Chapter 24

THIS TIME, ONIONS met Manolis at the front gate. Sparrow remained at the station, his swollen face making love to a packet of frozen peas, rapidly thawing and dripping.

‘Good morning, Detective,’ Onions chirped. ‘I trust you slept well.’

Manolis grunted. ‘When you wake up, it’s a good sleep.’

Onions smiled salesman teeth, unnaturally white. ‘I agree. I wake up every day and thank the Lord for the gift of life and this wonderful, safe country.’

‘Hmm, yes.’

‘I’m sorry I kept you waiting, I was receiving my daily sitrep.’

Manolis closed an eye in thought. It sounded like an exercise routine.

‘Situation report,’ Onions explained. ‘It’s an executive summary of all major incidents in the preceding twenty-four hours – adverse events, missed meals, behavioural management, that kind of thing. Fortunately, today is a good day.’ He again bared his teeth.

The logbook and CCTV footage from the night Molly died had been retrieved.

‘As it turns out, we actually had two people break curfew on Friday,’ Onions said, offering the thick, ink-stained notebook.

‘Sorry, two people?’

Manolis remembered the number of individuals that Searle claimed he’d seen with Molly on the Friday afternoon, and consulted his notes to recall their physical appearance.

‘It’s more common on weekends,’ Onions said.

From what Manolis had seen, there was very little distinction between weekdays and weekends in Cobb.

‘And you say you had a staff party on Friday night?’

‘Yes, due to changeover. But the gate was manned, always with two security guards.’

Manolis examined the logbook and was then shown the CCTV footage in a darkened back room. Due to the quality of the cameras, the images were of limited use. Faces were poor resolution and in variable light. He questioned the cauliflowereared guard on duty at the time; he confirmed the time of the entries in the book, then corroborated the grainy footage. It was only when he paid more careful attention to the names of the two detainees who had broken curfew that his eyes grew large. The names were distinctive alongside one another and masculine. His pulse sped up in the hollow of his throat.

‘I’d like to ask these two individuals to come down to the station for official questioning,’ he said to Onions.

The manager shook his head gently. ‘Afraid I can’t allow that. It’s not in our protocols.’

Manolis considered the manager, his starched white shirt and perfectly straight-hanging tie. ‘Then here,’ he said. ‘But I need somewhere secure, ideally a private room.’

Onions turned away, eyed the centre guardedly. A few seconds passed. Finally, he snapped his needle-like fingers. ‘Actually, on second thought… yes, I can approve an official escort to the station.’

Manolis was surprised. ‘No, here is perfectly fine. I’m flexible.’

‘No,’ Onions said firmly. ‘Your request can be arranged. I’ll organise the two men to be at the station within the hour. You can head back there now. Thank you and good day.’

He barked an order straight from the parade ground, and the bull-necked guard hurried away. Onions followed. Manolis watched them leave with a questioning, unsettled gaze.

ON HIS RETURN to the station, Manolis found the frozen peas sitting on the collapsible tearoom table, the bag now watery and malodorous in the heat. Sparrow had gone. Manolis guessed he might’ve left to fetch another variety of frozen vegetable or meat, but had more than likely gone home.

The detective cleaned up and prepared the tearoom for interview. He soon heard a large vehicle pulling up outside. Doors slammed; voices were raised, argumentative and full of protest. The station door was flung open, and a uniformed, sunglassed Deacon bundled a limp body inside, presenting it to Manolis like a beaten old tyre.

The man stopped arguing with Deacon the moment he saw Manolis. He was tall, slender, brown-skinned, with unkempt shaggy hair, and a thick moustache that concealed much of his mouth. The canyon of an old scar shone in the sunlight. He was just as Searle had described. The look on the man’s face was one of sheer terror, his eyes wide, his body not moving a muscle.

Manolis walked over to the window, peered through the open blinds. The darkened outlines of two individuals remained seated inside a four-wheel drive, unmoving.

He looked back to the moustachioed man and his squareshouldered escort. ‘Right this way,’ he said, showing them the tearoom.

Manolis sat, offered the man a flimsy plastic chair. He remained standing, frozen. But Deacon sat, lifted sunglasses onto his head, exhaled. He crossed a leg and made himself comfortable. Manolis fired him a cold stare.

‘I’d prefer to conduct the interview alone,’ he said.

Deacon smiled canine teeth. ‘Consider me his lawyer.’

Manolis considered him. ‘Well, because you’re very clearly not his lawyer, I’d appreciate if you sat over there,’ he said, indicating the furthest wall. ‘I’d like some privacy during questioning. This is a police station, not the detention centre, and this is now official police business.’ His voice was strong, categorical.

Deacon mumbled something under his breath and reluctantly dragged his garden furniture away. He lit a cigarette, repositioned the sunglasses onto his pushed-in face, and turned to the window.

Still standing, the detainee watched his private security escort closely, a grave look in his enormous white-rimmed eyes. He peered out the window as if checking that the street was empty, that he would be unseen by passers-by. Eventually, his gaze returned to Manolis, who again gestured to the chair.

The man did not move. His trust was not going to be won easily. Manolis reasoned that he had likely come from war, seen many dead. This was a streetwise tomcat he was trying to coax into being petted. Haunted eyes stared out at Manolis from a face lined beyond its years, gaunt, the body beneath it incredibly thin.

The detective fetched two mugs sitting upturned in the nearby sink. He rinsed them, filled them from the tap, offered one. The man stared, a statue.

‘Hello, Ahmed,’ said Manolis. ‘Would you like to sit down?’

The sound of his name elicited a sharp blink. Ahmed Omari took the mug cautiously and began to speak. He spoke hastily, the words falling out in imperfect English, broken and anaemic. The very first thing he said was:

‘You will help me?’

He pulled out a battered wallet and showed faded photos of the wife and young daughter he’d left behind in Iraq.

Manolis briefly forgot the investigation and went along with it, asking the relevant questions at the appropriate moments like a new acquaintance.

‘I was home eating dinner and then start to hear grenades. They come and beat my father and brother. They rape my wife and sisters, threaten to kill my daughter. So I go north to Turkey to find us new life. I am three years in refugee camp. They give me food, but local people come at night with guns, take the food. I am in prison for six months, tortured everywhere, my body. They pull out my two front teeth with pliers.’

He opened his mouth wide to reveal an empty black gap, the rugged pink endings of exposed gum. Manolis could not help but recoil. The surrounding teeth were dull and brown like old ivory; the overgrown moustache was strategic.

‘From Turkey, I pay money to go to Greece. Then plane to Malaysia and boat here.’

‘Why didn’t you stay in Malaysia?’ Manolis asked.

Ahmed shook his head wildly, his hair swishing from side to side.

‘Turkey is for escape. But Greece is for Europe, how to get to Germany and Denmark and Sweden. But is now very hard, it all changes. In Malaysia, we live in commune in Kuala Lumpur, put all refugees. Very tough life, fifty people use one toilet. Very dirty, unclean. We dig all day the fields for little money, then sleep on floor at night.’

‘Why did you come to Australia without documents?’ Manolis asked.

Ahmed shot out a long slender arm, pointing in a random direction, at an unseen force.

‘They take it. The smugglers when you get on boat. Many problems on boat, gangs take our bags and people who pretend they police. But they all liars and take our money, it was big plot between smugglers and gang.’

‘And what would’ve happened if you didn’t hand over your passport?’

Ahmed paused, exhaled, and said, ‘They kill me.’

His shoulders slumped like those of a man at the gallows. Dragging his feet across the floor, he finally sat down. Bending forward, he held his face in his hands as the dark memories came to him. Deacon, unmoved, smoked on.

Ahmed proceeded to detail a harrowing sea journey to Australia, in an old fishing boat overcrowded with Arabs, Kurds, Syrians, Afghans, Sudanese. Adrift for days, vomiting, sunburn, fever, drownings. Indonesian pirates boarded their boat, smashed their engine and left them to die, until they were rescued by the Australian navy.

‘You will help me?’ Ahmed asked again.

Manolis paused, wanting to choose his words carefully. Eventually, he asked Ahmed what would happen if he returned to his homeland.

Ahmed’s dark eyes froze with horror. ‘I can’t go home. They will shoot me dead in a day. We think Australia is the place of freedom. But what freedom? There are people in centre on their third and final asylum, like me. If that fails, then, we have no choice…’

‘No choice than what?’ Manolis asked.

Ahmed looked down at his hands, like claws. He spoke to them almost reluctantly. ‘Aintihar.’

Manolis shook his head. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t understand Arabic.’

Ahmed spoke again. ‘Suicide,’ he said gravely. ‘We not go home to die.’

His words settled in the room. They seemed almost to echo, resonating for longer than anything said before.

Manolis leant forward and placed his hands together in a contemplative pose.

‘You don’t want to do that. Think of your daughter.’

Ahmed met Manolis’s gaze, his eyes suddenly alive.

‘I do,’ he snapped. ‘Every day, I do, all the time. But we have no future here. Here is nothing, it is not even death.’

Ahmed stared at the floor, the dull coins of his eyes downcast and wet with unshed tears. Manolis sat upright, digesting what the detainee had said. Was this man a killer? Could he kill? What life had he led before arriving illegally? How much was truth and how much lies?

‘I feel I go crazy,’ Ahmed said softly. ‘I don’t want to go back to Iraq as crazy man. Dying is better.’

Ahmed’s eyes were soon closed, his voice mumbling. Deacon turned, fired a glance, then returned to staring at the vacant street. It took a moment before Manolis realised what the young asylum seeker was doing.

Ahmed was praying.