BOWMAN WOKE AT eight. Before sleep, he’d squeezed half a lemon into a tankard of water and left it by his bed. He sat up now and drank it down. He was not a morning person, but he felt pretty good, still a spring in his step from a job well done last night. There it was, a universal truth before breakfast: The deepest principle in human nature is the craving to be appreciated.
He sauntered to the bathroom in his sarong and T-shirt, and then stepped into the lane to pick up his paper. In the kitchen, he made coffee and spread The National on the bench. It was the only broadsheet left in the country, and when they chose to unleash they went big. They’d gone big today.
Bowman knew that in all the other outlets the story would be generic, controlled by the cops. No name had been released, there’d be no images of the scene, no footage on the networks. So Bowman’s picture was the only thing. They’d run it deep and wide across the whole front page, under the headline BMK STRIKES AT BOYS’ SCHOOL. Broadsheets might be old media, but under full sail, when the wind was up, they looked magnificent.
Alexander called. Bowman was off the late shift: the editor wanted him back at the school right away. ‘Look for staff to interview, look for anything, just don’t get shunted by the cops,’ Alexander said and hung up. Bowman turned on the radio and headed for the shower. Ablutions done, he stood back in the kitchen, listening to the news and checking the websites … still no name from the cops.
In the Nissan, he put the windows down and made a U-turn on Darling. At the roundabout at The London he turned right and followed the back streets. Right again on Glassop and the river was laid out before him, Cockatoo Island sitting clean off his bow. Twenty-five years in Balmain and every day it took his breath away. Water everywhere. People always looked east, to the harbour and the big bays and then the bluffs, the stratified promontory drama of The Heads. Bowman liked to look west, to look homewards. To the scars of industry and the way the light played, the shimmering scales of the serpent river.
The workers’ cottage had come down to him through his mother’s side, stretching back to the convict past. She’d never lived in it. After Chick, Bowman had watched his mother crumple and then he’d turned away, unable to bear witness to her grief for her little boy. She’d died adrift from her living son and estranged from her husband. John Bowman had the gene: he dissolved himself in alcohol. Towards the end, he had come to stay in Datchett Street and Bowman had watched his father drink himself to death. Drowned in drink in the drowned river valley.
He took the same route as the night before, but this time crossed straight over Pennant Hills Road and down to a flat strip of shops adjacent to the school. Chemist, dentist, GP, hairdresser, newsagent, milk bar, mini market morphing into bottle shop. He parked and got out.
Prince Albert sat up to his left. A patrol car was moored at the top of a cul-de-sac where a path led into the campus. Head down, Bowman walked away from the police along a road parallel to the school’s northern edge. After fifty metres there was a gap in the suburban houses and a track veering off. He took it and dropped into scrub, walked up a rocky rise, through a hole in a cyclone fence that rode the boundary and he was in the school. The way was well worn, beaten down by generations of boys ducking out to visit the shops. Bowman had trodden it hundreds of times.
Remnant forest ringed the property, turpentine and ironbark. He continued until the track led him out into the belly of the place: the maintenance depot, laundry, loading dock, kitchens, dining hall—all shuttered for the holidays. The road he was standing on looped through the grounds in a long figure eight, connecting the outlying boarding houses and playing fields to the communal centre and the classrooms. There was a pocket of gums to his left and he slipped into them for cover.
Movement caught his eye: a man in a pale-yellow shirt walking along the edge of the road. Cargo shorts, sneakers, white socks, a soft khaki hat pulled down to protect his face—if he was a cop, he was deep undercover, ready to infiltrate bird-watching trainspotters. He was about fifty metres away, something robotic in his gait as he headed down a short drive and disappeared behind the maintenance block.
Bowman rubbed at his nose. His best bet was to follow and try to get the man to talk. If he was a staff member, anything he said could be turned into a story. Moving out from the trees, Bowman was about to cross the road when he heard a vehicle. It rounded the bend and caught him stranded, one foot on the gutter. Calais, unmarked—definitely cop. The driver pulled up behind him, unbuckled and got out, her movements fluid, nonchalant, assured.
Streaked blonde hair pulled back, supple in a T-shirt, a Glock on her hip. ‘Morning, sir.’ She pushed her sunglasses up. Hard emerald eyes—turn you to stone. ‘You live round here?’
‘Working here.’
She looked him over. ‘Teacher?’
He tried to stall. ‘My parents lived here.’
She squared off, her own foot on the gutter, facing him. ‘Sir, I’m Detective Sergeant Riley, New South Wales Homicide. We’re running a major investigation on these premises. Do you think I might see some ID?’
Bowman pulled out his wallet and gave her his driver’s licence. She studied it, handed it back.
‘Like to tell me what you’re doing here, Mr Bowman?’
‘I’m a reporter. With The National.’
She stared, blinked and walked back to the vehicle. Opening the passenger door, she pulled out the newspaper and returned with it.
‘Nice picture,’ she said.
‘Thanks.’
‘Press were corralled on the oval. How’d you get it?’
‘Came through a hole in the fence.’ He tossed his head. ‘I can show you, if you want?’
She looked at him, then nodded at the Calais. ‘Get in.’
The aircon was blasting. She reached for the knob, turned the fan down, checked her wing mirror and pulled out.
Bowman slid a side eye. ‘What’d you say your name was?’
‘Riley.’
‘Riley what?’
‘Detective Sergeant Riley.’
They came to an intersection and stopped. ‘Which way?’
The front oval with the media pack was down to the right. Network vans, camera crews, tents, desks, cables, a mobile canteen, newspaper and radio reporters, photographers, bloggers. A police media tent stood in the middle, the big top at the circus. Bowman was on the highwire, looking down. To stay on the trapeze, he needed the cops.
‘Left,’ he said and she started up the hill. After several hundred metres they came to a dirt driveway off the bitumen. ‘It’s down there,’ he said. ‘There’s a path through the bush to the local shops. I left my car there.’
She edged along. ‘You came in the same way last night?’
‘Yes.’ He lied like a sociopath. Tell them what they want to hear, that was his motto.
‘So you drove and parked offsite.’ She watched ahead. ‘Last night you came through the fence there, walked all the way over to the scene, took the picture, and then walked out again?’
‘It’s not that far. Twenty minutes each way.’
She picked up her notebook from the console. ‘You said your parents live here?’
‘Lived here. Not anymore.’
‘Did you live here?’
‘As a kid.’
‘And now you live in Balmain?’
His licence. He nodded.
She bit the lid off a pen. ‘Can I grab your number?’
Bowman gave it. She asked for the make, colour and registration of his vehicle and wrote it all down.
‘Can you tell me where you were on Wednesday night?’
He went still. Five seconds, six.
‘Today’s Friday?’ he said.
She raised her eyebrows.
‘I worked Wednesday night. Four till midnight.’
‘In the office?’
‘Yeah.’
‘And after that?’
He’d had two beers at The Aurora and gone home.
‘Did you drink with anyone?’
‘Locals.’ He didn’t know their names.
‘Was anyone with you at home?’
‘No.’
She made a note. ‘As you know, media’s restricted to the front oval. The school grounds are a crime scene. I don’t want to see you wandering around again.’
He opened the door, got out and looked back in. ‘Thanks for the ride.’