by JH Fletcher
No, I didn’t follow her. I didn’t touch her, throw a stone at her, do anything to her …
Hopeless.
‘The police will want a statement,’ Arthur said.
‘Let ’em, all I care.’ Luke, knowing himself and his son off the hook, could afford to be punchy about it. ‘Next time don’ be so quick to knock people up in the middle of the night.’
Once again Arthur had to hold Jeff Tom’s arm.
5
Arthur slept little during the night. At daybreak he got up wearily from his bed and went to take refuge in his chair on the verandah. He looked out at the mountain.
I have been blind.
He could see the darkly forested face rising above the town. This early, the convection currents had not yet begun to work and the summit was cloud-free. The sunlight shone on the slopes and gullies, the air so clear that he could make out the shapes of individual trees, the gaps in the foliage where streams tumbled silently.
I knew what must be done and did nothing.
In the personal darkness of that clear and pristine sunrise it seemed to him that he was to blame for everything that had happened: the turmoil arising from Josh Richards’s arrival that had divided the town, setting neighbours at each other’s throats; the news that Warren Shaughnessy and Harley Woodcock had won Richards’s support in their determination to wring dollars from the desecration of the wilderness; the spirit of violence that had fallen upon them all. Jacqui was in hospital, the town divided, the pillage of the land for cash likely to be approved by politicians whose idea of worth was measured in votes; to Arthur it seemed that the air itself breathed sickness and that he, who had done nothing to prevent it, must carry the blame.
No more.
Yet he felt so helpless.
Judy joined him, placing her hand on his shoulder. ‘You all right?’ she asked.
After an interval he answered her, but obliquely.
‘Why did you marry me?’
The question, spoken so seriously, frightened her a little and so she laughed with deliberate lightness, as though his words could have no significance at all.
‘Couldn’t find anyone else who’d have me.’
He was not to be fobbed off. ‘I’m serious. Why did you do it?’
‘Because I love you.’
‘Why?’
She answered him carefully. ‘You’re a good man. You are thoughtful, kind, you make me feel safe. All these things are important. But the real reason I love you is because you are you.’
There was silence between them for a spell. Beyond the sunlit paddocks a flock of corellas rose in screeching chorus, blowing like fragments of white paper in the morning breeze. The first tendrils of cloud nudged the green summit of the mountain.
‘You make me very humble,’ Arthur said in a low voice. ‘Ashamed, too, that I am so weak.’
‘That’s the last thing you are.’
‘I have done nothing about any of this.’
Judy bent and kissed him. ‘You did what you could. No one can do more than that.’
He would not accept it. ‘A child was hurt because I was not motivated enough —’
‘Motivation had nothing to do with it.’ Again Judy’s lips nuzzled his hair. ‘And Jacqui is going to be all right.’
Action, she thought. In cases like this, action was the only way. With Jacqui, thank God, on the road to recovery, it was possible to see that what had happened might even have been a blessing. It had certainly caused her to focus on the things that mattered for Jacqui, Arthur and herself, perhaps even for the world. She corrected herself at once. Of course it mattered for the world: if she did not believe that, there was no point in any of it.
She said, ‘I love you.’
In the depths of his despair Arthur seemed unwilling to believe her or to accept that Jacqui’s recovery could exonerate him for what he had failed to do.
‘I have to acknowledge my blame for what happened,’ he told her. ‘For what might have happened.’
6
Something had to be done.
The crisis had gone far beyond the Cloud Forest itself, the arguments in favour of development and against it, of jobs versus ecology. Jacqui’s wounding, unconnected to the main issue, had nevertheless brought matters to a head for Judy, not for the harm done to Jacqui, because she would recover, but for what it might do to Arthur and herself.
Arthur had been infected by the fallacy that the only true man was a man of action. Ideas had been his god and ideas had failed him because the Warrens and Lukes and Harleys of the world were uninterested in ideas. That simple fact had left him helpless. Judy sensed his frightening loss of vitality and knew how dangerous it was for any man to despise himself as Arthur was now doing.
She had to do something. But what?
Arthur said, ‘If it wasn’t for the fact that the pair of them are such crooks …’
Crooks.
A warmth stirred in her, different from anything she had felt before. Her hand still rested on Arthur’s slumped shoulder. Even his bones felt weak in acknowledgement of failure yet the rising warmth made Judy sense that this might be, not a moment of despair, but of triumph. Instinct caused her to run her open palm to and fro across his shoulder, to take his head and draw it softly to her breast. She sensed this was the moment when their feelings for each other might rise out of defeat to acquire a new tenderness transcending anything they had previously known.
Names came to her from nowhere.
Alec Anderson and his wife Moira … Moira, a librarian at the State Library. Alec, a senior officer in the police. She had not thought of them for a long time yet they had been close friends once. How often in the old Brisbane days had she been a guest in their house? For hours the three of them had debated the distinction between law and justice, justice and vengeance, what was legal and what was right. They had been good evenings with wine and laughter, and herself going to bed afterwards with a head spinning with talk.
Arthur’s casual words had given her an idea. Was it possible that Warren and Harley might have been of interest to the police at some time? Given their nature, she thought it was highly possible, even likely. Even so, would Alec be willing to help her?
She told herself it was a ridiculous idea. He was a cop, for heaven’s sake; of course he wouldn’t help her. Yet Alec was not the type to let regulations blind him to what was right.
One way to find out, she thought.
‘Alec Anderson, please.’
It was easier to get through to him than she had expected, flattering to discover that he remembered her without prompting. She came straight to the point.
‘Alec, it’s Judy. I need your help. Desperately. If you can give it to me.’
She would not discuss it over the phone, she said. She wanted an appointment. Tomorrow.
‘I must warn you of one thing, though. If you agree to see me I shall ask you for something I know you have no right to give me, but I shall ask it, anyway.’
‘Why would you do that? If you know I can’t give it to you?’
‘I didn’t say can’t. I said you would have no right.’
‘Sounds intriguing.’ His voice sounded relaxed, completely untroubled. ‘I’ll look forward to catching up with you after all this time. But Judy …’
‘What?’
‘No promises, right?’
7
Before Judy left, Frances came to the house to offer her help.
‘People who think like we do must stand together.’
The truth was there was nothing she could do. She was in any case especially vulnerable, given the fact that Harley owned her house, but moral support was welcome for its own sake.
‘How is Arthur?’ she asked.
‘Not good. I’m going to Brisbane,’ Judy said. ‘To try and fix things up.’
‘Will you succeed?’
‘Of course.’ She would permit herself no doubts.
‘It’ll involve Warren, won’t it?’ For
a moment she looked anxious. ‘He’s a hard man.’
‘I’ll fix his wagon for him.’ Vainglorious Judy.
‘It’s time somebody did.’ Frances smiled maliciously. ‘I was reading something the other day. You love everything or nothing: leaf, flower, beast and human. Perhaps that is almost true.’ And waited, the malicious smile still in place.
‘Almost?’ Judy asked.
‘Whoever said that can’t know Warren or Luke very well. Or Luke’s son. It is hard to love them, I think. My stepson too, I am ashamed to say. I notice you haven’t mentioned him.’
‘I wouldn’t want you to think Harley has been overlooked,’ Judy said.
‘I am glad. It would be against my egalitarian principles to think he had been left out of whatever plans you have for them.’
‘Harley will be an honoured guest,’ Judy told her.
8
Judy stood in the doorway. She took in the panelled office, the big desk, Alec coming forward to greet her with outstretched hand, his shoulders encrusted with silver braid.
He ordered coffee, escorted her to a group of easy chairs around a side table. They sat, exchanging all the ritual nonsense of old friends who had not seen each other for a long time.
The coffee came. Alec took a sip while his grey eyes studied her.
‘Now. Tell me what all this is about.’
She had prepared a slip of paper with two names on it. She pushed it across the desk.
‘I want to know if you’ve anything on these two men.’
If Alec was startled he didn’t show it. He glanced at the paper then looked back at her with expressionless eyes; whether the names meant anything to him it was impossible to say.
‘You know it is out of the question for me to discuss such things with a member of the public.’
‘Of course.’
The grey eyes continued to watch her. ‘Yet still you asked. Why?’
‘Because everything I hold dear in life may depend on it.’
‘Explain that to me.’
She remembered the day shortly before the accident and her vigil in the dawn’s tranquil light while she waited for Jacqui to come home. She had returned eventually: shuttered face, voice quenched of feeling.
‘I’m going to try and stop it,’ Judy told her. ‘If I can.’
Jacqui had looked her over with guarded eyes: damaged trust was not so easily repaired. ‘Good.’
And passed silently into the house.
Now Judy told Alec everything that had happened and her fears that a child’s trust might be destroyed, a husband so damaged that their life together might be crippled.
‘I’m frightened for myself, too,’ she told him. ‘I have a vision of completeness in my life that may be lost if things aren’t put right.’
He studied her in silence for what seemed a long time. She had finished her coffee and had nothing to do with her hands which felt bigger and more awkward with every second that passed.
He picked up the piece of paper and studied it again. Slowly he shook his head. ‘I can’t do it. You know I can’t.’
So hope dies. She went to speak, closed her mouth again as he raised his hand.
‘What we can do is talk in general terms. No names, you understand? Nothing like that. Just a … general discussion. If that would suit you?’
He looked at her courteously, his head tilted a little to one side.
Somewhere she found her voice, while her heart pounded in her chest. ‘That would suit me very well.’
‘Good.’ He got up. ‘I won’t be a moment.’
He went out of the office, closing the door softly behind him. Almost at once he was back, carrying a plain grey file with a red flag in one corner.
He sat down and scanned the contents of the file, taking his time about it. Then he closed it and laid it casually on the table.
‘The police are compelled to work under considerable difficulties.’ He spoke casually; they might have been chatting over evening drinks at his house. ‘Take a case I had to deal with once. It involved selling blocks of land at an inaccessible beach in the north of the State. Not far from you, as it happens. The sales went well but later we started receiving complaints. We found that a road had been promised but not provided, while some of the blocks were located in the beds of dried-up watercourses. It made them useless for building, of course: the first heavy rains would have washed out the foundations of any buildings erected on them.’
‘Were you able to do anything?’
‘How could we? It was a civil matter and the company behind the venture had gone into liquidation, I remember.’
‘And the men behind the company?’
‘That was a different matter, of course. The names were hidden behind a cobweb of trusts. We discovered their identities eventually but there was nothing we could do. No crime had been committed. It was highly unethical but that didn’t make it a police matter. Our hands were tied.’
‘Did the men responsible ever surface again?’
‘Oh yes. They’re still active. Two high-profile individuals, in fact.’ He flicked a glance at her. ‘The aggravating thing, from our point of view, is that men like that seem unable to help themselves. Invariably they’re up to their ears in any number of rackets. Take these men we’re talking about. They have a finger in a yacht charter operation. There was fraud, no doubt about it: maintenance services improperly charged, an insurance scam over a dinghy claimed stolen from a locked yard … They also own a disco. There’s been talk of drugs —’
‘Why aren’t they in jail?’
‘Not enough evidence to satisfy a court.’
‘But they did these things?’
‘Oh yes, they did all of them. And will do more, no doubt, if we can’t stop them.’ He placed his hand on the file that lay on the table between them. ‘Everything’s in there: names, shareholdings, interviews. But not enough to put them away. If the public knew the sort of men they were dealing with, they would have a measure of protection, but they don’t, of course.’
‘Why don’t you leak it?’
‘That would be highly improper.’
‘Other people could.’
‘Only if they had access to the information. And they don’t. That file is stuffed with dynamite but it doesn’t help because no one can get at it.’
‘A pity,’ Judy said.
‘A very great pity,’ Alec agreed. ‘This niece who was hurt … Tell me about it again.’
He listened attentively. When she had finished he nodded.
‘That is a police matter. Or could be, if anyone lodged a complaint.’
‘Brett Shaughnessy is a child.’
‘But it shows the sort of people we’re dealing with. The father covered for the son. He told lies for him. And a child might be dead …’
He sat drumming his fingers on the tabletop. Finally his fingers were still. She thought he had come to a hard-fought decision. He stood. ‘Would you care for another cup of coffee?’
Judy was already over her ration for the day but didn’t hesitate. ‘Very much.’
‘No need to trouble my secretary,’ he said easily. ‘I’ll get it myself.’
He took her cup and went out of his office, closing the door firmly behind him. Five minutes later, when he came back, Judy was at the window staring down at the river twenty floors below.
They drank their coffee, chatting easily about nothing at all, then she rose to leave.
‘I can never thank you enough.’
‘A chat,’ he said. ‘It’s been a pleasure.’
He had not even warned her to be careful how she used the information she had obtained during his absence. Officially, of course, he knew nothing of that.
At the door she said, ‘I owe you one.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
The door closed on his parting smile.
THIRTY-SIX
1
‘A ratbag,’ Jacqui said and smiled at Jeff Tom
s, sitting board-stiff beside the bed. ‘That’s what Brett is. Like the rest of them.’
Herself apart, the ward was empty. The sunlight shone through the windows and reflected from the neatly turned counterpanes of the other beds, making even the air seem bleached and clean.
Jacqui had been treated like a regular little heroine and had enjoyed it. She still had a headache but it was nothing like it had been; Doctor Lewis had told her it should disappear altogether within a day or two.
She was feeling pretty good about herself and life, particularly with Jeff Toms having come to see her. Visitors were always nice. Frances had come, Betty and Judy and Arthur, but in a way they had meant less because she had expected them. Jeff was special not only because she had not expected him but because it was her last chance for surprises at all: Doctor Lewis had also told her she’d be going home in the morning.
Jeff had been Judy’s idea.
‘He’s been asking after you. Why don’t you let him come and see you? Doctor Lewis says he probably saved your life.’
‘I don’t mind,’ Jacqui had said. ‘If he’d like to.’
It seemed he had. Not that he had much to say for himself. So shy and awkward was he that Jacqui felt she had to put him at his ease, hence her remark about Brett. She knew nothing about Jeff, which made conversation hard, but Brett was one subject they were certain to agree on. Except that it seemed they did not.
‘Why d’you say that?’ Jeff asked her.
‘Call Brett a ratbag? Because he is one.’
‘Not that. You said like the rest of them. Why?’
‘Because the Shaughnessys are like that.’
‘All of them? Is Judy like that?’
‘Of course not.’ Everyone knew Judy was different.
‘Brett’s mum?’
‘I don’t know her.’
‘So how do you know she’s a ratbag?’
‘I meant Brett and his father.’ Greatly daring, she added: ‘His uncle, too.’ And looked at Jeff cautiously. ‘At least, that’s what I think.’
