River of Salt

by Warner, Dave;

  Kitty had been lunching with Jenny and a couple of other girls but it was just going through the motions. Their excited chatter about what boys they liked and which ones had looked their way made her feel resentful, angry. Today she couldn’t face it any more so she headed to the library where nobody would disturb her. To make it look like she was there for legitimate purposes, she peeled a book off the shelf, opened it at random and began reading, an activity never high on her list. It wasn’t that she disliked reading, more that she didn’t want to waste time she could spend on her true loves of dance and drama. She’d always wanted to be a ballerina, but if that didn’t work out, an actress would do. At first the words were just inscriptions on paper. She was reading but nothing was soaking in, her brain stuck on a loop of a drive-in screen and that maniac attacking the car. And then, without any preamble, the words in front of her coalesced and inveigled her to forget everything else. She read without realising it and was still reading when the bell went. It was a book by a woman, Edith Wharton, and though it was written many years earlier, it spoke to her no less clearly than Laurey Williams in Oklahoma!, as if some all-seeing person had been able to distil her life — Kitty Ferguson’s — and record it in this book before she had been conceived.

  That night when her head touched the pillow and she closed her eyes, for the first time in weeks she was not assailed by Gene Pitney’s haunting ‘Liberty Valance’, or visions of a banshee swinging a shoe, or the sense of helplessness against the iron hands of Todd, but of brownstones and bonnets and the slow tick-tock of grandfather clocks. She gave into it completely, let it take her where it would. As if her history had been written on a seawall, then wiped smooth by an eternity of tides, she released everything she had been, offered herself free and clear to be whatever nature’s forces decided she could. For the first time in what seemed forever, she looked forward to tomorrow.

  12. A Shirt Returns

  White light on a screen that could be pulled from the ceiling, the clatter of projector gears in the cool emptiness of a wooden hall, mislaid scout hats, cub caps, a sweater and a lunchbox abandoned on dusty seats. Blake and nobody else unless you counted the deceased Val Stokes on screen. When he’d picked up the projector, Duck’s pal, Manto, had shown him how to thread the film and now he stood watching. Black and white, one fixed camera, no Cecil B. deMille. Almost certainly it had been filmed in the underground ‘cellar’ at Clarke’s, converted for the movie into a studio boudoir. Stokes appears in front of the camera wearing a bikini. Ham acting: it’s hot, oh so hot. She takes off her top, fans her bosoms but clearly it’s still too hot for her. Her eyes focus on a Kelvinator fridge, unusual for it to be in a bedroom but not to Stokes, who doesn’t bat an eye. She opens the door, removes a tray of ice cubes, pops one and traces it over her breasts. That’s better. She’s giving her nipples a work-out and now there’s an actual zoom in, so somebody is working the camera. Nipples erect she throws herself on the bed and starts to play with herself but her bikini bottoms are still on. After a few moments they’re gone too. Plenty of close-ups now, then back to a single focus as she’s writhing in ecstasy. Somebody walks toward her from camera, a man in a suit, Clarke, he can tell, even though his back is to camera at first. This next part is going to be edited out no doubt. Clarke adjusts her in front of the lens at the angle he wants, nods for her ‘action’. More ham acting: she cowers. He slaps her hard. With trembling fingers she unzips his fly. He points threateningly. She pulls out his penis, transfixed like it’s the first time she’s seen such a thing. He meets her gaze and nods with authority. She sucks … amazingly she is converted instantly, going at it like it’s her favourite ice cream. Her desires seem to increase rapidly from here, sucking replaced by Kama Sutra stuff that goes on until Clarke’s eventual climax. The acting over, Stokes relaxes. You can almost read her lips: ‘How was that?’ For his part Clarke seems pleased enough. He walks to the camera and the screen goes black as he switches off.

  Blake stood there under the tin roof thinking on his next move. He was confident his theory was correct but alone could do little. He needed help.

  Nalder was starting to wonder whether Saunders was worth the trouble but on the phone he’d been insistent he meet him at the scout hall. Nalder parked a distance away, walked there in his civvies. It was still light but wouldn’t be for much longer. He remembered bringing the boys here all those years ago, marvelled how time had wriggled out of his grasp like a greased piglet. He walked up the three short steps and tried to open the door. Locked. Whatever it was, Saunders didn’t want unannounced guests. He knocked.

  ‘It’s me.’

  February was already gone, the humidity leached out of the air, but experience told Nalder there would be one more rousing charge by the rain god. The door opened, Saunders welcomed him with a single word greeting and locked the door again with a long key. It was little more than a rectangular hut, although at one end was a four-foot high stage that Nalder remembered building with a few other dads while Edith played tennis with the other wives in the courts at the back screened by tall gums. An era of homemade lemonade, Lew Hoad on the radio.

  ‘So what is so important?’

  Saunders said, ‘I know who killed Val Stokes.’

  He saw that rocked the policeman, at least temporarily. But Nalder wasn’t going to make a fool of himself by any clamour.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Got something you need to look at.’

  He pulled the chair across and gestured Nalder sit. When the cop did, he played the movie. Nalder didn’t say a word during the film.

  When it finished Blake said, ‘That’s why nobody has found Stokes during those critical few days from Sunday to Thursday. She was at Clarke’s shooting this. I don’t think it was the first time they’d worked together.’ He told Nalder about what he’d learned in Kings Cross. ‘Clarke told me he was in the movie business in LA with his brother-in-law. I’m guessing these were the kind of movies. I wouldn’t be surprised they film here and distribute in the US.’

  The cop considered it. ‘They look pretty chummy at the end. You think it soured and he killed her?’

  ‘Andy saw a man in an Hawaiian-style shirt with crabs and lobsters on it, out the back of the Surf Shack talking to Stokes on the night she was killed. There’s a photo of Clarke in that exact same shirt hanging on the wall of his office.’

  ‘Doesn’t mean he killed her.’

  ‘I don’t think he did kill her. I think his son did.’

  Nalder, still seated, squared around. ‘Young Tom? You got to be joking.’

  ‘I’ve got a witness called around to Clarke’s house about eleven p.m. Clarke was snoring his head off in his bedroom but his car wasn’t there. There was a kid asleep on the couch but I don’t think it was Tom.’

  ‘Did your witness check every inch of the house?’

  ‘Come on, who else is going to have the old man’s car? Next morning it was back with a scraped fender. Clarke told me one of Tom’s friends had backed into the car. I think that’s what Tom told him. Around midnight, some car knocked over a trash can a couple of hundred yards from the Ocean View Motel. I had to pay but I’ve got it. I took a trip over to the smash repair place Clarke used. They still had the old bumper. They did a simple replacement on his car. I’m just an ordinary Joe but the dents look like they match to me.’

  Now Nalder was listening, calculating what was in his best interest. This was the critical point. ‘Why are you talking to me? Why not Vernon?’

  ‘They might bury it. I want to clear Crane. I want a confession.’

  Nalder stood. ‘That’s not my domain. You need to speak to Vernon, or Crane’s lawyer.’

  Blake pressed. ‘I think when Tom Clarke arrived to stay with his father, Stokes must have still been there. She was probably planning to head back home, nicely cashed-up. I don’t know if Tom Clarke knew about the film but he’s eighteen and she’s a sexy broad. It was his birthday. He wanted to give himself the best gift an eightee
n-year-old boy could get. I think he set something up, took Dad’s car, met Stokes out the back of the Surf Shack, wearing his dad’s shirt. Kid wanted to make an impression.’ He could still remember borrowing Jimmy’s shirt and jacket for a date so he looked older, worldly.

  ‘It’s thin.’

  He could tell though that Nalder was considering it now.

  ‘There’s no sign of the shirt in Clarke’s wardrobe. I think it was soaked in blood and Tom had to get rid of it.’

  ‘How do you know about the wardrobe?’

  Blake watched Nalder solve that question for himself.

  ‘Jesus. You broke and entered.’

  ‘Door was open.’

  ‘That where you got the film?’ Nalder spread the sarcasm thick. ‘The film was just lying around? If that film’s stolen, we probably can’t use it.’

  ‘We say it was stolen but not by me. There’s been a spate of house thefts, right? Like Edward and that radio he was found with. We say we found it tossed on the side of the road. You tell them you took a look at it, realised the significance. Only that same day the yardman at the Surf Shack had told you about the shirt he’d seen. A shirt you recognised. Hell, Vernon and Apollonia hadn’t questioned him. You were just connecting dots. I can put you in touch with the witness who noticed the Chevy missing. She gave you her story, it got you thinking. Maybe the shirt was there at the Surf Shack carpark that night but not Winston Clarke. You thought you’d just have a word to the boy …’

  ‘Alright, I get it: this whole thing just unravelled before I could call in the Homicide boys.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  The big cop rolled the idea like a lozenge, sucking on the implications. ‘If Clarke knew his kid had met Stokes, he must have told him to shut up about it.’

  ‘If he did.’ Blake hit the ‘if’. He wasn’t sure Clarke knew. He informed Nalder how the car man seemed unguarded about the Chevy when he was talking to Blake. ‘If he’d known he was covering something, he probably would have acted differently.’

  ‘So Winston Clarke may or may not know.’ Nalder paced, stopped, probed another crevice. ‘Who’s the witness?’

  ‘Name of Carol, barmaid from the golf club. The whole thing freaked her out and she’s up the coast now.’

  ‘Clarke was banging her?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘And you know this because …?’

  Blake could see him connecting the dots again.

  ‘You were going there as well?’

  Blake said, ‘Does it matter?’

  ‘Everything fucking matters when you ask me to hang my dick out and piss on Vernon and Apollonia. How do I know you didn’t put her up to this?’

  ‘If I wanted to do that, why not just get her to say Clarke wasn’t there when she called around?’

  Nalder appeared to give him that, muttered to himself. Then he came to a decision. ‘It’s not enough. Not yet.’

  ‘Come on, we’ve got the trash can, the car missing, the kid absent …’

  ‘I want it airtight. I don’t want to piss off HQ. You get me more, I’ll run with it, take the bin, make up some story, see if they can get some match on it with the bumper.’

  This must be how you feel when a steamroller flattens you, Blake thought, as he cruised aimlessly around town. Every so often the anger spouted out of him and he cursed the fat, dumb cop and slapped the top of his steering wheel. Near the minigolf place he spied Duck’s van. Duck was probably trying to canoodle with one of the young women from the bank or hairdresser, showing them how to putt, his arms around them. Normally he would crack a smile but tonight Blake couldn’t manage that. He drove back towards his place, slowed and threw a U-turn.

  Bossa nova music played in the lounge room. Doreen had been mending a stocking. She didn’t seem like that kind of girl, too glamorous and nightclub for a needle and thread, but then that’s what set her aside from Carol, say. There was a homeliness about Doreen even though she was sexy. Actually it made her more sexy. He thought of the women he’d always dated, like Mindy. They could be fun but there was something so brittle about them, as if just sending a deep thought their way would break them like one of those little glass straws they sucked their martinis with. Doreen was stronger, mysterious, durable. If she was a country, she could be Russia.

  ‘What’s up?’ she asked, showing him in, and then before he could reply adding, ‘You’ve been in another world since you went to the Heads. You want a tea? Brandy?’

  He told her he’d have what she was having. Doreen grabbed a couple of tumblers from the cupboard above and poured two brandies. She was wearing shortie pyjamas and it excited him when she stood on tiptoes to get the glassware. There was something beautiful about a long-limbed woman on bare tiptoes. It reminded him of the lamp old Repacholi had in one of his studies: French apparently, a silver nude, stretching holding the world above her head. From the fridge Doreen brought out a large bottle of ginger ale and added it.

  He had to this point told her nothing about the film other than he had acquired it but not looked at it. She’d asked him ‘Why?’ and he’d fobbed her off with the fact he didn’t have a projector.

  ‘I ran the film tonight.’ He told her about it: a stag film featuring Winston Clarke and Val Stokes in lead roles. He told her his theory, told her about Nalder. Confession done, he swallowed the brandy.

  ‘You can get all this to Harvey.’

  ‘My worry is Nalder. If I can’t get him involved, I won’t get Vernon. That leaves it up to the jury.’

  As she often did when she was thinking, she closed her eyes, stretched her neck, delicate and lean. It belonged in that church in the Vatican with the painted ceiling. Her eyes opened again. In this light they were jade.

  ‘There might be a way to swing Nalder.’

  He swigged eagerly. ‘How?’

  ‘He’s desperate for membership to the golf club, applied twice, knocked back twice. You convince him that solving this will get him in, then he might be prepared to stick out his neck.’

  It was a different part of his anatomy Nalder feared losing, but it showed she was thinking like the cop did.

  She said, ‘Tell me again what Carol said.’

  He ran through what Carol had told him, added uselessly, ‘It can’t have been Clarke senior.’

  ‘What about the kid? The other one.’

  It was self-evident, yet he’d completely missed it, Nalder too.

  ‘The kid on the lounge?’

  ‘You get to him. He might be able to confirm that his mate Thomas wasn’t around.’

  ‘Carol didn’t recognise him.’

  ‘But she got a look at him?’

  ‘Not really. She didn’t remember his hair, said he was small enough to fit on the sofa. Which is why I don’t think it’s Tom Clarke.’

  To her, the next step seemed obvious. ‘If we find somebody who knows Thomas Clarke they might be able to say who this kid is.’

  ‘How are we going to do that?’

  ‘I don’t know him or his friends that well but I saw them down the beach a few times.’

  Doreen had thought it was better to intercept Kitty on her way to school rather than meet up at the Victoria Tearooms where Nalder could be ensconced. Blake injected himself into the conversation.

  ‘This guy is probably not that tall. We’re guessing he might be average to slim build.’

  Kitty pursed her lips. ‘Not much to go on, Sherlock, though you might get lucky: most of Clarke’s mates are big guys like him, rugby and all that. You could try Paul Sommerville and Doug McGee. I haven’t seen McGee since school went back. I think he might be at uni. Paul Sommerville delivers telegrams.’

  Doreen thanked her, promised they would soon catch up.

  ‘I have to get the Shack ready for tonight,’ she explained. Kitty was eager for gossip.

  ‘So what did he do, Sommerville?’

  ‘We just need to talk to him about something.’

  Kitty smirked. ‘You lie like my
parents,’ she said, and swung off towards the school.

  It had been something of a revelation that her parents lied. Not about the Easter Bunny and Tooth Fairy but about loads of things: they lied to her, to themselves and most surprising, to each other. None of this she would have realised if she hadn’t made that fateful trip to the library and found Edith Wharton. It was like the English in the war cracking the German code. All of a sudden, the mystery fell away. Instead of gawking at amazing sets, you could see how the pulleys and winches worked, how the flats were painted. After that first time at the library, she had gone home still thinking about the book, its world, its people.

  Next day she had waded patiently through morning classes and when lunchtime came, had avoided Jenny and hurried to the library where she retrieved the book and started to read it from the beginning. She had finished it by Friday. There was only one other Wharton book there so she took it home and read it over the weekend. After that she would graze, read a few pages of something and if it took hold, keep reading. This way she found Somerset Maugham, John O’Hara, Henry James; whispering in her ear, showing her how to study, pick up clues about those around you. She returned to lunch occasionally with her friends, listening more keenly than she had ever listened, noticing nuances she’d previously missed, omissions, prevarications, things that told her just how vulnerable they all were. This new skill she found she possessed, fed upon itself, increasing progressively by the day. What shocked her most was that she was suddenly more aware of her parents’ relationship, tensions, the occasional unspoken condemnation on both their parts. Her mum’s obsession with tennis, canasta, bridge, musicals, even the artistic use of driftwood could be understood now as an attempt to fill in space and time. Stripped of these, her life was a void filled only by her daughter. Her dad’s complimenting his wife’s cooking — Kitty had always thought that sweet — she understood now was simply a password to camp after a long day on the battlefield with other men. His thoughts were on the next day and the day after that, where to move the artillery, when to retreat, who to form an alliance with, who to declare war against. She realised now that his returns late from work often included stopovers at watering holes. Her mother was thirty-six, her father three years older. Their adult lives had been spent together. When she fell pregnant, her mum was only two years older than Kitty was now. Their lives had been mapped out for them, a recent past of war instilling a desire for stability. Their habits had given their lives a structure that was clearly more acceptable than Japanese invasion but the external threat had diminished and fear was no longer calling the shots over reason. Kitty was grateful to be free of all these past horrors, had no craving for security, or peace, but for new experiences. She saw her generation as having more in common with the bohemian crowd of the nineteen twenties and thirties.