After the Flood, page 19
He looked over to where she slept in her bag on the deserted beach. They had shifted camp yesterday to be closer to their next important staging posts. So far, she had not failed him. When it had come to dealing with the Sun King, he was prepared for it, but she had not resiled from what had been needed of her. Perfidy needed punishment. That she understood. She had been insistent that they quit the May River as soon as possible. He had learned to trust her instinct. It was like she had the gift. She was the one who had whispered to him that Paul had been sent to them, he was the key. So he had proven to be.
As for any trail the police might try and pick up, he had made his list of precautions and followed them closely. First and foremost, keep the vehicle hidden at all times. He had filled jerry cans of petrol a week ago. No need to call in on servos to refill. So long as the police didn’t know their names and couldn’t place their vehicle, they were smoke. Nothing was perfect however. There was always a chance for an error, a piece of bad luck, or worse, a mistake by one of the others. He took a deep breath and a long moment to appreciate the natural beauty surrounding him. Eighty miles of beach they claimed.
He would like to have brought his mum out here. He didn’t recall them ever being on a holiday. She was gone before they had a chance. His father was no more than the shadow cast by passing clouds. He had been nine when that man had taken himself out of their lives. Three wonderful years he and his mum had shared. Then she was gone too.
A child loses his mother at that age, it’s devastating. You haven’t even rebelled yet. Suddenly it is just you and objects from an outside world, cheap dressers, rusting clothes hangers. Friends are immature and inadequate, and he’d never really had friends anyway. Teachers are no more than actors on a set. Your whole life feels like a play. Each day you want the performance to end so you can go back home, but there is no home, there is no core because ‘home’ is where the love is. Home is the invisible but tangible emotion that exists between loved ones, that’s all it is, not bricks and tiles, not a driveway with a car in it. They’re no more than a sound stage.
A child needs to be able to close its eyes and still feel secure. To sense the dull rhythm of a mother’s heart. That’s why people put a clock in the bedding of a kitten or a puppy. Words are a very poor cousin for communication to the real thing, that bond between a parent and child, especially a mother and her child. Without that the world is sparse as an art gallery. And there is nobody to reassure you about your worth. No bosom for you to lay your head on and be gently stroked while you cry. None of that testing of boundaries either, going to the fridge one more time when you’ve been told to quit. Feeling yourself slowly grow into adulthood and your own entity.
His uncle, her brother, was a moron who spent most of his conscious hours in a betting shop. Aunty Jessica, Thomas was convinced, only kept her nephew around because she got some money coming her way for it. At least she fed him. She tried sometimes. But you have the overwhelming sense that you are a tolerated burden, no more. He would trawl for pleasant memories of his mother, haul them up when they bit, dissect and savour them. A time they went to the movies to see Harry Potter together. Not just locally, all the way up to the city and the cinemas in George Street. They caught a train and walked around the crowded streets before the movie, and then they ate ice-cream in the dark, his pulse racing to the action of the movie, but all the more special because she was beside him. Another time he remembered she took the morning off work to come to the classroom and see what he had been doing. Year four, around then it was. For once he had a parent who was checking out his artwork and the things the kids had built, and he felt a flutter of pride as she turned and smiled back at him in that crammed little classroom.
By seventeen, he was out of his uncle’s and school but he didn’t know enough to escape those dull suburbs he’d been born into where McDonald’s was the Taj Mahal, and entertainment consisted of sitting on the railing by the supermarket and listening to the night-time rattle of shopping trolleys. He’d stayed with a Lebo mate whose parents let him sleep on the floor of his mate’s room and use the bathroom and kitchen until he found a job. He scored one in a warehouse, where for the most part he was surrounded by more morons. He got into a share flat as soon as he could manage it but the rent left him with hardly anything to spend. Everybody he knew was dropping eccies. A few smoked weed. He started along the same hopeless path. It was an endless loop for what, two years? Working a mindless job to get enough money to make yourself mindless. Money seemed to float past him in a quick stream, never snagging. There were what passed as girlfriends. He didn’t seem to have too much trouble getting sex but he had no desire for lasting relationships. Squalid was how he now thought of that phase of his life. The loss of his mother had robbed him of what should have been every child’s right. He must have been twenty when he made his first important discovery.
He had spent most of his free money on pills as usual but unlike the rest of his friends had felt no desire to gobble them as quickly as possible. Then one night they were all at some rave and he found himself the only one with any pills left. His crew were so desperate they offered him twice what he’d paid. He had not a second thought about obliging. That’s when he realised there was money to be made and a future to be had by judiciously buying and selling. He didn’t think of himself as a dealer because he didn’t even have a wholesale price going for him. It was just he had the wits to know where he could get the cheapest gear and where he could sell it for the most bucks. Like those stockmarket pricks making money out of nothing but shuffling paper. Arbitrage they called it and he adopted the term to describe what he did: arbitrage.
For a time, things went well. He kept working at the factory but the money he got from drugs was increasing. He was careful to stay out of the way of the dealers. This wasn’t a career path for him, it was just something to earn more dollars, get enough to move into a flat on his own. He bought a cheap car and drove to the city where he would take in an art gallery or ramble through the Botanic Gardens. When he got bored with that he drove to national parks. He would take a quiet trail and explore, sit for hours absorbing nature around him.
Along the way he discovered that the university provided a low-risk, solid-return environment for his drug reselling, though at first he couldn’t crack it with the students except at some campus raves when they were already off their faces. It dawned on him that they knew straight away he wasn’t one of them. He didn’t look the part, he spoke coarsely, his gaze hit women head-on instead of drifting parallel to them. He ploughed his profits into better clothes, began to dress like a student and to hang out around campus, soaking up the quality that almost all students have: entitlement. Sufficiently imbued with that, he was able to effortlessly recreate the same vibe. He was undetectable.
That was really when his life changed.
At first, he went to the rallies and talks just to fit in but then he began to listen to these student activists and what they were protesting about. It was clear most were talking out of their arse and hadn’t a clue what it was like out there sleeping on the floor of your mate’s bedroom or having a punch on in the deserted carpark of your local supermarket, but all the same he was impressed by their desire to change the world around them. He learned about socialism and multinational corporations, about genetically modified crops and pharmaceutical companies who basically bribed doctors to get you onto drugs you didn’t need. And he thought about his mum, that stupid factory where she had worked and how she was now lost from his life. Pretty soon he decided to bypass the intermediaries – students who were spouting theories about which they had no personal experience – and to go to the library and become acquainted with the originals, old French and German dudes who’d been writing about this shit a hundred, two hundred years earlier.
At one of the campus forums one day, he found the courage to actually go to the microphone and speak. Words and ideas poured out of him and he saw he held his audience in some kind of thrall. Later, a bunch of the most committed sought him out and over bad coffee he told them his mother had contracted cancer from the chemicals at her workplace. He told them he’d been cast out on the streets. He told them that a reckoning was coming, that people didn’t just stop polluting the world because it was the right thing to do, that they would only cease doing that when the pain it induced, be that physical or bottom line to their profits, was greater than the personal benefit they received.
Very quickly he became a minor celebrity. Student leaders deferred to him. Young students sought him out as a mentor. And then he learned a harsh but very important lesson that he had never forgotten. It was easy to get swept away in what might be, easy to forget what is. In this case, he neglected that a large slice of his income was from selling drugs. He hadn’t covered himself with enough veils, left enough false trails, and so it wasn’t difficult for the cops to track him down when they busted one of his piss-weak student clients. The dominoes fell, more clients were turned up. The cops decided he was threat enough that he should go to jail and the magistrate agreed.
He wound up getting three months. Of itself, that wasn’t so terrible but now he had no job, a criminal record, and worst of all, his old hunting ground the campus was well and truly off limits. It had been quite a setback but despite that, he had gained the most valuable insight of all: what his life was to be about, how he was to make his mark in this world. He had learned too, that he held great powers of persuasion, that he could read people but that he must be ever vigilant, must eliminate errors.
The road ahead would be difficult but the destination was predetermined. And now nearly four years on from that, he was ready.
By the time Clement made it back to his flat, it was closing in on 2.30 a.m. When they had told Rhys about Hazel Meadows the boy had fought to stay strong but his eyes had quickly misted and a tear or three rolled, something that endeared Rhys to Clement, and made him proud. Our ability to feel, to care and to love is possibly our finest human quality, Clement told himself and yet he had so often stonewalled those impulses. For months he had fought feeling anything about Marilyn. He’d thought that had made him stronger. And then like a routed army he’d run screaming. He wished he could take back that dumb phone call. He wished their relationship had been like the Meadows’. Clement rolled into bed. He shut his eyes. He said a quick prayer for Hazel Meadows because he had told Stephen Meadows he would. He hoped it produced a better result than previous times.
Within a minute, his day ended.
21 MONDAY
It was dark when Thomas rose to the smell of ocean salt in his nostrils. For an instant he felt the deep stab of what might have been. The Frenchman had wrecked everything. Carefully laid plans, years of saving and work turned to ash. If things had gone as they were supposed to, it would have been so simple. The police would never have had any idea about them, at least not until too late. They were so far under the radar they were subterranean. For months he had kept away anything that might attract attention. But the fucking Frenchman had ruined all that.
The bastard.
Unfortunately, there were going to be consequences. As soon as they found the body, the police would have started their hunt. First step would have been identifying the dead man. That had to be delayed and that meant the motorcycle had to disappear. He had been careful from the get-go: minimal contact, keeping their identities secret, especially from the Frenchman, keeping the car out of the way and avoiding cameras, particularly servo ones. He couldn’t be sure how much time he’d bought. That tattoo was going to be a signpost. But any extra minute was important. The plan had to go ahead. There could be no postponement because the longer any delay, the more chance the police might find something. Perhaps he should have been less public with that traitor. They could have dumped him in the river for crocodiles to feed on or just buried him out in the bush and likely nobody would have ever found him. But that would have been unsatisfying. Betrayal was the ultimate transgression. It mocked. It strutted. It cut the heart from the innocent. It was worse than murder because it destroyed not just the body, but our ideals, our aspirations, those fragile constituents that make us more than flesh and blood, that make us a son, a lover, a friend, that make us who we are. Despite the risk that was entailed by leaving the Frenchman there so flagrantly, it had given him a sense of completion. And if things continued as he hoped they would, it would offer a salutary lesson for any wavering followers. Still, it heightened the risk of discovery before their mission was complete, no doubt about that. The most tenuous link in their plans was the boat hire. The Frenchman had organised all of that and was going to skipper. Well, there was nothing to driving a boat, he could handle that himself, but the Frenchman knew the waters, the reefs, the tides. Nonetheless, he was confident he could handle all those so long as he got the boat. But would there be any snags with the boating people? They knew Seydoux, they trusted him with their boat. Would they insist on somebody else taking his place?
His heart had been in his mouth when he had called yesterday and made out like he had no idea what had happened to the Frenchman. Hello, my name is Thomas, I organised a boat with Jean-Claude. He mentioned he was hiring from you but I’ve been unable to …
‘Oh no,’ he had gasped, ‘that’s terrible!’ when told that the Frenchman had been killed. ‘That’s awful.’ And then after the appropriate shock and expressions of regret he had made like he was clawing his way through fog. Is it possible we could hire the boat still? We have travelled all the way from Perth. We’ve been planning this trip of a lifetime for years. It had been easy to fudge how Jean-Claude was an acquaintance of a mutual friend who had met the Frenchman while diving in Perth, and how he had recommended they get in touch with Jean-Claude about diving the islands off the north-west coast. That way he didn’t need to act too distraught, or have the hire people tell him to see the police.
Yes, he had lied, my partner and I are both experienced divers. The problem, had explained the man at the boating place, was that this was peak tourist season and that he didn’t have anybody spare to act as a guide.
This was perfect. It made things simpler.
We don’t need anyone, he’d said. All we need is a boat and a trailer because Jean-Claude had said diving and fishing would be better a bit further south and it would be better to drive.
The man at the boat place had agreed with that.
‘We could leave a deposit, a bond?’
The man had asked what they had agreed to pay Jean-Claude. Clearly, he expected Seydoux would be adding a mark-up for himself on top of whatever Seydoux was paying for the boat.
‘Two thousand eight-hundred for everything, trailer included, for three days.’
The man had thought about that and said they could leave it at that then. They could direct-deposit the money or use credit card. He would need a passport or driver’s licence and that was about it. The boat would be fitted with all safety gear.
‘When would you want to get it?’ he had asked.
‘Say seven tomorrow morning, if that’s alright? We’ll be driving up from Hedland. We left Geraldton two days ago and dived at Ningaloo.’ He’d thrown that in just in case the police asked about the boat hire. It would make it seem they hadn’t been anywhere near the Kimberley. Then he sputtered some more nonsense about how he couldn’t believe Seydoux had been killed.
‘Not that I knew him personally, but it must be a shock.’
Yes, it was a shock the man agreed. It sounded from what he could tell, he said, that somebody might have killed Jean-Claude and stolen his bike.
‘That’s just awful,’ Thomas had said. ‘I’ll let my friend in Perth know. He’ll be upset I am sure. So, seven?’
The man had given them directions to the marina. The tide would be a bit low but it would be sufficient.
After that call he had breathed much easier. He was sure the police weren’t onto them. The guy would have been more agitated and would have asked for names and all sorts of things. It was possible, he thought, that they might still get away with it. Initially that had been his intention. This would be just the start of a series of events where he would strike out at those multinationals who controlled energy, food, medicine – all our essentials. He had, however, always been prepared that there could be consequences to himself: incarceration, injury, death. That was the price you had to be prepared to pay to create lasting change. And it would come with a bonus: global recognition.
Oh, how the world had kowtowed to Greta, that snub-nose little Swedish twerp. How did she deserve it? What had she given up? What had she lost? How many nights had she slept on the streets, scavenged dustbins? Had she lost her mother? Her home? No, her mother was a fucking opera singer, her father some musician. They’d spent their lives sucking off the teat of cultural institutions, travelling around famous European cities, whereas his opera house was a McDonald’s carpark. He’d arbitraged his way up the ladder with drug-commerce. Well, what he had planned would put little Greta well and truly back in the Swedish shade where she belonged. He was sick and tired of these arseholes who jumped on the bandwagon: gay marriage, Black Lives Matter, you name it. Not the ones, anonymous like him, who’d been in the vanguard and taken the hits, and stood on cold corners with chilled fingers shovelling out flyers, but those that thought they could get a piece of righteousness by sticking a stupid logo on their Twitter or Facebook, or by joining a rally march because all their cool friends were doing it. And no institutions did he loathe more than Facebook and Twitter and Instagram and Snapchat with their jeans and t-shirt moguls congratulating themselves on their ‘disruptive’ philosophies. Not that he would tell them that, ever. For they were the ones who would spread his notoriety. They ultimately were his conduit to power.
