After the Flood, page 6
By then he was in a rented flat. One of the neighbours had a cat who would call in on him and he would sit there reading while the cat sat on his lap. Apart from history books he had never read much, a couple of cricketer biographies that was about it, but one day he was walking home and he found a box of books left on the verge and he picked it up and brought it home. Television was just so much crap, well the free-to-air anyway. Ed and Sean and everybody at work now paid for their television content. His parents seemed to be the only people beside him who still watched the old channels, and that made him feel old too. So, he would sit there and read, sometimes with the cat on his lap or beside him. The books were all different and not like any he would have picked, even if he had been more of a reader than he was. There were books on politics, philosophy, a couple of novels, child-rearing theories. He wondered who had left them there, not even bothering to take them to a bookshop. Had somebody died and a relative just dumped them on the verge? The books were pretty old so maybe it was somebody downsizing, being forced to accept that their old way of life was over. One of the books he liked a lot was about men being from Mars and women from Venus, and it made him smile for maybe the first time since that day because it was so like him and Gabrielly. His favourite was a book about the early writings of Karl Marx. He knew nothing of Marx and in truth he found the book hard to grasp but there were passages that resonated, especially about the relationship between our work and humanity.
‘The only connection still linking them with their existence, labour, has lost all semblance of self-activity and sustains their life only by stunting it.’
If it was true in Marx’s day, that was even more true now, he thought. He began to go on the internet and look at other industrial disasters of which he had been only dimly aware. The Ixtoc oil spill, the San Juanico explosion and Bhopal, my God. They still didn’t know how many people had died in that but more than half a million people had been exposed to toxic gas and the effects would be felt for generations. As always, it was the poorest people who suffered the most. The dull log of his grief sharpened into an angry spear.
One day he had found himself over in the inner-western part of the city responding to an ad offering a second-hand bicycle. He had been thinking that cycling might be a suitable activity where he could keep up his fitness but not have to interact too much with others. The idea of a gym was anathema to him, same with any kind of boot camp. The bike was nowhere near as good as had been advertised and he didn’t buy it, but on his way to the train station he passed a small restaurant specialising in Brazilian food. This was truly the first time he had felt at home in his old home town. He ate, enjoying the chicken and rice soup just how Gabrielly used to make it. Francisco, the owner, cooked it all himself. Of course, he didn’t know this until he became a semi-regular. On his fourth or fifth visit, he had got to talking with Frank, as he insisted on being called, and explained he had worked in Brazil but he didn’t go into detail. Frank had invited him to a Brazilian night they held at a local hall every so often and he had actually travelled out there on a rattling tram through the drizzle. But once he arrived, he couldn’t take himself up into the hall. He stood outside and every now and again when the doors opened, he would hear laughter and music but he told himself, this is not for you, you don’t belong here. The next time he had gone to the restaurant, Frank had asked why he didn’t come to the party, and this made him feel uncomfortable so he weaned himself away from the restaurant. It was kind of pathetic really, trying to keep something alive that had died four years earlier.
And it was too cold here.
And so, he had found himself another job in the resources industry, not mining this time but gas, all the way over the other side of the country on a small island in the Indian Ocean.
He missed the cat, however, and felt guilty that he had abandoned it.
The food in the canteen was nothing like Frank’s but it was a good standard and there was always a lot of seafood, even though it was all flown in. Today he was having a salad.
‘Mind if I join you?’
He hadn’t noticed her approach. She was the English engineer. He tried to recall her name. Eve? She had placed her tray down but not let go of it yet, in case he said he did mind. Clearly, she didn’t expect that, she had a welcoming smile. He wanted to say, yes, he preferred to eat alone like he nearly always did here at the second-last table on the left-hand side.
‘Of course,’ he said and gestured she sit. He was pleased she sat on the other side near the end, not too close.
‘Ingrid Cavendish,’ she said, and then before he could answer, ‘You’re Paul.’
‘That’s right.’
‘I wanted to thank you. You okayed me for the job but I’ve been on odd weeks and our paths haven’t crossed.’
He nodded, sipped his 7 Up. Then felt he needed to say more.
‘It wasn’t really me. I just ticked a box.’
‘Well, I’m glad you did. I really needed this job.’ And then as if he might misconstrue and report back to HQ, she added, ‘I mean, it’s a dream job for me, but it was timely too.’ Before he could respond she edged herself off her seat and peered over at his meal.
‘Just salad?’
‘I don’t eat much for lunch,’ he said.
She gestured at her plate of fish and salad. ‘Can’t help myself. I lay off dessert though. Most days.’
‘How are you finding it?’ he asked, though he really had little interest.
‘I love it. The work, I mean. And I like the sun too, after Manchester it’s paradise.’
‘Same. Melbourne,’ he said and was surprised she laughed. He wasn’t meaning to be funny. He couldn’t think of the last time he made anybody laugh. Well, it would have been Gabrielly, maybe watching him try to dance.
‘You live there?’ she asked.
‘From there,’ he said. ‘I rent a place in Broome.’
‘Broome is gorgeous. I’ve got a flat in Perth but I’m thinking of ditching it.’
He had finished his salad and felt uncomfortable sitting here but he didn’t want to be rude.
‘When were you in Broome?’ he asked.
‘Shinju. I was thinking then, I wonder if I should live up here instead of all the way in Perth.’
She looked about thirty-five.
‘You have a partner?’ The non-subjective words of governmental forms came easily to him now. When he first started in the job you would have asked ‘boyfriend’ or ‘husband’ but those words were all obsolete, like himself.
‘Not any more, thank God.’ She laughed. ‘That’s why I came to Australia, true love. Following my man.’ She gave a thumbs down. Now she was going to ask him about his family.
‘Excuse me,’ he said, getting up with his tray.
‘Nice meeting you, Paul,’ she said.
‘You too, Ingrid.’
There was still a third of a can of 7 Up left when he dumped it in the bin.
6 FRIDAY EVENING
By 6.30, Clement was alone in the squad room. He’d let Earle go home for dinner and was waiting for Keeble.
‘You should spend as much time with Rhys as you can,’ Clement had said.
‘Makes no difference. He barely acknowledges his mother or me. He heads off to his room or his phone and he’s back on the net. I take it off him, he sulks. He thinks he can butt heads with his old man and win but he’s got another think coming.’
That was the last time Clement would bother to offer the kind of dumb advice parents give with good intentions but no expertise. They’d arranged to meet back up in an hour to start the rounds of the local pubs. There was no guarantee the victim had been living in Broome but it was a small place, so chances were that if the victim was living around here somebody would recognise him. Given that he appeared to be a male somewhere between late twenties and early forties, there was a very strong likelihood he would have been a drinker at one of the local watering holes. There weren’t that many, and Friday night was a good time to hit. Mal Gross had contacted the Derby police and they would do the same there but so far, they’d turned up nothing either. The arse-end of the afternoon had produced zilch. Earle and he had fruitlessly searched the database for any missing persons in the Kimberley that might fit the description of the dead man. They’d sent emails to Perth to distribute his description statewide for missing persons but he wasn’t holding his breath on that. It was likely the dead man hadn’t even been reported missing yet.
Even though Earle had already done it, Clement trawled the internet looking for similar crucifixion style murders. Nothing in Australia. He’d been across most WA homicides of the last decade and knew there was nothing similar in that period. It was not something you’d forget.
The dead man was fit. Clement would get Mal Gross to detail some uniforms to do a round of the local gyms and pools. An environment like that, the tattoo would be on display and might prompt memories. But the fellow may not even be from Broome. Maybe not even from the Kimberley.
Clement rang the two local gyms anyway but drew a blank. Pubs would be their best bet. People crisscrossed the region for work, holidays, adventure. You could bump into somebody from as far afield as Kalgoorlie who remembered having a drink with him in some outback bar, somewhere, sometime. Could be a long night ahead he was thinking as Keeble entered halfway through a carton of fish and chips. She looked grimy and understandably tired.
‘Late lunch,’ she offered. He didn’t even get to pose a question, she anticipated him.
‘It’s far too early to speculate but I’m ninety-plus percent certain that he was killed by the crush injuries.’
‘Someone pegged him out alive and then ran over him?’
‘What it looks like. I checked. The body has arrived in Perth and they autopsy him first thing in the morning. I’ve drawn bloods, they will have done that too. They’ll have a full tox screen done, I reckon, day after tomorrow.’
He knew she couldn’t match them for timing on the full-screen test but he was thinking –
‘I know what you’re thinking,’ she said.
‘What am I thinking?’
‘You’re thinking how do you get somebody to lie down for you while you drive stakes through their palms. Maybe he was drunk, maybe he was drugged.’
Clement hoped he wasn’t so transparent in everything.
‘Was he?’
‘Come on, give me a break. Soon as I finish my lunch,’ she emphasised the word to ram home how hard she’d been working, ‘I shall run a test for benzodiazepine. That’s the most likely drug, right?’
He conceded that it was. Most sleeping tablets had that as their basis.
‘Ketamine too?’ he asked hopefully.
‘Now you’re pushing it. Okay, that too. The alcohol test will take longer. I expect Perth will beat me. You want to know about fingerprints?’
‘Please.’
‘I found partials on the spikes. They match the victim.’
‘So he nailed himself down after running over himself,’ said Clement facetiously. ‘Or maybe we can assume his killer was careful.’
‘Hmm, the latter, I’d say. Now let me go. I need to shower.’
There was little more he could do here. They would do the autopsy first thing in the morning and he could organise to watch it live if he wished, but he thought he’d leave them be and get the results as soon as it was over. This time of night there was no chance of making progress on the spikes. What he really needed was the victim’s identity. The fingerprints of the victim were in the system, computers doing their work. If there was a match, Clement would be notified immediately. He was resisting the temptation to go to the local media. A homicide victim who had been nailed to the road would be big news for sure, too big. He’d find he was dealing with nationwide media inquiries. He was surprised the story hadn’t leaked yet, but so far so good, no phone calls asking him about it and soaking up his energy and time. Once it broke, he would be grateful for any help he could get, but if he could just identify the victim first then he might have a chance of snaring a killer before they’d ditched evidence like the railway spikes or the car.
‘Not one of ours,’ said Jill the bar-person at the Anglers Club as she scrutinised the photo of the dead man on Clement’s phone.
‘He had this tattoo on his back.’ He showed her the next photo.
‘Have to keep their shirts on in here. The beer garden at the Cleopatra would be a different matter. Or the Picador.’
‘I thought you might save me some legwork, give your mates there a call, text them the photos.’
Jill looked over at Bill Seratono standing at a high table waiting patiently with the two untouched beers Clement had just bought.
‘What do you reckon, Bill?’ she asked cheekily. ‘Should I help Columbo?’
Clement had never been sure of Jill’s age but that reference put her in the ballpark he’d figured, sixty or not far south. He bet she would not only be able to correctly identify a fax machine but remember how to work it. Bill took a sip of his beer.
‘Your civic duty, I reckon.’
Jill smiled, took Clement’s phone and set to work. If she came through, he could let Earle have a night at home. Wouldn’t do any harm.
‘Let you know when I’m done,’ she assured Clement, who took the hint and joined pretty much his only friend outside of the department. He and Bill Seratono had gone to school together in Broome. They’d made no attempt to stay in touch when Clement had left with his family for Perth in his last couple of high school years but had rebonded on his return.
‘Bad news for me, good news for you re December,’ said Clement. Then, off his mate’s look, ‘Phoebe is going to the US with the school band. Marilyn never told me.’
Bill took a long sip. There was only one other table occupied in the Anglers: three blokes in shorts and polos almost certainly bought by their wives as birthday gifts. They favoured the short-hair look that gentlemen their age adopted to hide thinning patches. Too neat to be full-time fishermen, Clement guessed they worked at one of the businesses in this small complex, a mix of offices and panel shops.
Bill remained silent.
Clement reassured him. ‘It’s okay, I know you can’t offer the boat in January.’
‘I would if I hadn’t made plans.’
‘Understood. Phoebe and I will still have some fun.’
Clement had called Seratono and arranged to meet here. They convened here every other night as it was, neither man having anything to occupy the space of their lives but work or hobbies. Seratono had sustained a long-term, part-time relationship with a woman, Samantha, but it had run aground nearly a year back. Clement figured Samantha may have wanted more commitment than Seratono had in him but on reflection realised that thinking was dated. Might have been Seratono who wanted more or neither wanted more but both just couldn’t be bothered to keep it going. Outwardly Seratono had shown no emotion at the split but then he likely wouldn’t. It had been over for more than a month before Clement had twigged.
So far Clement had kept his information as to what was on his phone to a minimum, just asking if Bill had ever come across the fellow in the photo.
‘I presume that fellow was cactus,’ said Seratono.
‘Yeah.’
‘You can’t say any more.’
‘Not really.’ Although it was pointless holding out. He was going to have to break the story in the next few hours and Bill wouldn’t tell anybody anyway. ‘Looks like a homicide, over at the station on the Gibb River Road. They don’t know him.’
‘Could be from anywhere, Darwin, Adelaide.’
Didn’t Clement know it. Seratono didn’t pursue the police business.
‘Nothing from those two fillies whose hearts you broke?’
Seratono had been the only person he had confided in about his love life. Clement related his previous day’s unpleasant experience with Lucinda.
‘Live by the sword …’ observed Seratono.
‘I’ve learned my lesson,’ said Clement. He watched the cardboard coaster absorb the moisture from the cold heel of his glass, thought, my life is as flat as that coaster.
‘Did you ever have any ambition?’ he found himself asking before he even thought about it and halfway through realised how patronising he sounded.
‘My ambition,’ said his friend evenly, ‘was to have ambition. I never managed it though. You did.’ Seratono tilted his glass at his mate and took a slug of beer.
‘Yes, I did.’
He had wanted to be the best detective in the whole world. He had wanted to be the best dad and husband too.
Seratono said, ‘I never had a plan beyond forty-eight hours. I saw a car I wanted, so I saved for that. Or a fishing rod. Or a boat. I spent my money each week on beer and fags. I liked women who were too beautiful for me so I got drunk, and of course beautiful women then avoided me like the plague. Now there’s a phrase that has a whole new meaning post-COVID. I don’t know any single blokes like me who are content, and yet it would be wrong to say we’re unhappy. Blokes with wives and kids seem on the whole content and yet much more stressed.’
Clement thought of Graeme Earle.
‘And blokes with no wives but kids seem neither happy or content,’ added his friend.
