After the Flood, page 26
He felt he was a fraud, a thief posing as a security guard. Valentina Gomez had not answered. He had left a message but she had not responded. Why would she? He had spoken to his elderly parents as soon as he could. They would be worrying. His sister had called to wish him well. So had Marilyn. Earle had informed her that her ex had been blown up but not so badly you’d notice much difference. She had finally called Clement and the conversation had lingered and set off far more pain than the broken rib. Had there been a frisson or was it his concussion talking? It was safer if he ascribed it to the latter. He had even found two voicemail messages in his phone from Lucinda, the brief fling that had ended in tears. He couldn’t guess whether she was going to wish the blast had killed him or was offering sympathy. He decided not to find out.
By day four, dressed and packed, Clement was itching to go, although the air-conditioning was something he could get used to. He inquired from the staff about where Paul Isegar might be found and was directed just one ward away. Apparently Isegar was not considered a flight risk. There was no policeman guarding the door and he was not cuffed to his bed. The plastic tubing pumping various fluid into his body and the leads for constant monitoring were anchor enough it seemed. Isegar still looked weak, not as white as he had in the photo but in far worse shape than Clement had been. He was, however, quite conscious.
Clement introduced himself. Isegar looked anxious.
‘It’s okay. I’m not trying to trap you. I’ve been in the next ward. Berryman blew himself up and nearly took me with him.’
Still Isegar seemed wary.
Clement said, ‘Truly, I wanted to thank you because I think you saved my life.’ Clement told him what had happened. ‘I don’t know if you only dragged yourself out of that house to save yourself. I don’t care. If you hadn’t, I don’t know how I’d have done. Maybe I would have been okay. But it saved hours.’
Isegar spoke, though he seemed understandably constricted, the words taking an effort
‘I lost my partner in Brazil. And our baby. The tailings-dam burst.’
Clement had not forgotten the news reports.
‘I died that day. My whole life. And I was angry and I wanted to punish people who I thought were responsible. Probably still do. But not that way. I wanted to help Thomas. Then I realised … Gabrielly … she wouldn’t want that. She would have said no ideology is worth hurting innocent people. I met someone, a lovely woman at the plant. I didn’t want anything to happen to her. I tried to stop them. I thought I could talk them around. But just in case, I never encoded the passes. They couldn’t get into the main compound. I’m not trying to excuse myself. I just wanted to save Ingrid. That’s why I crawled out onto the road. I wasn’t being a hero. I just didn’t want her to get hurt.’
Not for the first time, Clement felt that there was no fairness in the world. But at whose feet do you lay the blame? Berryman, whose mother ran out on him when he was ten? The resource companies, who existed because they produced what we demanded?
‘Has she been in to see you?’ asked Clement. ‘Ingrid?’
Isegar shook his head. ‘I called her. The police had been in touch about me. She said she wants nothing to do with me. I can’t blame her.’
Clement reached across and took his hand. There were tears in Paul Isegar’s eyes, and Clement thought there might have been tears in his own.
EPILOGUE
Clement rang the doorbell and waited. Beyond the flywire door were shadows of the entrance way, the front door propped back. He heard steps coming towards him. The smell of hibiscus hung over the newborn year.
‘Oh, hello, Inspector.’
Stephen Meadows swung the door open.
‘Hi there, Mr Meadows. I felt terrible I didn’t get back to you.’
‘Stephen, please. Totally understandable. Would you care for tea?’
‘Please.’
Clement followed him into the room he remembered so clearly. The barometer was exactly where it had been, the Doulton teapot looked the same.
Meadows fussed with the tea. ‘Young Rhys told me you had been injured, and then I read the reports.’ He swivelled and checked him over. ‘I was worried you might have lost an arm or fingers.’
‘I was lucky.’
‘No slice this time, I’m afraid,’ said Meadows. ‘But I do have some very nice shortbread biscuits I got for Christmas.’
They sat in the comfortable chairs under the cooling breeze of the fan.
‘She never regained consciousness,’ Meadows said, nibbling a biscuit, legs crossed, his eyes on the watercolours his wife had painted. ‘We got your card. Thank you very much. It was so kind of you to think of us.’
Clement wasn’t sure if Meadows was using the royal ‘we’ or more likely, he thought, including his wife as a living presence. Though Clement had sent a sympathy card, and despite his natural inhibition, he had felt impelled to visit personally.
‘I couldn’t get this place out of my head,’ he said as he sipped tea. ‘Or, more precisely I guess, I couldn’t get the two of you out of my head. You seemed, not so much a couple but one person. You don’t even really know me so I apologise if I’m …’ Clement had led himself into a dead end, ‘… and I envied you that. My own marriage didn’t work out.’
Stephen Meadows looked at him intently, without judgement, patient.
‘We met so briefly but Hazel made such an impression. You both did.’
‘That’s very kind of you. Yes, Hazel was hard to forget. Swept me off my feet when I was twenty-two. She was a fabulous dancer.’
Clement said he could believe that. He wanted to say he was worried for Meadows, worried he would be bereft at the loss of his soul mate.
‘It must be very hard,’ was what he finally said, and bit the biscuit.
‘Sometimes, yes. But you know, I think about it, how fortunate we were. We did everything but die together.’
‘Do you have children?’
‘A son and daughter. Daughter lives in England married, two grandchildren. She came out for the funeral. So did our son. He’s in Boston. My daughter prodded me about going to live with them but you know, this is home.’ He looked around, breathed in the air. ‘I still feel her here. And I love the climate. I don’t think I could handle those cold English winters any more. Or summers for that matter. And you? Children?’
‘Yes, my daughter, Phoebe. She’s around Rhys’ age. She’s coming up here to spend her holidays with me. We’re doing a diving safari and Graeme Earle has a couple of days where I can borrow his boat.’
A thought jumped into his head and Clement, so rarely impulsive, said, ‘Would you like to come out with us for a day? With Rhys.’
Meadows’ eyes sparkled and he uncrossed his legs, put down his cup and leant forward as if sharing the most amazing piece of gossip.
‘I would love that. I really would.’
‘Good.’
There was something about this place that relaxed Clement and made him able to drop his natural defensiveness.
‘What was your secret, do you think? You and Hazel?’
Meadows sat back, recrossed his legs and tented his fingers beneath his nose. Apart from professorial robes, he looked just like how Clement imagined an English academic. Meadows took his fingers away, sat up and said, ‘You know, I think we just got lucky. I hear people say all the time you have to work at a relationship but I don’t think that’s true. If you have to work at it, then perhaps there’s a fault in it. I’m not saying we didn’t quibble, or have the odd row over nothing but almost every day of our lives, we enjoyed being with one another.’
That’s how it had been with Marilyn at the start, thought Clement. Actually, for quite a long time. He wondered where he had gone so badly wrong. He had almost finished his tea but felt no inclination to leave this space.
‘Another?’ asked Meadows reaching for his cup.
He was on leave, Phoebe was still two days away. ‘Please,’ said Clement.
When Clement finally emerged and walked to his car, evening was falling slowly like a hood. Thunder was close. He thought of the contentment of Stephen Meadows and how it contrasted with the despair of Paul Isegar. Both men had found their soul mates and yet fate had treated them completely differently. Isegar’s life had been buried in mud. Then when he had finally found another person to love he had lost them too.
Our past is always dogging our heels, affecting our judgement. Isegar had become a pariah in the eyes of the woman he loved, even though he had nearly died trying to rectify his error. Had he not done what he had, maybe Clement wouldn’t be standing here now sniffing encroaching rain, savouring the advent of Phoebe’s return. He thought of Lauren Bagot and Valentina Gomez and wondered if their lives had been scarred forever. He hoped not.
He looked at his phone. There were still those two Lucinda voicemails demanding attention. He’d never played them. He dropped the phone in his pocket. Then he pulled it out again. You couldn’t live your life like that, running away. He hit the dial button and put the phone to his ear.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I am very grateful for the assistance of a number of people. Pat Fairchild and especially Daniel Prowse, thank you so much for your help in regards to the availability, storage and protocol for explosives in Australia’s north-west. Neil Fergus, I greatly appreciate you directing me on the kind of security operations that might be in place in the locations called for by my story, and for a little mining anecdote or two as well. Bullbar, thanks for your assistance as always, and Steve Mitchell and Pumper, your assistance in describing your experiences in mining and energy work, explosives, security, and the marine geography of the north-west of Australia was invaluable.
Jed Elderkin, your knowledge on powerboats was gratefully received and if I sell a couple of hundred thousand copies of this book I’ll buy a boat from you.
To my editor, Georgia Richter, thank you again for guidance and intelligence, you make each novel so much better with your input.
My wife Nicole, thanks so much for believing in me from the first till the present.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Dave Warner is an author, musician and screenwriter. After the Flood is his eleventh adult novel, with previous novels winning the Western Australian Premier’s Book Award for Fiction, and the Ned Kelly Award for best Australian crime fiction. After the Flood is the third in the Dan Clement series (Before It Breaks, Clear to the Horizon) set in Broome and Australia’s North-West. Dave first came to national prominence in 1978 with his gold album Mug’s Game and his band Dave Warner’s from the Suburbs. In 2017 he released his tenth album, When. He has been named a Western Australian State Living Treasure and has been inducted into the WAMi Rock’n’Roll of Renown.
ALSO BY DAVE WARNER
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Dave Warner, After the Flood
