Leaning in close to him, she saw his pale skin and realised his hair was truly red. ‘Is the storm coming back?’ she asked him.
He didn’t stop what he was doing, but he answered her. ‘I’ve learned the hard way and I don’t see the point in taking any chances. Do you?’ The guy kept hammering, not listening for her answer. Time seemed to be of the essence for everyone but Sammi.
***
Further up on Boundary Road, she noticed an abrupt absence of the red dust. The ground was wet, as if a light rain had come past, but the streets were clear and clean. It was like walking back into the real world. A few feet further on, she saw two men boarding up a pub.
‘What’re you doing that for?’ she asked. The men looked at her with the pity you have for a slow child.
Sammi demanded, ‘All I’m asking is this: is something going to happen?’
The older man, in blue coveralls gave her a patient smile and said, ‘No one’s specifically said so, but no point in taking any chances, is there?’
***
No, there certainly wasn’t.
There was no job to go back to. The only thing that waited for her at home was the other half of that chorizo and some eggs. Maybe it was all covered in dust, maybe water. Maybe it was dry. The willow vase was there too, but it had taken care of itself for quite a while. She had no doubt it would continue to do so.
Sammi followed the path of clean streets. The buildings had the freshly-washed look of morning shower. The air had been cleaned of particles. Although there were people shuffling around with nervous urgency, it was easy to imagine that they were the ones who were lost.
Ride of the Valkyries announced itself from her pocket. The soundtrack was apt for scene – people busily carrying jugs of water, carting their belongings to hilltops.
She retrieved the phone and looked at the number. It was Admin. They probably wanted her to return her swipe.
‘Sammi Bernhoff here.’
‘It’s Victor. Where the hell are you?’
She looked at a street sign for a clue, but it seemed to be covered in, not dust, but a cobweb. Weird. ‘Look. I don’t know. Does it matter?’
‘Mona’s dead.’
‘What?’
‘She was in the atrium. Glass fell on her. Through her. It’s a horrendous scene. Can you get back here right away?’
‘I was let go.’
‘Forget all about that. That’s nothing. Someone hit send when they shouldn’t have. We need you to deal with the police, we’ve got people camping out here. No one has done the drill for this kind of thing in years. We need someone with a level head.’
Sammi said she would be there as soon as she could and hung up.
Mona was dead.
Sammi continued following the clean streets until she reached the waterfront, ending up at one of those little outdoor bars that served overpriced tapas. The place had apparently seen neither dust nor rain. It was yesterday there, when she had never been fired, when Mona was still alive. A hostess in a miniscule dress walked over, fanning herself with a menu, saying, ‘This heat. Ri-donkulous. Can I get you anything cool, like a cocktail?’
Sammi smiled, shaking her head, and turned towards the library. Following the winding paths of bougainvillea, she found herself walking backing into the world of orange-coated sludge.
The river looked pristine, cleaner than usual, except for the occasional tree drifting by. It was tempting, all that timelessness right there, just beneath the surface. She could climb over the ledge. No one would stop her. It would be no effort at all to let the current take her. When she got tired she could grab onto a log and ride the water all the way out to the sea. She could float so easily, so far from the library, so far from everything.
Mandala - P.M. Newton
The sound resonated, entering the cavity of his body, shook his organs, bullied his blood about, stopped him in his tracks. Could have been a cow. That was how it began, like the lowing of a cow. A big cow, then as it grew, a cow crossed with a foghorn. Bigger than that, rising into one long sustained note, raising the hairs on his arms, up the back of his neck, across his scalp. It was the sound of something old.
The sound tailed away as he passed into the concrete atrium and saw them. Small brown men in red robes, golden sprays like cockatoo combs on their bald brown heads, long brass horns joining their lips to the ground. They drew breath and blew again. No gentle slow build. This time the blast belted around the concrete space like thunder bursting through storm clouds. Violent and quick. Wide-eyed children watched the monks, clapped small hands over small ears, small mouths flying open, the sounds they made swallowed by the sound of the horns. The parents looked like he felt, uneasy in the face of the power of the horns, of the human breath transformed into something so wrathful. It was the same look people got standing at the edge of lookouts, their children exhilarated by the great empty, while their parents’ hands hovered over their shoulders, ready to drag them back, all fighting the same sense of vertigo tipping them closer to the space that fell away beneath their feet.
Rain filled the gaps between the horns, filled the gap between the collar of his shirt and the collar of his suit coat, bled between the fabric and his skin. He dropped his shattered umbrella into the bin outside the coffee shop. The wind that had sprang like a mugger as he crossed the bridge had snapped its spine. He’d worn it like a hat the rest of the way, only for another squall to shred the skin as he turned into the library. Droplets ran from his hair, pooled above his eyebrows. Itched. The horns started again, sunshine, lethal and blinding fell into the space they ripped open. Steam rose.
The security guard on the front desk looked him up and down. ‘Detective Constable Burleigh?’ Took in the greying hair, the bull-nosed verandah of a belly, stressed ‘constable’, then let his eyes do the rest. Loser. And this coming from a bloke who spent his days checking backpacks for nicked library books.
Burleigh flicked open his warrant card. Repeated his request. ‘Bernhoff, Sammi Bernhoff. She’s expecting me.’
His request disappeared under a final blast of the horns that rattled the glass wall between them. Burleigh looked back over his shoulder, the applause from the children and the parents seemed to puzzle the monks. They removed their sulphur-crested cockatoo comb hats and collapsed the horns, telescoped their length like a magic trick, like packing thunder into a box. The kids were hyper. The sunshine after days of rain and wind, the sound of the horns, they ran in circles, cartwheels, shoes flying, little boys bulged their cheeks blowing air, parents flailed their arms, trying to exert some control.
‘Ms Bernhoff? She’s out there,’ the guard said lifting his chin towards the concrete entry space. ‘She’s the monk minder.’
Burleigh followed his glance. A young woman had separated from the crowd and was organising a young man with a trolley, supervising the boxes of hats and horns onto it, then herding the monks into the entry hall. Every thing done with an economy of movement, quick, precise, the monks propelled forward by the force of her will, like debris on the swollen river outside. They passed Burleigh, smaller, browner once stripped of their outrageous hats and Himalayan horns. They spoke to one another in a language of breaths and plosive stops.
‘Miss Bernhoff.’ Burleigh stepped in front of the woman, stopped her mid-flow tasking a sub-ordinate with instructions about thermoses of boiling water.
‘Yes?’
Distracted. She didn’t recognise him. He’d have seen the shadow cross her eyes if she had. No reason she should. She’d only been a kid. Five? Maybe six.
He flashed his warrant card, long enough to see the badge, too quick to read the name.
‘A quick word? Won’t take long.’
A bullshit job. That was why he had it. But still. Could’ve flick-passed it. Not too many junior to him in rank, but there was that new woman, the plain clothes constable, undesignated. Made him the senior man for a moment. At least he had that, his designation. He was still a detective.
She frowned. Dark eyebrows, two neat lines intersected by a vertical line in her forehead. Carved deep for a someone so young.
Cop appears on your doorstep, at your job, civilians clutch at straws and imagine the worst. Crooks close up shop, a range of no, not mine, and get-fuckeds at the ready. But not Sammi Bernhoff. She was family. She checked her watch, and nodded at Burleigh to follow her in. She led them all, the young man and the trolley, the monks and the overweight policeman towards a low platform set up by the entrance. The banners on the wall above the platform announced the monks of Ganden Jangtse would be making a sand mandala, according to the dates they’d been at it for days, they’d be at it for a few days more by the look of it.
Burleigh stepped in closer, intrigued, despite himself. At the centre of the blue square the heart of the design was taking shape; a circle of blue ringed by petals of red and green and orange, the colours bleached from pale centres to deep edges, each filled with its own small intricate image, a parasol, a fish, a flower, a wheel. The rest of the blue space was filled with a complex chalk outline. Like a bluepint for a piece of architecture. He looked up. A poster on the wall mirrored the image growing on the platform. The mandala of the Medicine Buddha, the healer of outer and inner sickness. There were arrows pointing to parts of the mandala, linked back to boxes of close typed text. Each line, each image, each change of colour designated with a detailed explanation. He caught the words ‘charnel house’ before Sammi Bernhoff’s voice brought him back to the cool sense of the library.
‘Elroy, make sure the monks have a thermos of hot water. And keep an eye on the God-botherers. Don’t let ‘em near the mandala.’ The young man pushing the trolley looked over at the small group of protestors; end-timers, in their homespun smocks and braided hair. Their banners the usual accusations of blasphemy and God’s good riddance for flood and famine and pestilence. They were tuning up the choir, Rock of Ages by the sound of it.
‘OK,’ she said, turning to Burleigh, glancing at her watch again. ‘My office I think.’
She took the stairs with the easy grace of an athlete. Burleigh looked at the lift doors closing and followed her up, a flight behind by the time she reached the first floor.
***
‘You’re a hopeless cop.’
First time anyone had said that to Burleigh he’d been angry. Determined to prove them wrong. Now he said it to himself, but for different reasons than the bosses who shook their heads over his performance appraisals. He believed people. Believed what they told him. That was his first instinct. Still was. After all this time, after every thing that had happened, it still was. He had to mentally check himself, remind himself, that people lied. Didn’t know why it still came as any surprise, after all he did.
People lied for so many reasons. Usually to protect themselves, but sometimes to protect others. Cops told lies for the greater good. That’s what he’d been told. Way back then. Way back when he’d been a kid with a uniform that still smelt of the plastic it had come wrapped in and a badge number so shiny that it caught the rays of the sun and nearly blinded him as he stepped off the little plane that brought him to his first posting. An island of sand, and palm trees, surrounded by water so blue it looked photoshopped. Water filled with creatures so deadly that it was unswimmable.
Knowing when to lie and when to step back, that was the trick. Knowing which lies would stick and which would dissolve under scrutiny. The first time he’d had to choose, he’d made the wrong choice. Hard to walk a line that kept shifting. The sand beneath his feet had shifted that day, been shifting ever since. Like the sand was chewing through Wynnum and Manly and Lota. Every day a different landscape depending on the wind, and the rain.
He thought about the island every day. Always would, even though the sand had claimed the town a few months back. The combination of a big blow, a big tide, mashing waves that carved up the police station, the town hall, sent that old stopped clock tower tumbling. Some of the people probably went up the mountain in the middle, just them and the spiders and the snakes, all fleeing for higher ground. The hymn singers and the goom drinkers and petrol sniffers, all up high. Most had taken the plane out when they could. The island left behind everywhere but in their hearts and heads, in the scars on their bodies.
Burleigh leaned on the railing of the stairs. Red dots spotting his vision, blood punching him in the ears. His knees buckled. His phone vibrated in his pocket. He fumbled it out, blinked and tried to focus the words. Damn PI wanting something for nothing, again. He switched the phone to mute.
‘Detective . . .?’ Sammi Bernhoff leaned back from the door, her back a graceful arc. The little girl in the ballet tutu pirouetting in the sandy back yard in the shade of a palm.
***
Burleigh pulled himself upright and followed Sammi through the door and down a corridor of industrial grey and exposed pipes. The bit of the library that only staff got to see. His shirt stuck to him, rain and sweat. In the air-conditioning it was cold against his skin. He shivered. Sammi’s dark hair, pulled back into a ponytail, swung like a metronome. A ring tone, Ride of the Valkyries, echoed in the corridor.
‘Yes?’ She walked and talked, tapping into another keypad to open another locked door. ‘Well, I can see that. I just want to know when and how high?’ The voice on the other end of the phone was muffled, and incapable it seemed of providing Sammi Bernhoff with the certainty she was demanding. ‘Well how about you find someone who does know and they can call me. I need to know how high and when, do you understand?’ She snapped her phone shut like a trap snapping the neck of a rodent.
The weather. You didn’t get used to it. Anyone who said they did was lying. Outside the river was rising, in the mountains behind the city the rivers were breaking their banks, finding new ways down to sea level. Through houses and along the valley floors, sweeping down highways, pushing semi-trailers like road kill before them. It was coming, again. Just a matter of when.
Something black and shiny and large scuttled away from the opening door. Not fast enough to evade Sammi’s shoe. She didn’t break stride as the psychedelic colours spurted from beneath the shellacked armour. Burleigh looked down as he passed. Not a cockroach. Just another unnamed thing trying to make for higher ground, the front feelers still flailing, seeking safety.
‘So, Detective, what did you want?’
Burleigh settled, uninvited into the visitor’s chair. Sammi didn’t look at him as she circled her desk, tapping the screen of her computer back into life, and checking the lights flashing on her phone’s message bank. She’d already lost interest in him, he was just another box to tick on a day that promised more challenges than a sweaty cop in a bad suit. Her radio was set low but the familiar rant of morning 4BB was audible. Brightman and Ferret weren’t kicking the cops today, it was the turn of the frackers and the politicians who’d jumped so swiftly into bed with them. Loud and angry and uninformed. Even when they were talking sense, they made it sound like bullshit.
Just like this job. A bullshit job. A go nowhere job. Just needed to be ticked off.
But he’d wanted to see Sammi. See what she’d become. He pulled out his notebook, peeled the printout of the job from between the sodden pages, hardly got the bare bones of it out before Sammi clicked her tongue in irritation.
‘Oh for fucks . . . really, did you not read the protocols? We have a contact person for CEM reports and it’s not me.’
Her shoulder twitched, as if her body was readying itself to do something violent. Burleigh recognised it. A tell she’d inherited from her father. The F-bomb dropped without concern. A little girl who’d grown up around cops. They didn’t intimidate her. She knew what real ones looked like, and her instincts had told her the one in front of her wasn’t worth her time.
A bullshit job. Somewhere in Germany a cop had ticked it over into a reference, images downloaded, passed around, shared. CEM. Child Exploitation Material. A web trail like a branching tree, one of the twigs leading to the public
wi-fi system in the library. Chances of finding who did it were Buckley’s and none. But a job was a job and a reference with a number needed a clearance. Could have done it by phone. The contact librarian’s name was up on the wall in the office, just above the number for Thai takeaway. No need to have walked down from Roma Street, through the gutters swirling with storm debris, between the groaning masts of the Kurilpa bridge straining in the wind as if it wanted to join the brown churn of water and make a bolt for the open sea.
Burleigh murmured an apology, shifted slightly in his seat and set the plastic squealing. He’d barely blown the Cloncurry dust out of his nose when he saw her photo in the newspaper’s Sunday Supplement. The bright new librarian surrounded by the little brown monks who were going to make sand into art. Even without her name he’d have known her. The eyes, the chin, dark-haired handsome profile. Her father’s daughter.
‘Simon . . . well, where is he?’ Sammi tapped through her emails, phone lodged under her chin. ‘Well, as soon as he gets back then. Yeah, I’ll send him back down to the display. Yeah, yeah, he’ll recognise him.’
Her eyes darted up. Burleigh felt himself flensed. Always had had such knowing eyes. Dark. Whole worlds in them even back then. And now? It was like she knew him, down to every last dirty little secret failure. Every last pathetic lie he’d told from the one he’d told on the first day he’d met her.
‘Yeah, yeah, tell Simon he’ll be the one who looks least likely to be a buddhist.’
Hard to say what he expected from seeing her again. What did a moth expect from a flame? Some final searing understanding? A need to experience the fact that fire was eternal and consuming? Maybe he’d imagined it, that moment, that look, the placing of him in her world. Her mobile rang again.
Willow Pattern Page 4
