by Chris Hammer
There is silence as Mandy composes herself. Martin tries to imagine what was going through the young priest’s mind that fateful morning. He’d been accused of molesting children by Herb Walker. So he’d either decided to leave town or had been instructed to go; he was either fleeing from the allegations of abuse or from the fear an investigation would uncover his impersonation of Byron Swift. Was he planning to move elsewhere, drop the Byron Swift identity and reinvent himself as someone else? That would certainly explain why he didn’t want to take Mandy with him. But what of Fran?
‘Mandy, that story you spun me when I first got here, about Liam’s father being some abusive arsehole, what was that?’
She sighs. ‘I couldn’t tell you the truth. You must realise that. I didn’t know you; I’d just met you. You were just another journo hungry for a story. You would have splashed it all over that horrid rag of yours. Made it all dirty and ugly when it wasn’t like that at all. I was here after the shooting. I remember the journalists exaggerating any little thing, blowing them out of context. I saw what drives you. You think I’d visit all of that on my son?’
‘So why tell me anything at all?’
‘Because I wanted your help. I wanted you to find out who he really was. Why he did it.’
‘To find out who he really was? So you had guessed that Byron wasn’t really his name?’
‘No, not that. But there were his tattoos, indications he’d been in the armed forces. And all the contradictions in his personality and how he led his life. Once he was dead and I had Liam, I wanted to know more about him. I thought I might persuade you to find out for me.’
‘Persuade? How about manipulate?’
She’s growing testy again, unhappy at being challenged. ‘Use whatever word you like.’
‘And that story about getting pregnant from a one-night stand in Melbourne, you made it all up on the spot, just like that?’
‘Of course not. It’s what I’ve told people in the town ever since I got pregnant. I didn’t want them to know Byron was Liam’s dad.’
‘Why not?’
‘What do you think? I went through shit as a kid because my father was a rapist; how would Liam fare if the whole world believed his father was a homicidal maniac?’
The rape. Martin can see the passion in her face, see her love and her conviction. But she’s about to be interviewed by the police; he might not get another chance for some time. He swallows, pushes on.
‘Mandy. The allegation of rape against Harley Snouch. We can’t find any record of it. The researchers have been scouring the archives. It looks like there was no conviction.’
She looks shocked, eyes wide with disbelief, before certainty returns. ‘It doesn’t mean it’s not true.’
‘No, it doesn’t.’ He tries to pitch his words as sympathetically as possible. ‘You don’t think it’s possible your mother made it up?’
‘Fuck no. Why would she do that?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe she had good reason. The first time we met, you spun me a story to protect Liam, about you contemplating suicide, Byron saving you, touching your soul.’
‘But that’s all true in it’s own way—I was lost before I met him. It’s like an allegorical tale.’
MARTIN SITS IN MANDALAY BLONDE’S OFFICE, TRYING TO WRITE, BUT MAKING no progress. The daily story is only half written and his feature on Riversend’s attitude towards its homicidal priest taunts him from the screen. He’s feeling a swelling anger, a deep antipathy towards Byron Swift. A murderer, possibly a paedophile, and certainly a serial exploiter of vulnerable women. Could anyone be more susceptible to seduction than Mandy Blonde, marooned in Riversend caring for her dying mother? Telling poor Fran Landers to wait out at Blackfellas Lagoon when he had no intention of taking her away; telling Mandy, newly pregnant, that she couldn’t leave with him. And that was just in Riversend. How many more women had he preyed upon down in Bellington? How many more had he impregnated and abandoned in other country towns? Was that the sordid secret behind his assumed identity: fleeing a series of paternity claims? And yet, even now, the women, the victims, defend him. Jesus wept. What did Swift tell himself: was he honest enough to admit to his predations, or did he rationalise them as giving comfort and succour to those who needed them?
Again Martin is forced to consider his own behaviour: sleeping with Mandy when he has no more intention of taking her out of this town than Byron Swift ever did. And in an hour or two, he’ll walk down to the police station and drop her in it. Her diary, her relationship, her boy. No wonder he can’t concentrate; the urgency of the daily story, the biggest story in the country, is upon him, yet he can’t progress until he informs the police about the diary. He thinks of Mandy, so beautiful and so vulnerable, condemned to become entangled with the Byron Swifts and Martin Scarsdens of this world. Eventually he’s had enough of staring at the laptop screen and decides to get out and about.
Outside the heat is waiting. It no longer comes as an affront or a surprise, merely an accepted constant, bearing down like the weight of existence, all that he deserves. He walks in the shade of the shop awnings towards the crossroads where the bronze soldier stands impervious. Two grizzled bikies roar slowly past on their guttural machines, acknowledging no one. A car moves along Somerset Street, heading west, past the soldier, past the bank, moving slowly before coming to a stop, the driver executing a reverse angle park across the road from the police station, joining a number of others. Martin can see a huddle of media gathered in the shade of a tree opposite the station. He’d been thinking of walking down there himself, checking it out, but now he considers turning right and going to the services club for something to eat.
Undecided on which way to turn, he does neither. Instead, he pulls out his all-but-useless mobile phone and takes a photo of the digger on his pedestal. He looks about him. The soldier, standing atop his column, constitutes the centre of Riversend. Looking down at him from behind, from its prime position at the crossroads, is the Commercial Hotel, its facade as fresh as on the day it closed. Across Hay Road from the pub is the Bendigo Bank, and diagonally opposite the Commercial is the red-brick solidity of the old council chambers. The soldier is facing the chambers. The other corner is taken by Jennings Dry Goods, closed on this Sunday morning. Martin walks over and peers through the windows. Clothes, hardware, household goods, small electrical appliances, some toys: everything except food and perishables.
An idea is forming in Martin’s mind. Somewhere in his feature there may be room for a descriptive passage on Riversend, capturing the town’s decline. It could start here at the crossroads, with the memorial to dead soldiers and the bankrupt pub, then proceed down Hay Road, past the op shop’s sad window, past the closed hair salon, to arrive at the wine saloon, with its forlorn interior and its dusty ghosts. Martin walks out from under Jennings’ awning into the glare of the midday sun. God it’s hot. He quickly takes a photo of Jennings, noticing that above the awning, on the rendered facade below the peaked roof, JENNINGS DRY GOODS 1923 is written in raised letters. Brilliant. He makes a mental note to return on a working day to interview the latest generation of the Jennings family.
He looks at the Bendigo Community Bank on the other side of the intersection and is rewarded by a similar revelation. It’s a solid building rendered with concrete, the architrave of its entrance dressed in stone. The building carries the russet and gold livery of the franchise, but above the awning, wrought-iron lettering spells out its origins: THE COMMERCIAL BANK OF AUSTRALIA LTD. The bank is still operating only because locals have formed a community bank under the Bendigo umbrella; the big banks can no longer extract sufficient profit out here.
Martin captures more images; more grist to his mill. He crosses Somerset Street to the council chambers, set slightly back from the street on a large block of land. This time it’s a plaque that tells the story: This building housed the Riversend Council Chambers from 1922 until 1982, when the council was merged into Bellington Shire Council. Unvei
led 12 June 1991 by Errol Ryding, Last Mayor of Riversend. A wry smile and more photos. A sign on the door communicates the building’s current purpose: RIVERSEND ART GALLERY AND STUDIO. OPEN TUESDAY AND THURSDAY MORNINGS 9 AM–1 PM. Martin imagines walls covered in gum-tree paintings, shelves of brown-glazed pottery and hand-spun wool, all gathering dust. As a nod to its municipal past, there’s a community noticeboard attached to the wall by the door. He reads a council notice setting out draconian water restrictions, a homemade flyer for the Black Dog Motel, a fly-spotted note advertising babysitting services from someone called Gladys Creek. The bottom of the ad has Gladys’s phone number repeated on thin fingers of paper designed to be ripped off by prospective customers. None have been taken. Martin collects another photograph. There are a couple of lost pets: a collie called Lassie and a moggy called Mr Puss, both with photos. The owner of Mr Puss is offering a small reward for the cat’s return. There are ads for old cars, for a harvesting contractor; a note that the footy team, having missed the finals, will resume practice in March on the primary school oval.
Martin returns to the middle of the intersection, looking again at the bronze soldier. He rather likes the pose. The soldier does not appear heroic. He’s not gazing off at some far horizon, towards some glittering future. Instead, his head is bowed, eyes directed downwards, mourning his fallen comrades. Martin steps back a few paces, captures a couple more shots of the memorial, with the old pub in the background.
He’s putting his phone back in his pocket when a movement catches his eye, up on the wraparound verandah of the Commercial. He focuses, trying to shield his eyes from the sun. Yes. Movement. A flash of colour, someone in a checked shirt, yellow and black, a fleeting impression as the person moves off the verandah and into the building. Someone is in the old pub. Martin chuckles; maybe Snouch has moved in, qualifying for the front bar at last.
Martin crosses the remainder of the intersection and gains the shade under the verandah. The main door on the corner is locked and padlocked. Above the door is the obligatory sign: THE COMMERCIAL HOTEL. AVERY FOSTER. HOTELIER LICENCE NO. 225631. A red CLOSED notice hangs in the window of the door; no doubt there’s a green OPEN sign on its reverse side. Martin walks beside the pub, stopping to press his face to the window, using his hands binocular-style to reduce the glare from the street. He can make out the front bar, with tables and chairs near the window and stools by the bar. There are no bottles behind the bar, but inverted glasses are still arrayed along some shelves. Apart from the missing bottles, it looks as if the place has been shut for the weekend, ready to reopen come Monday. Martin wonders if Avery Foster’s licence is still active or whether it’s been sold off to some suburban beer barn.
It occurs to Martin he’s distracting himself, wasting time, delaying the walk to the police station and the inevitable confrontation with Herb Walker. Nevertheless, he continues. There’s a service lane running along the back of the pub, extending the whole block between Somerset Street and Thames Street, where Herb Walker had parked momentarily the day before. Martin walks down the lane to where the fence ends in a pair of five-bar steel gates, chained shut. The gates prevent vehicle entry to a small gravel car park behind the pub, enough for three or four cars. There’s a low porch devoid of handrail: a delivery platform designed for reversing trucks. There’s a stack of wooden pallets, blue paint faded and peeling. And a car, one rear tyre flat, the other on its way down. He wonders if the closure of the pub might have been a sudden thing, its owner taken ill, leaving his car behind, the hotel left largely untouched.
Martin can see the swing doors to the old cellar, and a wooden stairway leading up to the accommodation on the top floor. He climbs over the waist-high gates, moving as quickly as possible to keep contact with the scalding metal to a minimum. He mounts the concrete stairs onto the delivery platform, finding the door locked. He doesn’t bother trying the cellar doors; the padlock looks resolute enough. He climbs down from the platform and walks over to the stairs and starts ascending, past a sign: STRICTLY HOTEL GUESTS ONLY. The green paint on the handrails has wrinkled and bubbled under the solar assault, and Martin keeps his hands to himself.
At the top there is a short landing and a door, its upper half a window. There’s a hole punched in the bottom left-hand corner of the window near the handle. Martin tries the door. It’s unlocked, opening outwards. Inside, his feet crunch on broken glass as he pauses to allow his eyes to adjust. He’s in a short passage, running into another corridor about five metres in front of him. At a guess, the passage between the door and corridor separates two hotel rooms. The air smells stale and musty. Martin moves to the junction with the other passageway. The main corridor is lined by the doors of the hotel rooms, left open with sunlight spilling through them. To the left the corridor goes only a few metres before ending in a closed door with the word PRIVATE in old-fashioned gold paint. The door boasts three serious-looking locks: private indeed. Martin surmises it’s the owner’s apartment. He walks along, tries the door. It’s locked.
Back the other way the doors on the left open onto hotel rooms. At the end of the corridor, where it turns ninety degrees to the right, there is another open door, leading into the best room in the hotel, the corner room. There’s a double bed, a washbasin and a small desk, and the room has its own set of French doors opening onto the verandah. Someone has been sleeping on the bare mattress of the bed; there are blankets bundled at its end and an ashtray full of butts on the bedside table. On the floor, next to an empty bourbon bottle, there’s a scattering of pornographic magazines. Martin picks one up; he didn’t think they still existed in this digital age. There’s nothing subtle about the imagery. It’s brutal, mechanical, emotionless, the flat lighting leaving nothing to the imagination. He wonders if they belong to the person in the checked shirt.
Exiting the room, Martin follows the corridor around its right-angle corner. It opens out a little where thickly carpeted stairs with brass runners head down on the right to a landing, from where they must continue back towards the front of the hotel. Opposite the stairs a wide passage leads to the verandah. There’s an ornate dresser on one side of the passage and a bucolic print depicting an English fox hunt on the other. Martin continues along the main corridor, more open doors to the left. To his right, a door opens onto a guest lounge. An old sofa and lopsided armchairs face a new flat-screen television. Someone has been here as well. Another overflowing ashtray, empty beer cans, dirty coffee cups.
The smell is worse down this end of the hotel, no longer merely musty. There are communal bathrooms at the end of the corridor, one for men, one for women. Martin gives them a miss. There is a final hotel room, this time with the door closed. Martin approaches it, and the smell is coming at him in waves: the smell of death. His stomach turns, from the stench and from the trepidation at what he might find inside the room. He holds his breath, pushes the door open, braces himself.
The place reeks. He pinches his nose shut between finger and thumb and enters, almost afraid to look at the bed. But it’s empty. What, then? He walks around the bed and there, lying spread on the floor, is the body of a cat, crawling with maggots and flies. Martin gags. Mr Puss, he guesses; locked in the hotel room with no way out. Poor thing. Martin retreats backwards towards the door, but then stops. He creeps forward again. There. The cat’s tail has been nailed to the floor.
Martin sits slumped on a bench in the Riversend police station, wondering if Walker will give him the time of day. The pretty young constable behind the counter has taken Martin’s name through to the office and returned with the message that if ‘sir’ would like to wait, Sergeant Walker will talk to him when he has an opportunity. So Martin sits and waits, suspecting Walker will simply leave him stewing all afternoon. There’s a wooden rack filled with brochures: Neighbourhood Watch, fire permits, how to get your driver’s licence.
Forty minutes later, Jason the army vet emerges from the back rooms and walks out of the station, deep in thought and apparently oblivious t
o Martin’s presence. A minute or two later Herb Walker appears. Martin leaps to his feet. Walker regards him with contempt. ‘This better be good, fuckface.’
‘Herb. Thanks for seeing me—’
‘I didn’t come to see you. I came for a smoke. C’mon.’ He walks to a door leading out to the car park at the back of the station.
Outside, the overweight police sergeant extracts a cigarette and disposable plastic lighter from a khaki packet, lights up, sucks in a huge lungful of smoke and blows it back out with a long sigh of satisfaction. Only then does he regard Martin. ‘That’s better,’ he says. ‘You can’t even blow smoke in their faces while you interrogate the fuckers anymore.’
‘Herb, I just want you to know I wasn’t aware of the article until I saw it this morning—’
Walker has his hand up, palm out, ordering Martin to stop. ‘I hope like hell that isn’t why you’ve come here.’
‘No, but it’s worth saying.’
‘Really? And if you had known, would you have pulled the story to help me out?’
‘No. But I would have warned you, got your side of the story, and made sure it was written as objectively as possible.’
The policeman takes another long suck of his cigarette. ‘So what is it that you desperately want to tell me? Be quick, you’re on cigarette time. As soon as I’ve finished this, I’m back inside.’
‘Byron Swift couldn’t have killed those girls. At least, he couldn’t have abducted them.’
Walker raises his eyebrows. ‘That’s interesting. How do you know that?’
Martin tells the policeman about Mandy’s record of her being with Byron on the night of the abduction, explaining that she’s willing to talk to the police, but would prefer not to be paraded before the media.
Walker listens intently, finishes his smoke with another massive toke and grinds the butt beneath his black boot.
