When Chris was a boy, his mother had told and re-told the story of Prime Minister Holt’s disappearance. She’d stood on the headland watching the helicopters and the rescue boats, along with three-quarters of the town’s population. The first time Chris went to Portsea, he’d trudged over to the back beach with a school group, and been shown the spot. One of the more imaginative theories was that Holt had been picked up by a Russian submarine. It was the days of Khrushchev, after all. Theories multiplied when no body was washed ashore; not even pieces of the politician’s wetsuit.
The story had come back to haunt both Chris and his mother. He hadn’t been able to bear her making the comparison. ‘Hush!’ he’d cried, and, ‘Please!’
Here was the horizon he’d escaped from in Swan Hill, the expanse that mocked him by its reach, the blend of sea and sky which had swallowed a country’s leader and made him disappear without a trace. The mockery of it filled Chris’s mouth with bile.
Clean windows made it worse, the view paid for by a lifetime’s professional success. Chris was appalled by the barren expanse ahead of him, the more so since, were he to attempt to express his feelings, the solicitor would stare at him in disbelief. He knew depression had been growing in him; yet at the same time it seemed sudden, unforeseen. And why hadn’t it lifted now he’d found Riza, now Julie’s camel was back where he belonged?
The shipping channel was full of buoys and markers, defining precisely this human activity, or that. And on land, there were the lighthouses. He only had to step onto the footpath outside his own station door to be aware of the black one’s jutting, solid shadow on the headland, its white twin a little further round, and further still the great stick marking the Point Lonsdale reef.
Full of definition, yet none of it availed him. He hated the very idea of commercial shipping, would have swept it out of existence like an angry three-year-old. He had no doubt a psychologist could explain his black mood, in language that was smooth, remote and logical. And he knew in advance that the definitions psychiatry offered would seem as false and alien to him as the ones his eyes sought out only to disclaim.
Yet what truth of his own did he have to set against them? How had he come to this point, that all his inner markers had deserted him? Was he making too much of ordinary grief?
His assistant was a case in point. When they’d rung to tell him they’d appointed her, he’d asked to have a look at her file, and had noted that both her parents had been killed when she was only three. How had this loss marred and shaped her? Of course it was impossible to tell. Even her close friends might not know. All Chris could think was that he’d never meant for it to be like this. He’d never meant to wake up in his forties with so little to show for his time on earth.
Chris forced his thoughts back to Camilla, who was alive and in danger. Bob Sinclair was speaking and Chris had missed half of what he’d said. He apologised and asked him to repeat it.
‘There are several ways in which the law might be of use.’
Chris listened carefully while the old man explained that Simon Renfrew would apply for power of attorney if he had not already done so. ‘He might persuade the doctors in Geelong to sign the forms.’
‘Why not come and see Mrs Renfrew yourself?’ Chris suggested. ‘On the way, we can discuss the options.’
Camilla was delighted to see her solicitor. The two of them clasped and held each other’s hands for a long time.
Camilla wrote in her notebook ‘No speech therapy!’ and underlined it three times. She drank some water that Chris poured from a jug on the bedside table.
A plan began taking shape. Sinclair would apply to be legally responsible for Camilla after she was discharged. He would arrange for nursing care and deal with the financial side of things.
THIRTY-THREE
Chris dropped Bob Sinclair home, pleased that he could set the problem of Camilla to one side for the moment. He was confident the solicitor would act responsibly and straight away. He hoped the test results on Theo’s horse trailer and the soil samples would have come in, and was disappointed to discover that he still had to wait. Perhaps Jack Benton had carried the murder weapon into the surf with him, thrown it out as far out as he could. If that part of the beach had been empty, he might have taken the chance. Chris thought it likely that Benton had used something from the Landcruiser, but, if that were so, whatever it was had not been missed and noted.
He wondered how he might discover who’d been on the beach that day. Holiday-makers, tourists, they could have come from anywhere, be anywhere by now. Benton might have risked throwing a metal bar, knowing it would sink and eventually be buried in the sand.
Chris saw the murder as an act of rage that had been building up over weeks, even months, but impulsive nonetheless. He pictured Margaret jumping out of a moving vehicle, stumbling, righting herself, running off into the dunes. She probably had no idea how isolated it was there, beyond the swimming beach. Yes, a tool from the Landcruiser was the most likely weapon. It fitted with the skull fracture in a general way.
The phone rang. A woman Chris knew by sight wanted him to go to the lookout. Some kids were trespassing on Port Authority land. Chris never went near the lookout, certainly not for any recreational purpose, but the woman couldn’t be expected to know that. On a clear day, Point Nepean looked close enough to touch, a paltry three kilometres away. People swam the Rip, foolhardy, stupid people, who risked causing grief to their families.
The lookout mocked him by being the closest point of land to the other side. For all it had done his father any good, Point Nepean might as well be three thousand kilometres away. The pilot and his father had both been wearing life jackets. Why hadn’t they been rescued? The pilot boat with its driver had been right there, underneath the rope ladder. If the pilot had fallen straight down he would have landed on it. Why had his father jumped?
Chris had been over these questions countless times, and each time brought him no closer to understanding or acceptance. Yet he’d gone for years with the lid firmly down on all of it. Why had the questions come back now with such a vengeance? He knew why. It was the murder, the body, the woman who’d escaped her hidden grave.
The pilot’s driver had testified that Eric Blackie had said nothing to him, had not spoken a word. He’d been at the wheel, Chris’s father in the stern when the pilot had fallen. The driver had described the black spider shape against the tanker’s white flank, how it had detached itself and dropped, how he’d swung around to see Chris’s father jumping overboard.
Nobody had been able to answer any of the questions that began with why. Why had the pilot fallen? Why had his father jumped? Why hadn’t they been rescued? The driver had resigned, not that he’d been blamed by anyone. He’d moved his family inland, to the other side of Colac. His mother had kept in touch with them until her last couple of years, and the driver had come to her funeral.
From Chris’s reading of the inquiry transcripts, and his at first frantic, then bitterly resigned inquiries, he’d been unable to come close to solving the mystery. The pilot had fallen from the ladder. His father had jumped in, presumably to try and save him. Both men had disappeared. Though the driver had searched until exhaustion forced him to stop, he’d seen no sign of them. By the time Chris spoke to him, the man had moved beyond guilt, or perhaps had never felt it. He was only certain that he would no longer make his living by ferrying pilots out to waiting ships.
When Chris’s mother had been offered a memorial, she’d refused. He’d thought her refusal perverse and ungracious at the time. Now he felt that she’d been right to say no. He never went near the pilot’s memorial.
There was no sign of the children who were supposedly playing on prohibited land. The woman who’d reported them had perhaps scared them off, or their game had simply taken them in another direction.
Aware of a feeling of reprieve, Chris stopped for a moment, well back from the edge of the cliff.
A tanker was making its way ponderously
through the heads. A swift, slim, orange pencil of a boat darted out to meet it. It was the last hour of the ebb. Almost immediately, the small boat began to buck. At times, cross-waves hid it from view. Conditions weren’t bad. Nobody who knew anything would say today’s conditions were bad. Chris went on watching in spite of his increasing heart rate, his desire to run away, knowing he was about to witness the most ordinary of events, if daily, nightly repetition could render any event ordinary, which he supposed it might.
The orange sliver hooped and splashed its way towards the tanker, then on past it, whipped and swung around and drew close alongside. Now, even if Chris strained his eyes, he could not see the next stage, though he knew it by heart. The tanker did not slow down. The pilot’s driver, cutting his engine to move at the same speed, manoeuvred to within touching distance of its massive side. The pilot began his climb down. Slow. So slow. A less than human pace. Foot beneath foot and hand beneath hand, the great vessel and the tiny one coupled by this strange, unremarkable activity, repeated perhaps forty times a day. The slowly descending man was the weak link between the vessels, for an instant resembling nothing so much as a huge mother and her suckling offspring.
This pilot had brought the tanker safely out from the Melbourne docks. Now he was going home; but not for long. Next time, he’d be climbing up, to steer another tanker, or container ship or liner, safely into port.
The orange arrow, safely received of its human cargo, sped away.
Chris looked down at the shoreline.
Scavenging along it was a figure in a long black coat. Recognition came slowly, Chris’s heart still racing. The figure was old and masculine. Above the coat, a long grey beard and untidy hair announced it as belonging to Brian Laidlaw.
Chris smiled his relief. He looked down and told his hands that they could now stop shaking.
Brian Laidlaw was known for riding his bicycle as slowly as it was possible to do so without falling off. When he was a boy, Chris and his school mates used to bet on when Laidlaw would take a tumble. He never did, though his stately progress along the main street had been the cause of many complaints, and at least one potentially serious accident.
Chris smiled again at the retreating figure, who had not looked up. Laidlaw wouldn’t, not while there was a chance that he could find something of value on the tide line. He seldom spoke, and his answer to a greeting was rarely more than an indifferent nod. But his eyes were sharp, and, Chris believed, his hearing good as well.
Making his way down the nearest path, Chris wondered where the old man had got the coat - St Vinnies in Hesse Street most probably. He waited until he was a couple of metres away before calling out hello.
Laidlaw frowned at him through wiry hair. Chris saw that he was getting ready to refute whatever complaint was about to be levelled at him.
‘Relax Brian,’ he said comfortably. ‘I was just wondering where you got your coat.’
‘I never pinched it.’
‘Was it St Vincents?’
Laidlaw stared down at the high water mark and kicked at a bit of broken cuttlefish with his salt-stained boot.
‘I’ll tell you why I’m interested. There was a lady staying here - ’
Laidlaw curled his lip, it may have been at the word lady, or at a memory of the town filled to the brim with tourists.
‘She had one just like it. I’m wondering if you saw her anywhere about.’
Chris described Margaret Benton as well as he could. For once he’d left his photographs behind. He would have liked to ask Laidlaw to come back to the station, but knew that if he were to get anything out of the old man, he’d do better here, on the beach, where Laidlaw felt at home.
‘She was down here with her husband,’ Chris finished, aware that it was lamely, and that Laidlaw would only have noticed the Bentons if he’d bumped into them on his bike, or if they’d got in his way in some other fashion.
Laidlaw turned away, gruffly and rudely incommunicative, daring Chris to reprimand him.
The ex-sailor’s moods were few, and he expressed them parsimoniously. A person needed to be experienced at reading his expressions in order to tease out any but the most negative and misanthropic. Chris stepped back and let him continue his beachcombing, watching his stooped, deliberate and sharp-eyed progress. He wondered about the thoughts, the mental landscape of a man who’d lived alone well into his eighties; and solitary, by what Chris knew of him, in his younger years as well. He’d bet a year’s salary on Laidlaw never listening to gossip, or watching the news.
Laidlaw’s lack of interest in his fellow human beings was enough to make Chris pause on his way back to the station. For all the old seaman’s cantankerousness, he lived modestly on his pension, didn’t drink excessively, and would probably die painlessly in his bed one night. Still, it seemed a sour achievement just then, to end one’s days beholden to no one, owing nothing to any living creature, entirely without duty or commitment.
Chris’s phone rang. It was Simon Renfrew.
‘How dare you force my mother to keep a house she can’t look after and to pay for individual nursing care when there are plenty of good nursing homes!’
Chris took a deep breath and said, ‘It’s your mother’s wish to remain in her own home.’
‘Nonsense! My mother’s not capable of making that decision! She’s a sick old woman and her mind is wandering!’
‘On the contrary, there is nothing wrong with your mother’s mental faculties. Both her doctor and her solicitor have signed statements to that effect, and she has given Mr Sinclair enduring power of attorney, so I’m afraid that any legal questions from now on will have to be taken up with him.’
There was a moment’s silence before Simon exploded again.
‘Who’ll pay the bills when she can’t? That’s where I come in, isn’t it, to finance an absurdity! And why? Because of some bloody-minded idea of yours! You’re an interfering, jumped-up little dictator. Have you any idea how much home nursing costs?’
‘Mr Sinclair and your mother went over her finances together. She can afford a nurse for six weeks and that’s all that should be necessary. Your mother is a strong woman, Mr Renfrew. There’s no reason to predict anything but a complete recovery.’
‘And you’ll make her talk again, will you? I suppose that comes under your godlike powers as well.’
‘No one will make your mother talk again,’ Chris said sharply before hanging up.
Chris and Bob Sinclair helped Camilla move back home. Ian had picked flowers from his garden, and arranged for the house to be cleaned, and groceries delivered. Chris left before the nurse arrived, satisfied that Camilla was in good hands.
When Sinclair rang a couple of hours later, Chris expected trouble, but the solicitor said that Camilla had a visitor with some information for him.
Camilla’s bedroom seemed quite crowded, with Sinclair on one side of the bed and Brian Laidlaw on the other. In the middle, her broken leg covered by a brightly coloured blanket, Camilla exerted a surprising authority over both men.
Chris’s eyes were drawn to the blanket’s colours and patterns, which reminded him of something that he could not quite place.
Brian Laidlaw wasn’t a man to come forward with information, having all his life behaved as though even pronouns had a price attached. Yet this antisocial man, who appeared not to know what a conscience was, had suddenly produced one.
Chris drew Laidlaw’s story out of him slowly, letting him begin it where he would. He’d heard about Camilla’s fall and her spell in hospital. These facts were offered with half a dozen nods, by which Chris understood that the old seaman liked Camilla, for all he appeared to have had no more to do with her than with any of his neighbours.
He liked Camilla and considered what he was doing now in the light of a favour to her; and by extension to Chris as well, because Chris had helped to bring Camilla home. Chris knew that Laidlaw would much rather have died than be stuck in hospital himself.
He’d bee
n trawling along the surf beach on a summer evening, paying close attention to what the sea brought in, as well as what had been left behind by trippers. He’d hired a metal detector for a few days, so he’d been ranging further than he usually did, up into the soft sand of the dunes.
The man had startled him; Laidlaw hadn’t expected to meet anyone coming up from the water just there. From the look on his face, the man hadn’t been planning on meeting up with anybody either. The two had almost bumped into one another, Laidlaw stooped over his metal detector, the stranger dripping wet.
Once Chris eased him into it, Laidlaw described the encounter with a certain understated flair. The fellow had made an impression on him, no doubt about that. He’d been wearing swimming trunks, seawater pouring off his hair and body. Laidlaw had noticed that his hands were clenched.
He’d stared at Laidlaw as though about to challenge him, but neither man had spoken. The encounter had lasted only seconds before the stranger continued on up through the dunes. He was powerfully built, a little past his prime. Laidlaw was confident he would know the man again. Chris questioned him closely about the date and time, which direction he’d been coming from, and exactly where he’d gone.
A more openly accepting, optimistic character might not have noted Jack Benton’s demeanour when he came dripping from the ocean - for who else could it have been but Benton, fresh from washing away the blood of his murdered wife?
Chris stood up. ‘I’ll take you there now Brian, and you can show me.’
It wasn’t a request, but Laidlaw looked mutinous, as though he’d finished co-operating and was going to refuse.
Camilla cleared her throat. The sound was so unexpected that they all looked startled, Camilla in particular. She held out her hand towards Laidlaw. Chris noticed that she’d drawn the folds of bright material closer to her, and kept her other hand on them.
He said goodbye, taking a hastily scribbled note from Camilla, and drove to the surf beach. The spot Laidlaw picked out led directly to the path where he’d found Margaret’s ‘grave’.
Through a Camel's Eye Page 19
