10. The Rusty Swan

Rion’s new house down by the river on Nestor Street was like a fortress. Vanya, whom Rion had chosen along with Marcel to join him on this assignment, had dubbed it the ‘Rusty Swan’ after the sign at the top of the driveway. The sign read Riverside in faded letters and was accompanied by an image of what had once been a painted swan. The paint was gone and now only a rusty outline of the swan remained. The house provided a clear view of the Tyne Street bridge and the silo on the far side of what could no longer be termed the Blake River. The dry riverbed was littered with decades-old rubbish and the occasional rusted hulk of a car or truck.

The house’s river-facing side was clad in steel mesh and the windows were barred. The mesh encompassed the undercover carport, where an ancient car sat on blocks. The only way into the compound was by way of a metal door in the mesh, which could be locked from the inside. Rion thought that one of Gillam’s right-hand men had probably lived here in ‘58, but there was no one here now and thankfully no gruesome discoveries waiting for them inside. The house sat on about an acre of dusty land and the front yard was filled with spiky cacti.

“What are we supposed to do around here, play cards?” Marcel asked as they unloaded their provisions in the kitchen.

“I thought I could catch up on some sleep,” Vanya replied, hauling the heavy flasks of water into the cupboard under the sink.

“Is that all you do?” Rion asked. “Laze around?”

“Boss man said to lay low, didn’t he?” Marcel said.

“I thought we might go see a friend of mine on the other side of town,” Rion said. His task was to stack dozens of cans of food into the pantry cupboard. “Her name’s Lydia.”

“What does she looks like?” Marcel asked, grinning.

“She looks like an old woman – ”

“Can’t you find us someone a bit younger?”

“ – and she has some things of mine.”

Marcel sat at the table and looked up as if expecting someone to wait on him. “What kind of things?”

Photo albums, hundreds of them that he’d collated over the years: that was what Lydia had. But there was no way he could tell Marcel and Vanya that. “Just some personal stuff,” he said.

“Turley said to stay here,” Vanya said, joining Marcel at the table.

“That’s right,” Marcel replied. “And you wouldn’t want to cross Captain Turley, would you? Man like that could snap any one of us in half. Hey, Vanya?”

“I’ll hold the fort here,” Vanya said. He made snoring sounds.

“One of us should stay back anyway,” Rion said. “And besides, there’s only two shotguns.”

“You’re not leaving me unarmed!” Vanya said.

“No one can get you in here,” Rion said. “Just stay put.”

“They’re only fucking rubber bullets anyway,” Marcel growled. “I’d like to shoot that Turley fucker right in the ass. Rubber bullet or not, it’s gotta hurt.”

“And we’ve got those two-way radios,” Rion said. “We’ll let you know how we’re doing, all right?”

It was decided. Rion and Marcel would pay a visit to Lydia at the old power substation while Vanya stayed behind. If Turley wanted to know where they’d gone, Vanya would tell him that they were reconnoitring the area, which in a way they were.

Shotguns at their sides, Rion and Marcel made their way outside as quietly as possible. They went down to the riverbank and the line of spindly shrubs that grew there. Shopping trolleys, prams and other miscellaneous junk provided little in the way of cover. Despite the time of year, the weather was unusually mild. The sky was full of light grey clouds, the kind which never turned into more than the most miserable excuse for rain.

“So what’s the plan?” Marcel asked, crouching down in cover.

“First thing we need to do is get out of these clothes,” Rion said. “We’ll stand out for miles in these bluesies. We need to find some civvies somewhere.”

Crossing the dry river, they came up on the other side in the shadow of the old flour mill. Nothing seemed to move in the windows up there. Rion didn’t think it safe to take the direct route past the police station, so they took the long way around. Rion led Marcel, the latter huffing and puffing, on a circuitous route through the back streets of East Hills. They searched empty houses for clothes and soon found plenty to choose from.

Rummaging through brittle drawers, the bottoms of which kept falling through, Rion pulled out a shirt of approximately his own size. The shirt was chequered red and white. He pulled it over his head. Then he threw Marcel a crumpled T-shirt that looked large enough to accommodate his ample frame. The T-shirt had the emblem of a local football team on it, a team that hadn’t played a game in over twenty years. “Go the Railways,” Marcel said. They stuffed their CPF uniforms into a bag, which Rion carried.

Morrison Road joined up with Hugo Avenue, which ran along the southern edge of town. The power substation where Lydia had lived for so long was all the way down the far end of Hugo, on Rind Terrace. It would have been a fair hike even if they hadn’t been carrying the shotguns, and now the sun had come out from behind the clouds.

“Give me that canteen,” Marcel said, his chest heaving. He took a draught and wiped his sweaty brow. “Want some?”

Rion drank. “You take a rest,” he said. “The power substation isn’t far from here.”

“I dunno if I can find my way back to the Swan if something happens.”

“You can see the mill from here,” Rion said, pointing. “You can navigate by that.”

“Just give me a breather, I’ll be all right.”

“Nothing’s going to happen,” Rion said, handing him the canteen. “I’ll be back in an hour, max. If anyone gives you grief, let ‘em have a mouthful of rubber.”

Rion dropped the bag of uniforms at Marcel’s feet and went on his way. The path took him uphill. He needed to talk to Lydia and to see if his albums were all right, neither of which he’d be able to do properly with a chaperone. It felt wrong to be toting a shotgun and he knew that if push came to shove it’d be no use anyway, so he stashed it where he would remember to pick it up later, propped up against a tree behind one of the derelict houses. He continued on up the hill.

Reaching the end of Hugo, he started to regret leaving his only flask of water with Marcel. The sun beat down on him through a gap in the clouds, but it wasn’t far now. With any luck, Lydia would have a drink and three years’ worth of news for him.

The intersection of Forrester Drive and Rind Terrace was devoid of life and the power substation was just across the road. The dead substation was much as it had been before, its coils rusted and bleak, its transformers silent. The High Voltage – Keep Out signs fooled no one and the door to Lydia’s blockhouse stood open. It didn’t take him long to realise that something must have happened to the old woman, for her shop was in a state of disarray. Her previously neat shelves had been wrenched from their fastenings, and a thousand useless objects lay scattered on the ground amid the debris of empty cans and smashed bottles. He half expected to find her body stuffed into a drum or draped across the broken card table, but alive or dead, she wasn’t here.

The back room was more orderly but had still been picked over. But the thing he had come for, and the thing he had no way of taking with him now, was still there. In the corner of the room sat a shopping trolley filled to the top with dusty photo albums of the family he’d never had. He picked up the album on the top of the pile, Camping Holidays 2, and turned the long undisturbed pages. In the photos, small children stood on sandy beaches clutching half-melted icy poles in their grubby hands. Fathers stood over infant children, helping them to stand in the shallow water. Mothers handed out sandwiches and held their offspring close to their chests. The snapshots told a familiar story that he’d composed years ago from the wreckage of the lives of those who had gone before him. Turning the brittle pages was like stepping back into a time and a state of mind he’d almost forgotten. A time of idleness, of unending boredom.

The Rion who had assembled these albums so methodically and with such care had not been a working man. He had been very lonely. He realised now that the one photo he truly required was the one he always carried with him: the laminated newspaper article, only a stub, about his dead mother and her athletics award. He had lived with the image for so long that he’d almost ingested it. He saw the clipping with his inner eye without needing to retrieve it from the ziplock pouch in his pocket. All of these albums – he saw it clearly, with the clarity of several years of separation – had just been something for him to do with his time.

He put the album back on the pile and pushed the trolley into the back corner. No one would disturb it here and he could return to look through the albums whenever he liked. He returned to the front part of the shop and gave it another once over, but he found no clue as to Lydia’s whereabouts. Whoever had disturbed the shop clearly had not expected to have to answer to her for the mess.

As one burden lifted, another descended: where was Lydia? He supposed that she might be dead; it was a harsh life out here and no place for the elderly. Water was probably even scarcer now than it had been in ‘58. It was possible that she had been caught up in the military reprisal of that same year.

Footsteps.

He pressed himself against the wall. Why had he been so stupid as to abandon the shotgun, his only defence? The footsteps were getting closer, crunching through the gravel outside. He got ready to make his break.

The muzzle of a shotgun appeared in the doorway. “Bang, you’re dead,” Marcel said, stepping into the room. Rion let out his breath. “What, you didn’t really think I was going to wait back there, did you?” Marcel’s T-shirt was soaked with sweat.

“You scared the shit out of me!” Rion said.

“I wasn’t a hundred percent sure it was you or I would have called out. Lucky it’s just me and not the yokels. Where’s your shotgun?”

“I stashed it behind one of the houses,” Rion admitted.

“You’re a fucking pacifist now, are you? Not if you’re working with me, you’re not. What the fuck happened here?”

“Lydia’s gone.”

“I can see that,” Marcel said, kicking a can. “I’m sick of this pissant town already. I want to shoot something. I’m hot, I’m cranky, and we’ve got a long walk ahead of us. Unless, of course, you’re taking me to another one of your friends?”

“Pass me that radio, would you?” Rion said. “Let’s see how Vanya’s holding up.” Marcel handed over the radio. “Vanya,” Rion said. “Vanya, are you there? Can you hear me? Vanya?”

Static.

“He’s probably asleep,” Marcel concluded.

“Probably. Shit, we shouldn’t have left him.”

“This was your idea.”

Rion tried the two-way one more time, but it was no good. Thankfully, the sun had disappeared behind the clouds again, and after a short detour to retrieve Rion’s shotgun they were on their way back along Hugo Avenue. “I dunno why you left the shottie behind,” Marcel said, “but if you do it again, I’m gonna tell Turley that you’re a reject.”

“I heard you the first time.”

“Seriously though, why did you leave it? That was really dumb.”

“It’s a long story. I killed a cop once.”

Marcel stopped short. “You? I don’t believe it.”

“I don’t care if you believe it.”

Marcel looked at him. “All right, maybe you did. You don’t seem the type to boast about it. How did it happen?”

Suddenly the two-way radio on Rion’s hip came to life. “ – dead, but it’s working now. Some guys – ” Vanya’s words were lost in the rising hiss. “ – get the fuck back here. I don’t know – ”

“Vanya!” Rion said into the radio. “Can you hear me? Are you all right?”

The answer was endless static.