into this shitty pub and bother a bunch of old farts like us? Come on man....what does that tell you? Eh? Eh? It tells you these guys are losers, ya?'
Swifty and his boys did things like putting hot sauce in Grant's drink and fucking about with his cell phone. They took the hubcaps off his car and they messed around with his bar stool. Petty shit like that. They fooled about with his precious briefcase which was...well, you need to understand that Grant's briefcase was strickly off-limits. Grant kept all his important things in there. His precious gadgets and his documents. All those kinds of things. So when they fooled around with the briefcase, when they hid it, poured beer on it...Grant got very upset. And as a result, this teasing became a self-perpetuating cycle. The more they wound Grant up, the bigger and more emotional his reactions became, the more the boys were tempted to continue pushing his buttons. It was a way to pass the time. I have found that one sure fire way for the lower man to define and maintain his social standing is to humiliate individuals outside the circle of mateship, ya? This is an easy way maintain rank. Anyway, Swifty just kept pushing and pushing, exploiting all those little cracks in Grant's personality.
'Swifty'....I've never understood why a fully grown man would perpetuate some ridiculous nickname he picked up as a youth, eh? Why he would drag such a name into his adult life. 'Swifty'. Jesus Christ. It all had something to do with his microscopically brief career as country footie star. Before the ill-fated shoulder injury, we all had to hear about each time he got pissed. His big moment of glory out on the pitch. Of course, there was a long, tiresome story behind why and how he acquired the nickname 'Swifty'. A story which I was forced to overhear many, many times. A story which I always make a point of forgetting.
Grant was a very sensitive guy. That much is clear. He tried to make out like he wasn't....but he was. He was one these guys who will internalise everything, dwell on it, chew on it, until later. And as I said, those boys just kept pushing and pushing, ya? Then, one summer evening Grant snapped big time. He made a huge scene. I think in his mind, Grant thought he was standing up to them like an action movie star might do in a film. But in the end, he just made a fool of himself. Swifty was a big man with a quick wit. Grant was no match. And when words failed, when push came to shove, Grant didn't have the balls to take on Swifty. The reality was, Grant had a heart the size of a pea. So in the end, what should have been the victim standing up to the bully, backfired in Grant's face. A chasm of humiliation opened up under his feet, swallowed him whole. We all saw it. We turned away. In response to that confrontation, Grant's attempt at bravery, instead of showing a little humanity, a little understanding, Swiftly went in for the kill. All pretences asides, he got openly nasty. He backed Grant up against the bar, pinned him with a jabbing finger to the face, called him a little parasite shit, a leech whose main purpose in life was preying off human misfortune. He made out....he characterised Grant as a stooge for the government. A grass. A rat. Lowest of the low. All this kind of business, eh? In that moment Swifty decided to break him. No more messing around. It was a very bad combination. Swiftly had that Aussie larrikin disregard for authority. When he looked at Grant, Swifty didn't see a portly middle-aged man simply trying to enjoy a few beers at the end of another pointless day. No. Grant had come to represent authority in all its ineptitudes. I understand this. Sure. Policy enacted by a prissy little guy with a briefcase. And like I say, it was a natural response for Swifty, ya? Challenging authority. But what Swifty didn't understand was, for Grant, the pub and his snooping surveillance job was basically was his entire life. As I have indicated, Grant had nothing else. He would show up every single day, rain or shine, at five o'clock with his little briefcase. He always drank five light strength beers and then he drove home. Rain or shine. I think that apart from his brother, who lived over in Sydney, we were the only human contact this poor bastard had, eh? I seem to remember there was some talk of a Thai mail order bride but Grant never followed through with that. He wouldn't know what to do with a woman if one dropped on his lap. Even if she was naked and feeling sexy. Anyway, the bar was an integral part of his routine and we were his family. And he derived a great deal of comfort from this familiarity. We would sit there and basically have the same conversation every day, over and over again...'How are you going Grant?'....this and that. Grant would tell us all about the people he was following and we'd say 'So Grant are you close to cracking the big case yet?' And sometimes we would have a bit of a laugh at his expense but it was never anything nasty or mean-spirited, eh? Not like Swifty.
The final straw came when Swifty wrote on the bathroom wall. He wrote 'The PI is a soft cock'. Right there on the tiles, right above the urinals for everyone to see. This was more than just a simple written slur. This cut deep, eh? Not only had Swifty defaced the bar, Grant's second home, he had also vandalised Grant's professional reputation and character for all to see. In response to this, Grant asked the manager to clean it off. Which he did. Eventually. After much humiliating nagging on Grant's end. And as soon as it was cleaned off? Well....Swifty went right back in there, stood with his cock one hand and his felt tip pen in the other, and he did it again. So it became this war of attrition. The graffiti would get cleaned off. Then it would reappear a few days later. And it went on like this for a quite a while. A cycle. Neither side willing or able to back down.
It was just a normal afternoon, the horses being lined up in Melbourne on the feed. Princess was standing behind the bar, hypnotised by her cell phone. The regulars were in their usual spots. Sven had just come back from the toilets, drying his hands on his suit pants, his eyes fixed on the screen as the track stewards corralled the horse into the starting gates. We had our betting tickets lined up on the beer mat. Between races, I was flicking through the newspaper. I remember looking at some holiday specials for South East Asia packages. They seemed very cheap. Swifty and his mates were already there, leaning up against the bar, drinking and carrying on as usual. Swifty had his sunglasses propped up on his head and I think he was telling the boys a story about some girl he'd messed around with the previous evening. Anyway, his voice had the lurid tones he reserved for this kind of story. And I wasn't listening.
There was some sort of confusion by the front entrance which is not visible from where I sit. There was a jarring sound. Initially, I thought it came from the TV mounted over the bar. It sounded like a heavy book being dropped on a hardwood floor. A flat, sudden sound interrupting the ambient noise to which we were all contributing. One of the boys standing next to Swifty jerked backwards and then dropped like a trap door had opened beneath his feet. I thought it was just more of their messing about, ya? They were always tackling each other, bringing each other to the ground. Or maybe he tripped on something? I couldn't tell. Anyway, suddenly they were all shouting. And not the usual silly buggers type of larking around either. No. I mean fearful, chaotic shouting. The other boys, they bolted around the bar and then I saw Grant walk into view with a rifle in his hands.
In the security footage, you can see him enter on the left side of the screen just above the timecode. This is the camera positioned over the TAB machine. It's a grainy, black and white image. The boy Grant shot is lying on the ground, face down and not moving. Grant doesn't waste any more time with him. He raises his rifle, points it at one of the other boys who is fleeing across the bar room floor. Then you see a silent puff of smoke issued from the muzzle and the kick of the rifle against Grant's shoulder, sending a visible shock through his body.
This police say Grant got this rifle from his uncle's farm. It had been maintained and correctly stored for a very long time, apparently waiting for this very afternoon. His uncle had ignored the amnesty, ya? Back when in the Johnny Howard days, after that business at Port Arthur. The uncle kept the gun in his shed. In a storage locker. It was a .243 bolt action rifle. Grant had often fired it as a boy out in the bush. Tree stumps and kangaroos. Grant's second shot hit the next boy in the back as he was trying to get through the exit into the beer garden. The bullet went right between this boy's shoulder blades, made a mess of his suit. By this time, living up to his nickname Swiftly had made it to the men's toilets.
Grant stopped and looked at us. Sven and I were just sitting there in a state of shock, trying to process what was happening. You know how they say time becomes a viscous, slow substance when you are under this kind of duress? When someone is waving a gun in your face? Well, it's true. I mean, I saw motes of dust suspended in a beam of afternoon sunlight which was falling across the bottles lined up on the back wall of the bar. My heart stopped in my chest. Time behaves very differently in these circumstances. Every moment cracks open to reveal a concealed eternity within. Also, from this point on, it was very clear what was going to happen. It was a junction. I was going to come out of this either alive or dead. Very simple, eh? Black or white. And I could have tried to run or tried to reason with Grant but I don't remember moving of saying anything. I just sat there, my hands on the bar, waiting for the outcome. Grant looked at me for a moment, weighing me up, trying to determine if, in this final judgement, if I was a friend or foe. One door leads to more life. More time. The other one is an exit. And you know, in that moment, the muzzle of the rifle swinging my way, I was thinking back, taking stock. Technically speaking, I was always on Grant's side but were there not a few nagging incidents? When the boys were taunting him and a smile may possibly have crept across my face? A slight ghost of a smile that Grant may have caught in the corner of his eye? Showing that I was capable of deriving some entertainment from his suffering? His torture.
But then the moment passed and Grant moved on, clicking back into hunting mode. There would be no bullet for me. Princess was just standing there, in the doorway leading into the cooler room, her mouth open and her eyes wide. Grant took aim at her chest but then changed his mind. They say he only had a handful of bullets. I'll tell you, that look in his eyes, it was frightening. And not only his eyes. It was almost like his entire face had changed in a number of very subtle ways. It was like looking at someone for the first time. Trying to read their intentions yet failing to do so.
Grant moved around the bar, heading across the dance floor, threading between the tables in front of the little stage, towards the men's toilet. He was after Swiftly. As soon as he went in through the door, the gun muzzle probing ahead into the tiled gloom of the men's, we all got the hell out of there. Princess was frozen on the spot, muttering something about the cash register so I had to run around the bar, grabbed her and dragged her out. We had to leave the wounded boy behind. There was no telling how long Grant would be in the toilet. Sven was propping open the front door. We left everything behind: all our money, smokes, our drinks. We ran across the parking lot, up the main street and into the little park near Lemon street. Luckily Princess had her mobile so we called the cops. After ten minutes we began to hear overlapping sirens in the distance, the sound climbing up out of the surrounding silence.
They found Swifty dead in the men's toilet. They went in dressed in jumpsuits and paper booties. From the physical evidence, they easily ascertained that Swifty had tried to escape through the little window above one of the toilet stalls. This was a futile attempt. The wire mesh had been far too strong for him to break through and as a result, he'd only succeeded in bloodying his hands as he tried to punch his way out. It wouldn't have mattered anyway. He would have been too big to climb through the opening. He would have been better off trying to tackle Grant. At least then he would have stood a chance. People do funny things when faced with mortal danger. Sometimes the tough guy goes meek and the meek guy turns into the hero. You can never tell. As it was, Grant put three bullets in Swifty. One in the back, one in the head and one through his side. They found Swifty in the middle stall, crumpled up around the bog, his brains on the tile.
According to the police timeline, there then followed a bit of a stand-off with the cops surrounding the place. During that time Grant finished off the salesman he had previously wounded. That boy had attempted to crawl out the front door but only made it to the betting station. In all likelihood, he wouldn't have survived anyway. He left far too much blood behind, a large swath of vital fluid which he painted across the wooden floor, marking his slow but ultimately pointless attempt. The other one, the boy Grant had shot trying to get out through the beer garden exit was already dead. The fourth one, Mick, was hiding in the cooler room, behind a stack of kegs, shaking with cold and fear. He was jammed in a very small space. Wisely he didn't move until the cops cleared the place out. Grant assumed incorrectly that he had escaped.
After all the killing, the security footage shows Grant sitting for a time at the empty bar, seemingly lost in his own thoughts, the rifle within easy reach. Then, like a rugby team brandishing handguns, the police came barreling in through the front door and pinned him to the floor. This was the beginning of Grant's long journey through the legal and medical system, the slow digestion of the man Grant had once been through the intestinal tract of a bureaucratic creature. A journey partially reported on with typical blood lust by the local press. A journey which would eventually land him for the remainder of his Thorazine drooling days in the Graylands psychiatric hospital.
A week later we were all back in the bar, sitting in our usual spots like nothing had happened. We drank our drinks and we put our bets down, waiting for the gates to spring open, releasing the horses and the dogs. They cleaned up the blood. Princess came back to work, talked badly of Grant. I didn't participate in any of this. The poor girl has a breakdown some days later, just couldn't function with the memory of what happened. This was completely understandable. She went off to seek some professional help.
As I say, the papers made a meal out of the whole thing. There were photos of Grant in his suit being led out of the courthouse, his hands in cuffs. His face looked blank. Resigned. This was not the Grant we knew from before. They twisted his character to fit into their narrative. I made some altruistic plans to go visit him up there in the nuthouse but I never followed through. This always bothered me. Alcohol made us brothers but that bond was only maintained when it was convenient to do so. And really, it didn't extend beyond the pub's front door. While I pissing that beer away, standing with my nose up against the tiles in the toilet, I could still faintly make out Swiftly's graffiti on the wall. In those moments of quiet reflection, I was tempted to change the course of my life, to pry my ass off that bloody bar stool and walk out the front door. I could have picked the phone and visited my son. I could have done a lot of things. There was still time. But then I remembered something very important. I had just put some bets down. There was a trifecta I had a very good feeling about. So I came back from the toilets and took my place next to Sven. And up on the telly, the gates sprung open in Sydney and the horses were released.
Actually, that's not entirely true. There were several obvious reasons, ya? It was right around the corner from their office building and the manager of the pub, Derrick, would put up with their bullshit because they spent money. And I mean, a lot of money, you know? Princess, the girl who worked behind the bar during the week, she was a pushover as far as those hooligans were concerned. What did you expect? She was one of these young girls with a bubble for a brain. Swifty had her wrapped around his little finger. You know how the young girls are these days? With their cell phones and their need for validation.
Anyway, these guys, Swiftly and his mob, they'd come in shouting and shoving each other around, carrying on like school boys. And they would instantly change the atmosphere of the place. Us regulars, we would just keep our heads down and do our best to ignore the dickhead comments about the bar being an old age pensioner home. 'God's waiting room' was an expression they kicked around quite a bit, saying we were a bunch of 'old soft cocks', you know? 'Drooling old jokes'. Those boys had fucking endless smart-ass comments about our half strength beers, our prescription reading glasses and our chicken shit two dollar bets lining the bar. I'd just smile and think to myself, wait until it happens to you sunshine. If you live that long, eh?
Listen, I had two teenage boys, ya? So I know. Just like my Angus, these guys were constantly testing our boundaries, seeing how much they could get away with, you know? So the only way to deal with them was to not to play their game, ya? Simple. Ignore them. And I know Swifty. I mean, I have met men like him before. His type. Swiftly is the kind who will push the joke to the very limit, ya? He is the classic sadist hiding in the guise of a joker. If you can read people, like I can, you'd pick up on this the moment you met him. He was very charming and intelligent but he had the curling smile of a sadist. He was alert to human weakness like a shark can smell a drop of blood in the ocean. Swifty would lead you in one direction, getting you all upset and bent out of shape, and then he would switch gears, you know? He would say, 'Just joking mate' and 'What's the matter with you? Eh? You can't take a joke?' So he will put it back in you, as if you were the sensitive, and therefore weaker party. As if you couldn't take a little bit of teasing.
Like I say, these boys didn't bother with me. No. You know I am from South Africa. After Apartheid ended my farm was robbed twice. At gun point. So this level of intimidation? This schoolyard stuff...it doesn't bother me. I just don't rate it is something worth getting upset about. It's all comes down to perspective, eh? Because there is something very important you have to keep in mind: these guys, these local guys, they grew up in this big, empty, sprawling state, ya? So what I am saying is, nothing has really happened here apart from a gold rush followed by the mining boom. Sudden spurts of economic growth. Transient population. A few local celebrity millionaires made good. Otherwise, it's track housing stretched to the horizon, empty streets and parks. Shopping centres. They don't know what intimidation and violence are really like apart from what they see on the telly, eh? For them, it's all schoolyard bully stuff. Playing war. And you know what amazes me? I mean, I understand why but it has to be this way but...instead of being thankful, of appreciating that you have this relatively peaceful history, these guys have something to prove, ya? There is a big chip on their shoulders. And like I say, I get it, you know? Young men who are untested feel like they're living a half a life. It's just human nature. Or at least for males. Why do you think little boys run around with guns, shooting each other?
Anyway, these guys never bothered me. All you have to do it ignore it. The problem is exasperated when you to react to them. This is what the bully wants from his victim, eh? A reaction. Plain and simple. And they got under Grant's skin alright. That much was obvious from the start. When they realised that me and Sven weren't going to take the bait, they focused pretty much exclusively on Grant. They'd wind him up every single day. It was sport for them. It was fun. It started with little digs, you know? Little comments and jabs. Nothing too serious. But then it got worse. Much worse.
And Grant was....well....Grant was Grant, eh? We all knew Grant was a bit special. A bit of a sad and lonely guy. There was something not right with the poor bugger upstairs, ya? He wasn't playing with a full deck of cards. It was very subtle but the longer you knew him, the more you'd notice it. I would describe this psychological flaw as an emotional disconnect. A dead spot in his personality. Basically, he had trouble communicating his feelings and relating to other people, eh? He was a state licenced investigator-security consultant. Or at least that's what his business card proudly proclaimed. What he really did wasn't exactly like a James Bond movie. Or, what was that old TV show? Magnum PI? No red Ferraris, no beautiful babes. Grant just sat around, watching people scamming the government. He would collect information for caseworkers to use as evidence. He filmed these people, these scammers, in shopping centres and on the street. He had little cameras. Tiny little cameras that he would conceal in his clothing and in a gym bag. Grant was very good at blending in. He was like a chameleon. Just another face in the crowd. He had a pair of dark sunglasses which reflected what was happening behind you, over your shoulder. Gadgets like that, ya? He would show us all this spy stuff that he bought online. He was a real gadget guy. That was the Grant we all knew. The Grant who showed up at the bar every day. In his private life, he would post photos of himself on Facebook, holding a pair of brass knuckles and replica guns. Like that, you know? Action man. Always in the background of these photos, you could see the same sad little one bedroom apartment in Mount Lawley. Brick walls. A kitchenette.
Anyway, adding to his woes, Swifty and his boys would pass the time teasing Grant and he would take the bait. Grant took it all so personally, ya? I'd pull him aside, say to him, 'Grant man...just chill out. Don't worry about it'. I'd say, 'Listen....you're a middle-aged man. Do you really put any value on what these guys are saying? You can't let them get to you. These guys are young and stupid and all they can think to do with their time is come here, into this shitty pub and bother a bunch of old farts like us? Come on man....what does that tell you? Eh? Eh? It tells you these guys are losers, ya?'
Swifty and his boys did things like putting hot sauce in Grant's drink and fucking about with his cell phone. They took the hubcaps off his car and they messed around with his bar stool. Petty shit like that. They fooled about with his precious briefcase which was...well, you need to understand that Grant's briefcase was strickly off-limits. Grant kept all his important things in there. His precious gadgets and his documents. All those kinds of things. So when they fooled around with the briefcase, when they hid it, poured beer on it...Grant got very upset. And as a result, this teasing became a self-perpetuating cycle. The more they wound Grant up, the bigger and more emotional his reactions became, the more the boys were tempted to continue pushing his buttons. It was a way to pass the time. I have found that one sure fire way for the lower man to define and maintain his social standing is to humiliate individuals outside the circle of mateship, ya? This is an easy way maintain rank. Anyway, Swifty just kept pushing and pushing, exploiting all those little cracks in Grant's personality.
'Swifty'....I've never understood why a fully grown man would perpetuate some ridiculous nickname he picked up as a youth, eh? Why he would drag such a name into his adult life. 'Swifty'. Jesus Christ. It all had something to do with his microscopically brief career as country footie star. Before the ill-fated shoulder injury, we all had to hear about each time he got pissed. His big moment of glory out on the pitch. Of course, there was a long, tiresome story behind why and how he acquired the nickname 'Swifty'. A story which I was forced to overhear many, many times. A story which I always make a point of forgetting.
Grant was a very sensitive guy. That much is clear. He tried to make out like he wasn't....but he was. He was one these guys who will internalise everything, dwell on it, chew on it, until later. And as I said, those boys just kept pushing and pushing, ya? Then, one summer evening Grant snapped big time. He made a huge scene. I think in his mind, Grant thought he was standing up to them like an action movie star might do in a film. But in the end, he just made a fool of himself. Swifty was a big man with a quick wit. Grant was no match. And when words failed, when push came to shove, Grant didn't have the balls to take on Swifty. The reality was, Grant had a heart the size of a pea. So in the end, what should have been the victim standing up to the bully, backfired in Grant's face. A chasm of humiliation opened up under his feet, swallowed him whole. We all saw it. We turned away. In response to that confrontation, Grant's attempt at bravery, instead of showing a little humanity, a little understanding, Swiftly went in for the kill. All pretences asides, he got openly nasty. He backed Grant up against the bar, pinned him with a jabbing finger to the face, called him a little parasite shit, a leech whose main purpose in life was preying off human misfortune. He made out....he characterised Grant as a stooge for the government. A grass. A rat. Lowest of the low. All this kind of business, eh? In that moment Swifty decided to break him. No more messing around. It was a very bad combination. Swiftly had that Aussie larrikin disregard for authority. When he looked at Grant, Swifty didn't see a portly middle-aged man simply trying to enjoy a few beers at the end of another pointless day. No. Grant had come to represent authority in all its ineptitudes. I understand this. Sure. Policy enacted by a prissy little guy with a briefcase. And like I say, it was a natural response for Swifty, ya? Challenging authority. But what Swifty didn't understand was, for Grant, the pub and his snooping surveillance job was basically was his entire life. As I have indicated, Grant had nothing else. He would show up every single day, rain or shine, at five o'clock with his little briefcase. He always drank five light strength beers and then he drove home. Rain or shine. I think that apart from his brother, who lived over in Sydney, we were the only human contact this poor bastard had, eh? I seem to remember there was some talk of a Thai mail order bride but Grant never followed through with that. He wouldn't know what to do with a woman if one dropped on his lap. Even if she was naked and feeling sexy. Anyway, the bar was an integral part of his routine and we were his family. And he derived a great deal of comfort from this familiarity. We would sit there and basically have the same conversation every day, over and over again...'How are you going Grant?'....this and that. Grant would tell us all about the people he was following and we'd say 'So Grant are you close to cracking the big case yet?' And sometimes we would have a bit of a laugh at his expense but it was never anything nasty or mean-spirited, eh? Not like Swifty.
The final straw came when Swifty wrote on the bathroom wall. He wrote 'The PI is a soft cock'. Right there on the tiles, right above the urinals for everyone to see. This was more than just a simple written slur. This cut deep, eh? Not only had Swifty defaced the bar, Grant's second home, he had also vandalised Grant's professional reputation and character for all to see. In response to this, Grant asked the manager to clean it off. Which he did. Eventually. After much humiliating nagging on Grant's end. And as soon as it was cleaned off? Well....Swifty went right back in there, stood with his cock one hand and his felt tip pen in the other, and he did it again. So it became this war of attrition. The graffiti would get cleaned off. Then it would reappear a few days later. And it went on like this for a quite a while. A cycle. Neither side willing or able to back down.
It was just a normal afternoon, the horses being lined up in Melbourne on the feed. Princess was standing behind the bar, hypnotised by her cell phone. The regulars were in their usual spots. Sven had just come back from the toilets, drying his hands on his suit pants, his eyes fixed on the screen as the track stewards corralled the horse into the starting gates. We had our betting tickets lined up on the beer mat. Between races, I was flicking through the newspaper. I remember looking at some holiday specials for South East Asia packages. They seemed very cheap. Swifty and his mates were already there, leaning up against the bar, drinking and carrying on as usual. Swifty had his sunglasses propped up on his head and I think he was telling the boys a story about some girl he'd messed around with the previous evening. Anyway, his voice had the lurid tones he reserved for this kind of story. And I wasn't listening.
There was some sort of confusion by the front entrance which is not visible from where I sit. There was a jarring sound. Initially, I thought it came from the TV mounted over the bar. It sounded like a heavy book being dropped on a hardwood floor. A flat, sudden sound interrupting the ambient noise to which we were all contributing. One of the boys standing next to Swifty jerked backwards and then dropped like a trap door had opened beneath his feet. I thought it was just more of their messing about, ya? They were always tackling each other, bringing each other to the ground. Or maybe he tripped on something? I couldn't tell. Anyway, suddenly they were all shouting. And not the usual silly buggers type of larking around either. No. I mean fearful, chaotic shouting. The other boys, they bolted around the bar and then I saw Grant walk into view with a rifle in his hands.
In the security footage, you can see him enter on the left side of the screen just above the timecode. This is the camera positioned over the TAB machine. It's a grainy, black and white image. The boy Grant shot is lying on the ground, face down and not moving. Grant doesn't waste any more time with him. He raises his rifle, points it at one of the other boys who is fleeing across the bar room floor. Then you see a silent puff of smoke issued from the muzzle and the kick of the rifle against Grant's shoulder, sending a visible shock through his body.
This police say Grant got this rifle from his uncle's farm. It had been maintained and correctly stored for a very long time, apparently waiting for this very afternoon. His uncle had ignored the amnesty, ya? Back when in the Johnny Howard days, after that business at Port Arthur. The uncle kept the gun in his shed. In a storage locker. It was a .243 bolt action rifle. Grant had often fired it as a boy out in the bush. Tree stumps and kangaroos. Grant's second shot hit the next boy in the back as he was trying to get through the exit into the beer garden. The bullet went right between this boy's shoulder blades, made a mess of his suit. By this time, living up to his nickname Swiftly had made it to the men's toilets.
Grant stopped and looked at us. Sven and I were just sitting there in a state of shock, trying to process what was happening. You know how they say time becomes a viscous, slow substance when you are under this kind of duress? When someone is waving a gun in your face? Well, it's true. I mean, I saw motes of dust suspended in a beam of afternoon sunlight which was falling across the bottles lined up on the back wall of the bar. My heart stopped in my chest. Time behaves very differently in these circumstances. Every moment cracks open to reveal a concealed eternity within. Also, from this point on, it was very clear what was going to happen. It was a junction. I was going to come out of this either alive or dead. Very simple, eh? Black or white. And I could have tried to run or tried to reason with Grant but I don't remember moving of saying anything. I just sat there, my hands on the bar, waiting for the outcome. Grant looked at me for a moment, weighing me up, trying to determine if, in this final judgement, if I was a friend or foe. One door leads to more life. More time. The other one is an exit. And you know, in that moment, the muzzle of the rifle swinging my way, I was thinking back, taking stock. Technically speaking, I was always on Grant's side but were there not a few nagging incidents? When the boys were taunting him and a smile may possibly have crept across my face? A slight ghost of a smile that Grant may have caught in the corner of his eye? Showing that I was capable of deriving some entertainment from his suffering? His torture.
But then the moment passed and Grant moved on, clicking back into hunting mode. There would be no bullet for me. Princess was just standing there, in the doorway leading into the cooler room, her mouth open and her eyes wide. Grant took aim at her chest but then changed his mind. They say he only had a handful of bullets. I'll tell you, that look in his eyes, it was frightening. And not only his eyes. It was almost like his entire face had changed in a number of very subtle ways. It was like looking at someone for the first time. Trying to read their intentions yet failing to do so.
Grant moved around the bar, heading across the dance floor, threading between the tables in front of the little stage, towards the men's toilet. He was after Swiftly. As soon as he went in through the door, the gun muzzle probing ahead into the tiled gloom of the men's, we all got the hell out of there. Princess was frozen on the spot, muttering something about the cash register so I had to run around the bar, grabbed her and dragged her out. We had to leave the wounded boy behind. There was no telling how long Grant would be in the toilet. Sven was propping open the front door. We left everything behind: all our money, smokes, our drinks. We ran across the parking lot, up the main street and into the little park near Lemon street. Luckily Princess had her mobile so we called the cops. After ten minutes we began to hear overlapping sirens in the distance, the sound climbing up out of the surrounding silence.
They found Swifty dead in the men's toilet. They went in dressed in jumpsuits and paper booties. From the physical evidence, they easily ascertained that Swifty had tried to escape through the little window above one of the toilet stalls. This was a futile attempt. The wire mesh had been far too strong for him to break through and as a result, he'd only succeeded in bloodying his hands as he tried to punch his way out. It wouldn't have mattered anyway. He would have been too big to climb through the opening. He would have been better off trying to tackle Grant. At least then he would have stood a chance. People do funny things when faced with mortal danger. Sometimes the tough guy goes meek and the meek guy turns into the hero. You can never tell. As it was, Grant put three bullets in Swifty. One in the back, one in the head and one through his side. They found Swifty in the middle stall, crumpled up around the bog, his brains on the tile.
According to the police timeline, there then followed a bit of a stand-off with the cops surrounding the place. During that time Grant finished off the salesman he had previously wounded. That boy had attempted to crawl out the front door but only made it to the betting station. In all likelihood, he wouldn't have survived anyway. He left far too much blood behind, a large swath of vital fluid which he painted across the wooden floor, marking his slow but ultimately pointless attempt. The other one, the boy Grant had shot trying to get out through the beer garden exit was already dead. The fourth one, Mick, was hiding in the cooler room, behind a stack of kegs, shaking with cold and fear. He was jammed in a very small space. Wisely he didn't move until the cops cleared the place out. Grant assumed incorrectly that he had escaped.
After all the killing, the security footage shows Grant sitting for a time at the empty bar, seemingly lost in his own thoughts, the rifle within easy reach. Then, like a rugby team brandishing handguns, the police came barreling in through the front door and pinned him to the floor. This was the beginning of Grant's long journey through the legal and medical system, the slow digestion of the man Grant had once been through the intestinal tract of a bureaucratic creature. A journey partially reported on with typical blood lust by the local press. A journey which would eventually land him for the remainder of his Thorazine drooling days in the Graylands psychiatric hospital.
A week later we were all back in the bar, sitting in our usual spots like nothing had happened. We drank our drinks and we put our bets down, waiting for the gates to spring open, releasing the horses and the dogs. They cleaned up the blood. Princess came back to work, talked badly of Grant. I didn't participate in any of this. The poor girl has a breakdown some days later, just couldn't function with the memory of what happened. This was completely understandable. She went off to seek some professional help.
As I say, the papers made a meal out of the whole thing. There were photos of Grant in his suit being led out of the courthouse, his hands in cuffs. His face looked blank. Resigned. This was not the Grant we knew from before. They twisted his character to fit into their narrative. I made some altruistic plans to go visit him up there in the nuthouse but I never followed through. This always bothered me. Alcohol made us brothers but that bond was only maintained when it was convenient to do so. And really, it didn't extend beyond the pub's front door. While I pissing that beer away, standing with my nose up against the tiles in the toilet, I could still faintly make out Swiftly's graffiti on the wall. In those moments of quiet reflection, I was tempted to change the course of my life, to pry my ass off that bloody bar stool and walk out the front door. I could have picked the phone and visited my son. I could have done a lot of things. There was still time. But then I remembered something very important. I had just put some bets down. There was a trifecta I had a very good feeling about. So I came back from the toilets and took my place next to Sven. And up on the telly, the gates sprung open in Sydney and the horses were released.
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