I lay on the bed and took in the curtains, the lamps, the wooden dresser, the view beyond the window into the garden with gum trees dropping leaves in the lazy afternoon breeze. It was almost 4 pm. I had started at 6 am.
I took out my phone and sent Stephanie a text. Thank you. It’s fabulous. Granny would be amazed! I love it!
I sent JC a text too. Met with Farris, Singh and Lennox. And mgt group earlier. All good. Talk tomorrow.
Then I turned off my phone and closed my eyes. I thought about the meeting with the Bruny Friends Group. I could hear Jenny Singh saying, ‘It’s the death of a way of life.’ I’d heard that one a few times. The death of a way of life. Fishermen, subsistence farmers, forest dwellers. A lot of violence these days had its genesis in some kind of environmental disaster if you looked. My career had been spent trying to help people come to terms with the new. Give them some sense of empowerment that wasn’t attached to the need for guns and missiles. But weapons were the biggest international trade—all across the Baltic, the Middle East, throughout Asia and Africa. More than one hundred billion dollars was spent on weapons every year. If people could get their hands on weapons, they generally didn’t see the need for conversation. It was my job to remind them.
Who exactly had stood to gain from the bombing of the bridge? Officially I wasn’t here to solve the crime but, as I said, there are things my family do not know about me. Other roles I’m employed to play. It was highly likely that someone on my meeting list over the coming week had been involved.
Had the BFG been infiltrated by the kind of radicals that would do that? Did Farris really know his fellow activists? And if it had come from within the BFG, what else might they do? Assassinate someone? JC would have to be at the top of the list.
The nationwide media attention JC was getting four months out from an election was priceless. Yes, he’d gained a lot from this bombing. But what about the damage? Was it pure coincidence that the bridge could be repaired by March, but only with the help of skilled foreign labour?
The police divers had also found a bomb on the base of the other tower. It hadn’t detonated; infiltrated by sea water. Had that been a coincidence too?
The investigators were saying the charges were detonated remotely, probably from a computer or a mobile phone. Apparently the music festival bombing outside Paris last summer had been activated in Libya. The call to detonate the bridge could have come from anywhere. Whoever they’d been, they’d done enough.
The bombing suited the federal government even more than JC. Mining companies had been lobbying for foreign labour laws to bring in cheap mine workers in the Pilbara for years. The federal government had needed a project of national significance to find a way around the CFMEU, the union Alec Brankovic represented here in Tasmania. Now, suddenly, they had their chance. They’d swooped and gotten themselves a little test case running in Tasmania.
I thought back to the afternoon JC had rung, asking me to come home.
‘The Bruny Bridge. Someone’s just blown it up.’
‘What?’
‘They blew up the bridge, Ace. It’s a fucking nightmare. I just got off the phone from telling Max,’ he said. ‘In her official capacity, of course,’ he added wryly. My siblings …
‘There’s police everywhere,’ he continued. ‘The feds are coming in thick and fast.’
‘Was anyone killed?’
‘No, thank God. Happened at dawn. No-one about, thank Christ.’
‘Was it that unpopular?’
‘That bridge is bringing prosperity to this island. It’s going to take more than a few fucking terrorists to knock it down.’
‘Okay,’ I said. ‘I was just asking—’
‘The federal government has called for a special session in parliament tonight to enact the foreign labour laws.’
‘Meaning?’ I asked.
‘We’re going to bring in Chinese workers. Skilled bridge workers to add to the existing crew. Without them, we have no chance of finishing the thing on time. It’s a project of national significance and there just aren’t the workers here.’
‘And the deadline is …’
‘Election day, of course. Watch how the Greens like that.’
‘JC, the Tasmanian people aren’t going to like that. Chinese workers?’
‘They’ll like it when the bridge is finished.’
‘But you have an election to win, yes? Public opinion?’
‘That’s why I need a conflict resolution specialist. A good one. A very good one.’
‘JC … no. You know this isn’t my thing.’
‘Yeah, it is. It’s a fucking war between the people who would have this place stay a little backwater and those of us who want to get with the program and join the world.’
‘And the Bruny Bridge is going to do that?’
‘Ace, trust me. Yes.’
‘It can’t be me. Everyone will cry nepotism.’
‘Ace, this is what you do. It doesn’t have to be under the UN banner. Could you take leave? I’m sure you’ve got buckets of it. It’s your home, Ace. It’s your island. We need you. I need you. Tasmanians trust other Tasmanians.’
There was a long pause. Then he said, ‘Who did you help today, hey? Today you could help me, Ace. Me.’
There it was. The family rule. Every night at dinner, from as young as I could remember, our father Angus Coleman would ask us at the dinner table: ‘Who did you help today?’
Our mother suffered the question in silence for a long time. By the time we were teenagers, she’d started scoffing. She’d begun an affair with the principal of JC’s boys’ school. Her boss at the time. She’d decided to get a job once we were all in high school. ‘Just for pocket money,’ she’d said. The marriage had nearly fallen apart, but somehow she and Dad had survived it. Like they survived everything. Mostly because our father was the kindest person I’d ever known.
Once Max had asked our mother the question. ‘So who did you help today, Mum?’
Our mother had replied, ‘As if your father’s silly ideas apply to me. Goodness!’
Two of us became state politicians and one of us ended up at the UN.
‘Let me call my chief of staff in and we’ll brief you,’ JC had said, thinking he’d won.
But I held out. Said I’d try to come home for Christmas. I wanted to see Dad and everyone else. I’d see if I could help him then. And then I’d received that text. Call your brother. Say yes. Tell him you changed your mind.
And so I was here.
I breathed. I knew there were things I had to do, but I was getting cold. This felt like the first moment of complete silence I’d had in a long time. The sun was moving stage west, towards the Hartz Mountains. Gulls were flying down the channel. Seals were prodding fish farm nets. Flies buzzed against the screen door. I slid in under the doona. The white linen felt crisp under my fingertips. I dreamed then of New York, of trying to catch a cab to JFK. JC was beside me and Max was in the car ahead, but no matter how much I wanted to get to the plane, it never happened. In the end, I was standing on the tarmac in the dark feeling desperately alone.
I woke suddenly, disoriented, surprised to find I’d slept for almost three hours. My body clock trying to adjust. I wandered through the house and out onto the deck. The breeze had dropped and the channel was a millpond. A bright streak of pink was running like a wound across the western sky. From here the bridge was a monolith. Listing to one side, too large to pick up and dust off, too unwieldy to untangle and start again. It looked like an idea that had been derailed. Perhaps even misunderstood. If I did the job JC wanted, the bridge would be opened without protest on March 4th. JC would be the premier for another four years. Max would be relegated to Opposition again, and there would be tourists by the thousands flowing over the bridge day and night, supposedly bringing wealth and prosperity to the people of Tasmania.
I had to agree with the BFG. And with Max. Something about this bridge didn’t add up. No government puts in two billion dollars without a serious payoff. It had to be worth a lot more than two billion dollars to someone. Why had the Chinese brought it in under their Belt and Road Initiative? Tasmania was never going to be able to deliver a payoff like that to the Chinese no matter how many tourists came. The Belt and Road Initiative was in South America, the Pacific, southern Europe and Asia now. Big investments in infrastructure—dams, ports, power stations and roads—and massive loans to foreign governments.
In my experience, the people to worry about most were not the entitled white men. They were easy to peg. It was the people of any gender, colour, race or religion who had implacable ideals. The bridge smacked of something to do with a vision. I just didn’t know what that was yet. But I was going to work it out.
I put on my jacket. Sunset this far south was a long farewell. By mid-summer it would be twilight until after 9 pm. I followed my nose and found the narrow path at the bottom of the street, and in a moment I was down the flight of steps and crossing the road to the beach.