AT THE COTTAGE on Datchett Street, Bowman’s phone told the story—his piece on Marguerite Dunlop had hit the spot. Colleagues who’d ignored him for years were texting their approval. He scrolled through the messages. There was one from Riley: I have told the Greens we are happy for the boy Tom to talk to you. Plus Craig Spratt. Both are free this arvo. Let me know when. Get moving.
Bowman made a face. Get moving? How’s Get fucked sound? He saw Riley in The Bald Rock: eyes hooded, a hawk roosting, out of his league. It had been a while since Emma. She’d dumped him for ‘lacking drive’, for being a loser. Then she’d wanted him back, nothing better on offer. He didn’t want to get married, he didn’t want kids, but he went with the flow. Until he didn’t.
He got moving. Riley sure worked fast. Last night she’d said she’d think about lining up the interviews, now they couldn’t happen quick enough. In the Nissan, he looked at her message again. Spratt and Green weren’t names he recognised from the past. But where they lived—he knew all about that. The Greens lived in Bowman’s old house, where he’d been born and raised. He decided to start with Spratt.
At a red light, he texted Riley. Can u tell spratt i’m coming to interview him? The light went green. Yes. He turned right and his thoughts swivelled with him. The only time he hadn’t lied to Emma was when he’d walked away. They had been in Annandale, in another car at another red light. He’d looked across at her from the passenger seat, her brittle mouth, and he’d opened the door on Parramatta Road and walked away for good. His past was pocked with shame, wounds he grimaced to recall, but leaving Emma wasn’t one of them. She had been controlling, angry, disappointed. He’d needed to get clear, that was the truth of it.
He turned off Pennant Hills Road and drove up past St Anne’s. Marguerite Dunlop’s school occupied an old hospital site on the south-west border of Prince Albert.
Spratt’s place sat just clear of the tree line in a scrappy far corner of the property, lantana country, beyond Ghost Gum and more remote. As a boy, Bowman hadn’t lingered here—and he felt it still. He didn’t envy Spratt his patch of dirt.
He closed the door of the Nissan as a flyscreen banged at the fibro and Craig Spratt came out.
‘Craig,’ Bowman said.
‘Did ya come through the police cordon?’ Spratt’s handshake was dry, hard.
‘Nah,’ Bowman’s voice adjusted. ‘Come up past St Anne’s.’
‘Well, you know your way around.’ Spratt’s chin ratcheted up in approval. He was wearing black shorts and a blue shearer’s singlet, black socks, Volleys. ‘The detective said you’d be comin’. She’s comin’ too, in a bit.’
They walked up the yard into the house. Spratt thrust his chin again. ‘Have a seat.’
Bowman pulled a chair out from the kitchen table. Brown lino floor, green doors on the cabinets, the barnyard funk of marriage.
‘Terrible business,’ Spratt said. ‘Cuppa?’
There was a tin of International Roast by the sink. ‘You got tea?’
‘Yeah.’ He filled the kettle. ‘Missus is at work.’
Bowman put his bag down. ‘Where’s she work?’
‘On the harbour. Hostie on the charter boats.’
Bowman’s eyes widened. ‘Yeah?’
‘I used to be a skipper, that’s how we met. Never want to see another buck’s party.’
Bowman snorted lightly. ‘Fair enough. You got kids?’
‘Mm huh. They’re gone now.’
‘How old?’
‘Twenty-two and twenty.’
‘They grow up here?’
‘Pretty much. We come here when the eldest was seven.’
‘You know I grew up here?’
Spratt’s hand paused on the fridge door. ‘I heard that. Milk?’
‘No. Thanks.’
Spratt moved around the kitchen.
‘Your kids,’ Bowman said, ‘they like growing up here?’
He shucked a shoulder. ‘Hundred and fifty acres of bush, plus the rest of the place. They got to run free. Like you, I’d guess.’
Bowman felt it—the hot sun, the chlorine from the pool. When school was out, the tight commune of staff families.
‘Not that it helped Marguerite,’ Spratt said.
There was an undertow to his tone, cold and black and running fast. Get moving. Had Riley felt it too? Bowman bent for his notebook and digital recorder.
Spratt put the mugs on the table and Bowman explained what he wanted: to hear from Spratt and then the boy, Tom Green, about how things had unfolded on Thursday. He clicked on the recorder. Spratt eyed the tools of the journalist’s trade and stirred two sugars into his tea.
It was a busy time for Jenny on the boats, he said, with Christmas parties and now New Year’s. She’d been lucky this week and scored some day shifts. ‘Lunch tours with Chinese and stuff. She worked on Boxing Day for the Sydney to Hobart. Usual chaos, every idiot on the water.’ Then she’d worked Tuesday, had Wednesday off, worked Thursday. ‘I wasn’t doin’ much on Thursday. The wind got up all dusty in the afternoon. Thought I was back in Terry Hie Hie.’
‘I remember,’ Bowman said. ‘The dust got into town.’
‘True? Anyway, Jen calls about six, says she’s gunna have a drink with some of the girls, won’t be bringin’ any dinner.’
Bowman jotted in shorthand.
‘So, I’m caught a bit short with that announcement.’ Spratt looked peeved. ‘There’s a milk bar down the road, at Dundas.’
‘I know it.’ Bowman smiled.
Spratt described the route he had driven through the school. ‘Get the fright of me life when I see Tom jump down from the Hay Stand and start wavin’ both hands. I knew it wasn’t good.’
The boy had told him there was a body on the floor of the stand. He’d said it was wrapped up, but he knew it was a body. Spratt had got out of his car, and the black shape had come into view as he’d walked. He’d gone up the steps. The floor had been covered in fine red dust and he’d been able to see Tom’s footprints. He hadn’t needed much of a look. He’d backed out. Then he’d sat with Tom in the car and called triple zero. The cops hadn’t taken long, uniforms and then the cavalry.
Spratt trailed off, eyes following Bowman’s pen. ‘That’s it.’
‘It’s quiet here,’ Bowman said. ‘Had you seen anyone this week?’
‘Cops asked me the same thing. We got one gardener on, so I seen him. The bursar, Graham Murray, seen him on Tuesday, I think. On Wednesday, I seen Preston. He was in his car, over round this side, the lord of the manor checkin’ his estate. We had a quick chat.’
‘You get on alright?’
‘With Preston? Up himself. Pretty useless. You know the sort.’
‘All hat, no cattle.’
‘Yeah. Bit shifty, too. Fish rots from the head down.’ A pause, then, ‘Don’t put that in the paper.’
Bowman nodded. ‘I’ll need to describe your job at the school. In the paper.’
‘Property manager.’ Spratt drained his mug. ‘I oversee all the maintenance and grounds staff, the gardeners. Keep an eye on the place in the holidays.’
‘You really from Terry Hie Hie?’ Bowman said.
‘Worked there for a bit, grew up round Wee Waa.’
‘How was that?’
‘Old man had a thing for the sugar cane champagne—liked a Bundy with his Coke. Me and me brother knew the buckle of his belt.’ Spratt stood and picked up the mugs. ‘Me mum, she knew the back of his hand.’
Bowman swallowed. Alcohol, fathers, brothers, mothers.
Spratt was at the sink. ‘We had some trouble here with our kids,’ he said. ‘Stealin’, wreckin’ shit, bit of fire lightin’. They took me twenty-two once, went shootin’ in the bush.’
Bowman couldn’t see his face.
‘They were harassin’ some of the girls, daughters of staff.’
Bowman studied his notebook.
‘I heard about what happened to your family here,’ Spratt said. ‘You don’t have to say. I’m just tellin’ you my story ’cos I heard yours. Seems only fair.’
Fair. He had to say something. ‘Fair enough.’
‘Thing is,’ Spratt said, ‘my two were loving little boys. We raised ’em up right, not like I was raised. I know how that sounds, like an excuse. But this place …’ He faltered. ‘There’s a bad feeling here … you know what I mean?’
Bowman did know what he meant, but he was surprised to hear Spratt raise it—the strange marsh country, the country of the mind, where things bubbled up in the soil. Maybe in grief Spratt sensed it—Marguerite had led him to the shadows at the school. The Northern Farms of the early settlement had been here, and Toongabbie, stained in the blood of the black wars, lay over the rise to the west. Pemulwuy and guerrilla raids for maize—shootings, spearings, clubbings, rapes, beheadings, the dead strung up on gibbets. There were other types of violence. The trees, the immense trees—true grandeur, rifting back to Pangaea—axed and ring-barked and poisoned. Prehistory, clear-felled, on the Cumberland Plain.
Spratt’s phone rang and Bowman gathered his things to leave. Something the property manager had said had lodged in his brain: fish rots from the head down. Philip Preston hadn’t taken Bowman’s call yesterday.