Chapter 4

IT WAS A short ride to the pub, past the post office, memorial hall, two overgrown tennis courts without nets, and a dozen more limp Australian flags. Parking outside the pub, Manolis saw a long queue of people standing under the shade of the street’s only tree.

‘What are they doing?’ he asked.

‘Watch,’ said Sparrow.

Manolis saw a clapped-out hatchback appear at the end of the street and drive towards them at low speed. It picked up the first man in the queue and drove him fifty metres up the road to the drive-thru bottle shop. It waited until he made his purchase, then returned him to the starting point and picked up the second in line, repeating the process. The first man staggered off into the scrub, slab of beer under his arm, song in his heart.

‘That’s the rules, the drive-thru only serves cars,’ Sparrow said, smiling. ‘We coppers can’t do anything about it. And not that we’d want to, it’d only cause more trouble. Whitefella who owns the hatchback charges a fee. Smart, eh. Name’s Trev, he’s run off his feet every second Thursday when the dole payments come in, one client after another, nonstop all bloody day. Trev’s a bloody millionaire. C’mon, it’s your shout.’

‘Aren’t you on duty?’

Sparrow snorted a laugh of disbelief. Still chuckling, he entered the top pub.

Inside, the air conditioner was doing battle with the smell of sweaty men, cigarette smoke and free-flowing beer. Sergeant Fyfe was propping up the bar. He had a fresh pint in his hand and was holding court with two fellow barflies and the publican, all dressed in footy shorts and singlets, bare feet. Manolis felt decidedly overdressed.

‘Well fuck me without a kiss,’ Fyfe said. ‘You must be the city mouse.’ His voice was wet and sluggish with booze.

‘Hello,’ said Manolis, offering his hand. ‘Detective Sergeant George Manolis.’

Fyfe crushed Manolis’s fingers and palm in a show of cop strength. Fyfe’s red scabrous face and spider veins made him look like he’d been marinated in beer and left in the sun to dry. The dead glare in his dark grey eyes said this was a man who’d seen many horrors.

‘Nice clobber, mate.’

‘You look like you’ve come straight from a catwalk.’

The ’flies laughed, full and hearty, guts quivering, mouths agape, rotten teeth, shrivelled heads. Beneath their amusement, Manolis sensed a subliminal hostility. Indeed, it was almost tactile.

He acknowledged the barflies with a polite nod. Eyes were looking at him for an unnervingly long time, much longer than they would anywhere in the city.

‘So you’re the white knight,’ said the publican.

His hair was albino, his skin paler than snow. Manolis wondered how that was even possible in country Australia.

‘Come to save us from ourselves, eh?’ the publican continued. ‘Bless ya, son. Reckon that deserves a drink. What’s yer poison?’

Manolis was about to mention ‘duty’ but then reconsidered. When in Rome. He eyed the bar. It had a selection of nearly full liquor bottles, all weighed down with a thick coating of outback dust. The bar itself had four taps, all the same beer, full strength, lager, domestic. The walls and ceiling were covered with a selection of second-hand bras, jocks, footy jumpers, X-rays, business cards, photos and yet more Australian flags.

‘Whisky,’ Manolis said. ‘A double.’

His order seemed to silence the room. The publican looked at him crookedly. He wiped his nose, his odour yeasty. ‘Sure you don’t want a beer, mate?’

‘No thanks.’

‘Sure? It’s good ’n cold.’

‘Don’t drink beer. It bloats me. But I’ll have one for young Sparrow here…?’

Sparrow nodded blankly, as if he’d just seen something horrific, an abomination. He took his schooner and astonishment and went to sit in the corner while Manolis corralled Fyfe at the bar and pressed him for details about the investigation. Fyfe was elusive. Manolis pressed harder.

‘Look, mate, honestly, right now, we’re in mourning,’ Fyfe said. ‘Cobb’s a small place.’

‘I know it’s small,’ Manolis said. ‘Small and insular. It’s why I got seconded here from Major Crimes.’

‘I think that had more to do with what went down last night at the brown house than anything else.’

‘It does. But it doesn’t sound like it was an isolated event.’

Fyfe sucked on his beer like a vacuum cleaner. ‘It wasn’t,’ he said, through a frothy moustache. ‘That place was supposed to turn this town around. Jobs, they said. Economy, they said. Arse, I say. The jobs they brought in pay minimum wage – part-time cleaners and untrained security thugs.’

Manolis took a very deliberate sip of his room-temperature whisky. It tasted stale and sour, an oily texture, and lingered on his tongue like an old coat. Perhaps he should’ve listened to the publican and bought a cold beer. He regretted ordering a double. Twice the pain.

‘Molly was a good woman, you know,’ Fyfe continued. ‘Real good.’

‘Good lay, ya mean…’ said a ’fly with a wry smile.

‘Town bike,’ muttered another. Laughter ensued.

‘Oi!’ Fyfe said. ‘Shaddup, you lot.’

Manolis waited for the chortling to stop before he spoke again. ‘Molly?’

‘Salt of the earth,’ said Fyfe. ‘She taught our kids.’

‘She was a schoolteacher?’

‘Yep. She didn’t deserve to go out like that.’

‘No one ever does.’

‘I’m pissed off deluxe. Those animals.’

‘Who?’

Fyfe’s glare seemed to bore right through Manolis. ‘The scum who did this,’ he said flatly. ‘Who else did ya think I meant?’

Manolis didn’t reply, drank his whisky fitfully. ‘I need to see the body and crime scene.’

‘Sure, mate. But not today. Tomorrow.’

‘Who found the victim? Can you take me to them? Why not today?’

Fyfe drained his pint halfway with a rapid, throaty glug. ‘Son, it’s Sunday. You can’t hassle people on a Sunday. That’s the Lord’s Day.’

‘Sergeant,’ said Manolis, pulling on his earlobe, ‘are you saying the day of the week takes precedence over the course of a murder investigation?’

‘Thass right, city mouse,’ Fyfe said combatively, puffing out his chest. ‘This ain’t the city round ’ere. Round ’ere, Sunday still means something. It’s a day of worship. It’s a day of rest. Rest and rehydration.’ He drained the other half of his beer and caught the publican’s eye.

‘Well I didn’t drive all this way to sit and watch you drink,’ Manolis said.

‘Frankly,’ Fyfe said, ‘I couldn’t think of anything more compelling.’ He proceeded to wrap his fingers around a freshly poured glass and saunter back to the ’flies, who slapped his back hard and clinked pints, beer sloshing.

Manolis watched them laugh and drink and smoke and sway. He leant against the bar and downed the rest of his whisky with a single gulp. It avoided the taste.

The publican reappeared. ‘Let ’em be. Like Bill said, we’re all hurtin’. Molly was dear to us all. Him especially.’

Manolis spun around. ‘What’s that supposed to mean? Was he close to the woman?’

‘We’re all close. It’s a small town. Bill just sees himself as a shepherd. A wolf took one of his flock.’

‘He’s got to be professional, though.’

‘He will be, when he’s sober. Today, don’t consider him a cop. He’s only human. Poor bastard nearly died last year himself.’

‘Oh?’

The publican rested his weight against the bar. ‘This one mad fella slashed Bill’s wrist with a broken bottle, severed an artery. Bill needed three pints of blood and a pint of whisky to keep from passing out.’

Manolis slid his empty glass across the bar. ‘Thanks,’ he lied.

‘No worries. Around here, the pub’s where you go when you’re doing it tough and need a pat on the back. I’m Turps, by the way.’

Manolis shook hands, introduced himself. ‘Nice place,’ he said.

‘It’s a shithole,’ Turps replied. ‘But at least it’s an honest business. Not like that bloody brown house.’

Sparrow walked over with his empty schooner, lace stuck to the inside like spider webs. ‘C’mon,’ he told Manolis. ‘I’ll take you to where you’re stayin’, let you settle in. Thanks, Turps.’

‘See you boys later.’

Sparrow instructed Manolis to drive west, the afternoon sun in their eyes.

‘Why’d you take me there?’ Manolis asked. ‘Fyfe didn’t want a bar of me.’

‘It was only meant to be a friendly g’day, an intro. We’ll talk more tomorrow.’ Sparrow scanned the empty streets through the dirty windscreen. ‘Hopefully it’s quiet out there tonight. No trouble.’

‘Why? What’ve you heard?’

‘Just chatter.’ He paused. ‘Talk of reprisal attacks, people vowing revenge for what the brown house did to Molly.’

‘That implies knowledge of the perpetrator.’

‘Assumptions are enough. Makes life simpler.’

Manolis kept driving. After some time, he asked, ‘Her name was Molly?’

‘Yair, Molly Abbott. Taught at the primary school. Well liked, popular. Early forties, widowed.’

Manolis’s heart sank a few inches. Being separated from a loved one was unfortunate, heartbreaking. But at least they were alive. To be widowed so young was tragic.

His detective brain swiftly clicked into gear. There would be no ex-husband to chase up. An obvious lead was gone.

‘Did she have a boyfriend?’ Manolis asked tentatively.

‘Don’t think so,’ Sparrow replied. ‘But I know there’s this one bloke in town, he’s been lusting after her for a while.’

‘Lusting? Who’s this?’

Sparrow took a moment to respond, then seemed to choose his words delicately.

‘Name’s Joe. Relatively harmless bloke. Ever since Molly’s husband died, he’s been courting her without success. Even made a scene at the top pub one night.’

‘What kind of scene?’

‘Nuthin’ major. He’d had a few, made a pass at her. She slapped him, humiliated him in front of his mates. Bruised his ego. Not the first woman who’s slapped Joe at the pub neither…’

Manolis smiled to himself. ‘That’s all good to know.’

‘I doubt he could do this, though. He’s a pest, but no predator.’

‘Track him down.’

‘Mm, okay.’

‘And have you any idea who might’ve seen her last?’

‘Not yet.’

They left the town behind. Vast brown plains soon stretched in every direction. Manolis gunned the accelerator, the pistons singing. The road heading west wasn’t on any map he had seen. He thought it strange not to be staying in Cobb itself, close to the action. He would’ve been happy enough to flop in someone’s granny flat or spare room, or even on a bunk at the station. His eyes squinted, darted, tried to work out where the hell they were going. Sparrow said nothing; he stared straight ahead from behind impenetrable black sunglasses while his fingers drummed a high-powered rhythm on his thigh. Manolis wondered whether they were heading to a farm or a property with a long rambling homestead overlooking bushland. Or maybe a slab hut made of timber and bark where early settlers once lived, drovers and woodcutters and shearers. He was so distracted that he nearly missed the crooked wooden archway announcing their arrival in Olde Cobbe Towne.

‘Holy shit,’ Manolis said.

‘Yair,’ said Sparrow. ‘Ever since the brown house opened, there’s not many cots available in town. This was Sarge’s idea. It’s away from the worst trouble.’

They parked outside a demountable office building with an Australian flag in the window. As they entered, Manolis got tangled in the multicoloured plastic strip curtains hung across the doorway; he hadn’t seen curtains like that since he was a kid.

Sparrow called out. A groan came from a back room, followed by cursing. A chair was shunted, another groan, heavy, slow footsteps.

The proprietor shambled out under a cloud of broken sleep. At first he had his head down, patting his comb-over to ensure it remained in place. When he finally looked up and stood erect, he appeared imposing, tall and broad, matching Manolis’s six feet. The proprietor wore a navy-blue shearer’s singlet and a pair of old tennis shorts. An overgrown moustache obscured his mouth, a hairless patch of skin on his arm appearing white. Rubbing his cheeks, he passed a pair of deep-set eyes over Sparrow and then Manolis.

‘Well I’ll be a monkey’s…’

After this half sentence, the proprietor’s voice turned to dust in his throat. Stepping out from behind the counter, he approached Manolis with wide eyes and wide arms. His moustache was quivering. Manolis backed away a step but was powerless to stop the embrace that clamped around his chest and squeezed his heart till it hurt.

‘Ma! Ma, quick, come see!’ the man called over his shoulder. He turned back to Manolis. ‘I thought I might’ve died in my sleep, or that I saw a ghost,’ he whispered. ‘You look just like your father.’

Manolis glared straight at Sparrow, whose confused expression showed he’d heard what the proprietor said.

‘I grew up here,’ Manolis said. ‘Here in Cobb, I mean. It’s the reason they sent me. And I think I knew Molly.’