Last Drinks

by Andrew McGahan

  But there in the hot glare of afternoon it seemed like a dream. The dark house of shadows had become a dreary, neglected place in which no one really lived, and all I saw next to me was a tired woman who looked her age, sleep crusted in her eyes, and the stale smell of alcohol on her breath. And me—I was a husk, too old for this now, and in betrayal of everything I’d done to rescue my life.

  And there was only one way to get the dream back. Only ever one way. The empty wine bottles still had brothers, waiting out in the kitchen.

  I sat up, gazed bleakly out the window.

  The other truth about alcohol was that whatever it was you drank to escape from, it was still there waiting for you when you woke up. The only change was that you felt worse, and more time had flown, leaving you and your problems with less.

  May stirred, opening her eyes to stare at nothing, until it all came back to her as it had come back to me.

  ‘Oh shit,’ she groaned.

  ‘I have to call Detective Kelly,’ I said.

  ‘And tell him what?’

  ‘Whatever I can. I should have done it last night.’

  May didn’t answer. It was another line from the drinker’s creed. Everything that should have been done never was.

  I stood up, feeling hollow and dizzy. When had I eaten last? I couldn’t even remember.

  May said, ‘I’m not going to back you up on this, George. I don’t want you mentioning me to the police. You tell your detective friend about me and he tells Jeffreys, and Jeffreys tells . . . you know who he tells.’

  ‘Maybe you should call him yourself. Clarke, I mean. It might help.’

  ‘There’s nothing I could say. Not after Charlie . . .’ She closed her eyes, as if it was all coming back again, overwhelming. ‘Why don’t you just leave it, George? Whatever he might have been once, he’s dangerous now. Look at what he’s done. Him and his detective. You push things, and that’ll only give them a reason to come looking for you.’

  ‘He’ll come looking for me anyway.’

  I left the bedroom and moved around the house until I found the shower. Then I stood under the spout with the water turned as hot as I could bear, as I had a thousand times in an earlier life, hoping against hope that water could wash the sin away.

  It didn’t. And when I emerged, May was slumped at the table, wrapped in a bathrobe, with a fresh bottle of wine unopened before her.

  ‘May, what are you doing?’

  She looked at me. ‘There’s six bottles left . . .’

  Evening was descending on the house. Echoes of the previous night ran through my veins. But sometimes even an alcoholic can see the dream for what it is. I flicked a switch on the wall. Fluorescent lights blinked, throwing shadows under May’s eyes and casting a grey pallor to her skin. The hangover flared in me, cold and nauseating. Welcome it, I told myself, and remember it. It’s reality.

  But May was opening the bottle. And there were two clean glasses there.

  No . . . for pity’s sake, no . . .

  But they were just words in my head. There was nothing behind them.

  I found my wallet, then picked up the phone and dialled, praying he would still be in his office.

  ‘Detective Kelly here.’

  ‘It’s George.’

  ‘George! Where the fuck have you got to? I told you to stay at the motel.’

  ‘I had to leave.’

  ‘So where are you now?’

  My eyes were on May. ‘I don’t think I’ll say, just yet.’

  ‘What’s going on, George? You know we need to talk to you. We can make that into a warrant if you force us.’

  ‘Have you looked into those things I asked you about yet?’

  ‘A few of them, but—’

  ‘Tell me what you found and maybe I’ll say where I am.’

  ‘Jesus, George.’ But I could hear him rifling through papers. ‘Okay. Like I said, we got a few things, but they really don’t mean much.’

  ‘What are they?’

  ‘The phone first. You’re right, a call was made about two a.m. from Marvin’s place to your motel. But like I said, what does that prove? It could have been Marvin himself.’

  ‘It wasn’t Marvin. And that proves someone else was there.’

  ‘So you say.’

  ‘What about the vodka bottle?’

  ‘There were no prints on the bottle, not even Marvin’s.’

  ‘And that doesn’t make you wonder?’

  ‘Of course it does. But there could be explanations. Maybe Marvin knew the vodka would connect him with the substation vodka, so he wiped his prints off before he killed himself.’

  ‘He’d supposedly just written a note confessing—why would he bother?’

  ‘All right. But your theory doesn’t help us either, George. It’s been pretty much confirmed by forensics. Marvin killed himself. It was suicide.’

  ‘Maybe it was—maybe he pulled the trigger himself, anyway. But someone else was there.’

  ‘This George Clarke of yours.’

  ‘Have you looked into him?’

  ‘A little. You’re right. There are a few noises just now about him and stuff to do with the old days. And it’s true, some people seem to remember he had links to Marvin. But lots of people had links with Marvin.’

  ‘So go and talk to him.’

  ‘Why? Marvin killed himself. No one else did. And there’s still nothing at all to connect Clarke to Charlie’s death.’

  ‘I’ve got another name for you. Detective Jeffreys.’

  ‘Jeffreys—what about him?’

  ‘I saw him outside Marvin’s place two days ago. The day before Marvin died. I think he followed me there.’

  ‘That can’t be right.’

  ‘It’s right. So when he came looking for me yesterday, you can see why I didn’t answer the door.’

  ‘Was it you with that bogus call about Lindsay’s place?’

  ‘That was me.’

  ‘I don’t get it, George. What are you saying? Jeffreys knew where Marvin was all along and didn’t tell anybody?’

  ‘I’m saying a lot more than that. How much do you know about him anyway?’

  ‘I’m not going to discuss another officer with you.’

  ‘He works for Clarke.’

  ‘Christ,’ and he was angry now. ‘Where are you getting this stuff from?’

  ‘Why don’t you ask Jeffreys yourself? Or ask some of your superiors about him. What’s his record like?’

  ‘His record is none of your business.’

  But there was doubt there. Jeffreys was not one of his friends.

  I said, ‘He’s the one who told you to close down the investigation into Charlie’s death, isn’t he?’

  Kelly didn’t answer.

  ‘Just talk to him,’ I said.

  ‘I can’t. He took some extended leave. Starting today.’

  ‘Ah . . .’

  ‘George . . .’

  ‘C’mon, Detective, how much do you need?’

  ‘A lot more.’

  ‘Then I don’t think I’ll be telling you where I am.’

  ‘You’re making a mess of this, George. You can’t hide out forever, and no one’s gonna believe a word you say if you keep being so difficult.’

  ‘Maybe I’ll call you later. Go and find Jeffreys. See what he has to say.’

  ‘Hang on, George, there’s one thing you might like to know. You pissed Lindsay off yesterday. Jeffreys gave him a hell of a grilling and Lindsay hasn’t had to put up with that sort of thing for years. He’s pissed off at everyone. And he told us something about your old girlfriend.’

  ‘What old girlfriend?’ But I felt the pit again, yawning beneath me. Beneath both of us, this time.

  ‘You aren’t that dumb, George. Maybellene is in town after all. She called up Lindsay a few days ago, said she was looking for you. Lindsay says he told her exactly where you were. So have you seen May lately, George?’

  ‘I haven’t seen her in ten years.�
�� At the table May’s head shot up, eyes wide. ‘Why would I want to? It was bad enough once.’

  ‘You don’t think it’s odd she suddenly appears again, right now?’

  ‘I wouldn’t know.’

  ‘Does she have anything to do with this, George?’

  May was shaking her head at me, urgently.

  I said, ‘How much do you know about Clarke’s private life?’

  ‘What? Nothing. Why would I?’

  ‘Find out who his wife is.’

  I hung up.

  May stared at me. The bottle of wine was open now, and the glasses filled.

  I said, ‘I had to say something. Once they work out you’re his wife, then they’ll have some sort of link to Charlie. At least they might start wondering then.’

  ‘She shook her head again. And Jeffreys will tell George. He’ll know I’m with you. Christ, think about what that will do to his state of mind.’ She took up one of the glasses and drank. I watched as it passed down her throat, saw what it did as it hit, to her body, her eyes.

  I said, ‘Did you tell Lindsay where you’re living?’

  ‘No.’

  I stared out across Brisbane. I thought about the city below and the bush around us and the gravel track that led back to the road. And I thought about the wine on the table.

  ‘I think we should go.’

  May sounded far off. ‘No one knows I’m here. Not in this house. I didn’t rent it under my name, the house or the car. And it’s a big city.’

  ‘It’s tiny. We’d have to get food, leave the house sometime. We’d be seen sooner or later. They’ll find out.’

  ‘Go where, then? And why? For all we know he’ll stop now. Marvin’s confession wraps everything up for him, especially if one of the investigating detectives is onside.’ Her voice faded away, hopeless. ‘Maybe he’ll leave us alone.’

  I turned back to her. ‘I don’t think he’s that rational any more. There was no reason behind what he’s done so far, not that I can see. I think we should go. We can’t just wait here to see if he finds us or not.’

  Her hand was drawing sad circles around the rim of the glass.

  ‘This isn’t how I thought it would be. If we ever met again.’ She drank. My mouth felt dry, but it wasn’t the hangover now. ‘Not the two of us, stuck in a house we can’t leave. I thought we’d be able to do whatever we wanted. At last.’

  ‘Tomorrow, May, we can leave tomorrow.’

  ‘Where? Where is safer than here?’

  I was struggling to think, trying to blot the thought of drinking from my head. This was important. It had to be somewhere we could disappear for a while—for how long I didn’t know. I didn’t even know how this could be ended, any more than Marvin had known. Time and silence, that seemed to be the only way. Until the police worked something out, at least. There were enough connections, they would have to see it eventually, at least track down Clarke for questioning.

  In the meantime we needed to vanish. Another big city, then? Sydney or Melbourne, perhaps? Places where we knew no one and no one knew us.

  But would he know people in places like that?

  Somewhere else, then . . . if only the wine would get out of my mind, stop tugging at me, distracting me.

  ‘Highwood,’ I said.

  May was disbelieving. ‘Highwood? Your house in High-wood?’

  ‘Not my house, of course not. Not even Highwood itself. But there’s a place near there. A farm, someone I know owns it, right off up in the hills. It’s miles from anywhere.’

  ‘How would that be any better than here? It’s your home town George. People would know you were there. Anyone could find out.’

  ‘No, you don’t know this place, or the man who owns it.’

  She sighed. ‘All right. I don’t think it matters either way. But I’ll come with you, for a while at least.’

  She got up from the table, took her wine to the kitchen.

  ‘There’s food here, I’ll make some dinner.’

  And that was it. I’d made the decision. Now there was nothing to do but stay put until morning and . . . and the wine waited on the table.

  There didn’t even seem to be any battle inside me this time, no momentous decision. May was moving about in the kitchen. She flicked off the overhead light and turned on some lamps. The house felt warm and safe again, almost as if I had already drunk the glass, as if my mind had leapt ahead in anticipation. And it was just one night more, one night more, and after all, May and I might have so little time together, and I’d already fallen now, why fight, why suffer . . .

  I lifted the glass, and all the lies and justifications faded away, leaving just one last clinging delusion.

  ‘This friend of yours,’ said May. ‘He won’t mind us dropping in?’

  It was only for her.

  ‘He’s not a friend,’ I answered, desolate. ‘But I think he’ll let us stay.’

  FORTY-THREE

  Not everyone had welcomed me to Highwood.

  It was bad enough that I had blown in, raving drunk, from Brisbane. And while my notoriety in the media had been brief, there were still plenty of people in town who knew I had something to do with the Inquiry, and so viewed me askance. At least at first. Over time some of their fears were calmed by my quiet lifestyle and the fact that a man like Gerry saw fit to hire me, and that a woman like Emily saw fit to sleep with me. No doubt, too, my sobriety would have been duly noted. Still, there remained a few incorrigibly sceptical folk in the town who never accepted me—our own secretary, Mrs Hammond, in particular—and occasionally I heard of their dark mutterings, and their certainty that, sooner or later, I would turn out to be trouble.

  One other man shared that certainty, but his reasoning was entirely different. Stanley Smith. He wasn’t even a local. He was from Brisbane, just like me, and just like me he’d fled to Highwood, seeking refuge. But that was as far as the similarities went. Stanley had arrived in town years before me, and he wasn’t running from the fall of a government, or from any such consequence of the Inquiry. He was running from the government itself, and his only opinion about the Inquiry was that it should have happened far sooner, and that the government and all its ilk couldn’t have fallen quick enough. I was one of that ilk, and he detested me on sight.

  In the late ’70s and early ’80s Stanley had been a university lecturer in philosophy and ethics, and his life, understandably, was one long cry of outrage at the way things worked in Queensland. He organised street marches when the government made street marches illegal. He attended communist party meetings when the government had made it known that the Special Branch monitored and listed every single person at such meetings. He demanded freedom of information when the government hadn’t even heard of the concept. He chained himself to bulldozers when the government sanctioned the bulldozing of mangrove swamps to build tourist resorts. He reported on the Aboriginal gulags that the government denied existed. He organised sit-ins of gay men and women in public bars after the government had forbidden publicans from serving them. And year by year he refused to vote, claiming that until the electoral boundaries were properly redrawn, there was no point in the process anyway.

  He was fined for not voting and, refusing to pay the fine, went to jail for it. He was arrested for marching and chaining himself to bulldozers and, refusing to pay the fines, went to jail for that too. For being a suspected communist he underwent years of phone tapping. For being a suspected homosexual he underwent the indignity of police peeking through his bedroom windows at night. He was forbidden entry onto Aboriginal reserves and into most government buildings, by restraining order. Special Branch agents attended his every lecture at university. Traffic police routinely pulled him over for alleged speeding offences, or seatbelt offences, or roadworthy offences, or to breathalyse him . . . almost as if they tailed him wherever he drove. And when none of those things shut him up, half a dozen heavily armed riot police stormed his house early one morning, trashed the place, and arrested him
for the possession of ten pounds of marijuana which had magically appeared under his bed. Stanley spent two years in prison for dealing in a forbidden substance, lost his tenure at university, and finally got the message. That was the way things worked in Queensland.

  So he gave up and retreated to Highwood. He bought himself a few hundred acres of mountain scrub about ten miles out of town, at the end of a disused logging track, then went on the dole and set about building a house, a haven from a world that had become unspeakable. After a few friendly raids by the drug squad, who combed his land up and down for plantations and who always chose to arrive at three in the morning, he bought himself a pack of dogs and began collecting guns. They left him alone in the end, partly because they were convinced that having spent so much time and money on his property, it was unlikely he’d ever darken the doors of Brisbane again, and partly because the Inquiry came along, and suddenly the authorities had their own problems to worry about. It was too late for Stanley, however. Terminally embittered, he applauded the fall of his political nemesis, but he had no great hopes for the incoming government either. He stayed in his hills, and his only obvious acknowledgement of the new age was that, for the first time in his life, he really did start to smoke marijuana, and set up a small plantation to boot. Justice at last, of a sort.

  Most of this I learned from Gerry during slow days at the newspaper. Gerry was probably Stanley’s only close friend in Highwood—an independent editor’s natural affection for a defeated radical, perhaps. Indeed, occasionally Stanley would recover enough of the old flame to fire a letter off to the Highwood Herald, railing against some local injustice in a dense welter of academic references and political dictums. Gerry would glance through them and think of his readers, then tear the letters up and drive out to Stanley’s farm with a carton of beer, to offer solace for the old days.