River of Salt

by Warner, Dave;

  Blake headed over, his heart beating more fiercely by the second, galloping as he saw his suspicion confirmed: it was a portable movie screen. His conversation with Stokes’ roommate Jill flooded back — Stokes claimed she’d shot a blue movie. Blake made his way around a heavy punching bag bolted to the ceiling. He was looking for a projector, film cans. No luck. Propped against something was a phalanx of large framed oil paintings, rural scenes. He pulled them back to see what they were leaning against — a large old trunk secured by another small padlock. He wasn’t going to stop now. He picked that too. How long would the kid sleep? He pulled back the lid of the trunk. Shoeboxes of various photos, old negatives. He flipped quickly through a bunch: Clarke as a younger man in a double-breasted suit, a wedding. His? Maybe not. The bride bore a family resemblance. More photos showed the bride cheek-to-cheek with another man, dark-haired. The same man, now with Clarke, posing in a convertible auto beneath high palm trees. Blake had seen those palms, Los Angeles. More shots, a house, likely LA, the dark-haired guy in overalls smiling in a workshop as he tinkered on machinery, a background sign. The brother-in-law maybe. Fragments of a conversation coming back about his brother-in-law in the movie business. Blake put down that box, turned his attention to another one that had been slipped into a brown paper bag, slid it out.

  Nudes.

  Young women, mainly topless, a few full-frontal, posing like for a magazine spread. Something amateur about them, the women, not the photography, that was professional enough. Some looked recent, taken in the bush or maybe down here where a bed had been set up, the old iron-frame type. One photo made him stop cold: Carol, topless, lying back in the bush, smiling.

  Queasiness, anger, terror, flushed through him all at once like the debris at the bottom of a creek bed churned by a flash flood. Possibilities shot out at him: her leaving was staged, she was dead, Clarke had killed her too. He folded the Carol photo and shoved it down his shirt, closed the trunk harder than he meant and winced as it thumped. He held his breath … no response yet. Quietly as he could, he replaced the paintings. Time to get out. He needed to think. He was about to start up the stairs when he saw, half-obscured behind a collapsed camp stretcher, an old hatbox. He shoved the bed aside, unclipped the box. Jackpot: a silver movie can. He grabbed the movie can, replaced the lid of the hatbox, froze. From above had come the solid tread of feet. He moved as quickly as he could to the stairs, seized the dangling string, pulled down, plunged the room into ink. He had already memorised the room, knew there was a clear narrow channel to behind the sofa but it took him further away from the room’s only exit so he remained exactly where he was on the stairs, his left foot one step above his right. He followed the steps as they approached the trapdoor. He tensed. If the kid — he guessed it was him — reached for the light-switch cord he could grab him, pull him down …

  The steps turned and moved away down the other end of the house. Maybe he was going for a weapon? No time to hesitate, Blake was still holding the film can. He pushed up and out of the trapdoor, caught the sound of a toilet seat being flipped up. He snapped the lock shut, and was about to hit the exit when the toilet flushed. He stepped back as far as he could into the shadows at the north end of the hallway. There was enough light to show up Thomas Clarke as he left the toilet and went to the kitchen. Maybe he was going out? But instead of the flywire door banging, what he heard was the fridge opening and closing. More beer? There was a long pause, then more noise and Thomas Clarke was back in the hallway. He peered down right at Blake but Blake never moved a muscle. He knew that from that distance it was just shadow. Thomas Clarke crossed the hallway into his room. Blake slid along the far wall straight past the kid’s room back into the kitchen, out the flywire door.

  He made his way back to the car, pulled up the lid of the film can: coiled film, negative. A quick look, naked flesh, faces too hard to make out. Not smart to hang around, he fired up the ute and headed back to town. It was only when he was on the outskirts that he realised poor Andy was still waiting for his pie, so he stopped at the fish and chip shop. All he could think about now was Carol. She had known Winston Clarke and most probably that had cost her her life. But should he go to Nalder? He needed to think it through.

  ‘I was worried you had an accident.’ Andy devoured the fish and chips in a frenzy. Blake apologised, said something had come up and he couldn’t get back but all the time his mind was working on what he needed to do next. He’d never encountered this problem where you actually needed to keep somebody like Clarke alive. You just ended it all with a shot to the head or heart or both. But that wouldn’t save Crane nor reveal if Carol was dead. The only person he trusted was Doreen but when she turned up, he resisted spilling any of it. Friday was a big night. He would tell her after.

  The last few days since that night at the golf club had been weird. She didn’t know why she had done what she had, slept with a complete stranger. Up until then when she had slept with men there had always been some kind of relationship: dates, a few dinners or shared outings that grew into something — never satisfactory. The last boyfriend had been six months ago, Michael. Three months of weekends watching him fix cars and play rugby had been enough. She didn’t know what she wanted to do but definitely not that, and not dancing in nightclubs anymore, cramped dressing-rooms, the smell of hairspray that hung like chemical warfare. When Blake told her he had something to talk with her about after they finished tonight, her first thought was that he’d found out. Probably the barmaid at the golf club or one of the other men who had been there. She had not been prepared for what he was telling her now under the green glow of the fish tank.

  ‘Winston Clarke? The car man?’

  He ran through it all. The photo of the shirt, the film can he’d taken.

  ‘Jill, the girl Valerie Stokes worked with in Sydney, told me she boasted of doing a stag film. I think it was with Clarke. They renewed their acquaintance and made another.’

  ‘Why kill her?’

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe he’s a psycho. There’s another girl, Carol, from the golf club.’

  She knew all about Carol. He laid out his suspicions, that Clarke had killed her too.

  ‘If he’s really killed two women, you don’t have a choice, you have to go to the police. But are you sure that’s Valerie Stokes on the film?’

  ‘I can’t tell. I’ll have to get it printed.’ He considered. ‘You’re right. If that’s not her, I’ve got nothing.’

  ‘Even if it is her, he might have an alibi for when she was killed. He could have been back at his kid’s party.’ She was getting the hang of this now, working the logic. She might have acted impulsively the other night but here she could be measured, pragmatic. ‘First, you need to prove he knew Valerie Stokes. Then that he hasn’t got an alibi for when she was killed or Carol went missing. Are you sure about Carol?’

  Men could be dumb, maybe even Blake. Just because no woman had dumped him before didn’t mean it wasn’t going to happen ever. She was thinking Carol could have got into debt, or felt her past creeping up on her. There were a dozen reasons she might have bailed. But Blake just shook his head.

  ‘She would have told me. I think something bad has happened.’

  If it had, then it worried her: first Andy, now this girl who was intimate with Blake. She could see herself right slap bang in the middle of things.

  ‘You want me to run you home?’

  Of course she did. She had read the copy of the police report Harvey had sent down and it gave her shivers. But what happened if she said yes? Would he need to offer to escort her home every night for her not to feel slighted? She didn’t want that strain. She’d take the wheel spanner from the boot, carry it with her.

  Long after Doreen had declined his offer for an escort home, Blake continued to sit in his office thinking. He would have to get the film printed as soon as possible. If, as he suspected, Valerie Stokes featured, it was a step in the right direction but it wasn’t proof that Clarke was her kil
ler and he knew enough about cops to know they were very fucking reluctant to change their opinion. What he needed was something hard and irrefutable. Something like Clarke’s blood-soaked Hawaiian shirt. It had to have been blood-soaked because it was no longer in Clarke’s wardrobe. He’d buried it or burned it. Pity. Blake could see it all unfolding now in his head: the meeting, the murder, Clarke’s desperation to get away.

  But was it enough? His eyes ached, his brain was numb. He switched off the lights and locked up. It was somewhere near three thirty when he made it to his own bed, fell onto it fully clothed.

  Blake woke fifty minutes later. A dream, fresh as bread from the oven, came back to him. He was in the bush and he had a pistol in his hand like he was readying for a hit but he couldn’t remember who it was he was supposed to kill. He knew time was running out and it had to be done but who was the target? Next thing he remembered looking up behind him and there were Harry and Steve grinning as Harry dropped a match in a pile of dry gum leaves. He tried to shoot him but the gun wouldn’t fire and the flames were advancing fast. He turned to run back the other way and there was Winston Clarke in that damn shirt. Winston did exactly the same as Harry. He torched the bush and then it was all closing in on Blake, the circle of bush around him that was not aflame dwindling by the second. The smoke was rearing at him like a cougar. He couldn’t breathe.

  That’s when he woke up.

  The smoke seemed to still linger in his nostrils. Was the house on fire? He jumped up and quickly checked but there was nothing burning. For an instant he thought it might have been a bushfire somewhere that he’d smelled but by the time he’d completed the thought the smell was already gone. But there was … something. His brain had relaxed with sleep and had yielded up some deep secret. What? Smoke, flame, death … the shirt. Why did he keep fixating on that shirt? Clarke had burned it, yes, that made sense. But not in the bush. The last thing you needed was to start a fucking bushfire.

  So you burned it in an incinerator.

  An image jumped at Blake: Clarke’s salesman Leftwich grumbling because he had to clean windscreens … again. What day had that been? He couldn’t remember but what if it was the morning after Stokes’ murder? Hadn’t he dropped in to say they could keep the keg if they needed? Regardless, if I’m Clarke, my clothes soaked in blood, what do I do? I go to my car yard and burn the evidence. Blake raided his kitchen cupboards for a brush and pan, grabbed a couple of calico moneybags from his table, then his keys and lit out.

  Ten minutes later he was outside the car yard. He’d not passed one vehicle. The cars on display, presumably disabled, were locked in behind a wire fence at the front and sides. At the back of the car lot, behind the office was a high paling fence. A lane gave access to it. He took a left down the side street then another left and cruised down the lane. Fuck it. He stopped the car, jumped out, pulling with him the brush, pan and bags. He lobbed the pan and brush over the fence. Then he scaled the fence, just like old times when Jimmy would lead a raid on the Emeralds. The incinerator, a big cast-iron thing, was right there at the side of the office. Who knew if anything was still there, but you had to try, right? He threw open the grate. It was wide enough to take the pan. He shovelled out ash into the calico bags, hoping to see fabric of some kind. Sometimes that stuff didn’t burn. There might have been fabric there but it was still dark and he’d need to wait till he got home. Something clanged on the pan, some piece of metal. With a torch he could have seen better but it was too dim to discern exactly what it was. It looked small, about the size of a fingernail. He threw it in the bag and kept shovelling, found a little bit more metal, which he suspected was a blackened paperclip. Not wanting to linger, he knotted the bags and tossed them over the fence, dropped the pan and brush in the nearby trash can and re-scaled the fence.

  Rather than drive back to his house, he drove to the Surf Shack. It seemed only an instant since he’d been in here. He grabbed a couple of trays from the bar and tipped the contents of the bags into them. He had no way of knowing whether the incinerator had been cleaned out since. Mostly it was just paper ash. Some wedges of cardboard at the extremity of the incinerator hadn’t quite burned and there was something that looked like a strip of material about three inches long by half-an-inch, scorched but not totally incinerated. He wanted to think it could be the shirt but in truth it was impossible to tell. He retrieved the paperclip and a few staples and pins he’d missed. The small metal object he could now discern was some kind of small badge like men wear in a buttonhole, Rotary or one of those clubs, but it was impossible to say for sure because fire had blackened it. All that was left was a diamond shape. He dropped it into an empty tin he kept for paperclips. Automatically his focus returned to the material. It could be part of a shirt, for sure.

  Before leaving for the Heads he had gone home, caught three hours sleep and made himself a quick breakfast. No chance for a surf, and he missed that keenly. The Yellow Pages had given the address for a film lab and after two and a half hours of straight driving he had located it relatively easily. From here though, things might prove delicate. It was, after all, a stag film. The lab was obviously just a backroom processing place, a basic brick building with minimal bevelled glass windows up high, no retail signage. It was in a street of similar buildings. He could hear the clang of hammers from a body repair shop a few doors away. It was near eleven a.m. and he guessed whatever staff were there would be getting ready for weekend fun. He stepped into a room with a lino floor and a long, low deserted bench at the front. A curtain hived off this modest reception from what he guessed was the processing area. There was a bell which, when he hit it, gave off a dull tink. A young guy with Tony Curtis hair, wearing a lab coat, appeared.

  ‘You process sixteen-mil movies here?’

  ‘Yes, sir. Normally we can do a reel in a day but not over the weekend.’

  ‘Who does the processing, your boss?’

  ‘Yes. Mr Hampson or John.’

  ‘Are either of them in?’

  He disappeared out the back. A moment later a tall guy with a side part appeared. Early-thirties or late-twenties, face slightly pitted. Blake was guessing John. John asked how he could help.

  ‘I have a film I need processing as soon as possible.’ He held up the can.

  ‘We could do it by end of business Monday.’

  Blake leaned in close and spoke in a whisper. ‘Thing is, it is … risqué, I think is the word.’

  John looked around to see if the teen was listening. ‘If you mean …’

  ‘Yes. I do. So I’m guessing I might have to pay extra. And as I would be paying extra anyway, perhaps it could be done … sooner. Tonight?’

  John shook his head. ‘Tonight is not possible.’

  Blake found that encouraging, not an outright no.

  John said, ‘This time tomorrow, that’s the earliest I could do it.’

  ‘How much?’

  ‘Twenty, cash in advance.’

  Blake had no leverage to bargain and John knew it. Though he had braced for thirty, he’d been hoping closer to ten. He handed the film across, pulled out his wallet and found the money.

  ‘I’ll be here at eleven tomorrow.’

  ‘There’s a bell in the wall.’

  It was early enough that he could drive back, do his gig tonight and then return tomorrow. On the other hand he could sleep in the car or by the beach. Saturday night was solid whether the band played or not. He was still tossing up what to do as he tootled slowly down the beachfront where Neptune’s World, the marine park, was located. Being a Saturday, it was frantic. Even though school had been back a couple of weeks the guesthouses were still full. He found a place to park and started walking towards the concrete pool and viewing area that comprised Neptune’s World. On the beach there must have been five hundred teenagers doing a hokey-pokey competition. He’d seen the porpoise show on that very first trip after getting in from the States. In truth it was a little underwhelming, a group of porpoises flipping a b
each ball around in a concrete pool. It was fun for the kids though, especially if they got to feed them. He felt a sudden desire to bring Doreen up here one day, maybe Andy too. Andy would love it, he was just a big kid. By now Blake was out front of Neptune’s World. Maybe he would go in after all.

  ‘Oh God. I don’t believe it! Blake.’

  The voice was American and female. He swung around and saw a woman about his age he vaguely recognised. She wore a big sun hat and a summer dress with a plunging back, high-heels and a lot of lipstick.

  ‘You remember me? Mindy, Trixie’s friend.’

  He did now. She was gushing like a fire hydrant somebody had cranked open on a sweltering July day.

  ‘I can’t believe it. I thought you’d be in Florida.’

  He was lost. ‘Florida?’

  ‘With Jimmy. Vin said Jimmy had gone to Florida. Oh gee, it must be years. What are you doing here?’

  He grabbed the first idea that popped its head up. ‘Vacation. What about you?’

  ‘I’m dating a really nice guy, Mike. He was a marine in the war stationed up in Brisbane. He kept talking on and on about this Great Barrier Reef, said it was the Grand Canyon of the south and I had to see it with him. And it is, it’s amazing except I got real seasick on the boat because you go out to it on a boat. Have you seen it?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘This is so crazy.’ Her fingers fluttered, in what he guessed was an imitation of particles of craziness.

  He said, ‘You still see Vinnie and the gang?’

  ‘Oh yeah, all the time. Well, not quite so much. Mike’s from Pittsburgh. You’ll have to meet him, he’s a nice guy, though you know, he might be jealous because I told him I was sweet on this guy, Blake.’ She cosied up to him when she said that.