Blake drove south towards the meeting place, a picnic area five miles out of town. Sensibly, Nalder did not like anything open to public scrutiny and the picnic spot had always been deserted on their previous meets, which were traditionally set for around ten a.m. It was a fine clear day, the humidity not yet roused as Blake turned off the coast road and headed inland along a gravel road that ran to the river. He was surprised to see Nalder’s car pulled over to the side, well short of the picnic area. Through his windscreen he could make out Nalder about a hundred yards ahead in his sergeant’s uniform standing in calf-high grass looking down at something. Blake parked behind Nalder, got out of his car and advanced. Halfway there he saw Nalder was holding something flat against his leg … a tyre iron. Nalder looked back at him, waiting till he was almost level.
‘Dumb bastard.’
Now Blake saw that lying in the grass was an injured kangaroo.
‘Ran out in front of me. Lucky it didn’t break my headlight. Can’t leave it like that, though.’
A large man with a sizeable beer gut, Nalder was sneaking out of his forties, having disguised himself for many a year as early-fifties. He raised the iron and struck down hard: one, two, three times on the head of the roo. He got his breath back, seemed to realise he had nothing to wipe the tyre iron clean.
‘Bloody things are everywhere this summer.’ His eyes met Blake’s. ‘You said it was urgent.’
The sudden violence had shaken Blake. He thought the animal had quivered after the first blow and had been forced to pull his gaze away.
‘Two guys turned up trying to shake me down. I think they’re running the racket up the coast to the Heads at least.’
‘And you tell me this because?’
‘Because I pay you twelve pounds a week. And you’re a cop.’
Nalder still looked at a loss with what to do with the bloody tyre iron. For an instant Blake thought he might use it on him.
‘Your twelve pounds a week is, I think I’ve made clear, insurance that you will get no competition in the liquor business. Anybody applies for a licence, I object. Makes my life simpler, yours too. Now, I am prepared to turn a blind eye to the occasional underage drinker or public urinator emanating from your establishment — call it goodwill — but as you know, I will not tolerate drugs or depraved acts. Nor does your twelve pounds entitle you to have me act as your private security.’
‘I’m not the one breaking the law.’
‘I only have your word for it. The parties involved will deny it.’
‘I’m not the only place they’re pulling it.’
‘You’re the only one who has come forward and complained. And the Heads is out of my jurisdiction. Look, what do you see before you: a policeman in a suit, a detective?’
‘No.’
‘No, you see an ageing sergeant in his uniform. That’s the way I like it, the way we both should like it. You start reporting anything above a little larceny or common assault, our crime statistics rise. Some wanker in an office somewhere decides they need a CIB division in Coral Shoals. You don’t want that. Neither do I.’
Blake told himself to take this very slow and calm, like the Massimo Benetti job when he found himself on the creaky landing and had to slip off his shoes. Benetti was in the lavatory. Even now he could transport himself back in time and hear a radio from somewhere else in the building. It was playing old music, Glenn Miller. He’d waited in the shadows. When the toilet flushed, he’d slipped his shoes back on for the exit. The door opened on Benetti standing there in his singlet. A look passed between the men that said everything about their respective roles: You are going to kill me. Yes.
Blake shot him twice in the chest. He never knew what Benetti had done wrong.
He had to be just as calm now. Getting hot under the collar never helped anybody. He needed Nalder. He put himself in the cop’s shoes, caught a whiff of Nalder’s logic.
‘So what am I supposed to do?’
‘Take care of it. Make your choice: pay up or find another solution.’ Nalder’s eyes bored into Blake’s. ‘Sure, you look like butter wouldn’t melt in your mouth, but I know you, Saunders. I’ve seen a thousand Blake Saunders since I started this job. Well, maybe not ones as smart as you. You’re a businessman. Thankfully I am but a humble policeman. You will have to make a business decision.’ The matter as such was clearly at an end so far as the cop was concerned. ‘I believe you had a large crowd of youngsters there last night?’
‘Yes. Of course no alcohol was served except in the restaurant.’
Nalder lay his heavy mitt on Blake’s shoulders. ‘See, that’s what I mean, a businessman. Now, regrettably I have to return to the station to protect the good citizens of this principality but perhaps you will save me the trouble of a return trip?’
Blake had come prepared. He handed across the envelope containing the twelve pounds.
Nalder smiled. ‘Watch out for the roos.’
On his return, Nalder deliberately diverted past the golf club. The fortunate were out in their short-sleeve Gloweaves, nothing more on their minds than a pesky insect as they were lining up to putt to the background click of reticulation. Tonight would determine whether he could join their number. His application for membership would be considered … again. With Rob Parker nominating him this time, he felt sure he had a strong chance. As a solicitor, Parker carried weight. More clout than Jack Hitchcock who had been his champion last year. Jack was a nice enough fellow and well respected by the RSL blokes, but he didn’t mix with the young professionals who really controlled things at the golf club. It pissed Nalder off that he had been rejected last year — you had to wait twelve months before you could reapply — but, on the other hand, what made the golf club so desirable was that it didn’t just let in anybody. Once you were in, you were ‘in’. He had always had a strong desire to belong to a group: a clan.
As a younger man, Nalder had flirted with the idea of joining the Masons. The police force had two strong groups, Catholics and Masons, and he was no Mick. That Freemasons had arcane rituals appealed greatly to him but then he met Edith and soon enough they were married and had the two boys and then war had broken out. Nalder had joined the navy and spent three years on a minesweeper that had never seen action. There was much about the comradeship of the navy he had enjoyed but as a club it offered no entrée to higher status. For that you needed to be an officer. He left the same rank as he went in and returned to policing. When the Coral Shoals job came up, he was the only one to put up his hand. The others had seen a tiny station, no chance for advancement, a frontier world. He, on the other hand, had smelled potential. Going on for ten years now, his word had been law here. There were only six of them at the station and he was the most senior. He was more or less the sheriff of this strip of coast and the adjacent hinterland. On the few occasions when a more serious crime had been committed, the regional detectives came down from the Heads and attended but they knew their place. You wanted to build flats or shops in Coral Shoals, you wanted to operate a liquor licence or drive a taxi, you wanted to so much as fart in Coral Shoals, you needed Nalder’s approval. Oh sure, it might seem like it was the mayor, Tom Street, or the town planner, John Duggan, who was calling the shots but it was him.
Street had been his servant ever since he’d found his son drunk as a skunk having just crashed into Harrison’s furniture store. Nalder had been able to keep the kid’s name out of it and make Harrison happy by goosing the insurance. Duggan had smacked up a prostitute after the Heads’ race-day carnival two years ago. Nalder had called in a favour from his colleagues to the north and everybody had walked away happy. Well, perhaps that wasn’t strictly true. Duggan wasn’t happy once it was his turn to repay the largesse displayed by his local policeman. However, the constant threat that his wife could be made aware of his deeds had made him compliant. At first he’d not wanted to approve the George Street shops on what had been set aside as a public carpark for beach patrons, running a whole lot of claptrap about aesthetics. Nalder had been forced to remind him about the aesthetics of fucking around on one’s wife with a prostitute. Tony Puglise the developer was grateful of course and saw to it that one of the shops, the hair salon, was titled in Edith’s name. The rent wasn’t going to make them millionaires but every penny helped; the shop, the tithes from the Yank and a couple of other businesses, various one-off contributions from ratepayers looking for council approval on this or that, all swelled the coffers. Originally he’d thought he’d be using the money for Brian and Andrew to go to a private school up in Brisbane but neither showed any academic aptitude. It would be throwing good money after bad. Instead he’d bought a caravan park down the coast and that was ticking along nicely, the proceeds enabling him to buy three vacant blocks within a couple of hundred yards of the beach. Nobody else here seemed to appreciate the value of land so close to the water with a booming population. Well, it might take twenty years but there would come a time when he hung up his boots for good and when that land would enable him to live like a king.
He was galled by the knowledge that he was worth as much or more than many of those members of the golf club who thus far had rejected him. Regrettably, it was not possible to know who had voted against him. Each member who attended the nomination meeting had a black and a white ball, black for ‘no’, obviously, white for ‘yes’. They dropped them in a ballot box and then these were tipped out into a tray. One black ball was enough to nix you. Though members weren’t supposed to reveal details, he had been told that four black balls had been issued against him. Had Duggan been there, he would have been an obvious suspect, however, Nalder had been secretly watching from the carpark and had noted Duggan was not present. So he had at least four other enemies. It could be anybody. As a policeman you were bound to have run-ins with people, although his gut told him it was probably just some bloody snobs who thought a policeman wasn’t up to their level. That’s where Parker should help.
He cruised down the tapeworm road that took him back to the heart of town, and for the first time actually considered what the Yank had said about the extortion racket. It wasn’t good but his hands were largely tied. If he did anything official, there would have to be a report. Powers-that-be would read it. One of them might even realise that Coral Shoals existed. If any policeman more senior than him got posted here, bang went the gravy train. On the other hand, tangling with crooks direct was not a course of action compatible with where he saw his life heading. In fact it was the direct opposite of what he should be doing, enjoying a top-shelf whisky in the dead of winter before a blazing fire, cosy in a lamb’s wool pullover in the company of the good men of Coral Shoals, talking real-estate deals, and looking at the tight arse of the waitress to the hiss of a soda siphon. Or enjoying a cold beer on the terrace on a summer night, like tonight, smoke from his cigar drifting among fluttering moths, a yellow moon trying to catch their men-only jokes. There was, too, a certain attraction in the accoutrements of the game itself: the little wooden tees that you could push into the spongy earth, the gleaming steel shafts of the clubs, the gloves, soft leather that matched perfectly the style and swirl of brandy in a balloon glass. All of these made the experience more than a mere game. They formed a language that bonded the chosen, the powerful men of the community, and that set them apart and made them brothers. Once he was in the club, Nalder would no longer just be the local cop. He would be Leslie, ‘Les’, their valued equal.
In one way it didn’t surprise Blake that Nalder had stiffed him regarding the shakedown guys. Life was like that. It was never as easy as you wanted. There was always shit to clean up. One look at Leftwich made him think the salesman would agree wholeheartedly. Jacket off, Leftwich was vigorously polishing the duco of a Holden with a chamois in the prescribed circular motion. It looked like he’d already done a whole row of the vehicular bargains available on the lot of Clarke’s Cars. Blake saw a smear of ash over the last two cars in the row and thought he’d figured out why this was occupying the salesman’s morning. Leftwich had clearly lit the incinerator at the wrong time, forgetting about the prevailing wind. Blake was almost at the door of the office when Leftwich called out.
‘He’s not in.’
Blake angled his body at him.
Leftwich said, ‘I think it was a big night last night at the party. He called at nine to say he wasn’t coming in.’
‘I was supposed to get paid.’
‘Sorry, you’ll have to speak to Mr Clarke about that.’
Blake didn’t think he looked sorry at all.
Blake went back to his car and drove to the beach. There were only two other boardriders out there. Even from the shore he could recognise Pete and Dave. They all got on fine but today he didn’t feel like talking to anyone. He might understand Nalder, was not surprised by his attitude but all the same, he didn’t like it. If he’d have had Jimmy with him, those bozos would have taken one look and cleared out, but they looked at him and they saw ‘easy target’.
He climbed back in his car and drove fifteen minutes south. The break wasn’t as good here but at least he would be alone. As usual when things niggled at him, the water changed everything. This is life, infinity, God, he thought as he let the power of the ocean lift him up and propel him. He felt good again, cleansed by the river of salt.
Just under an hour later he was in Carol’s cool room, the smell of her hair mingling with the fragrance of a warming day outside as it squeezed through the shutters. They fucked like beggars fighting over a scrap, neither giving an inch, both knowing whatever morsel they got would be never enough to not have to go through the same ritual again. What had led her here to this point, what failures or half-won dreams, he never inquired. He really did not care, did not want to jeopardise the sanctuary that he found when inside her. All he knew was that for a short time the throb was morphined out; the snow of Philly, the bare room with their chipped plates, the apartment building’s dark vestibule smelling of stew, the weight of the revolver in his hand, the mist of his breath in the back of the car outside the flat where Jimmy was holed up, the flash of the gun, all that was blotted and there was only skin and heartbeat and the relinquishing of control … and for the flimsiest time, peace.
They sat at her formica table — here they called it laminex — sipping instant coffee. She wore a singlet and panties. Because his swimmers were still wet he was naked.
She said, ‘I didn’t expect you this morning.’
‘That bother you?’
She looked at him across the top of her black brew. She was still wearing last night’s make-up. ‘No.’ She cast about for cigarettes, seemed to decide against it. ‘I might have had company though.’
This was true. He should have considered that.
‘I apologise.’
‘You wouldn’t have been jealous?’
He toyed with his cup. ‘No.’
She sat back. ‘No, I don’t believe you would have been. Must be good to be that … free.’
‘You don’t get jealous.’ It was a statement. She’d never seemed possessive.
‘I don’t show it.’
This genuinely surprised him. He wondered if this was the beginning of the ‘girlfriend’ talk. He’d experienced a few of those in his time, didn’t like them at all. But she didn’t pursue the subject.
‘How was your night last night?’ she asked instead.
‘Good crowd, all young. You?’
‘Could have fired a cannon. You know The Honeymooners, that TV show?’
‘Jackie Gleason, sure.’
‘Is it really like that? People live in those tiny apartments and other people drop in?’
‘The big cities in the east.’
‘Why do they live like that?’
‘They don’t have a choice.’
Edith had cooked sausages for dinner, with mashed potato and peas. No fish on Friday here, this was no Mick house. Normally Nalder loved his Friday dinner. He would drain a chocolate soldier, then he and Edith would sit out on the back porch, sometimes turn the radio up so you could hear it through the window. Tonight though, he’d had to pretend how much he enjoyed the meal. For the umpteenth time he checked his watch: 7.16. They would be just filing into the room at the golf club now, free jugs of beer on the table no doubt, ham and mustard sandwiches, probably. He had not told Edith about his renewed application. He’d made that mistake last year, expecting naturally enough he’d be accepted. When he had failed, she’d made all the right noises about them being snobs, and who would want to play that silly game anyhow et cetera? She just didn’t get it. Quite frankly she was probably pleased. Edith wouldn’t be comfortable in those dresses they wore to their balls and dinners but, dammit, she deserved it. And he definitely deserved it. He’d served this community … another quick check of the watch … 7.18. His doorbell rang. Could they have decided already? Had somebody declared there was no way they were voting for him and so that was it? Game over? He rose quickly from the old cane chair and walked through into the dining room. Edith, who had been engrossed in a Pix, made to get up but he stayed her.
‘I’ve got it.’
‘It’s probably Phil wanting our mower tomorrow. Tell him to buy his bloody own.’
The house reflected none of Nalder’s steadily growing assets. He’d been sorely tempted to buy a Rover but had thought better of it. When ordinary policemen started to spend up, they stopped being ordinary. He yanked open the door, determined to confront his fear as soon as possible.
He was taken aback to find two men in suits and hats who just had to be …
‘Sergeant Nalder?’
Shit. Had they come to arrest him?
‘We would have called but nobody had your bloody number and there’s no answer at the station. Detective Inspector Ian Vernon,’ the spokesman tapped his chest. ‘Detective Sergeant Tony Apollonia. Homicide.’
The ballad had gone down well, couples on the floor taking the opportunity to dance close after the more frenetic surf rumble. The room was almost as full as the previous night but with an older crowd of liquor drinkers, profits would be higher. Blake couldn’t enjoy it though. He was still on alert, scanning the crowd to see if Harry and Steve had turned up. Maybe they would leave him squirming a little longer?
He stiffened. He’d caught a glimpse, suits moving through the crowd heading his way. Then he saw they were wearing hats, realised Nalder was with them, in uniform. Cops. The crowd was doing the Red Sea. Doreen loomed to intercept but Nalder waved her away and took the lead, reaching Blake first.
‘Mr Saunders. These are detectives Vernon and Apollonia from Sydney. Can we speak privately in your office.’
The office was small. A desk and a couple of chairs with a lot of crap jammed on the perimeter. Nalder looked over to the fairer of the detectives — Vernon, Blake was guessing. Vernon put his hand out and the other detective slipped a large manila envelope in it. Vernon opened it over the desk. Glossy eight by ten black-and-whites spilled out. Blake caught images shutter speed: a motel room, blood on the walls, the bed, the floor, a naked body, a young woman’s face close-up.
‘You know the Ocean View Motel?’
‘Sure.’
He was getting some kind of an idea now why they were here. The Ocean View was the closest of the few motels between the Shoals and the Heads. Vernon’s finger stabbed the close-up and manoeuvred it to the top of the pile.
‘Sometime last night or early this morning in room ten of the Ocean View, this young woman was murdered.’
‘Stabbed at least twenty times.’ Apollonia speaking for the first time.
Blake’s focus eased in and out. The ferocity of the attack obvious. The cops not sparing the dead girl’s modesty, splayed, naked.
‘Who is she?’
Vernon took the lead again. ‘We were hoping you might tell us. She checked in using the name Susan Smith but there’s no sign of any ID. Queensland plates on her car, we’re looking into that.’
‘Why would I …?’
Apollonia tapped a close-up shot of the night table: a matchbook, Surf Shack. Blake’s head was still ringing.
‘We had thousands of those printed. She could have been in sometime or got it from anybody.’
‘You don’t recognise her?’ Nalder offering something other than beery breath.
‘No. My manager Doreen knows faces. She’s your best shot.’
Vernon said, ‘There was also this,’ pointing at a roach in an ashtray. ‘I’m sure you’re familiar with marihuana.’
Blake didn’t like where this might be heading. ‘What do you mean by that?’
‘You’re American. You run a bar. You are some kind of musician from what I hear. You telling me you don’t know this “grass”?’
‘I’m telling you I don’t tolerate narcotics of any sort in my establishment.’
Apollonia moved in closer. ‘That’s funny because we’ve been up and down the coast the last few hours and people have said they’ve heard about weed being used here.’
‘People make up stuff. Sergeant Nalder will tell you, we run a clean place.’
Vernon was not to be snowed. ‘You’re saying to the best of your knowledge, nobody in this place smokes the stuff?’
‘That’s what I’m saying.’
He was going to kill Duck.
‘And if we shook down everybody here, nobody would be holding grass?’
Blake conjured a room with a radiator that didn’t work and blood on the walls. He’d been in worse places. ‘That’s right.’
Vernon regarded him from top to bottom, looking for something wrong about him. ‘Where were you last night after your bar closed?’
‘He was with me.’
Doreen was standing there. The men noticeably straightened.
‘This is my bar manager, Doreen Norris.’
‘How do you do, Miss Norris?’ Vernon scooped up the photos with practised ease. ‘You were with Mr Saunders last night?’
‘That’s correct.’
‘All night. Till the early hours. That’s not against the law yet, is it?’
Vernon appraised her with a smile on his lips. ‘Certainly not.’
Apollonia and Nalder smirked at the joke. Vernon carefully peeled off the photo showing the victim’s face in close-up.
‘You recognise this girl?’
Doreen studied the photo carefully. ‘No.’
‘She wasn’t in here last night?’
‘Not while I was here. I went out for an hour or two.’
‘May I ask why?’
Vernon was no fool. Blake could almost hear gears whirring.
‘I was checking on the competition up the coast, see how they were doing.’ She rattled off the places she’d been.
‘So it’s possible, this woman came here in the time you were absent?’
‘Yes, it’s possible.’
The detectives swapped looks: more work.
Vernon turned back to Blake. ‘We’ll have to interview your patrons.’
‘Of course.’
‘Thanks for your time Mr Saunders, Miss Norris.’
‘Anything we can do.’
Doreen said, ‘If you have a spare of that photo I could put it up in the club by the entrance?’
‘That would be of great assistance.’
‘You don’t recognise the girl?’
‘What? No!’
He had Duck up against the wall behind the old outdoor toilet, shoving the photo under his nose.
‘Last night, you were out here, smoking that shit in the break.’
‘I might have been.’ Duck was squirming.
‘Did you meet this girl and give her a joint?’
‘Did I …? No, no, I told you … I don’t recognise her.’
Blake tried to control himself, eased back. ‘Would you?’
Duck was less confident. ‘Probably.’ He realised his error and scrambled to cover. ‘I mean shit, it’s dark, there’s girls … sometimes I … but not last night.’
‘Anybody else? Did you give that stuff to anybody else?’
‘Last night?’
‘Yes, last night. Or any night.’
‘Not last night.’ He flinched at Blake’s gaze. ‘Look, sometimes, a guy or a girl, I might let them have a puff.’
‘Did you sell any to anybody?’
‘No. Man, come on, you’re grilling me like a fucking cop. Next thing you’ll bring out the phone book.’
‘The girl was murdered. Like something out of Psycho.’
‘Yeah well, there was a matchbook there too, that mean you did it?’
‘They could close us down. You get that?’ He tapped Duck’s head. ‘I don’t want you ever, ever bringing that stuff in here again.’
‘Okay, I swear. Scout’s honour. Listen, it’s not like I’m the only person in the state who smokes weed. There’s loads of it. You know that.’
‘And you never saw the dead girl here last night? Or a car with Queensland plates?’
‘No. I was judging the contest. I came out in our break for a quick puff. I spoke to a young guy, I didn’t offer him anything … that’s it.’
Blake stepped back, Duck pulled out a cigarette.
‘I love you, man. I wouldn’t put you in the shit. And I swear, no weed near here ever again.’
‘What did Duck say?’
They were in his office, Doreen handing him calico bags of the night’s takings. There was just the two of them. He could hear Andy cleaning and straightening the main room but it was past two and the bar long closed.
‘Said he didn’t recognise her. Admitted he was smoking weed last night but never gave any to anybody else. You didn’t have to do that, you know … cover for me.’
‘You saying you had somebody else could alibi you?’
Sometimes when she looked through those long eyelashes he thought his heart might thaw out from where it had been frozen so long.
‘No. But I didn’t do it, so …’
‘So you were clear?’ She invested it with disbelief. ‘I missed the intro but it seemed like Vernon was interested in you. I thought it best to be on the safe side.’
‘Thank you, anyway, called for or not,’ he said. ‘You’re right. I don’t need some cop giving me grief. Nobody recognised her?’
‘None of the staff. I don’t know about anybody else. There weren’t many from last night in tonight.’
That was true. The dance comp had brought in underagers.
He said, ‘Nalder told me they would likely be back tomorrow asking around town.’
‘She could have got the matchbook from anywhere.’
He liked Doreen trying to reassure him.
‘Yeah.’ But what he didn’t say aloud was what he reckoned she was thinking too: the girl may not have been a customer here, but maybe her killer had. ‘I can follow you home?’
Doreen brushed that off. ‘I’m alright. Once they identify her, they’ll find it’s her husband or boyfriend. Queensland number plates on her car. She was probably heading south, picked up the matches in the Heads. I left a bunch up there last week.’
She swayed out of the office, pulled the door to. Though he had a safe in here, he decided he would take the money home with him. He hadn’t forgotten Harry and Steve. More vermin threatening his paradise. And now Nalder would be even less likely to change his mind and intervene.
Doreen wasn’t being quite as noble as he thought. She had been on the verge of telling him that she knew he was alone because she’d sat across the way and watched him like she did regularly. Thought maybe she could confess it in one shocking rock-through-a-window moment. But didn’t. What was he going to think — she was some desperate woman stalking him? The Surf Shack matchbook didn’t mean anything, really. They’d had hundreds printed and dropped here and there up the coast. It could have even been left by some previous guest. These motels were cleaned about the same level as a bus. She’d often found somebody’s shampoo in a bathroom cabinet or a magazine under a couch. Still, even though she was sure the murderer would prove to be some man who knew the woman, she did cast around the carpark when she reached her car. That wasn’t something she did normally, too busy thinking about staff and shifts and next week’s advertising. She climbed into the car. She was looking forward to getting back in her little place, kicking off her shoes. Lately she’d been thinking she had to have that television. Maybe with a TV she wouldn’t feel the need to go sit outside Blake’s? She already had money saved and they had some smaller models she could buy. No way was she doing hire-purchase. As she pulled out of the carpark, she was contemplating whether the young woman who had been killed up there in the Ocean View had left hire-purchase agreements. She guessed she probably had.
By the time the detectives left Nalder, it was a little after one-thirty in the morning. He’d played the assiduous local cop kissing their arse, how he’d have loved to have been a detective but wasn’t smart enough, blah, blah. They lapped it up. He’d driven them around town and shown them the likely places where they might get a witness who recognised the dead girl, if she had indeed passed through.
He also gave them the run-down on a half-dozen locals with some kind of form for violence and sex crimes.
‘What about Norman Bates?’ The Italian cop had asked.
‘Who? I don’t think he’s on our files.’
The two of them had started laughing then. At him.
Trying to quit the hysterics, Apollonia had said, ‘You know from Psycho, the motel guy in the movie. Janet Leigh gets stabbed to death in the shower.’
Nalder had never heard of the movie. He and Edith almost never went to the movies. Earlier this year they’d gone up to the Heads to The Music Man. If they did go to a movie, it wouldn’t be one about a woman getting hacked to death. He felt small, a country bumpkin. They were thorough. They went to the station and made notes and skimmed files. They were staying in Opal, halfway between the Heads and the Ocean View Motel, and said they would canvass that area first. The only thing pointing them here had been that damn matchbook. And the narcotic. It made him look bad, people saying you saw that stuff at the Surf Shack. Saunders would need a very serious talking-to. In private, the cops had admitted that they’d heard the same about other places up near the Heads, and in the river towns inland, so it wasn’t actually a black mark against him per se, but when you put it with the matches it didn’t look good.
The house was cool when he entered. Edith always left the windows open even though he’d told her not to when he wasn’t around. All night he’d been busting to ring Rob Parker and see if he had news for his nomination. It was too late now. But maybe he had called here? He clicked on the kitchen light, saw the dark blur of a moving cockroach making for a corner. His feet hurt. He walked lightly on the lino so as not to wake Edith. There on the little pad beside the phone under the Goodbye Cruel World cartoon of the bloke about to flush himself down the dunny was a message written in biro. He needed his glasses to read it properly.
‘Rob Parker called. Sorry, no. Call him tomorrow.’
In that instant he felt insubstantial, made of straw or less, chaff, like he could dissipate in the night air, like there was no centre of him anymore, like Leslie Nalder had ceased to exist, may never have existed, was just a volume of space that had split asunder without leaving a mark of his existence on the world.
He felt ashamed.
Quietly he opened the fridge and took out the half-consumed bottle of beer. Not flat yet. He carefully removed one of the beer glasses with the frosting around the outside and sat down at the kitchen table, poured a beer and raised it to his lips. He endured the bitter liquid rolling over his tongue, swallowed it. His old man had worked for the railways. Tough as nails. Nalder sensed his judgement: ‘That’ll teach you for trying to muscle into the dress circle. They’ve wiped you away like a stain.’
He saw the scene as a camera would: kitchen chair pulled at a laminex table, a half-full glass of beer, and above, looking down over the tableau, an ironic poster of a man about to flush himself down the toilet … but no human presence, no subject, so that it seems a work of still life, unless peering very, very closely you detect … There! A variation in the light as if something otherwise invisible, some pulse, some near undetectable half-life, might actually exist.
Here’s to you, Les.