by Chris Hammer
‘I know. They want a media pool.’
‘You going out?’
‘Yeah. I don’t think there’s any news left to wring out of the yarn, but that could provide some useful colour. If I can hack the heat. Is it always this hot?’
‘Yep.’
‘Listen, Martin, if you don’t mind me asking, what are you still doing here?’
‘Not sure I know myself. Just want to see it through to a conclusion, I guess. My last story, and all that.’
D’Arcy nods, his manner sincere. ‘Listen, you should give Wellington Smith a ring. You know him? Editor of This Month. I’m sure they’d go for a longer piece on what you’ve seen here. Be a shame to waste what you’ve got.’
‘Thanks, D’Arcy. That’s not a bad idea.’
‘Just a moment.’ D’Arcy has his phone out, writes down the number of the editor of the monthly news magazine. ‘Here. And give me a ring if there’s anything else I can do, okay?’
‘Sure. Thanks.’ Martin watches D’Arcy return to the media fold. The two have long been competitors, their rivalry at times intense, but now he’s no longer in the contest, that all seems petty. Typical of D’Arcy to be alive to the new reality; Martin has always been slower on the uptake. He looks at the number his former colleague has given him. D’Arcy is right: it is a good idea. He already has the makings of a great story, a compelling long read: everything from Robbie’s initial interview, through Julian Flynt hiding out as Byron Swift, to his own role in saving Liam Blonde and flushing out the backpacker killers. Plus an exclusive interview with Landers, erratic and lost to himself. Maybe he’s selling himself short: surely he’s got the makings of a book. A small surge of excitement runs through him; he’s not dead yet. Instead of returning to wait for Goffing at the Black Dog, he decides to make his way out to the Scrublands with the others; the sight of Jamie Landers at the murder scene may yet prove useful for a longer narrative.
By the time he collects his car from the Black Dog and returns to the police station, Montifore is finishing a doorstop interview and the media are preparing to drive to the Scrublands. There’s the sudden snarl of camera shutters; Jamie Landers is being led out wearing handcuffs and assisted into the back of a car, but not before the police are sure the cameras have had their fill.
Once more, Martin finds himself driving the last car in the media convoy. He’s debating whether the trip is worth it. D’Arcy’s suggestion of a longer piece for This Month is a good one, but the closer Martin gets to the murder scene, the less likely it appears he will learn anything useful traipsing around in the searing heat. Defoe is no slouch, he’ll milk the moment for all it’s worth, and he’s always been the more evocative writer of the two of them. And the cops won’t let them get within cooee: it’s a job for the photographers, television crews and telephoto lenses. There’ll be precious little left for any This Month piece. Perhaps Martin would have been better off staying in town, waiting for Goffing. Or going to see Mandy. He’s yet to tell her what he’s learnt about Swift. She won’t take it well, he knows that, the revelation that her lover was a fraud, a war criminal, a murderer of innocents. Is that why he’s driven out here? To avoid her? To delay? To savour this morning’s kiss a little longer? At least now he’ll be able to tell her that Defoe’s allegation was false; Swift was no paedophile—Jamie Landers has cleared him of that slander, at least. He wonders how much of an impact learning of Swift’s past will have on her. She had looked so happy; her son is alive, her charges have been dropped, she has inherited a fortune. For a moment he wonders if he needs to tell her about Swift at all. Why threaten her new-found equilibrium? But he knows the answer to that: she can’t learn about it from the papers, certainly not from a magazine article with his name attached to it. He has to tell her.
He reaches the turn-off into the Scrublands, the same circle of gravel where Errol Ryding and his fire crew had waited a week before. The police continue, followed by the media. Martin stops the car, leaving the engine running, the air-conditioning not so much cooling the car as making it less hot. Gradually the cloud of dust and ash from the departed cars falls from the air around him, hardly drifting at all in the windless day. He cuts the engine and feels the heat surrounding him, like the ocean around a diving bell, the pressure pushing inwards. Across the clearing he can see the array of letterboxes, rusted paint tins and painted boxes, mounted on poles, bearing RMB numbers. He thinks of Harley Snouch, tempted to confront him but knowing he shouldn’t. Instead, he decides to visit Jason and see if the motorbike-riding veteran knows anything about the Reapers.
Martin gets out of the car, into the silence. Somewhere, off in the distance, there is some sort of buzzing, some insect life impervious to the heat but serving only to emphasise the stillness of the day. He walks to the letterboxes, but most don’t have names, just the numbers. He realises he has no idea where Jason and his girlfriend live, which path might lead him there. Nothing would be more futile than driving around the Scrublands hoping to chance upon them. Except breaking down in the middle of nowhere. He thinks of Codger Harris; the old man could give him directions. And Martin knows the way to his shanty.
He finds it spared from complete destruction. The same fluky winds that left one cow skull untouched and the other incinerated at his fence line have played the same game of Russian roulette with his buildings. The house has survived, but the sawmill and garage are gone, the old Dodge a blackened shell. Martin wonders what happened to the bitch and her puppies; he hopes they escaped alive. A ten-year-old Toyota, covered in dust and ash, looks somehow modern sitting amid the frontier architecture of the yard. Codger, wearing a battered hat, boots and nothing else, emerges from the house, his skin like lizard leather.
‘Martin. Didn’t expect to see you out here. Come in. Enjoy some terroir,’ he says, giving his scrotum a tug.
Martin follows him in, but with no wind coming through the gaps in its wall, the corrugated-iron shack is an oven, superheated by the sun. Martin accepts some water but suggests they find some shade outside.
‘Any news?’ asks Codger.
‘Quite a lot.’ And Martin recounts the arrest and confession of Jamie Landers while Codger nods, eyes downcast, face solemn.
‘It’s a merciless world, all right,’ is all the old man has to say in response. ‘I guess it was him shooting me cows. So what brings you out here? Not to tell me that, I’d guess.’
‘Can you tell me how to get to Jason’s place? The vet with the motorbike?’
‘I could, but you’d get lost. The tracks over there go every which way.’ The old man again scratches his balls, as if it helps him think. Martin wonders if he has lice. ‘But I can take you if you like.’
‘Would you? You sure?’
‘What else have I got to do? This place is like Waiting for Godot. Without the conversation. Give us a tick and I’ll find some clothes.’
By the time they get to Jason’s bush block, Martin is comprehensively lost. Codger has guided him through back paths and short cuts, across dry creek beds and over rocky ridges; past trees destroyed by fire, past trees devastated by drought. On two occasions, the men pull fallen branches from the track; on another, Martin narrowly escapes getting bogged in a drift of windblown sand. The landscape is lifeless, the lack of wind denying even a false sense of animation. The world has stopped turning; it is dead still.
Jason’s gate, made of steel, survives among the ashes, adorned with various signs forbidding entry: TRESPASSERS PROSECUTED and PRIVATE LAND—KEEP OUT!, joined by a red-and-white sign pilfered from some distant freeway: WRONG WAY—GO BACK. But the signs have lost their authority; the gate is wide open and off its hinges.
Martin proceeds cautiously. He sees tyre marks in the ash; someone has been here recently, may still be here. It occurs to him that seeking out Jason may not be wise. But there is no room to turn around without risking getting bogged and he’s come too far to reverse all the way out. He looks at Codger, who appears utterly unconcerned. The track
leads on, through the blackened skeletons of trees.
They come over a small rise and arrive at what must have been Jason’s home. A pot-bellied stove stands on its brick hearth surrounded by ruination. Out of the car, Martin can see the house was small, but no bush shack; the brick pilings suggest a more thoughtful and complete structure. None of which matters now; there is nothing left. Codger has joined him, shaking his head at the sight.
Martin walks around the clearing, checking the ground as he does so. The tyre marks are easy to follow in the ash: blurry parallel lines created by a car, better defined impressions left more recently by motorbikes. He follows them, trying to work out if they’ve been left by Jason’s bike alone or if he’s had company. Company, he concludes; anywhere between two and four bikes. He imagines the scene: the Reapers arriving, gunning their engines as they slowly circled, full of menace. There are footprints as well, four sets, all made by boots, leading away into the bush. Leading where? How recently?
Martin follows the footprints and Codger follows Martin, past a clump of burnt-out trees, up and over a slight incline. Another burnt-out building, a large machinery shed, steel frame and metal sheeting unable to withstand the power of the fire. It lies like a gutted corpse, the aftermath of autopsy, exposed for examination. Its steel trusses twist upwards like blackened ribs, the sheeting peeled back to expose the innards. But the innards are gone, incinerated. The footprints stop short of the building, the people who left them having seen enough. But Martin persists, walking through the ash and into the corpse.
There is little to see; if this was a machinery shed, it housed no machinery; there are no burnt-out tractors, no incinerated drill-presses, no blackened ploughshares. Martin looks at the detritus, sifting through its patterns with his mind, trying to visualise what was here. Slowly, the corpse begins to give up its secrets. Martin sees the twisted metal poles, aligned in rows: the remnants of table legs. He scrapes through the ashes with his shoe: a piece of yellow metal. He bends down, picks it up: a brass fitting, like something from a garden hose. He looks up again. Along the remains of one wall, piles of long rectangular ceramic pots, blackened but impervious to the fire’s heat. He’s walking across to examine them when something unexpected seizes his attention: a dark stain on the ground. He crouches, places his palm against the soil. It’s not his imagination: the ground is damp and cool to the touch. Water. Water out here, where there is no water. And against the darkness of the moist ground, something new, the luminous green shoots of tiny plants.
‘Hey, Codger. Take a look at this.’
The old man shuffles over.
‘Are these what I think they are?’
‘Looks like it, young fellow. Baby dope plants.’
Martin stands, surveys the remains of the shed around him. A hydroponic operation, PVC pipes incinerated, together with wooden tables and rubber hoses. The shed must be thirty metres by twenty: a lot of plants, a lot of money. And a lot of water.
‘Did you know about this?’
‘Not me, young fella.’ The old man’s face is guileless, hiding nothing.
‘Where does he get water from out here? Are there bores?’
‘Nah. Only one place that has water out here: Springfields.’
‘Harley Snouch’s place?’
‘That’s right. It’s a fair way along the tracks, but only a kilometre or two as the crow flies.’
‘So Snouch has been supplying water? Selling it, or taking a cut from profits.’ A sense of elation is welling inside him: Snouch is part of a hydroponic drug operation; his threat of defamation against Martin evaporates, as empty as Riversend’s river. ‘Gotcha,’ he says aloud.
‘Don’t be so sure, Martin. Young Jason could’ve just stolen the water.’
‘Stolen? How?’
‘We all do it. Snouch’s dam is spring-fed, never runs dry. It feeds water out to troughs in the scrub, water for the bush cattle. Pretty easy to tap into it, feed some water into our own troughs. We started doing it back when the drought began. Old Eric turned a blind eye, and once he was gone and the place was empty, it was open slather.’
‘What about Harley?’
‘He ripped out the obvious taps, the bastard. Soon as he arrived. So most of us put in more discreet ones. Not so hard to do.’
Martin looks about him. Gotcha starts to lose its certainty. He thinks of the day of the fire, he and Robbie and Snouch retreating through the blazing homestead. There had come a point when Snouch’s hose had failed, when the fire reached the pump house. ‘But an operation like this, that’s a lot of water. Wouldn’t he hear his pump working overtime?’
Codger shrugs. ‘Maybe. And his electricity bill must have been a beauty.’
Martin is alerted by a sound, the crunching of a footstep on metal sheeting. The men turn.
Jason’s petite girlfriend is standing before them, but there is nothing petite about the shotgun she’s wielding. It’s pointed at Martin. ‘What do you cunts want?’ she hisses. She looks a mess: face dirty and blackened, eyes bloodshot, clothes torn and filthy. She’s wearing a black singlet, ripped jeans, boots, tattoos on her arms. An extra from a post-apocalyptic blockbuster.
‘It’s okay, Shazza—we don’t want trouble,’ says Codger, his arms spread in a non-threatening gesture.
‘Who’s he?’
‘Martin. You remember, from the fire. He’s not a cop.’
She considers this for a moment. ‘You got any water?’
Martin can hear the need in her voice, see her cracked lips. ‘Sure. In the car. In the back.’
‘Lead the way,’ she says.
Martin and Codger leave the shed, returning towards the car, arms raised. Codger falls behind Martin, dropping back towards the woman with the gun. ‘You don’t need the gun, love. We’re unarmed, don’t mean any harm. We want to help.’ His voice is calm, measured, reassuring.
‘Don’t be a dickhead, Codger. No one’s going to help us.’
‘Where’s Jase?’
Behind him, Martin hears a stifled sob. He stops walking, tenses, fearing the blast of the shotgun. But there is no response from behind, no insistence that he walk on. He turns slowly, arms held high. Shazza has stopped, the gun lowered, a tremor moving through her.
‘Let’s get some water, love,’ says Codger. ‘And you can tell us all about it.’
At the car, the woman still grips the gun but no longer points it at Martin. He springs the boot and Codger reaches in, takes a one-litre bottle, opens it and offers it to Shazza. She takes it, gulping greedily. Codger gets another bottle, drinks some himself, hands the bottle to Martin. He drinks too. The three of them, drinking water together amid the ruins. And without prompting, the woman starts talking.
‘We came back after the fire, saw there was nothing left. Came back again last Sunday, with a tent and some supplies, to see what we could salvage. But there was nothing left. Nothing. We didn’t know what to do. Jase said we’d just have to start again, borrow some money to build a little shack. Take it from there, a day at a time.’
‘You don’t have any money?’ asks Martin, thinking of the hydroponic operation.
She shakes her head. ‘Fuck all. Not since the priest died. But Jase thought he could borrow some, get an advance. He had a half-bottle of bourbon. We were toasting the future when the cop arrived and it all went to shit.’
Martin’s breath catches; he can hardly speak. ‘Cop? What cop?’
‘Not Robbie. That arsehole from Bellington, the fat one.’
‘Herb Walker? What did he want?’
‘He had a gun. Arsehole. Made us take him to the shed, what’s left of it. I was scared he was going to shoot us.’
‘What happened?’
‘The Reapers got him. Him and Jase. Took them away in the cop car. Came back later for their bikes. Took Jason’s as well.’
Martin’s mind is leaping from one fact to another. Dope. The priest. The Reapers. Last Sunday. Walker.
‘You’ve been here by yourself
since Sunday?’ asks Codger. ‘You poor thing.’
She nods. ‘Ran out of water yesterday. I was about to walk to Snouch’s. But I didn’t want to leave in case…’ She sobs, fighting tears. ‘In case he comes back, in case they let them go.’
Martin looks at Codger, sees the concern writ large on the old man’s face. He looks at Shazza, sees her stubborn hope. ‘Shazza, listen: Walker is dead. They think he committed suicide. That same night. Sunday. But there’s no news about Jason. He could be okay.’
But the news about Walker is too much for the woman. She breaks down completely, openly weeping, despairing for the fate of her partner.
Gently, moving slowly, Codger goes to her, takes the shotgun, breaks it open, removes the shells and lays it on the ground. He holds his arms wide and Shazza falls into them, like a child comforted by her grandfather. Martin watches this unfold without seeing; his mind is throwing up scenarios one after the other, trying to find one that makes sense. Jason growing dope but not making any money. Swift implicated; giving money to Jason. The Reapers, abducting Walker and Jason. Driving Walker to suicide? Killing him outright? Holy shit.
Into the silence, emphasised by Shazza’s weeping, another sound insinuates itself: a car. A car coming closer. Martin walks around to the side of his rental, picks up the shotgun. What did Codger do with the shells? Never mind. He snaps it shut, thinking maybe he can use it as a bluff.
A final wave of sound and the car comes over the rise into the broken yard. Jack Goffing is driving. He and two other men get out, one in his fifties, the other in his twenties, in the telltale dress of plainclothes policemen. The younger man is holding a handgun, out of its holster, pointing at the ground. He looks like he means business. Martin carefully puts the shotgun down, raises his hands, leaving no room for mistakes.
‘Are you Sharon Young?’ asks the older man, ignoring Martin and Codger.
