Through a Camel's Eye

by Dorothy Johnston

  Anthea was suddenly reminded of Julie Beshervase. But she saw also, from the way their eyes caught and held, that this boy loved his mother and did not want to cause her trouble.

  ‘You’ve made four people angry and upset,’ Anthea said.

  Instead of replying, Raschid touched his head again, more lightly this time, as though afraid that the gesture, if repeated, might fail to impress; but unable to resist it even so. His thought processes were transparent. He would have been terribly ashamed to learn how easily readable they were.

  ‘You’ll have to apologise.’

  Anthea didn’t ask if Raschid thought an apology would be in order, guessing that he’d accept punishment and put it behind him, but that the hypocrisy of those in power pretending to take his views into consideration was deeply galling to him.

  ‘And we’ll work out a few hours of community service.’

  Raschid nodded, eyes bright, rest of his expression sober.

  Anthea changed the subject. ‘That day you claimed to see a woman in a black coat walking on the cliff path - ’

  ‘I did see her! I told Mr Blackie. I never made it up!’

  ‘Constable Blackie asked if that was the only time you’d seen the woman, and you said you thought it was. But you added, and quite rightly, that you might have seen her without knowing it was the same person, going by in a car, for example, or walking down the street. Anything you can tell us, anything you might have seen, even if you’re not sure about it, might help.’

  ‘Well, like, I dunno.’ Raschid chanced another swift pat at his bandage.

  Anthea forbore asking if his head hurt. He’d be quick to take advantage of whatever opportunity her sympathy provided.

  ‘Like, I did see somebody,’ he offered with an air of divulging an important secret, ‘who might have been that lady. I dunno.’

  ‘When? What was she doing?’

  ‘In Hesse Street. Well, when I like first seen her that’s where she was. Then this guy pulled up. He opened the door. She didn’t get in, but. She kept walking.’

  ‘What makes you think it was the same person?’

  ‘I didn’t say it was, I said it could be.’

  Raschid frowned. He was trying to be helpful and he didn’t see why he should be rewarded with more questions. He glanced at Anthea from under long black eyelashes, with an expression that always worked on his mother.

  Anthea returned the boy’s gaze steadily. She took him through the scene forwards, back and sideways. The woman hadn’t been wearing a coat. The vehicle might have been a Landcruiser. He hadn’t noticed the number plate or who was driving.

  But Raschid was certain of the date. It was January 1, New Year’s Day. His holiday job had been delivering groceries, or helping with their delivery, since he was too young to drive. He’d just carried a box out to the van. They’d been short-staffed, since the boss was too mean to pay penalty rates on public holidays. And the Kostandises had had their big party the night before. He hadn’t wanted to get up and go to work, but his Mum had made him.

  ‘Did you see what happened then?’

  Raschid hadn’t. He’d had to go back into the shop to fetch another box. When he returned to the street, the four-wheel drive had gone and the woman too.

  Anthea thanked him for his help, gave him a card with her mobile number on it and asked him to contact her if he thought of anything more.

  Raschid took the card and slipped it under his pillow. He looked tired suddenly, and very young.

  Anthea said goodbye. ‘And Raschid? Wear your helmet from now on. I’ll be watching out for that.’

  She felt excited on the way back to the station, but once inside the silence and emptiness unnerved her. She would even have been pleased to see Julie Beshervase’s head poking up by the back fence. She sat down and wrote up what Raschid had told her while it was fresh in her mind.

  Anthea looked up, surprising herself by picturing Chris’s cottage, where she’d slept so deeply. Ugly and squat it might be, yet the funny, fragile box returned to her as an attractive memory. Comparisons with the cottage next door to her unit sprang to mind. Her neighbour was no more than average height, but muscular and fit, his skin brown as a seal’s.

  When Anthea called in on Chris, she found him sound asleep. Doreen came out as she was leaving, and said that she’d taken in some soup, which Chris had eaten for his midday meal.

  Anthea thanked her. She did not feel hungry, and made do with orange juice and fruit. She found herself wondering, irrelevantly, if there were, or ever had been, swans living on Swan Hill.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Anthea’s questions in Hesse Street brought forth only disappointing responses. New Year’s Day was one of the shopkeepers’ busiest. The street was parked out from early in the morning until late at night. Why should one car be noticed, let alone who was inside?

  She hoped she might do better with the supermarket staff. Jack Benton’s Landcruiser - if it had been Jack Benton - had pulled in next to their loading bay. It was late afternoon before she managed to track down the driver Raschid had been assisting with deliveries, but when she did he was no help either.

  He frowned and repeated what everybody else had said. He’d been far too busy to notice which tourist parked where, or what they said to one another.

  Anthea was about to give up when she received help unexpectedly from Raschid.

  She answered her phone to a boy’s voice saying, ‘Hello, Miss?’

  Raschid’s voice sounded childish, higher-pitched than when she’d spoken to him face to face. He told her that a mate of his who worked in the ice-cream shop over the summer had seen ‘that lady you were askin’ me about.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Anthea. ‘Go on.’

  ‘He doesn’t know if it was the exact same day, but he saw a lady rushing past and he reckons she was crying. It sounds like the same one, you know. I reckon if you show him that photo he’ll be able to tell you.’

  Anthea took down the boy’s name and address and thanked Raschid warmly.

  Peter Drayson lived in a renovated weatherboard house not far from the harbour. His mother answered the door, frowning when Anthea introduced herself. She was dressed in a silk blouse and fine wool skirt, tinted grey tights and shoes with higher heels than Anthea had ever worn. Even before she spoke, she made Anthea feel provincial and dowdy.

  Anthea explained what she wanted, and was greeted with the information that Peter was doing his homework. Couldn’t Anthea’s questions wait until tomorrow?

  No, said Anthea. They couldn’t.

  Peter regarded her curiously, not at all put out that his homework was being interrupted. He seemed tall for his age, not that Anthea had much of a standard of comparison, but he was certainly taller than Raschid. His straight black hair covered a pale forehead, and his eyes looked directly into hers.

  ‘Sit down, Peter,’ she said gently, guessing that this was a boy who would see through a pose of authority.

  Mrs Drayson stood with one hand on the door. Anthea said that she would prefer to talk to Peter by himself, but that, if she wished to be present, that was, of course, her right. Peter wasn’t in any trouble. Anthea hoped he might be able to help in identifying a person of interest to the police.

  Two small children appeared behind Mrs Drayson. Her skirts weren’t the sort that you could hide behind, but they did their best, peering out at Anthea with dark brown eyes. Anthea smiled. One smiled back, showing two enormous front teeth.

  The children were well dressed. Peter’s jeans and T-shirt weren’t bargain basement either. Their mother shooed them away, then took two steps forward and sat on the very edge of a chair, in front of thick curtains. Anthea took out her notebook and began by repeating what Raschid had told her, first of all about the scene he’d witnessed, then his conversation with Peter about the woman who’d run past the icecream shop. She watched Peter carefully for his reaction as she took out a photograph and asked, ‘Was this the woman, Peter? Do you recognise her?’


  ‘It could have been. I guess.’

  His mother held out her hand for the photo. ‘Who is this?’ Her voice was impatient and dismissive.

  Anthea repeated mildly that she was a person of interest to the police, reflecting that Mrs Drayson might be the only person in Queenscliff who didn’t know about Margaret Benton.

  A quick glance at Peter confirmed what Anthea thought must be the case. Raschid had told Peter that Margaret Benton was dead. It was interesting that Peter apparently wanted to keep this information from his mother, who apparently didn’t watch or read the news.

  ‘I saw her through the window,’ Peter said.

  ‘Which way did she go?’

  ‘I was serving behind the counter. I just looked up and saw this lady running by.’

  ‘Which way?’ Anthea repeated.

  ‘To the church.’

  ‘The Anglican church on the corner of Crystal Street?’

  Peter nodded.

  It was one possibility, thought Anthea. If the church was open, Margaret might have gone inside.

  ‘Was someone following her?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘What about in a Toyota Landcruiser?’

  Peter thought for a moment, then shook his head.

  Anthea opened her mouth to ask another question, but Mrs Drayson interrupted. ‘You heard what my son said. He had a job to do. He couldn’t pay attention to what was going on in the street.’

  Anthea nodded, realising that she wouldn’t get any more out of Peter while his mother was there. Perhaps there was no more to get. Still, she knew what Peter looked like now. If need be, she could wait for him after school.

  The church was locked and the vicarage, or what she assumed was the vicarage next door, was locked as well.

  Anthea called in on Chris, who was sitting up in bed. His eyes were clear and there was a more normal colour to his skin, but Anthea felt again the turbulence, some kind of unspoken fury, just underneath the surface, and how he struggled to control it.

  He listened while she told him her news, leaning forward and nodding as though she’d confirmed something for him, more than the stated facts. Anthea held out her hand in a gesture of solidarity and he grasped it briefly.

  Chris knew the Anglican vicar. Anthea could see that he was annoyed with himself for not having pursued the possibility that Margaret Benton might have sought refuge in a church.

  In a confusion of images, she saw again the kayak man as though painted on the seagrass, the mass of golden green supporting him, a frightened woman knocking on a locked church door.

  Chris was sweating at the hairline, and along his upper lip. Anthea wondered what she would do if she caught glandular fever: pull up the doona and stay in bed? Open the curtains when she was feeling a bit better, and sit on her balcony?

  She liked to think so. She liked to think she would be sensible enough to let the illness run its course. She wanted to tell Chris that it would be professional suicide to tear off up to Swan Hill, barge in on someone else’s patch, when only the day before he’d been too sick to know what he was doing. Yet she couldn’t help admiring him for wanting to.

  Chris smiled, and Anthea took this as a good sign. A memory of the wildflowers returned, in their modest yet substantial beauty. She should have brought a bunch with her. She would have, if she’d been surer of her patient.

  Chris leant back against the pillows and said, ‘Raschid’s not a bad kid.’

  ‘But thoughtless. He could have got himself killed.’

  ‘Oh, you’ll never convince him of that. All fourteen-year-old boys believe they’re immortal.’

  There was a silence, then Chris cleared his throat. ‘No need for you to come back here tonight. I’m fine.’

  Are you sure?’

  ‘Mike’s coming over later.’

  ‘That’s good then.’

  Anthea knew she should feel pleased that she didn’t have to spend another night away from home. A part of her was glad, and thought with pleasure of her own bed. Another part felt sidelined, even when it came to the amateurish nursing care she’d tried to offer.

  They said goodbye, Chris adding that if he felt better in the morning he’d come in to the station for a while, and Anthea assuring him that she was managing and he shouldn’t rush.

  She felt tired and told herself she must be starting to operate on local time. How to organise the next few days was the question. She would have to deal with whatever came up. Beyond that, she might be free to ask her own questions, as she had been that day. She wondered how the village would react. What if there was an outbreak of theft, and the local motorists decided to break the speed limit all at once? This thought made Anthea smile again.

  She cooked herself a simple meal. The setting sun on her balcony was warmer than it had been since she arrived. Maybe spring was really here at last. She would have to get some sort of awning for the summer, or else the sun would turn her flat into an oven. Anthea kicked off her shoes and sat with her feet rubbing the seat cover.

  The kayak man was there again, paddling slowly in the dusk. His movements looked drawn out, elongated, as though time, out there on the seagrass, obeyed different rules. As before, his image seemed to come and go through the reflections off the water and the rich, luminous plant life. Anthea would be sure that he had disappeared. Then she would blink and he would be back.

  He obviously did not work nine to five. Perhaps he worked from home; or had inherited money, or won it. Almost without thinking, Anthea fetched her binoculars, hooking them around her wrist by their fine leather strap, and returned to her position on the balcony.

  It startled her to see the kayak and its occupant close up, paddle registering as an enlarged brown smudge, but the man himself in sharp and human outline. His squarish hands looked like an extension of the paddle, but were at the same time clearly flesh, absorbing and transmitting their own share of the fading light. His body was perfectly balanced and upright, and he moved forward without haste or nervous impulse, his expression focussed. Anthea understood how foolish she had been to think he might be affected by the reflection off her glasses, and the knowledge that she was behind them as they swept the bay.

  The water became more mirage-like than ever, with no line at all between it and the air, but all a pearly blue-grey that seemed to move with one accord towards nightfall. Anthea wished that she could hold the moment, or else share it with someone. She poured wine, wondering at the kayak man’s ability to find his way to shore after the last light was gone. She raised her glass - she hardly knew to what - pride that she was managing perhaps, or solitary, unexpected pleasures.

  TWENTY-SIX

  An object, blown by wind, sand-coloured, was not sand, but something more substantial.

  Julie Beshervase shaded her eyes and squinted, then began to walk towards it. Day after day, she’d scoured the sandhills, though what was left of her common sense told her that if there ever had been footprints, if Riza had been taken that way, then they were long obscured.

  The hoofprints around the Erwin’s dam had proved to be those of cattle. Julie knew her credibility was fast approaching zero, but she didn’t care. She was used to people backing off in disbelief, in wariness or puzzled amusement, from the things she said and did. The one exception was her brother. Julie knew she tried his patience sorely, and his generosity; knew that his guilt for having survived was only slightly less than hers, though he bore it so much better.

  She spotted the object, covered in blown sand, and made her way towards it, head down and shoulders hunched. It was a woman’s yellow cardigan.

  Julie shook the sand out, or attempted to. She asked herself if it was possible that whoever had stolen Riza had been wearing such a garment. She tried to remember if she’d ever seen Camilla Renfrew dressed in yellow, but Camilla’s clothes were dun-coloured, as though she’d long ago chosen camouflage.

  Chris bagged and labelled the cardigan. Anthea drove to the dunes so Julie co
uld show them where she’d found it.

  Julie had marked the place with a stick shoved deep in the sand; but even so, by the time they got there, the rising wind had almost pulled it out.

  It was hard for them to hear each other speak. Anthea fixed a more solid marker, then stood for a few moments, teeth into the wind, hair pulled straight back from her scalp.

  Shoulder to shoulder, they made their way back down. Chris stumbled once, and Anthea was surprised by how swiftly Julie moved to steady him.

  Back at the station, Julie told them what she could, which wasn’t much. She had seen something rolled along by the wind, and, thinking of Riza, had gone after it. She did not say she’d been in the sandhills looking for hoofprints. There was no need for that.

  She told the two constables that she would walk home, that she would be all right. It was too windy for a bike, and she’d run all the way to the station with the cardigan inside her parka.

  Once Julie was gone, Chris said he was sending the cardigan to the forensics lab in Melbourne.

  A coldness came off Chris’s skin and hair. An hour like that, in the freezing wind, was enough to send him back to bed.

  Anthea phoned for a courier. Something about her boss’s determination reminded her of bushes that the wind bent, but did not break.

  ‘Margaret Benton dropped her coat, then this. Whoever killed her didn’t have time to go back for them. And he mustn’t have known about her name being on the coat. He needed to get her body away as quickly as possible.’

  ‘Jack Benton? In the Landcruiser?’

  ‘Maybe,’ Chris said. ‘Yes to the first one, anyway.’

  Anthea was thinking that the cardigan had been found a long way from the coat. She reflected that, from the little they knew of her, Margaret Benton had been a woman who liked expensive clothes.

  Who could link the cardigan to her? Mrs Desmain from the caravan park? They could hope for traces of skin on the collar or cuffs. There were no hairs, or other identifying marks visible to the naked eye.

  Two days passed and they heard nothing from the lab. On the afternoon of the third day, Chris announced that he was going to Swan Hill.