After the Flood, page 18
There was no question but that he had to put a stop to what had been set in train. He pulled out his phone and dialled. The slow empty ring reminded him of the sound of baby gulls.
Come on, answer.
The hollow electronic signal snipped through the dense night air invoking no response. They wouldn’t be deliberately ignoring him, surely? No, he was the lynchpin. Without him, nothing could happen anyway. It was this vast expanse of primitive land up here with no relay, that’s what it was. He would have to keep trying. And if there was still no response then he knew what he had to do.
It was closing in on midnight now and Earle and Clement were still weighing and sizing. Clement had finally got through to Jason, the bloke whose car Gomez had driven to Port Hedland. He confirmed Seydoux rented the car for a case of beer. The more he considered, the more Clement felt that Bagot and Gomez were innocents.
‘The whole focus of our investigation has got to be identifying the girl in the sketch,’ said Clement.
‘That was Josh’s case,’ said Earle in a tone that was like a metal stamp branding the item as suspect.
‘I spent a couple of hours on it.’ Clement was already on his computer looking up notes. ‘Those people who had Rhys – the Meadows. They knew her. At the time I remember thinking they may have been holding something back.’ He was looking at the footage of the abattoir demonstration that Josh had acquired. Josh had sworn the woman wasn’t on it but Clement quickly checked.
No. She wasn’t visible. The Meadows’ number was right in front of him. It was late but it couldn’t wait. He dialled, listened to the steady burr of the phone.
‘Hello?’
What was his name again … there, Stephen.
‘Mr Meadows, it’s Inspector Dan Clement.’
‘Oh, Inspector …’ He sounded distracted, there was a hollow sound as if his phone had moved away from his mouth. It came close up again, suddenly.
‘Sorry, I couldn’t find my glasses to read your name on the damn phone.’
He sounded odd, on edge.
‘I hope I’m not disturbing you.’
‘I’m in ICU at the moment.’
‘Are you okay?’
‘My wife collapsed late this afternoon on our walk. Some kind of brain haemorrhage. I’m afraid it’s not looking good.’
Clement felt like his insides had been scooped out. ‘I’m so sorry to hear that.’ He added, ‘Terribly sorry.’ As if that first reaction hadn’t been sufficient.
‘How can I help?’ asked Meadows.
As much as he desired to leave the man in peace, Clement knew he couldn’t.
‘I really am very sorry to call at this time. We are trying to find that young woman in the sketch we showed you. I’m afraid it’s a very serious situation.’ As if what’s happening to you wouldn’t dwarf this, thought Clement.
‘Frida, yes.’
Clement’s heart whammed. ‘That’s her name?’
‘Nickname that Hazel and I gave her. After Frida Kahlo the painter who was Trotsky’s mistress.’
Clement knew her. She was a favourite of Marilyn’s, an eye in the forehead and Brooke Shields eyebrows. He was looking at the notes, mention of a guy with a goatee beard they had dubbed Trotsky.
‘We never knew her name. Hazel is the one you’d need to speak to and I’m afraid that’s not possible right now.’
There was a tremor in his voice.
‘I understand, Stephen.’ The man’s life was on the precipice. ‘I just had the feeling … well, you might have known a bit more.’
‘If we had known, we would have told you. We suspected that Trotsky might have had something to do with the workers’ cars being set alight but honestly, it was speculation. He was a bit of a firebrand.’
‘Would you know what vehicle they drove?’
A sad chuckle. ‘My powers of observation are distinctly lacking. Hazel might have remembered.’
‘Our thoughts and prayers are with you. Thank you, Stephen.’
‘Thank you, Inspector.’
He ended the call. Clement related what had happened.
‘Poor bloke,’ said Earle. ‘Life can be a shit. Rhys is going to be very upset. He really connected with them.’
Life certainly can be a shit. Clement was drifting home in a post-midnight fugue, a bullet in ultra slo-mo twisting through space. One second, you were ‘we’. Then just ‘I’. Years fuse couples. You rust into one. He thought back to the friendly little house with the Doulton teapot, the barometer, that overwhelming sense of a shared life. It was almost sacrilege to imagine Marilyn and him in the same breath. He had his albums, she had her books and clothes. Yet there had been something of that oneness hadn’t there? That sense of aching loss he’d felt when she had left him, so real he could squeeze it, taste it, smell it, to this very day. Poor Stephen Meadows sitting in ICU. And what had it taken? A snap of the fingers, that’s all.
You could count in hours how long it had been since Clement sat eating Hazel Meadows’ slice. How kind and understanding they had been to Rhys. Now she clung to life by a thread. Time was scorching past so fast Clement could feel the heat of flames on its heels.
Rhys.
What was it? Something whispering to Clement about the case. Some fragment he had heard or seen among the thousands of tumbling pieces …
He was almost home now. How fickle was his brain, the Meadows’ plight replaced in an instant by the case.
But why? What had it been that had switched the points so that his whole body had vibrated as the express train dashed past him in the dark tunnel?
Something about Rhys.
The image he saw in his mind was that day of the protest. Rhys sitting beside him in the car, staring straight ahead, huddled as far away from him as he could get.
Hazel Meadows …
That was it, he was pulling it in slowly now.
She had said she had seen Frida and Trotsky in town selling t-shirts. Switch: there is Rhys Earle in the car. The air-con is on. He has a jacket over a t-shirt. Switch again: the vision of the abattoir protest Clement had just watched back at the squad room. The camera panning and then momentarily lingering on Rhys Earle in a t-shirt that read Speak For Me with a picture of a sheep.
19
Rhys Earle sat in the lounge room in his pyjamas. Clement noted that for all the boy’s recent lunge toward adulthood, the pyjamas were Star Wars. Clement vaguely remembered being caught in that awkward age between boyhood and adulthood, toy soldiers and erotic dreams. The boy’s eyes were sleepy, his hair tousled but as he sipped the glass of water his father had fetched, he was like the vast inland plains coming alive after drenching rain. Earle had chosen not to wake the sleeping Barbara.
Graeme Earle said, ‘Dan needs to ask you about some people who might be friends of yours.’
Too late on the scene to be ‘Uncle’ Dan, Clement was always referred to in the house by his first name. Rhys shot anxious glances between the two men.
‘It’s alright, Rhys. It’s just some questions but they are important.’ Clement was trying to reassure him without downplaying the gravity of the situation. ‘We were following up some leads with the Meadows.’
Earle and Clement had concluded it would be better to take Dan through their questions before revealing what had happened to Hazel Meadows.
‘They mentioned a young man and a woman, they nicknamed them Trotsky and Frida. They said they had a t-shirt stall.’
Rhys’ eyes were darting.
Earle said, ‘Dan remembered your t-shirt with the sheep. Did you buy it off them?’
Rhys hesitated.
Clement said, ‘We understand you may not want to get them into trouble but the man who was murdered at Meda was seen talking with this woman.’ Clement laid the drawing on the table. Rhys blinked at the drawing. He looked at his dad.
‘I didn’t buy the t-shirt. I didn’t have enough money. They gave it to me.’
‘Did you get to know them?’ asked Clement.
Rhys swallowed hard. ‘I met them a couple of times. First at the stall and then in the park.’ There was a beat and then he added, ‘And once down the beach at night.’
Earle asked his son if he knew their names.
‘I only know her as Frida. His name is Thomas.’
Clement almost did a handstand.
‘I don’t know his second name.’ Rhys looked from his father to Clement.
‘They’re activists. Is that right?’ asked Clement.
‘They care about people. And animals.’ Rhys manning the barricades to defend the citadel.
‘But does she advocate violence?’ asked his father.
‘The world is violent,’ said Rhys.
Be patient, Clement told himself. ‘How long did you spend with them?’
‘Couple of hours, each time.’
‘Were there others?’ asked Clement trying to get a picture of this group.
‘There were about five people there besides me.’
‘Young, old? Male, female?’ Clement wanted as much as Rhys could give him.
‘Mainly young. There was one guy there who was older. About your age, maybe a little bit younger. Three women, three men, something like that. But not the same ones each time. Except for the old dude.’
Clement displayed a photo of Seydoux he kept on his phone.
‘This guy? Was he there?’
Rhys looked closely. ‘I think he might have been there the second time. It was dark. I think so, yeah.’
Graeme Earle asked if he had spoken.
‘I don’t remember. Thomas did pretty much all the talking.’
Clement asked Rhys to tell them everything he could remember about how he met Thomas and Frida and the two meetings he had with them.
The first time they met was about two months ago. He had been in town getting a milkshake. There was a bunch of people grouped around a little pop-up market stall, just a couple of card tables really with t-shirts. They had slogans printed like How Would You Like Your Mother In A Burger? And If Animals Could Talk What Would They Say About You?, Coal Kills and others that he couldn’t remember right off. The little stall was doing a good trade. Rhys was admiring the t-shirts when Frida asked him what size he wanted. He explained he didn’t have the thirty dollars a shirt cost, he was just looking. They got to talking then about animal rights and she called over Thomas who was really friendly. He dug in a pile of t-shirts and found one with a drawing of a sheep and the words Speak For Me and just gave it to him. He said they were meeting to discuss issues later up at the park and Rhys was welcome to join. With nothing to do, curious, Rhys wandered up there later and found himself part of a group of six or seven. Thomas did most of the talking. He told the little group that he had not been an activist until his mother died. Up until then he was a hedonist. He made himself blind to what was around him but then his mother got sick. She had been working in a clothing factory with a lot of harmful chemical dyes and had got cancer, as had many of the other women who worked in that factory. The authorities poohpoohed the idea of the cancer coming from the chemicals. As they always did. But his mother died. That was the awakening he needed. Now when he looked around him with fresh eyes, he saw that large multinational companies were controlling everything important: petrol, food, medical supplies, minerals. He saw that the weak and meek always suffered, be they animal or human. He said that the ordinary people had to rise up and claim the world they wanted, that nothing came without sacrifice, that we were all going to perish unless we made a stand, that we were no different to the millions of animals made extinct each year because of fossil fuel. He said he would strike the first blow in the war soon and that it should be a rallying cry. He asked those who were interested in joining his crusade to leave some means by which they could be contacted. Rhys gave them his phone number. Not long after, he left as he had to get home, but the words made an impression upon him. Thomas had also warned them all not to go spreading this information to anybody they weren’t absolutely sure about.
Clement did a quick calculation. ‘This must have been just before the abattoir workers’ cars were torched.’
Rhys looked uncomfortable. ‘Just before. Maybe a week.’
His father seemed about to jump in but held back and said quietly, ‘Did you suspect them?’
‘I didn’t think about it at first. Then I suppose, I did.’
Clement asked if they were living in Broome.
‘I don’t think so. They said something that first time that they were only in town for a day. I never saw them except selling the t-shirts.’
‘Did you see their car?’
He couldn’t recall seeing it. About three weeks after the first encounter, Rhys got a call from the woman saying they would be meeting at the beach
‘What was the number?’ Clement was ever hopeful of some slip-up.
The boy got his phone, found the number. The number was dead now. Something for Manners to chase up.
‘So what happened at the beach?’
He went along. This was the time he thought the man in the photo was part of the group. It was dark, just a wood fire throwing light so it was hard to be certain. Somebody had asked if Thomas would be joining the abattoir protest. He said it had his blessing but Frida and he had something else planned and it was best they stayed out of the spotlight. Thomas’ speech was much the same as the previous time. He talked again about losing his mother. He said they were all bound together by grief, with each other and the animals of the world. He said they had to stand up and strike a blow for those who were unable to, either because they were dead or because they had no voice of their own. The older man seemed to be wiping tears, said Rhys, although he couldn’t be sure it wasn’t just the smoke. At the end of the talk the adults all drank wine. Rhys was offered but did not partake. He glanced at his dad, who nodded approval.
Rhys, perhaps encouraged by his dad’s support, then admitted that he had told Thomas he wanted to be part of the army Thomas had talked about. Thomas had said there would come that time but it was not yet. Right now, the best thing he could do was speak to his friends, awaken their consciousness. He had pamphlets he could distribute for them. And if he had any spare money, then he could donate what he could afford. Rhys had around twenty dollars so he gave it all. Thomas warned him it would not be easy. Most Australians will sell their unique heritage for thirty pieces of silver, he’d said and then handed him a shiny black lump of coal. That, said Thomas, is their thirty pieces of silver. Remember that, he said, you will need to be strong.
Rhys had tried to hand out the pamphlets at school, a few kids took them but not many. The rest, his old friends included, treated him like a freak.
‘Do you have any of those pamphlets still?’ asked Clement.
‘In my locker at school. I didn’t want Dad to find them.’ His eyes slid over to his father.
‘Was there any arrangement to meet again?’
‘No. Thomas said, “You won’t hear from us for a while but when you do, you will know.” He said he would be in touch with us when the time was right.’
Clement thanked Rhys and asked him to call his dad immediately if he remembered anything more. Then Earle sent him off to bed with a hug.
But Clement’s instinct told him that Thomas’ efforts to withdraw from public life spoke volumes.
‘They are planning something,’ he said. He was at that stage in the case where sufficient facts had been collected to concoct theories. He wanted to roll them, taste them, spit out the ones that didn’t fit.
‘Maybe it was the clinic. They did that, right?’
‘That seems pretty insignificant for all the talk,’ said Clement.
‘But what if it was all about money? Selling t-shirts, a GoFundMe page. All they had to do was a little something to keep the bucks rolling in.’
Clement had to concede that was possible. Earle continued as they climbed into the car.
‘Perhaps there was a lot of money involved and Seydoux had a stake. Maybe he funded them and wanted his dollars back?’
Clement followed that thought. ‘They pay him back but kill him and take the motorcycle planning to sell it but they panic.’
Clement fired up the car. It was possible but would you nail somebody to the road for that? Earle was already there.
‘I know what you’re thinking but you know what it’s like with zealots. If this Thomas lost his mother, he could be a bit psycho anyway.’
The trouble was, thought Clement, we still don’t have enough. It was ninety percent speculation.
‘We need to speak to Lauren Bagot again and Valentina Gomez, see if Thomas is familiar. And get Rhys with Lilly, get sketches of Thomas and all the people he remembers at the gathering.’
But that would have to wait till morning, which was now only about five hours off.
Where are you, he wondered. And why would you possibly crucify Jean-Claude Seydoux?
20
He watched the illuminated blue screen pulse in the dark. It put him in mind of the translucent bell of a man-o’-war as it propelled itself beneath the water’s surface. He recognised the number but chose not to answer. Paul would call again. There was no facility enabled on the phone for a message to be left. You had to be like a bushman, the fewer tracks the better. It was likely Paul just getting anxious, wanting reassurance. It was, he supposed, vaguely possible the police had somehow tracked them down and they were standing beside Paul right now. Or perhaps Paul might have recognised photos of the Sun King and then dimly tried to make sense of what had happened. He doubted it. Their paths had crossed very briefly on a dark night lit only by a low fire on a beach. The boy didn’t know enough either, although he may have remembered the two of them. But he’d never seen a vehicle, never heard a surname. No. It was likely just Paul double-checking.
