Blood River

by Tony Cavanaugh

  —

  IT HASN’T RAINED in more than a year-and-a-half. The entire state of Queensland is suffering its longest dry spell in history. The heat is intense. Baking waves of arid dust roll across the outback. The air-conditioning in the William Street building has crashed and emergency fans have been purchased, the last ones in Brisbane, everything sold out, before the next shipment arrives from down south, plugged into the beige-coloured wall and are shooting hot air across the long table.

  No-one wants to be there. Everyone wants to be home or on the little man-made beach on the other side of the river, in South Bank. At least there are plastic bottles of cold water. At least the fridge in the boardroom is still operating, which is saying something because the aircon overload is so intense, the city has been hit with rolling blackouts. People are demanding a new election as the government can’t even guarantee a basic service like electricity.

  —

  ‘YES. THANKS. YES, I understand,’ said Jen.

  ‘When we last spoke we tripped up on the issue of culpability.

  Because you were adamant of your innocence …’

  ‘Look, I just have to say, I did not do it. I am innocent.’

  Zap. Image closed. And it wasn’t an electrical malfunction.

  Cowboy Ray

  RECEIVING A PHONE CALL FROM THE NEW ATTORNEY-General at eight in the morning on a Sunday as I was making the girls’ breakfast was completely unexpected. The new coalition government had just swept into office the night before. They hadn’t yet been sworn in by the Governor. Votes were still being counted but the Sunday Mail headlined a swing against the old and an in with the new.

  ‘Is that you, Karin?’

  ‘Yes. Who is this?’

  ‘It’s Ray. I’m the new Attorney-General but don’t tell no-one or else I’ll have to kill you; state secret until Thursday. Come into the dining room at parliament – I’m gonna open it up just for you and me, tomorrow. Lunch. Twelve. Yeah?’

  Yeah. Sure. Ray. Without the surname. But it’s Queensland. The Premier is Betty. The Treasurer is Shane.

  After an election, the mechanics of government are still, silent, dead. It takes about two weeks before everything revs back to life with a return to normality, especially when the opposition party has trounced the existing power, when aides and advisors are scrambling and a man who was, a week ago, mustering two hundred thousand head of cows is now one of the most powerful people in the state.

  And in charge of the entire legal system.

  —

  THE PARLIAMENT DINING room, at the top end of the city, is a very large, high-ceilinged, Victorian space in which ladies in aprons whisper as they serve you, and the cutlery is silver and heavy and ancient and you are asked if you might like the lamb with boiled potatoes and mint sauce or perhaps the beef with mash and horseradish. There is a salad to start: lettuce, orange and processed cheese. Salt. No pepper. Which is what Warren told me to expect as we rolled around in bed on Monday morning before we roused the girls out of their eternal teenage slumber.

  Warren said that if the new government was Labor I would get pineapple slices (from a can of Golden Circle) on top of the lettuce, but because the new government is conservative, pineapple is banned.

  Sweet equals fruit equals radical. If you’re lucky, you might get a slice of orange with some processed cheese, he told me. Orange slices are safe, not radical.

  ‘Babe, you’re going to hate it, and why is Cowboy Ray asking you out to lunch before he gets – and the government gets – sworn in?’

  ‘I don’t know, but I have to go.’

  ‘Whatever you do …’ leaning over to kiss my lips and down into my neck and down and girls, don’t wake up, not just yet.

  ‘… do not come home in a Stetson hat,’ he said afterwards.

  —

  WARREN AND I met at the finishing line of a memorial Gelignite Jack car rally in Birdsville. To commemorate the famous 1954 Redex Trial race through the outback, we had to drive vintage cars – but not too vintage or else we’d all break down. I drove a 1970s five-litre LH Torana SL/R 5000 sedan. Bright yellow.

  I won.

  Warren came second in a Ford Fairlane V8. Bright red.

  We hadn’t really noticed one another as the drivers gathered at Longreach two days earlier. We drove six hundred and fifty kilometres to Mt Isa, stopped, stayed the night, got up at dawn after too much partying and drove another seven hundred kilometres to Birdsville. Then we partied again, big time, for two nights and three days and by the time it was all over I had found a genuine partner. We were both from Brisbane and we were both lawyers and we were both aiming to become QCs. I’d grown up in the bush in Longreach and he’d grown up in Ascot. I’d been sent to an exclusive all-girls school and he’d been sent to an exclusive all-boys school.

  We had many mutual friends and he was the first man I’d met who didn’t have a problem with being bettered by a woman.

  The car race was across outback desert. Massive swirls of red dust would almost sweep you off the dirt tracks. Back in 1954, the legendary Gelignite Jack sorted out any objects in his path, like boulders, by throwing a stick of gelignite out the window of his car, blowing them up and clearing the way.

  Warren and I thought the law should be like that: don’t let anything get in the way of getting the result.

  I’d been into car racing since I was twelve. On the roads outside Longreach no-one cared how old you were when you drove, as long as you could see over the dashboard. I rolled my first Holden ute at the age of fourteen and narrowly escaped death at the age of seventeen when I skidded off an embankment and landed in a dry creek bed.

  I’ve mellowed now. We’ve both mellowed. We are upstanding citizens of Brisbane and we enforce the law. The judiciary looks up to us. We take our daughters sky-diving on their birthdays, and the Torana is parked in the back garage. It’s still registered. On our wedding anniversary we back it out, down the driveway and then go to Brisbane airport. Which is under federal jurisdiction. Which means the state police do not patrol the roads. There are a few near-empty roads down near the mangroves by the mouth of the river, where you can hear the ocean. And we gun it. Him first. Then me. Crack the ton and then make love in the back seat, like we did that first night in Birdsville. And then we drive back home.

  —

  I ARRIVED EARLY.

  In keeping with the wild and independent we-do-it-our-way ethos of Queensland, the very first parliament was in a convict barracks building. Now, as I walked up to the entrance gate, I looked across the impressive 1860s sandstone building on the other side of the Botanic Gardens built in a blend of French and English imperial muscle with rows of archways and colonnades. Like every other Brisbane schoolkid, I had done the obligatory tour, trudging along the wooden-walled corridors and peering into old rooms with thick scarlet curtains, bored out of my brain, staring at the Assembly, thinking how small it was and how relieved I was when I finally climbed back onto the bus.

  ‘Hello, my name is Karin Jones. I’m a bit before time. I have a …’

  ‘Oh yes, we are expecting you. If you go up those stairs and turn left and then right you will be in the dining room. The minister will be with you shortly.’

  —

  ‘YO! KARIN! HERE she is!’ he said as he walked with long gaits into the otherwise empty dining room. Two frightened-looking women hovered close to the kitchen holding menus printed up every morning with the date in the top right-hand corner. Printed up today, especially for Ray and me.

  ‘Beef or chicken?’ asked Cowboy Ray.

  ‘I think I’ll just have the salad,’ I replied.

  ‘The salad is terrible,’ he said, ‘but I might convince them to bring out the pineapple. You want a beer? Wine?’

  ‘No, thanks. I’ll stick to the water.’

  ‘You know who I am?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Then you know … oh, here she is! Honey! Over here. I’m going to have the chicken but you know
what? I have a big hankering for a chicken parma, lots of cheese, you get me, and my colleague here, she’s going to have a salad and you have the pineapple, yeah? She wants the pineapple and bring her some garlic bread because we all know that eating only salad will kill us and bring us a bottle of your best red wine and my colleague here is going to drink some water so the best water in the house. Got that?’

  Yes, sir.

  ‘On air you go,’ he said, to which I thought: What? but decided not to push it. (Many years later I heard it again and asked: What does that mean? And I was told it was a 1950s BBC phrase used on set, just before the cameras were turned on; we are on air. So, go.)

  ‘I’ve got this parole-board thing and I want you to run it. Yes?’

  ‘Sir, minister, I’m not sure I’m qualified for that – it is a tremendous honour but I am sure there are others who would be far more suitable than I am.’

  ‘Bullshit. I need a smart, innovative person because …’ As he leaned across the table, inviting me to do the same, which I did. I could smell his breath of red wine. ‘Because I know nothing about this stuff, nothing; all I know is that if they do the crime, then put ’em away for the rest of eternity, but my advisors, all young folk, like you, they tell me to not be like Fred Flintstone, it’s a new century and stay with the times. So, what of it?’

  Let me talk to my husband.

  Who says yes.

  Let me talk to my kids.

  Who say yes.

  Thanks Ray. The answer is:

  ‘Yes. It’s an honour, it really is but will you allow me my independence?’

  —

  AND NOW HERE I am, years later, in the slow grip of pressure where he and I are going to do battle over a person neither of us has met.

  Jennifer White.

  Eighteen Years In

  ‘HELLO JEN, IT’S KARIN HERE AGAIN, ALONG WITH THE REST of the parole board. How are you?’

  ‘Okay, thanks.’

  ‘Today is your third time with the parole board. Your support system is still in place and your sister remains committed to you upon an early release, should that occur, and the prison social worker and your pastor support your application to return to the community. We also note that you have continued the sessions with your psychologist and you’ve created a literary class for the other prisoners and you’re studying Moby Dick, which is certainly not the easiest of books to read, let alone study, all of which we think is great. But we need to come back and look at this nagging issue of culpability. If we may.’

  ‘I am innocent. I did not kill any of those men.’

  ‘The jury found you guilty, Jen, and it’s critical that you – indeed, this is a crucial first step – that you acknowledge your crimes.’

  ‘I did not kill those men.’

  Zap. Black. Bye Jen. Not the right answer.

  —

  AT THE AGE of thirty-six in 2018, I’m now the longest-serving inmate. Not a record of achievement I would have imagined. Girls come to me for advice. Girls come to me in tears and they come to me for drugs and knives and I tell them I don’t do that shit. I’m like the Old Mother Hubbard of the prison. The Old Girl. Old Jen. Go ask Jen, she’s seen it all; there’s nothing that Mother Jen ain’t seen. She’s seen the suicides, so if you’re feeling black with thoughts of harm, go see Old Jen and she’ll straighten you out. She’s seen murders where bitches slash other bitches, mostly across the face so their men won’t wanna fuck ’em anymore, but Jen’s seen more than that; she’s seen girls stab and twist and head-kick another girl to the eternal mother up above. So, if you’re feeling as though you wanna kill another inmate, go see Old Jen and she’ll talk you down, reminding you that what you really want, above all else, is to get out of the prison, walk your way past those razor-sharp wire walls that encircle you. She’s seen girls who shrivel up and can’t move as if all energy has sapped from their very life-force, so if you feel like you can’t move or think or lift a foot or a hand, crawl to Old Jen and she’ll advise on how to combat the death of life when you’re not actually dead. Even some of the guards go see Old Jen for a bit of advice on what to do with their wayward husband or irascible kids because even though Old Jen don’t have neither, not in her life because she went down a teenager and us girls made a bet that she’s never been fucked, not by a bloke but we’ll never win or lose that bet because Old Jen tells us she ain’t never going to tell us if she has or not.

  The floors are polished linoleum. Light grey framed by dark grey edges. The buildings connect through outdoor cloisters. Around us, in every direction, is green lawn. But now it is brown and dead because of the drought and the water restrictions that kicked in a couple of years ago. The flowers died too. Beyond the scissor razor walls of metal are walls of forest. We’re under the flight path.

  I do the art classes and I lead The Girls in the literature classes where we talk about books, and Daphne does the massage and meditation classes, and Rosie and me, Rosie and me …

  Rosie. Danger-green eyes, deep as the ocean and a buzz-cut slicing into both sides of her head, tearing through her soft blonde hair; and muscles from being the tough girl and a smile, gentle and loving, from the side of her mouth, lest anyone see a semblance of vulnerability. With a ‘Come hither, Jen,’ moment that always consumes me.

  Who would have thought I would enter into a relationship with a girl called Rosie who is older than me with kids and a dead, murdered (pot roasted) husband, and whose body has a softness I not only caress but crave; she is going to get out before me; her parole comes up on June 24 and she will get out, she will, she has been in here so long and she is scared about getting out and as she twines her body around mine as we touch, I say: Wait for me and she says: I will, come and live on my farm with the tropical fruit. And she will wait for me; I believe her.

  —

  THERE WAS A dust storm. We were kept inside. The sky turned red then it turned brown then it turned burnt umber and the walls of the buildings shook and we, all of us, stared out through the windows. No-one said anything. We were all lost in our own thoughts. The sky was deep burnt umber for a long time and the cloud of dust swept in and enveloped the entire prison. It had been hot that morning but now we were encased in an even greater heat. Is this hell? I wondered. Is this what hell looks like? Hell comes from the sky? I always thought it was beneath me, far below the surface of the ground. None of us could see out through the windows. Just a wall of thick dust. Later, we were told that the dust storm was made up of top soil from out west. Top soil and desert red outback sand. Merging together as a great thunder of wind swept down from the sky, unearthing the land, ripping out layers of ground and then blowing across the city, then out into the sea.

  I think Rosie is drowning me; you know when you are in love, captivated and lost within the sea, the undulating, massive crash of waves, some as big as eighteen metres, as you are submerged by love and the threat of loss.

  It’s time for her to leave.

  She is being released today.

  —

  ‘I’LL COME BACK and visit you next week,’ she says.

  We both know it’s shaky. Freedom rewires all promises made inside. But I hug her and she hugs me and I say: ‘Can’t wait.’

  ‘Stop being innocent.’

  ‘But I am.’

  ‘No-one cares. Play the game.’

  ‘But I am.’

  ‘No-one is innocent,’ she says. ‘Be guilty, find remorse and then you’ll be out.’

  She’s been telling me that for ages. Everyone has been telling me that for ages. No-one wants to listen to a person who says they’re innocent because that’s what everyone says, all of the guilty people inside.

  Be guilty. Then and only then will you be free.

  And with another kiss, she turns. I watch her leave. Down a corridor, escorted by two prison guards, and just before she vanishes around the corner, there is a pause and she stops and she turns back to me and I feel the warmth from her smile all the way from the ot
her end of the corridor. And then she is gone. My Rosie. She is gone.

  Wait for me.

  No-One Is Innocent

  PAROLE WAS A GIVEN. PAROLE WAS MY RIGHT. PAROLE WAS almost the first thing my QC mentioned when the judge gave me Life. ‘You’ll be eligible in about fifteen years’ time,’ he said, which I didn’t really hear because I was so overwhelmed with what had happened to me but, as I was being driven, in the back of the van, to Wacol, my new home, parole became the beacon of light that was all and everything I clung to. The actual sentence of Life Imprisonment had been fully replaced by parole.

  Which, as I was now finally starting to realise, was not actually a given or a right and no amount of being a good girl and not bashing up guards or injecting smack or killing other inmates was going to substitute the acknowledgement of my guilt and, ergo, my atonement. Because, as I now realised after eighteen years of stubborn anger, the girl cast as The Innocent, unless I changed and did a one-eighty, would be stuck inside this sterile hell for a lot longer.

  Myra Hindley went down for Life, at the age of twenty-four, in 1966 after the jury took two hours to find her, along with Ian Brady, guilty of the horrid Moors Murders, the killing of kids. She was told she’d be eligible for parole after twenty-five years, which would have been 1991. But government after government changed the laws, and she died in prison in 2002. Sometimes Life behind bars actually is Life.

  —

  I HAD HEARD the burst:

  To be paroled, I had to be guilty. I had to be the killer. Thanks Rosie, I am going on a fast track to embracing my guilt.

  —

  I STARTED WITH the widows. Of the three men I was supposed to have killed –

  Stop, stop: of the three men I did kill.

  There is a thing called victimology, which I read about in the prison library, which is run by a (like me) thrice-killer, of her husband, his lover and their baby. Sheree. Kind of like a 1970s earth mother with rolls of tummy and she put her arms around me on the day I went in and said, ‘I need to do some work in here, is that okay?’ And she said, ‘Sorry to hear that Rosie has left you; I am always around for you,’ and I smiled, falsely, and said, ‘Thanks Sheree, can I sit over there, at that table?’ Her breath always smells of licorice.