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The return flight to Darwin was not until the following day and Dan had been booked into the only hotel on the island, a place right on the beach that lacked phone service or television but had an exquisite view of the ocean beyond. The bathrooms and showers were communal, but the glass doors of his room opened onto a wide deck and he spent the night listening to the sound of the sea and imagining himself back aboard his boat.
Was there anything he had learned that day that could help solve these crimes? He now had a pretty good idea of what the stolen items looked like, and he had learned a little more about their importance to the people, but without specific descriptions or identifying marks they couldn’t be identified even if they were located. And as for any witness . . .
He lay back on the warm wooden boards and gazed up at the stars. The Southern Cross wheeled over his head, and low on the horizon he could just see Ursa Major, the Big Dipper, the constellation he used to orient himself back home in Canada. It was as if the sky was reflecting his own reality, one foot back aboard Dreamspeaker in Port McNeill and the other here on Bathurst Island, linked by his job and by these damn crimes.
A sudden blaze of moving light caught his eye and he watched as a meteor shower streaked across the heavens only to disappear into the eastern sky. Would it have been visible if he had been home? He chuckled to himself and dismissed the question. Of course it wouldn’t. It was early morning back on the west coast, daytime, and the planets and constellations and meteor showers, while undoubtedly there, could not be seen. The realization brought with it a sudden thought. Just as the skies above him remained the same whether it was dark or light, these thefts were the same no matter which side of the globe they occurred—and that meant they had to be linked. They had to be part of a plan. Like the Southern Cross and the Big Dipper, if he studied them carefully, they could point him in the right direction. Somewhere, hidden in the details, there had to be some hint of how these things were being done and who was doing them.
He remembered a time at Friendly Cove on Nootka Island, when Walker had shown him how to find a trail of footsteps simply by sitting down and moving his body from one side to the other so that the light lit the grass from different angles. It was something he would never have thought of doing until Walker taught him how, and it was a lesson he had never forgotten. Perhaps that was what was needed now. Another angle. Another way of looking at the problem.
***
EARLY NEXT MORNING Wally arrived to drive him back to the airport, and before they climbed into the jeep he handed Dan two photos of the throwing stick plus several of various Pukamani poles.
“Wally, there’s something I want to ask you,” Dan said, staring at the images. “But I don’t want to get you into trouble so if you have a problem with it, just let me know, okay?”
He watched Wally’s face carefully as he spoke, looking for any sign of discomfort. What he was going to ask could be risky for him, but it would certainly be a bigger risk for Wally.
“I’m sure you’ve already figured out that I am not going to be here in Australia long enough to be of any real help, and there’s no way I can find these objects before I head home, but the same thefts are happening in Canada and I think they’re connected.”
Wally turned his head and glanced at him.
“My official liaison is with the Northern Territory Police in Darwin,” Dan continued, “but would you mind if I called you directly to see how things are going? Maybe between the two of us we can figure this out.”
Wally’s teeth flashed brightly as a smile dimpled his cheeks. “No problem Dan. I will give you my personal number.”
***
WHETHER IT WAS BECAUSE he was intent on studying the photos or was finally becoming used to flying he didn’t know, but the trip back to Darwin didn’t seem to take as long or be quite as terrifying as before which boded well for his flight to Maningrida the following morning. It would be his last opportunity to spend time with Claire until her return to Canada, and it would give him the chance to talk with Waru. Fate, it seemed, had decided he was going to get used to flying whether he wanted to or not.
***
THE HEAT WAS ALREADY building in Darwin when he headed out of the hotel in search of an aboriginal art gallery Sam had told him about. He walked six blocks, the sun burning his shoulders through his shirt, before he saw a sign with the now-familiar red and yellow dots announcing “Spirit Gallery.”
The interior was blessedly cool and dim, small spotlights illuminating the paintings hanging on the wall. The quiet thrum of a didgeridoo accompanied by the sound of feet stamping on soft earth played in the background.
“You like that one?”
He had been admiring a picture composed of a series of concentric circles, each one a different colour, that reminded him of an underwater reef, and he turned to find a small aboriginal woman standing by his side.
“I do,” he said. “But I’m not sure I understand it. Is it simply a pattern or does it have meaning?”
She smiled. “All of these have meaning. Each shape, each colour, how they’re placed, tells a story. This here,” she pointed to the outer wavy circle filled with bands of bright yellow and orange dots. “This is the Rainbow Serpent. She is from the Dreamtime, when all things were created. After she came out from under the ground, she travelled across the earth and the tracks she left filled with water. They created the rivers and the lakes.” Her finger traced another line that flowed across the canvas.
She pointed to some smaller, irregular shapes. “These are the trees and plants that sprang up beside the water. And these,” she indicated a small group of dots at the bottom. “This is a platypus that lives in that water.
“The stories and the designs go together. I can only paint the stories I own: the stories that have been passed down to me through song and dance by my family. My father’s dreaming is Ngalyod, the serpent snake, and I can also paint fire, and lightning and thunder, and some of the animals, as I am the custodian of my mother’s and grandfather’s totems.”
She led him to other paintings and told him the meaning of each one. Some were more graphic, and he could recognize kangaroos and wallabies and lizards and frogs, but others were entirely abstract. She—her name was Janet—was in the middle of explaining a particularly detailed set of dots in a vivid orange when they were interrupted by the sound of the door opening.
“Please excuse me for a moment,” she said. “I like to speak to everyone who comes in.”
Dan nodded and continued to stare at the pattern in front of him, trying to decipher what he was looking at. It was more like a code than a hieroglyphic he decided. Deceptively simple but conveying a complex message that he had no hope of understanding. All he could do was appreciate the design it created.
He was moving to the next painting when a single word caught his attention and he turned to see who had spoken. Janet was talking to someone dressed in a flowing crimson caftan whose back was towards him. Long dark hair, streaked here and there with strands of bright red, hung down over thin shoulders, and if he hadn’t heard the voice, Dan would have thought it was a woman, but the voice was both male and arrogant.
“I am a scholar, madam. I am simply trying to learn more about your culture. Surely some tjuringas must find their way into the wider community. After all, some families have died out. What happens to the tjuringas they owned?”
“They are returned to the alcheringa. The ancestor. They are his.” Janet’s voice had become louder.
“And you have no photos? No records? Nothing that provides information on the various totems or the ancestors they refer to?”
“We do not. They are sacred.”
“And what about the songlines? Surely you have information on those? Or on where the various spirits live?”
They were odd questions for a scholar to be asking in a small gallery, and the use of the present tense struck Dan as strange.
“I have heard people have written books that refer to our song lines.” The chill in Janet’s voice would have warned most people away, and every line and angle of her body was taut with dislike, but her words were rewarded with a sneer.
“Fiction! I am not interested in fairy tales. I am looking for facts.”
One voluminous sleeve of the caftan slid back as a hand was lifted in dismissal. It might have been a trick of the light, but Dan thought something about the skin looked odd: rough perhaps, or scaly, but it was hidden too soon for him to be sure. He had been thinking of the man and his strange attire as being eccentric, but now he wondered if perhaps it was hiding some disfigurement.
“I need to know the actual routes the songlines describe in order to trace the journeys of the ancestral spirits. I am creating a map of the various locations these spirits reside.”
Dan had met a number of academics over the years, many of them deeply immersed in their work and eager to share it, but there had also been a few whose arrogance made him wonder how they had ever been accepted by the institutions they worked for. It didn’t take much imagination to guess which category this ‘scholar’ would fall into.
There was a slight pause, and then the man continued in what he probably assumed was a more conciliatory tone, but in reality sounded patronizing. “My work is intended to help you people protect your land. Ensure that your property rights are upheld.”
There was no mistaking the anger in Janet’s voice when she responded. “It is not our land. We do not own it. The land owns us, and it is sacred. Our songlines are also sacred. Even to walk in the wrong direction along a songline can be sacrilegious, and we must sing special songs when we wish to approach any site where a spirit resides so that we do not anger the one who lives there.”
“What will happen if you don’t?” There was a sudden eagerness in the man’s voice that made Dan think that this was the real information the so-called scholar had come for.
Janet shook her head and glanced across the room at Dan. “I am sorry, but I cannot help you. Please excuse me,” she said.
***
“NOT A VERY PLEASANT sort,” Dan said as he and Janet walked deeper into the gallery. “I hope he didn’t upset you.”
“He is a very rude man,” she answered. “And very persistent. He always asks the same questions.”
“He’s been here before?”
“Several times. Sometimes he pretends he’s interested in buying something, but he never does. He only asks questions about things that we do not share with white . . . with others.”
“Do you know his name?”
She turned to look at him, anger still simmering in her eyes, turning them into liquid pools of darkness. “I have never asked him. I do not want to know. He makes me . . . ” She shivered and rubbed her arms.
He nodded. There was indeed something troubling about the man.
“Do you think he lives here? In Darwin?” he asked.
She shrugged. “Probably. He’s here too often to be a tourist—although I did see him at the airport once. He was with another strange-looking man.”
“Another caftan-wearing academic?” Dan liked this unpretentious, straightforward woman and hoped his wry humour would help ease the tension still evident in her stance.
“No. Just the opposite.” She threw him an apologetic smile. “Well, he might have been an academic, I suppose, but it was a very hot day and he was wearing a sweater and long trousers and gloves. He looked like he was dressed for Antarctica! He even had a scarf wrapped round his neck.” She shook her head as if she still found it hard to believe. “Oh, and he was very small. Much shorter than me and kind of bent over.”
For the second time since Markleson had given him the case, Dan felt a faint tingle of electricity shiver through his body. It was the feeling he always waited for. The thrill that kept him going. It was like an addiction. Something he needed and chased after no matter how long and difficult the journey.
Claire had told him the person who had seen the man who owned Snake Island at the Maningrida airport had said he was tiny, and ‘wore too many clothes.’ She had also suggested that perhaps he was hiding some disfigurement. Surely there couldn’t be two men who fit that description. It suggested that the ‘scholar’ who was interested in tjuringas and songlines was somehow connected to the recluse who owned Snake Island. And the man who owned Snake Island flew a small helicopter very like the ones seen in Canada. Dan had no idea exactly what the connection was, but he was sure it was there. He could feel it.