Scrublands

by Chris Hammer

  ‘D’Arcy. Welcome to the circus. Not so bad. What are the police saying?’

  ‘Very little. They’ve arrested the bookstore owner. Apparently she knew the priest Byron Swift.’

  ‘Yes, she did.’

  ‘Your mate Thunkleton is going in strong. He’s saying the police suspect that she and the priest did it together, murdered the backpackers.’

  ‘Listen, D’Arcy, don’t report that. Seriously, wait until you hear what the police have to say.’

  ‘So you know differently?’

  ‘I’m not sure what I know. But I’ve been pushing the envelope on this story and look where it’s landed me. Even I wouldn’t report that. Not yet.’

  D’Arcy is mulling over this information when, from the police station, a thin man in a grey suit and a five o’clock shadow emerges. ‘ASIO,’ comes the whisper.

  Goffing spots Martin, waves him over. He can feel the cameras boring into his back as he joins Goffing and they enter the police station.

  ‘Hope you’re cashed up,’ says Goffing.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘You may need to post bail.’

  The magistrate is sitting at an impressive desk, red in the face, somewhat dishevelled and none too happy. Neither is anyone else: not Montifore, who is looking daggers at the magistrate, not Lucic, who is glaring at Robbie Haus-Jones, and not Robbie, who is avoiding eye contact with the homicide detectives. Mandy is seated, looking small, wearing a white shirt, blue jeans and handcuffs. She looks up at Martin and smiles, eyes hopeful. His heart quickens and he wonders if she might have forgiven him his early-morning accusations.

  ‘Martin Scarsden?’ asks the magistrate. His eyes are bloodshot. Martin smells alcohol.

  ‘That’s correct.’

  ‘I am informed you may be prepared to go surety for Ms Blonde. Is this correct?’

  ‘Yes, Your Honour.’

  The magistrate snorts, sighs and shakes his head. ‘I’m a magistrate, not a judge, Mr Scarsden. I am no one’s honour.’ And he belches, for good measure. ‘Pardon me.’

  Martin nods. No one is laughing; no one is smiling. The magistrate is drunk, but it’s straight faces all around.

  The magistrate continues, his voice steady enough, but his hand gestures overly emphatic. ‘All right. I’m faced with a dilemma here, Mr Scarsden. A dilemma. Wisdom of Solomon required. On one hand, Detective Inspector Monty here is opposing bail, saying the charge is too serious. On the other hand, the young constable here tells me Ms Blonde is the sole carer for an infant under the age of one. Does that sound right to you?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Very good. Have you ever had gout?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Very good. Avoid it if you can.’ Another belch, the faces of the police officers resolutely serious, although Montifore has closed his eyes. ‘So here is what I propose: I will grant bail, provided you post a surety of, what shall we say, fifteen thousand dollars? Yes, that has a good ring to it. Fifteen thousand. Do you have access to that amount of money? And are you prepared to go guarantor?’

  Martin looks at Mandy and any doubts he has are erased. Her eyes are on him, filled with concern about Liam. How could he possibly deny her?

  ‘Yes, sir. I can visit my bank here in Bellington.’

  ‘Very good. Here are the conditions. Ms Blonde, you are to report to police in Riversend daily, before noon. You are not permitted to travel more than five kilometres outside the town without informing the police in advance and gaining their permission. And let’s see…you are not permitted to discuss matters connected to the charge with Mr Scarsden or any other media. However, I do advise you to discuss them with a lawyer. These conditions will remain in force until you face a committal hearing, or the charges are dropped, or I make some other determination. Or something else happens. Do you understand?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Mandy says softly.

  ‘Mr Scarsden, I am wary about discharging the accused into the care of a reporter. To be honest, I don’t think much of you lot. Be that as it may. You will not discuss the charge, Ms Blonde’s diary or its contents with her. And you shall not report on matters related to the charge. Do you understand?’

  Martin blinks. A gag on reporting. But he looks again at Mandy and the matter is settled. ‘Yes,’ he tells the magistrate.

  ‘And you are still willing to post bail?’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘All right. Ms Blonde will remain in police custody until she is returned to Riversend. Mr Scarsden, please collect a bank cheque and make your way to the Riversend police station. And Mr Scarsden?’

  ‘Yes, sir?’

  ‘Avoid rich foods if you possibly can. Source of all evil. Now good day to you all.’ And he liberates another belch, larger, louder and longer than its predecessors.

  THE CARAVAN HAS LOST ITS COHERENCE; MARTIN FINDS HIMSELF DRIVING BACK to Riversend without another car in sight. He’s not alone, though; sitting next to him, having cadged a lift, is Jack Goffing, ASIO investigator. The men drive in silence, occupied by their own thoughts. Martin has been to the bank, organised a bank cheque. It sits in his shirt pocket, weightless, yet heavy with obligation. Martin knows that somewhere ahead of him the purpose of the cheque, Mandy Blonde, is traversing the plain in the back of the highway patrol car, still wearing handcuffs, still a prisoner. Montifore and Lucic will be up ahead as well, planning their next moves. Martin wonders if Robbie Haus-Jones is part of their small convoy or if he’s put some distance between himself and his Sydney superiors.

  Martin may be trailing the police by some way, but he has a head start on the media, still in Bellington, still filing. Martin can imagine them: Doug Thunkleton talking nonstop down the maw of a camera lens, his observations beamed via the satellite van out across Australia; radio reporters breathlessly describing the scene as Mandy Blonde left the police station in a storm of camera flashes; newspaper reporters making the most of Bellington’s functional internet to file online: straight news reporting scant facts, colour pieces conveying the day’s drama, opinion pieces bravely asserting what it all means. But regardless of style, and regardless of medium, sitting at the core of each and every report, driving interest across the nation, will be variations of a single image: the young mother, with her ethereal beauty and uncanny green eyes, her wrists bound by handcuffs. Soon the journalists will be done and they too will be on their way across the digital desert to Riversend, eager to report the next instalment of this small-town saga, this tale of murder, religion and illicit love that is suddenly dominating the summer news cycle, this story now revolving around the photogenic couple: Byron Swift, deceased, and Mandalay Blonde, condemned. Halfway to Riversend, the first of the media passes Martin at speed, clocking a hundred and sixty at least: a photographer, having quickly filed his images from outside the police station, thrashing his rental to get a drop on his competitors and position himself for the next episode. Martin watches the car race into the distance, warping and distorting in the heat before dissolving altogether.

  Martin tries to concentrate on driving, but there is precious little to concentrate on: the road is flat, straight and devoid of traffic, a bitumen line bisecting an impassive and nonjudgemental landscape, like a line of longitude drawn on a map. He wonders what it is he’s committing himself to: fifteen thousand dollars is a lot of money for an unemployed journalist, particularly one gagged from reporting Australia’s biggest story. It’s not the money that bothers him; he doesn’t think that Mandy Blonde is about to abscond, but he has no idea what she might do. Or what she has done in the past. He’s acted with decency, with chivalry, in securing her release. Or has he? Is it gallantry or is it his desire for reconciliation? Or is it self-interest? Mandy will be in his debt, will surely forgive him, speak with him. Then he’ll be able to make the case for Harley Snouch, persuade her to take the DNA test and avert Snouch’s defamation threat. Has he been fooling himself; is that his true motivation? Regardless, he’ll now be inextricably linked to her i
n the public mind; if not already, certainly by the time the evening television news stories have delivered their verdict. Her epithet is set: she is now leading police suspect Mandalay Blonde, just as he is disgraced former journalist Martin Scarsden. And he’s stuck here, stuck in Riversend, his fate linked to hers, his fifteen thousand dollars most definitely linked to her. And he’s forbidden by the magistrate from writing a word about it. Where it’s all heading he has no idea, but his first course of action is clear: he needs to bail out Mandy and then get back on speaking terms with her. A memory comes to mind of her standing in her kitchen wearing nothing more than a loose t-shirt, offering him coffee. He shakes his head, dismissing the recollection.

  He looks away to the horizon, shimmering and ill-defined under the harsh sunlight, the sun that should lift all shadows but instead blurs the edges of the world, renders the horizon debatable, so that it’s impossible to tell land from sky. Who killed the backpackers? Why did Byron Swift run amok? What was written on the pages Mandy had ripped from the diary? The landscape is blank, the road melts into the distance, the sun beats down.

  Jack Goffing breaks the silence. ‘Martin, I need your help.’

  ‘I guessed as much.’

  ‘I want to speak to Mandalay Blonde, by herself, away from the police.’

  ‘Is that why you’ve been cultivating me? To get to her?’

  ‘To be honest, that’s a large part of it, yes.’

  Martin laughs at that, at Goffing’s honesty. ‘Right. Let me think about it. What’s in it for me?’

  ‘Maybe nothing. But there could be a lot for her. It doesn’t make sense, her handing over the diary like that if it implicates her. I might be able to help her get off the charge.’

  ‘So might a lawyer.’

  ‘You won’t help?’

  ‘I will. But tell me how you know Swift was really Flynt. And what you’re really doing here.’

  Goffing doesn’t respond straight away. It’s something Martin has noticed about the intelligence man: he never seems pressed to respond immediately, taking time if he needs to think through the implications. When he does speak, his voice is serious. ‘All right. I’ll tell you what I can. This can’t appear in the papers. Not yet. Maybe never.’

  ‘If you say so.’

  Goffing pauses, again considering his options, before sighing, as if giving in.

  ‘It started more than a year ago. An intelligence operation. You don’t need to know the details. Names were mentioned on the periphery: one was Swift, another was Riversend. We thought it was two words: river’s end or river send. Didn’t mean anything to us. Then Harley Snouch turned up at ASIO headquarters and exposed Byron Swift, identifying him as Julian Flynt.’

  Martin turns, stares at Goffing in disbelief, stares for so long that the car almost runs off the edge of the dead-straight road.

  ‘Say that again.’

  ‘It was Snouch who informed us Swift was really Flynt.’

  ‘I still don’t get it. Can you explain how that can even happen?’

  ‘He came up to Canberra a year ago, peddling this story to anyone who would listen that his town priest was a gun-wielding imposter. Not surprisingly, no one would listen. Not the cops, not the media, not us. No one. Eventually he got on to me, only because he mentioned those two names, Swift and Riversend. To be honest, I thought he was a fantasist, that the names were a coincidence. I was just going through the motions. Being thorough. But he was strangely convincing. Once he set it out, it sounded more and more credible. He said Swift liked shooting and that he was former military. Said he had what looked like a scar from a bullet wound and military tattoos.

  ‘I heard him out, then sent him home. But just to be sure, I had an analyst run the name. And bingo: she uncovered the death of Byron Swift in Cambodia. Suddenly we had something. So I got Snouch back in; he was still in Canberra. I sat him down with folios of photographs of former special forces soldiers. He identified Julian Flynt the moment he saw the photo. The name meant nothing to me, but as soon as it went into the system, all sorts of red flags went up: an alleged war criminal, a fugitive, supposedly killed while on the run in Iraq.’

  ‘Shit. So why didn’t you arrest him? Swift, I mean.’

  ‘We were too late. That was late Friday afternoon. We convened a crisis meeting on the Sunday morning, hauled all sorts of people into work. We were still deliberating when the news came through: Swift had shot the men at the church and been killed by the local police constable. We were too late.’

  ‘Shit. And Snouch was still in Canberra?’

  ‘Yeah. That’s why he’s in the clear over the backpacker killings. He was in Canberra that whole week, talking to the police, talking to us. Alibis don’t get much better than that.’

  ‘He told me he was in Melbourne. In hospital with pneumonia.’

  ‘Is that right? Convincing, isn’t he?’

  ‘So what did he tell you? Why was he so anxious to inform on Swift?’

  ‘Said he was concerned about his stepdaughter.’

  ‘Mandy?’

  ‘Correct. Didn’t want her entangled with this bloke he suspected was an imposter and could be dangerous.’

  Martin thinks about that; it has the ring of truth to it.

  ‘What about Snouch himself? Did you run a check on his background?’

  ‘Yes, he’s a bit of a mystery man. Lot of time out of the country, but nothing extraordinary.’

  ‘Did you find out how he got those markings on his hands? They look like prison tattoos.’

  ‘No. Nothing on that. But he hasn’t been in prison, I can tell you that much.’

  ‘So nothing about rape or sexual assault?’

  ‘No. We would have picked up anything like that.’

  More silence, the men ponder, the plain rolls by. Snouch had known all along that Swift was Flynt, but he had chosen not to tell Martin. Martin wonders why not, if Snouch was keen to diminish Swift in Mandy’s eyes. He’d been quick to repeat allegations of child abuse, so why not tell Martin the truth about Flynt? Because Goffing would know Martin’s source and come after him? Or because of Mandy’s likely reaction? If she found out Snouch had exposed Swift in the days before the priest’s death, then she might hold Snouch responsible for the shooting spree and any hopes of reconciliation would be dashed forever. Is that it? What is Snouch up to?

  ‘Listen, Jack, Byron Swift’s dying words to Robbie Haus-Jones were: “Harley Snouch knows everything.” Did he somehow know that Snouch was onto him?’

  ‘That’s what worries me. And worries the head of ASIO even more. There’s nothing concrete, but there’s a lingering suspicion that ASIO leaked; somehow Swift found out that Snouch had identified him. We take such suspicions very seriously.’

  ‘But that could be a factor in what made him kill those men.’

  ‘True. But, Martin, you can’t write it. Not yet. When the time comes, if the time comes, it’s all yours. An exclusive. You have my word.’

  Martin smiles at that; the word of a trained liar.

  ‘Thanks, Jack—and I’ve got something for you.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  Martin tells the ASIO man about the mysterious phone number passed onto him by the owner of the Black Dog, how he suspects it was left by Herb Walker pretending to be his editor, and that the number might be the one Swift had called from St James just moments before he started shooting.

  ‘Do you have it with you?’

  ‘Sure. In my coat. Take the wheel.’

  Goffing reaches across and takes the steering wheel with his right hand. Martin keeps his foot on the accelerator, the car rocketing along, while he reaches into the back seat for his coat and retrieves the number written on the post-it note given to him by Felicity Kirby. He hands it to Goffing and resumes control of the car. In the distance, the tops of Riversend’s wheat silos come into view, floating above the heat-distorted plain.

  ‘Can you find out who it belongs to?’ asks Martin.

 
; ‘Sure, piece of piss.’

  Martin slows the car, passing the abandoned petrol station and the Black Dog, turning into Hay Road and heading straight to the police station. There’s just the one photographer set up outside, the maniac who went tearing past as they left Bellington. The snapper takes a few frames and gives Martin a jovial wave. If he’s still the only one there when Martin and Mandy emerge together he’ll be more jovial still: the money shot will be his and his alone.

  Inside the station, there’s little sign of life, just muffled voices in the back somewhere. He gives the counter bell a ring and Montifore’s offsider, Lucic, puts his head around the frame of the door. ‘Sorry, mate. We can’t bail her. We need the constable for that. If he has the guts to show his face.’ Lucic offers a malevolent smile and withdraws his head before Martin can reply.

  Goffing shrugs in sympathy and heads out to his car, piece of paper in his hand. Martin slumps down on the bench where he was left waiting for Herb Walker two days ago. Everything is the same. The same brochures are in the same slots in the same rack: Neighbourhood Watch, fire permits, how to get your driver’s licence. It’s as if the world has not moved on, that it’s condemned to repeat the same cycles. Riversend, like Brigadoon’s evil twin, is locked outside time. Nothing changes. Not even his ageless hands.

  Robbie Haus-Jones walks in. ‘Hi, Martin.’

  ‘Hi, Robbie.’

  ‘You here to bail Mandy?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Won’t be a mo. See what I can do.’ The young policeman saunters through to the back of the station, seemingly unperturbed.

  But it’s an hour before he returns, followed by Mandy and the pretty young constable from Bellington who was there two days before. The hour of waiting vanishes, evaporated by Mandy Blonde’s grateful smile, beaming across the counter at Martin.

  ‘Sorry, Martin—had to sort a few things first,’ says Robbie. ‘I’ll need you both to sign some forms, pretty much confirming the conditions set out by the magistrate. Martin, you have the money?’

  Martin hands over the cheque. Robbie signs off on a receipt. Other papers are signed. Finally the policewoman—her name is Greevy—removes the handcuffs. ‘Free to go.’