Chapter 13

MANOLIS COULDN’T KEEP up with the four-wheel drive in Rex’s pickup truck, which took multiple attempts to get going. He watched until Fyfe disappeared into the distance. Slowly, Manolis began the long drive back to Olde Cobbe Towne, to rest and gather his thoughts. His mind was humming, connections being made, possible lines of enquiry opening up.

As he drove through the heat and flies, he considered all he’d seen, and all he’d not seen. The physical evidence was completely underwhelming. There was no murder weapon to trace, nothing the killer had left behind, and a grossly contaminated crime scene. But Manolis found it strange that there was only a relatively small bloodstain to be found there, and that Molly would’ve left home without personal items, her wallet and phone and keys.

‘That can’t be right,’ he told himself. ‘No matter what anyone from around here says.’

There was always a chance the items had been retained by the killer as some sort of sick souvenir, which Manolis knew was common. In fact, this was an outcome he preferred – it meant the items were out there, somewhere, linking an individual to the murder. A search of Molly’s house would confirm if they were missing. It was downright negligent that one hadn’t already been conducted, but it wasn’t altogether surprising for Cobb. The unorthodox was customary, the book barely followed. And that was a whole separate issue that niggled Manolis like a rock in his shoe. Securing a conviction based on evidence alone would be nearly impossible. Hardly a single procedure had been adhered to. Defence barristers would queue up to take the case, the media would have a field day, headline after headline. Cobb would be the great detention experiment gone wrong. And Manolis would be forever linked. His career would dive-bomb faster than his marriage.

There were even more roos at dusk. Manolis saw several pairs of boomers boxing by the roadside as he drove back to the tourist park. He found Rex asleep in a camping chair outside the demountable office building. Beside him, a hammer and box of nails. Above him, a gulp of scraggly hot magpies on dead branches aired out their rumpled wings, their mouths half-open as if panting. Manolis closed the car door lightly but it still rattled on its loose hinges and woke the proprietor, his ear attuned to a sound so familiar.

‘Sorry,’ said Manolis. ‘Just returning your car.’

‘It’s your car now, Kojak,’ said Rex, rubbing his eyes. ‘For as long as you need it.’

‘Thanks. Better to park it here, though. Cars spontaneously combust near me.’

Rex chuckled. ‘I was just getting some kip after trying to fix a fence. Bloody thing’s rotted, is about to fall over. How’d you go today?’

Manolis sighed heavily and leant against the rusted fender. ‘First impressions. Every time you come into a case cold, there’s a lot to get your head around.’

‘I can imagine. Make it up to the brown house today?’

Manolis paused, considering his answer. ‘I did, actually.’

‘How was it?’

He was careful with his words. Rex had an obvious interest in the case, but the investigation needed to proceed without any further intervention.

‘Quiet,’ Manolis replied.

Rex cleaned his ear with a black-rimmed fingernail. ‘Ma can go on. Sorry about that. She doesn’t want to admit it, but she loved Molly, she really did. Personally, I think she was heartbroken.’

‘Heartbroken?’

‘Because we’d drifted apart since Patrick’s death. But it was always on the cards. After all, there was no blood between us.’

Manolis nodded. ‘Can you think of anyone who’d want to hurt Molly?’

Rex shook his head. ‘Not a soul. The entire town was at Patrick’s funeral. Having already lost her husband, everyone knew that Molly had suffered enough.’

Manolis momentarily thought of Kerr. A town of widows, like in war.

‘What about this Joe bloke, do you know him?’

Rex snorted a laugh. ‘You mean Joe Shrewsbury? He’s harmless. He and Patrick were mates. Molly saw him as a friend, but that was all.’

Manolis rubbed his coarse chin. ‘Hmm. Okay. And was Molly’s recent behaviour at all different in any way?’

Rex exhaled. ‘Couldn’t tell you. Honestly, we hadn’t seen her round here for a while. We’ve been flat out dealing with the new arrivals, no pun intended. Ma can go on about that too. But the truth is that without all this extra business, we’d have closed the park yonks ago.’

Looking around at the scene of dilapidation and disrepair, Manolis wanted to say perhaps that wasn’t such a bad idea.

‘Be a shame to lose all this local history,’ he said instead.

Rex pointed towards the caravan section. ‘See all those people over there? They’d be homeless. They’re all pensioners, and I don’t charge the oldies any rent.’

Manolis acknowledged the proprietor’s generosity. There were certainly a large number of discoloured caravans baking in the sun, the vast majority with long grasses and weeds encircling their jaundiced sides like funeral wreaths.

‘Your dad did the same, you know,’ Rex added.

Manolis looked puzzled. ‘The same what?’

‘Like I said yesterday, when someone couldn’t afford to pay their bill at the milk bar, Con let them eat for free.’

A memory cut across Manolis’s mind. It was of hushed conversations by the cash register, embarrassment, then understanding and kindness. He smiled.

‘That reminds me,’ he said. ‘I ended up going past Dad’s old shop today. You wouldn’t happen to remember its name?’

Rex’s knees made a cracking sound as he stood. He stretched and scratched.

‘I’m pretty sure it was the Manhattan Café,’ he said. ‘No wait, the Niagara Café. Something American, anyway.’

‘Really, an American name…? I remember Dad cooking American food, British food, Australian. Didn’t realise he went the whole hog and called the café something American too. You sure it wasn’t something Greek, like the Parthenon or Olympia?’

A gear clicked in Manolis’s brain. Niagara indeed sounded familiar.

‘The name reflected most of the food,’ Rex explained. ‘I remember your dad tried adding traditional Greek food to the menu a few times, things like stuffed peppers, moussaka, even souvlaki. But people didn’t like it, they complained, said it was too oily and too rich. So he stopped.’

Manolis didn’t recall that. He certainly remembered his father’s vegetable garden, which produced tomatoes that tasted like real tomato, and eating Greek food with his parents. Roasted gemista vegetables, tomatoes and peppers filled with mincemeat and rice and mint. Spanakopita, spinach pie. Dolmades, which even Manolis helped make, collecting vine leaves bigger than his hands from the neighbourhood bushes. But it was all prepared and eaten behind closed doors, away from prying, judging eyes.

‘Greek food was considered peasant food,’ Rex added. ‘No one wanted it.’

That all changed in the city. Building on his experiences at the Niagara Café, Con ran a successful Greek restaurant serving authentic Greek fare for which people paid top dollar. His son waited tables there too, the handsome gadabout in a crisp white shirt and tireless charmer of flirtatious female diners. Con would’ve preferred his son take over the business, but the police academy – the chance to protect and serve the public – proved too strong an allure. The café was never meant to be inherited and was purely to lay a foundation in the new country. But the restaurant was different; it was something more legitimate and long-term. Con was understandably disappointed with his son’s career choice but supported him nonetheless, as any loving parent would.

Manolis stared at Rex blankly. ‘I better go,’ he said.

‘Go? But Ma’s cooking her famous lamb curry tonight. It melts in your mouth.’

‘Thank you, but no. I need rest.’

Rex held Manolis’s gaze a moment before half-closing his eyes. ‘I understand.’ He sounded disappointed and resumed his seat. ‘We’ll see you later then, Kojak.’

‘See you.’

The blackened shell of the Val remained beside the sheriff ’s office. A burnt smell hung in the air, the wreck still releasing toxic vapours. Manolis sat on the verandah and rolled his nightly smoke. Expelling his own noxious air, he pictured his father doing the same, hunched over a horseracing form guide, studying it fastidiously, making his selections with the precision of a surgeon.

‘Signomi, Baba. And sorry about the car too.’

Manolis had usually visited Con in hospital during the early evenings. He often found him sitting up in bed, staring into space, or sleeping. Maria sat there for hours waiting for him to wake up. She was then barked at for doing something incorrectly or not to his liking, and limped home in disgust and disappointment. Manolis knew that much of his father’s anger was frustration at himself, at his ageing body failing him. As hard as it was to witness, Manolis knew it was healthy. It was a spark. It was life.

But it was also wrong. Having given up her entire day, Maria often shambled home in the winter chill wondering why she’d bothered. And yet, she stayed devoted to the very end. Although Maria often drove her son crazy with her old-fashioned ways, Manolis remained firmly of the view that Greek women were the strongest on the planet because they’d endured a lifetime of Greek men.

With a light sigh of contentment, and a pang of guilt, Manolis extinguished his cigarette butt. He took out his notepad and wrote his thoughts in preparation for the next day. Unclicking his biro, he went inside and showered with his eyes closed, imagining the streams of water as pummelling rocks. For a brief moment, just before he fell asleep, Manolis thought he smelt the moisturiser his wife normally applied before bed each night.

His furry possum friend did not visit that night, probably still scared away by the fumes and the fear of fire. But the sound of explosions came again, in the near distance, somewhere in town. Manolis stepped outside for a better listen and look, but by then the world had gone quiet. The quick series of bangs, two nights in a row, left him pondering their significance.