Silver

by Chris Hammer

  ‘Where’s Liam?’ asks Martin.

  ‘Child care. I took him in early. Then the police called, they were looking for me. So I came back here.’ She smiles weakly, stifles the expression. ‘I wanted to see you. I was worried.’

  ‘I’m fine.’

  Her eyes drift back to Topaz in the car. ‘Did you sleep with her?’

  Martin feels panic in his guts. ‘No. It’s not like that.’

  But she sees the evasion in his eyes, the lie. She slaps him, hard, across his still-bruised cheek. She says nothing, just stares him down, the words unsaid more excoriating than any profanity. He stares at her, desperate for a way to explain, to pull them back together.

  The tableau is broken by the arrival of the police, their patrol car easing shark-like up to them. Mandy walks to it without saying anything else. She’s carrying an overnight bag. The sight of it shakes Martin. What is she expecting? What does she know? He wants to go after her, to reassure her, but he’s frozen to the spot. She gets into the police car and it pulls away and he’s still standing there.

  Winifred Barbicombe doesn’t answer her phone and Martin is forced to leave an awkward message, asking why the police are questioning Mandy and if he can help. When he calls Nick Poulos, his lawyer lets his phone ring and ring, then answers just as Martin is about to hang up.

  ‘Martin, what gives?’

  ‘They’ve arrested Mandy.’

  ‘Arrested? You sure?’

  ‘Detained then. They’ve just come out to the caravan park and taken her in for questioning. They didn’t want her to drive herself.’

  Poulos says nothing for a moment. ‘Leave it with me, I’ll see what I can find out. What about you? Did they want to speak with you?’

  ‘No. They more or less ignored me.’

  ‘That’s good,’ says Nick. ‘I’ll call you back when I know more.’

  Reluctantly, he gets back into his car. He wants to be with Mandy at the police station, to find out what’s happening, to be there when she’s released. Driving to Longton is the last thing he feels like, as if somehow ascending the escarpment is a dereliction. But waiting in the foyer of a police station, possibly for hours, will do no one any good. He starts the car, begins the journey to Longton.

  As they drive, Topaz is silent, eyes either closed or staring out her side window. There is no flirting; she’s like a different person. Martin concentrates on the road. The edges of the world seem blurry, as if threatening to peel away. He knows he can’t afford to slip up, that he probably shouldn’t be driving. The last thing he wants is Johnson Pear breathalysing him. Or ordering a blood test.

  Longton Hospital comes in two parts: the original building of brick and wood, erected some time in the early twentieth century, is now overshadowed by a two-storey building of concrete-laden functionality. A sign informs them that administration, physiotherapy and out-patient services are housed in the older building, while casualty and emergency as well as general wards are in the newer building. Casualty is quiet enough: a ginger-headed kid, eyes red, with a damaged arm in a homemade sling, sits next to his mother. An elderly Asian man has fallen asleep three places along. The triage nurse casts an eye over Martin and Topaz, expressing her scepticism with nothing more than a raised eyebrow, before taking their details and telling them to be seated. Martin slumps into one of the plastic chairs next to Topaz, gives a desultory look at the magazines on offer. Woman’s Day, Women’s Weekly, New Idea, Who. Royalty, Britain’s and Hollywood’s; babies on their way, divorces imminent, affairs rumoured. For a moment he longs for a life so boring that a celebrity’s baby bump could interest him. Topaz is still alternating between staring into the middle distance and closing her eyes for minutes on end. Her forehead is creased; Martin wonders if she’s in pain. He asks at the counter how long the wait might be. The nurse says he is fourth in line, but that could change. He has a yearning for a newspaper and coffee; he risks leaving. First he tells the nurse that he’ll be right back, that the doctors should see Topaz first. The eyebrow rises once more.

  When he returns with two coffees, two doughnuts and a Sydney Morning Herald, Topaz is still waiting. She takes the drink and snack with a quiet thank you.

  ‘You okay?’ asks Martin.

  ‘I’m really not,’ she says.

  Martin doesn’t know how to respond. At least the coffee and doughnut taste good, especially the icing, providing much-needed ballast. He starts feeling a suggestion of what it might be to be human for the first time since waking at Hummingbird.

  The doctor, an intern with a face from the Subcontinent and an accent from Parramatta, calls him before Topaz. She leads him into a small consulting room. ‘When did this happen?’ she asks, looking at his eye.

  ‘The day before yesterday. It seems to be healing.’

  ‘Let me see.’ She examines him quickly, pulling back gently on the eyelid. She has a torch, uses a magnifying glass. ‘How’s your vision?’

  ‘Good. No problem.’

  She looks puzzled. ‘Then why did you come in?’

  ‘It’s not the eye.’ He explains the party, the possibility of unprotected sex with multiple partners.

  ‘The possibility?’ Is that the hint of a smile cracking through her professional veneer?

  ‘I’m not sure,’ he says.

  Professionalism regains control of her face, but the smile remains in her eyes. ‘So why the rush to come in?’

  ‘I have a partner,’ he says, shame in his voice. ‘She wasn’t there.’

  The amusement vanishes from her eyes, but Martin can detect no judgement. ‘That is very wise of you. Considerate.’ She prescribes him a slew of drugs, tells him to refrain from unprotected sex for a week. He requests painkillers, something strong. She agrees to some low-level codeine tablets.

  ‘One more thing,’ he says. ‘I feel like I might have been given something illegal. Some sort of drug. Is it possible to have a blood test?’

  The intern frowns. ‘I can take some blood, but I’m not sure pathology is really set up for that sort of thing.’

  ‘Could you take some anyway, just in case they can find something?’

  The intern shrugs. ‘It’s probably not a bad idea anyway. Check out your liver function.’

  When he’s done, Topaz is still outside waiting.

  ‘I’m going to the chemist,’ he says. ‘I’ll be right back.’

  ‘It’s okay, you don’t have to wait for me. I’ll go visit Royce when I’m done here.’

  ‘You sure?’

  ‘Yeah. There’ll be a bus to Port Silver. Or I might splurge on a motel up here.’

  ‘All right. And the visa form—I can give that to the police?’

  There is a hardness to her eyes. ‘Yeah. Do it. Fuck ’em.’

  The sun has picked up its intensity, baking the town, away from the moderating effects of the ocean. The light hurts his eyes, the heat comes as an affront. A dry wind is coming from the west, carrying the dust of drought and the threat of fire. Officially it’s autumn, but the danger is unabated, with the bush tinder-dry even this far east. Especially this far east, where fuel loads are higher. He sniffs at the breeze, but there is no smoke in the air, only the windblown topsoil of the interior.

  He finds a chemist, but the pharmacist is out for a few minutes. They take his prescription, tell him to return in half an hour. Jesus. Half an hour. He tries ringing Nick, but the call cuts off. He’s wondering why when a text appears: Working on it. Call soon. Martin texts Montifore: Have visa form. There shortly.

  Martin looks about. What can he do? What can he possibly do? He sits in the shade. It’s all going awry. Maybe it’s the drugs, maybe it’s him. Mandy must be in some sort of trouble, but he has no idea what it is. Just when she needs him, he’s stuck in Longton, waiting for his prescription.

  He pulls out the visa form, examines it. The sponsor isn’t Tyson St Clair, but someone he’s never heard of: John Prentice. The address, up along the Argyle, suggests Prentice is a farmer.
Makes sense. Topaz’s name and passport details are there. Topaz Jade Throssel, born in Sacramento, aged twenty-nine. Older than she looks.

  He tries again to remember the previous night, but fails to extract anything new. He suspects it’s not coming back, ever, that the drug stopped the memories being created in the first place. There are just the same shards: memories of dancing, swimming, feeling so very, very good. Then there’s just a void, and nothing’s going to fill it except his lurid imagination. He thinks of this morning, how bad he felt. Topaz, himself, Garth McGrath. But no one else. Maybe there were others, still sleeping it off in their cabins and tents, unable to face the day. And yet he saw some revellers from the night before out and about in the morning, swimming and walking and laughing and attending to the swami. The swami himself had appeared unaffected. So what had happened? Had he, Topaz and Garth been targeted? Why them?

  A memory returns from earlier in the night, before the drugs: Jay Jay and the swami having sex on the floor of her office. Martin recalls the diamond-shaped melanoma scars rising and falling, the red crescent on the surfer’s buttock bouncing in the candlelight. Jay Jay and the swami. What a strange combination. No stranger than the swami, dressed in western clothes, chatting with Tyson St Clair here in Longton. But Topaz didn’t drink any of the guru’s potion; he can’t have been the one responsible.

  Martin looks at his phone. Still twenty-five minutes to wait. An idea comes to him, through the fog and the orchestra of pain.

  In the Longton library, he goes directly to the computers with access to the digital newspaper archive. He closes his eyes for a moment, gathering himself. The last thing he feels like is looking at a screen. He fires up the catalogue, enters ‘Jay Jay Hayes’, sets the dates way back, forty years, and hits search. The first hit is from thirty-seven years ago and shows a trio, three women standing proudly with their surfboards. Jay Jay is the youngest of the three, just thirteen, but already in the centre, flanked by the others. The copy, more of an extended caption than a story, identifies the young women, reporting they have won the local surfing competition and are heading to Ballina for a regional competition. The following year Jay Jay wins the regionals at Ballina, gets to the last round of heats in the statewide championships. After that, there’s plenty more: Jay Jay carving along waves, Jay Jay smiling shyly at the camera, Jay Jay bikini-clad and growing in confidence, rising through the amateur ranks, turning professional at age eighteen. All so very promising. The nature of the reports change, from locally written puff pieces to matter-of-fact wire copy from distant shores: South Africa, California, Chile, Hawaii. Cracking the world tour. Then they start to fade, petering out about twenty-five years ago. And then she’s gone. Martin does a quick calculation. She would have been about twenty-five or twenty-six. No stories of retirement, no reports of injury. Just gone. He leans back in his chair. She’d given up surfing, at least the world tour. There could be all sorts of reasons for that: injury, marriage, even children. Or the most common reason of all: she wasn’t good enough. Martin knows that there’s outstanding money to be made in surfing, as there is in most sports, but only for a small elite, the ones winning the big prize money and scoring the lucrative product endorsements. After that the prize money would fall away pretty rapidly, and any endorsements would be paid in kind: free surfboards and wetsuits and beachwear, not the money needed for airfares and hotel rooms and food. And that’s now; twenty-five years ago, the women’s circuit would have been running on next to nothing. He thinks about it and decides there is little definitive to be discerned: she was a promising amateur, she turned pro, gave it her best shot, then it ended.

  He brings the search dates forward. Nothing. Nothing for years, nothing for decades. Then, seven years ago, an obituary. Her father. Dead at eighty-three, his wife predeceasing him by twenty years, his sole survivor his daughter Jennifer ‘Jay Jay’ Hayes, the former surf champion. Was that when she had returned to Port Silver? For his funeral, to inherit the old dairy farm? Or had she returned earlier, to care for him in his decline? Martin thinks of Hummingbird. Signs of the dairy are few and far between. Maybe her dad had given it away well before his death, had simply lived out his retirement at the old farm. There were worse places to do it.

  He continues his search, moving the date forward, not expecting to learn much more. Instead, the next story hits him straight between the eyes, a front-page splash: CHAMPION SURFER IN SHARK ATTACK. Martin feels awake for the first time in the day, alertness coming with adrenaline, cutting through his headache and dullness of mind. He reads.

  Former professional surfer Jennifer ‘Jay Jay’ Hayes is recovering in Coffs Harbour Base Hospital after fighting off a shark that mauled her leg at Hummingbird Point, 20 kilometres north of Port Silver.

  It’s believed Hayes was surfing alone, just after dawn, when her board was struck from below by a large shark. It then mauled her upper thigh before she fought it off.

  Locals say a number of bull sharks have been seen in the vicinity of the attack recently.

  Ms Hayes was able to scramble to safety on rocks before staggering several hundred metres to raise the alarm. She was airlifted to Coffs Harbour suffering from deep gashes and extensive blood loss.

  Ambulance officers say she is extremely fortunate no major arteries were severed. ‘It’s quite remarkable, really, that she fought off the shark and then had the presence of mind to stem the bleeding and summon help.’

  Ms Hayes first came to prominence two decades ago …

  Martin smiles grimly. Now he understands the angry mark he saw on the woman’s buttock when she was having it off with the swami. Not spanking, but scars from the shark attack. And it explains her insistence on wearing a wetsuit in the March seas, when the water is at its warmest: not just for sun protection, but also to hide her injuries.

  Martin is about to continue his search when his phone rings, loud in the quiet of the library. It’s Nick Poulos. ‘Mate, I’m with Inspector Montifore. You’d better get down here.’

  chapter twenty

  Nick Poulos is nowhere to be seen as Martin enters the Port Silver police station, but Ivan Lucic is sitting waiting, his face breaking into a grin as he sees Martin. ‘This way,’ he says.

  ‘What’s happened?’ asks Martin. ‘Where’s Mandy?’

  ‘Relax. You’re about to find out.’

  But Martin doesn’t relax. Lucic is in control: confident, serious, malevolent. Martin feels as if he’s walking into some sort of trap. He shakes his head, trying to free it of paranoia. It’s a police station, for God’s sake. He needs to clear his mind, be on his guard, think before he speaks. He just wishes his head were clearer; he wishes he hadn’t been so quick to swallow the painkillers from the Longton pharmacist.

  Lucic leads him to an interview room that looks like something from a television drama—one with a low budget. A plastic-topped table, cheap office chairs, a concrete floor, brick walls. Clean, smelling of disinfectant, as if awful things have occurred here, things requiring sanitising. But it’s cool. At least it’s cool.

  Martin sits, places his head in his hands, closes his eyes, tries to gather himself. The headache has been driven back, pacified by the codeine, but it’s still there, plotting its return like a guerrilla in the hills. A fundamental ache remains in his bones, but his stomach has signed some sort of armistice. He breathes, tries to centre himself. It’s not easy: something is coming for him, he can sense it, something worse than a headache. He is in a police interview room and he has no idea why.

  The young constable enters. She has her video camera. Martin looks around him. It’s the same interview room as Monday, when Johnson Pear interviewed him. Why hadn’t he recognised it? Christ, he’s not prepared for this. The constable busies herself with the camera, mounting it on a tripod, plugging in a lead to a microphone built into the table, checking that everything is in readiness, not once looking at Martin or acknowledging his existence. She leaves.

  Some minutes later Montifore enters, fol
lowed by Lucic and the constable. Montifore gives him a cursory look, face serious, then busies himself with a file, opening it on the desk. Lucic, by contrast, does nothing but look at Martin, grinning. If it’s meant to be intimidating, it’s working. ‘Recording,’ says the constable, but Montifore remains entranced by his paperwork. Lucic smiles as if he’s trying to break a record.

  The door opens. Nick Poulos.

  ‘What’s going on, Nick?’

  His lawyer grimaces. ‘The police have some questions for you.’ He flicks a glance at Montifore before returning his gaze to Martin. ‘It is important that you answer absolutely honestly. I strongly advise you to do so.’

  Martin stares incredulously. Whose side is this guy on?

  Poulos sits next to him, placing his hand on his client’s shoulder, a supportive gesture, as if to reassure Martin of his loyalty.

  ‘Let’s get started,’ says Montifore. ‘Constable?’

  ‘Still recording, sir.’

  Montifore reels through the formalities: the time of day, the names of those present. Then he pauses, gathering his thoughts. Or increasing the pressure.

  ‘Martin, I want you to cast your mind back to your arrival in Port Silver four days ago, this past Monday. You have already given a signed statement that you arrived at the townhouse rented by Mandalay Susan Blonde at around eleven o’clock in the morning. You claimed that Jasper Speight was already dead when you arrived. I want you to think carefully. Is there anything about that statement you would like to revise? Anything you would like to change? Anything you would like to add?’

  Martin glances at Poulos, who does nothing but raise his eyebrows, whatever that is meant to convey. ‘No,’ says Martin. ‘Nothing.’ What is the detective driving at?

  ‘Understood,’ says Montifore, his voice measured. ‘But for the record, would you mind repeating now how the events unfolded from the time you entered the townhouse?’

  Nick Poulos interjects. ‘Just a moment. He gave his statement, has said he doesn’t want to alter or add to it. That should be enough.’