He switched the light off again and squinted at the lake foreshore. Sure enough, there was a vehicle there. It was driving very slowly—no wonder, without lights—and he recognized it. It was Pembridge’s van. He watched from the edge of the veranda as it reached the corner of the fence, turned, and headed toward the highway, then he hurried indoors. At the back of the house he could still hear it, but although he leaned out a window, he could not see it—until suddenly its headlights came on and there was a clash of gears.
Parker felt perplexed as he returned to the veranda. He heard Sonja’s footsteps on the stairs below and decided to keep his puzzlement to himself.
• • •
On the highway, Tom and Billy were already planning how to return to the Animal Room and, if possible, remove one of the baby gorillas. Using the van, they knew, was dangerous because its lights could be seen by the people who lived in the house upstairs. Tonight, because of the moon and the special binoculars they had found, Billy had been able to steer without the headlights as long as Tom, looking through the binoculars, corrected his direction from time to time. But they would not be able to do that when the moon began shrinking again—and anyway, they could not risk taking the van too often, or Diana would notice her petrol was disappearing. The difficulty was getting to and from the Research and having some way of bringing home their pet.
“Tell me about the room again,” Tom said, and Billy recounted for the fifth time everything he could remember: the lady who reminded him of their mother, the two little gorillas, like Michael Jackson’s Bubbles, the cages of white rabbits, the kindergarten-size table and chairs, painted yellow and red, the climbing ropes on one wall, the exercise bicycle—
“Bicycle!” Tom said. “They can ride bicycles! We could ride our bikes out in the daytime. Then we could dink it home.”
“We could both dink one,” Billy said.
“Yeah, we could take both of them!”
“We’ll have to wag school.”
“Just one day. Anyway, it’s the holidays soon.”
They fell silent in the joy of contemplating what lay ahead. Nobody else in the whole of Kalunga had a pet griller.
“Diana’s got a book about them,” Tom said. “We’ll read it and find out what they eat.”
When Joe arrived at his office, on the top story of the administration building, on Monday morning, the floor was awash with a fax from Homicide that had come in overnight. It was a report from Perth, where detectives had tracked down and interviewed the two men with whom Carolyn Williams had left the Kalunga Arms on Saturday night three weeks earlier.
He began reading while he was standing up and became so engrossed he forgot to sit down. The report said that the men, both in their early twenties, had not been part of the Victoria and New South Wales shooters’ cohort that camped by the lake. They had been unable to bring camping equipment on the flight from Perth and had stayed in town, in the motel, economizing by taking a single room and making their own breakfast. The motel was booked solid with shooters, all dressed in camouflage gear, all leaving for the lake in the predawn dark. It had been easy for them to come and go without the manager realizing he had two guests for the price of one. Smuggling Carolyn Williams in there on Saturday night had presented no difficulty—except, as they stated in their interviews, for the noise she made. The three of them went at it hammer and tongs, and by ten o’clock the men were exhausted. They had been awake since 4:00 A.M. and had not slept much the night before, on the airplane. Williams had jumped up and said, “Oh, hell! I’ve got to make a phone call or I’ll miss my lift home.” She said that if she telephoned from the room, the manager, who also operated the switchboard, would be “sus.” “I’ll go to the post office, to the phone box there.” It was only a block away. They all got dressed and walked around to High Street. She emerged from the box exclaiming, “All fixed! I’ll be collected in five minutes.” The last thing she had said was, “Wow! I stink of spunk.” She laughed and seemed to be looking forward to shocking whoever it was who was driving her home, because she added, “Wait till I tell my chauffeur there were two of you!” and danced about on the pavement.
In another couple of days, the fax said, there would be a DNA reading to determine if the shooters’ sperm matched the sperm found in the deceased.
Joe wandered to the window and looked out between the white blades of his Venetian blind. He felt a turmoil of relief and anger. At least my instincts were right, he congratulated himself. He was picturing the site out near the mountain, how he had thought at the time that if this was a rape-murder, it was a weird one. But the thought of her, an educated girl, going off with two blokes … It made him feel odd. When he was courting Sandra—he’d been twenty, she was eighteen—girls were terrified of getting pregnant. Now they weren’t frightened of anything, except perhaps AIDS. What’s happened in thirty years? he asked himself. Has the world got worse—or have I turned into a fuddy-duddy?
He felt so dispirited he decided to ring his daughter for a chat. He dialed Susan’s work number first and was told she was signed off, so he rang her at home.
Susan Miller, whose nickname was Weasel, lived half a kilometer from Bondi Beach, where she swam each day, and competed annually in the Iron Maiden contest. Three times a week she worked out in the police gymnasium, and on the other four days she exercised with free weights at home. She had never married, and Joe did not expect she ever would, although she would make some man a wonderful wife, was always the life of the party, a good cook, marvelous with kids. They had called her Weasel when she was little because she was so lithe, restless, and full of curiosity. And she looked a bit like a weasel, these days even more so, with her thin face and green eyes darting about, seeing everything. One of the best surveillance officers of all time—could follow a puff of smoke for a hundred K—youngest sergeant in the squad. Joe stared gloomily at the sliced landscape on the other side of the Venetian blind as her phone rang and rang. He was about to leave a message on her answering machine when she cut into it, panting.
“Just got in from the surf,” she said.
He rambled on while she caught her breath. Suddenly she interjected, “What’s wrong?”
Joe hated being put on the defensive. “Nothing, sweetheart. Thought I’d like a chat.”
“C’mon!”
“You remember the murder out here a while ago?”
She looked up at the living room ceiling and saw it needed a coat of paint.
“Did I mention to you that the crime scene looked odd to me?” he said.
A thousand times. “I think so.”
“Well, sweetheart, the explanation has come through on my fax this morning. It wasn’t a rape-murder. The deceased had sex that night by consent. One to five hours later, the perpetrator murdered her—and tried to make it look like rape.”
He had even forgotten he had guessed this scenario himself and discussed it with her weeks ago. “Looks like the Homicide blokes were right about that bloody vet.” His depression sounded worse than ever.
“Hey!” she interrupted. “Why don’t you come to Sydney next weekend and stay with me, and we’ll go to the Easter Show on Saturday afternoon? Go on the Ghost Train, see the champion cows … Remember when you took me to the show and I fell into the pigpen? Ooh, please, Dad. I’ve got five days’ leave and I can’t afford to go away.”
I could go surfing, he thought. There are probably things around her flat I can fix for her—or I could help her look for a new car. He was whistling when his secretary arrived with a cup of coffee.
“Why are you smiling like that, Daphne?” he asked.
“It’s so nice to see you smiling, Mr. Miller,” she said. He realized, with a shock, that she was sweet on him. I’ll buy her a present in Sydney, he thought.
Chapter Fourteen
At dusk on Saturday evening, Grace and Diana set off through the garden side by side, a broad, slow shape moving beside a tall, fast one. It was a warm evening, ringing with the cal
ls of birds that had gathered for the food Grace had put out for them earlier. A small party of bluebonnet parrots, with dark-red patches on their wings, was still on the grass, straight as soldiers on parade. As the women approached, they uttered sharp alarm calls and took off with rapid wingbeats, flying fast and erratically into the trees. They cried, “jak, jakajak.” Grace replied, “jak, jakajak” in the same pitch. “I wish you’d try ‘pseet-you, pseet-you,’ “Diana said, giving a poor imitation of a wedgetail eagle’s song. She could accurately mimic only five different birds, but Grace could make the calls of at least thirty.
“That old eagle, she a clever one,” Grace, said. “Not fooled by me. Fifteen year ago, when we still living out at Williams’ place, I watch her hunting. She sees wallaby on the hillside. Flies behind the hill. Wallaby’s eating, not looking. The eagle, she came down slowly from the sky, behind the hill, hiding, begins flying fast … whoosh, she fly up back o’ the hill, over the top, down onto the wallaby. Bash! Wallaby, he dead.” Grace raised her eyebrows at Diana, as if to ask, So how will you cope?
“I’ve got this!” Diana waved the leather hood that, in a few minutes, she would try to put over the eagle’s head. In her other hand was a pair of pliers. Grace was carrying some unskinned rabbit and the long, green-hide gloves they would need when they entered the eagle’s mews. The plan was to hood the bird, which would make it stand still, then remove the steel pin from its wing.
Diana had always taken birds to a vet to unpin broken wings. The procedure was not difficult and not painful enough to justify a general anesthetic, but it did frighten the creature, and Diana was not looking forward to doing it herself, for the first time, on an eagle. In the past fortnight the bird had shown signs of friendliness, and it was several days since she had struck out with her foot. Yesterday, during her shower under the hose, she had whistled as she tossed her mane feathers, flinging a rainbow into the air. Until then, she had been too sulky to show pleasure in anything.
The eagle was perched on a block, staring straight ahead when they arrived. Her head swung, and she glared possessively at the rabbit in Grace’s fingers. Diana had given the bird only half-rations of food for the past two days.
“Go on!” Diana said, urging Grace forward. “Just hold it out. But don’t throw it.”
Grace looked doubtfully at the distance between herself and the eagle. Although the bird could not fly, she could jump, the leash attached to her jesses being a good three meters long. She was already so intent on getting the food that jumping was just what she had in mind, Grace could see. Diana, meanwhile, was tiptoeing behind with the hood. The eagle crouched, preparing to grab the piece of rabbit, but Diana slipped the hood over her eyes. Grace stepped up and held the rabbit to the eagle’s beak, while Diana grasped the bent wing in one hand, snapped the pliers onto the metal pin, and as fast and straight as she could, yanked it out. A bit of skin and some filoplumes came away with the pin. The eagle shuddered from head to foot, but blindfolded, she would not strike out. Diana dropped the pliers and flicked open her knife. The leather thongs binding the wings fell to the ground; she plucked off the eagle’s hood and stepped back—but too late. The wings flew open and Diana staggered away, holding her eye. The eagle then leaped at Grace, who stumbled back, before turning quickly to confront Diana again.
The tip of a flight feather had caught her eye, making it water profusely. The eagle realized who had the advantage and prepared to push home to victory. With her open wings blocking Diana’s exit, she advanced in short jumps, trapping her quarry against the wall at the back of the mews.
“Throw the rabbit!” Diana called to Grace.
Grace aimed for the ground just in front of the bird but managed to hit her on the neck. It was enough of a surprise to dint the eagle’s concentration.
“G’arn! Get back!” Diana said, and stamped on the concrete.
The great wings lowered, the flat head turned sideways in a final threat, then the beak seized the food. Diana snatched up the pliers and skirted past.
Last week, she had removed two wooden lattice walls that had divided the big room behind the open mews area into three small rooms. It was now an enclosed space nine meters wide, five meters long, and four meters high. It had a perch close to the back wall, positioned halfway between the concrete floor and the wooden ceiling, and on a side wall another perch, three meters off the ground. Now that the eagle could use her wings again—she would not be able to fly properly for days, maybe weeks—she would want to roost at night on the lower perch. With the power of her tremendous legs and a bit of pumping of open wings, she would be able to jump up to it.
As the pythonlike neck bulged with rabbit, Diana undid the leash from the block perch and jerked it, making the eagle stagger after her into the big, dark room. There were three doors, each with a glass spy hole for viewing the birds. When the eagle was fully inside, Diana darted out through one of the other doors.
“That a clever old eagle,” Grace grumbled.
“Have faith,” Diana replied. Their eyes met with tenderness. All the years they had known each other, Grace had told Diana: Have faith. Faith, she said, was how her people lived. She chuckled and took a sideways look at Diana. Her colors seemed brighter and clearer today. She would need good colors if she was going to tame the eagle.
But as evening drew on, Diana’s confidence weakened. She sat for a long while on her terrace, watching night creep out from the earth, full of doubt that she could tame the wedgetail on her own. She felt a passionate longing to give up before she had taken the first step. It seemed as if she really was, as Grace had cautioned her days ago, attempting something that could fail badly, for herself and the bird. It had been on the tip of her tongue a dozen times to admit to Grace that when she found the eagle she had also discovered Carolyn. There was something urgent in her desire to see the bird flying once more, as if releasing the wedgetail from her crippled state would free Diana too. To fly any hunting bird was difficult. The human had to flow into the animal and raise it to a more conscious state than it had known when it was wild. Training a small, brilliant creature such as a falcon was like opening a succession of gates into another world. But to train an eagle, an animal so much stronger than oneself … The actions that lay before Diana seemed beyond her power to visualize; they seemed a rhythm, a dance, a storm that was invisible yet vibrating in the air.
In the morning, she woke from a dream in which she and Grace were seeding wheat. They walked side by side, throwing the seeds from their aprons. As they fell, the seeds turned into little birds and darted away. It seemed auspicious. She was hungry, which was good too, because she knew that once breakfast was over she might not be able to leave the enclosed room for the rest of the day. She was washing up the frying pan when Grace arrived to open the gallery at 9:00 A.M.
“Wish me luck,” she said.
She had ready on the kitchen table a dead rabbit and the contraption Raoul had made. It was a wide belt from which two aluminum rods jutted like flying buttresses, supporting a cantilever for her left arm. “Don’t s’pose I’ll be needing this yet,” she added. Her immediate task was to force the eagle to take food from her hand. It was called “manning.” Manning was where most falconers failed.
In the shed, she gloved up and tied the food bag on her hip, then peered through a peephole into the dark room. The eagle was asleep. When Diana entered and turned on the lights, everything stank of eagle. On her perch on the back wall, the bird sprang awake, raised her shoulders, and leaned forward. Diana stretched up her gloved fist, on which she held a strip of rabbit. “Come on, Aquila,” she said. The bird crouched above her, motionless. She could stand on a high branch and survey the landscape for an hour before swooping on prey Inside the room, they both stood like statues for twenty minutes. Diana was watching for a sign of the coming onslaught, but there was none. The eagle abruptly launched herself at the food. It took Diana all her will not to duck as the enormous feet slid through the air toward her face. But s
he stood still and suddenly moved her hand so the feet missed. The bird landed, folded her wings slightly, and jumped away until she had room to half-beat, half-leap to her perch again. Diana realized she had forgotten to whistle. She again held out the food, and this time she whistled. The eagle turned in profile and gave a distant stare. Diana waited. From time to time the bird twirled her face around with an expression of fury. Diana had the feeling that in these moments she was calculating when to jump.
Without warning, she launched herself again, giving Diana such a surprise she almost ran, but at the last moment she stood her ground and pulled the food away. They would do this all day.
There was no rule about when to reward a wild bird with food during its breaking in. The short rations of the past three days, and the sudden increase in mobility, were making the eagle hungry and anxious about eating. Her intention was to grab the food while avoiding touching or being touched by the human. She had to be forced to overcome her instinctive fear and go to her falconer. This could take hours or even days. If Diana miscalculated, she would overheat the bird, sending her into convulsions from which she would die. A hundred lesser mistakes were possible, from broken feathers to injured feet, and any of them could cripple the eagle for good.
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