Chapter 30

MANOLIS PROMPTLY FELL asleep in Kerr’s achingly comfortable bed. But his slumber was brief, his sore ribs donkey kicking him out of unconsciousness every time he rolled over. He heard the midnight fireworks again, closer now, only several streets away. Another shipment had arrived.

In the morning, the light through the curtains was thin, aquatic, the house several degrees cooler. Sitting up in bed, Manolis felt a dark and medieval pain muscle through his body. He rubbed his sleep-stained eyes, waited a beat, then gently rose to his full height, stretching every angry sinew.

After changing back into his own clothes, which had been magically washed and dried overnight, he went searching for his colleague and host. He overheard her on the other side of a bedroom door, speaking gently. Manolis didn’t want to intrude; he only wanted to give his thanks and bid her adieu until the station. In the end, he nudged the door open. Through the crack, he saw Kerr with her arm around her shrunken, blanketed mother, sitting up in bed, stroking her grey hair and gently asking, ‘Do you remember?’ over and over. Her mother’s eyes were closed, and she was breathing deeply. Kerr looked over, acknowledged Manolis through the gap. The detective nodded and quietly let himself out.

He walked to the station, the movement in his arms and legs making him feel instantly better. Breathing deeply, he filled his lungs with fresh country air. As usual, the day was inexorable, cloudless, the mercury cocked and ready to soar. The streets were empty, a great hush having fallen over the town. Manolis pictured Ida Jones with her cricket stump on her way to steal her morning paper. He thought about Rex and needing to explain why he was now walking and not driving.

As he rounded the corner into Endeavour Street, his vision became reality: Ida, splintered stump in one hand, newspaper in the other, head down, goitre out, plodding. Manolis thought the end of her stump looked decidedly sharpened, as if she’d whittled it to a deadly sabre point. When she finally raised her head and stump to face the oncoming threat, she recognised Poirot instantly and referred to him as ‘the Arab’.

‘You know, Inspector, something occurred to me after you left,’ she said. ‘There’s been a stoning in Cobb before.’

Manolis stopped.

‘It was a long time ago,’ said Ida, her fleshy turkey throat gobbling.

He pressed her for details: year, location, victim, perpetrator. There was every chance the old lush was imagining her today as yesterday, and in fact simply remembering the case of Molly Abbott. Or it may have just been the gin talking.

‘Long time ago,’ Ida repeated. ‘Happened outside town, late one night.’ She sounded utterly convinced by what she remembered, even though it was little.

‘Another stoning…? Are you sure, Mrs Jones?’

She didn’t reply, walked on, stump by her side. Her civic duty completed, she now had drinking to do.

MANOLIS’S ROUTE PROVED to be surprisingly direct thanks to some navigational tool long dormant in his subconscious brain. Unsurprisingly, the station was locked, empty. He sat on the steps and rolled the meditative cigarette he’d foregone the night before. He savoured the taste as if it was his last. You never know, he reminded himself.

He momentarily mused on Ida’s incredible claim of a previous stoning, before the two key suspects in the case of Molly Abbott re-entered his mind. As far as he knew, Ahmed and Cook were the last two people to see the murdered schoolteacher alive. One was a desperate individual with the relevant background to commit such an execution. The other occupied the conspicuous position of ex-lover and almost boastfully had no alibi.

Ahmed’s story and plight tore at Manolis most of all. To have endured all that he had, survived, and now to find himself where he was. Maybe Ahmed should’ve stayed in Greece, thought Manolis. Maybe Con should have too. Quietly, Manolis was immensely proud of the response by his grandfather’s country to the refugee crisis, his chest swelling with robust Greek blood. But, deep down, somewhere near his bile duct, dwelled the shame that he carried at his own country’s reaction.

Ida’s recollection continued to niggle at him like a horsefly bite. ‘An earlier stoning,’ he repeated to himself. Was that really possible? He challenged himself, forced himself to think. He couldn’t get a handle on things and swore that something didn’t add up. He made a mental note to research the possibility with police records in the city.

Sparrow arrived in his jalopy, eased up outside the station with a mechanical shuffle. His face was even more swollen with an extra day’s coagulation of blood, purple golf balls now clinging to his eye and cheek.

‘Look away. I’m hideous.’

‘Horrific,’ said Manolis.

‘It was always gonna get worse before it got better,’ Sparrow said heavily. ‘How’d you go yesterday? And hey, where’s your car?’

Taking up position in the tearoom, Manolis briefed him on the interviews.

Sparrow squared his jaw and helped himself to jerky. He chewed thoughtfully and deliberately through the inflammation.

‘I’ve heard of that Pommy bloke,’ he said, before adding, ‘I’m not so sure about him.’

‘How’d you mean?’

A blank expression washed across Sparrow’s face; he was clearly scanning for facts to back his swift character assessment. Finally, he shook his swollen head.

‘Dunno. Can’t place him. Maybe that’s the problem, yair. He’s neither here nor there. Plus he’s a whitefella. And not just any whitefella, he’s the very first whitefella who invaded my people’s country, an Englishman. I mean, c’mon, even his name is Cook.’

Manolis chuckled. ‘That never occurred to me. Related to Captain James, you reckon?’

Sparrow went quiet a moment. ‘Gotta be, direct line. Did he tell you what he was in for?’

The detective looked at him with minor alarm. ‘Arson,’ he replied tentatively.

‘Really?’ Sparrow snorted a laugh. ‘Arson, eh…’

‘No?’

‘I heard aggravated assault. Bit different to arson.’

Manolis stared into space, worry etched on his brow. Had it all been a lie, a precisely honed charade? He could normally tell fact from fiction but ever since arriving in Cobb, he felt out of his depth.

‘There’s all sorts of hardcore felons and thugs at the brown house,’ Sparrow added. ‘I’m talkin’ killers, rapists, paedos, kidnappers, dealers. All mixin’ with the nice brown folk.’

‘What, they’re all in there together?’

‘They used to be in protective custody in prison, then in a separate segregated unit at the brown house. But not anymore. Some are still awaiting their trials.’

‘And they let these people roam free through the town?’

Sparrow paused. ‘No one knows that about ’em,’ he said quietly. ‘Outta sight, outta mind. The paedos are the worst. The reffos who have kids ’specially don’t appreciate bein’ housed with ’em. Can you imagine that, havin’ kids and a paedo sleepin’ a few metres away? You’d never rest.’

Strange, Manolis thought. That wasn’t how Cook had described the felons at the detention centre; he’d described them as summary offenders, speeding tickets and vandals.

Manolis hitched up his trouser legs, showed his torn knees. Sparrow regarded them through pained, puffy eyes before looking away with disdain.

‘You’ll survive,’ he exhaled.

As Manolis remembered the damaged vehicle, a vague panic buzzed inside his chest. He stood with purpose, gave his bony knuckles a brisk crack.

‘Come on,’ he said. ‘I need a lift.’

SPARROW CHEWED AS he drove, one lazy finger nudging the wheel, steering with as little effort as possible. Manolis scratched at his dark dusting of new beard and eyed the road with an intense focus. The roos were retreating with the rising sun, looking for anything that cast a shadow. Manolis asked where the other cops were. Sparrow said Kerr had the day off and that Fyfe would be in later. The detective wanted to ask Fyfe how his investigation was progressing and what he’d learnt.

Manolis finally brought up Ida’s vague recollection of a stoning from yesteryear.

‘The old bat’s brain has rotted,’ Sparrow replied. ‘Or finally been pickled in all that gin.’

‘So you don’t remember one happening, or hearing about one?’

Sparrow shook his head. ‘Another stoning…? Are you serious? I’d bloody remember something like that.’

As they approached a sharp bend in the road, Manolis felt a clot of heat form at the back of his head. Pinpricks of sweat erupted on his forehead and the nape of his neck. It was an emotional reaction, the fresh memory of trauma. Having assiduously scanned the scrub by the roadside, his eyes following the wayward tyre tracks, he seemed to lose his bearings the further his gaze wandered from the road.

‘Here,’ he said uneasily. ‘Stop here.’

Sparrow pulled over. Manolis got out and started walking, then stopped. He eyed the land, suddenly unfamiliar.

‘You okay, boss?’ Sparrow asked.

Manolis touched his throbbing temple as if calling up a memory. What else was he forgetting?

‘I’m fine,’ he said. ‘Just stood up too quickly.’

He walked on, muttering to himself in a combination of Greek and English, retracing the path of what may have been his last ride. He was shocked to see how far he’d travelled, the land having blurred past in mere seconds. He had to stop on several occasions, turn and look over his shoulder, then forward again, to ensure he was on the right path. For a moment, he thought his concussion was more serious and more delayed than he could have possibly suspected. He cursed his addled brain and walked on, soon jogging, past tyre marks and scattered car parts. Finally, on seeing the executioner tree, he ran with relief.

The wreck remained in place, now part of the landscape itself. Bending down, Manolis examined the wheels first, looking for weeping brake fluid and stripped chassis paint. But there was no fluid, and the paint remained. It could always have been that the brakes had just worn away. It did happen. There was only one way to find out.

Easing himself down lightly, mindful of his tender ribs and stinging knees, Manolis squeezed his cumbersome frame beneath the crumpled chassis. The brake lines were hidden at first, indistinct and unnaturally contorted from the impact. But then he saw them, and their condition was unequivocal.

They had been severed, their hollow black ends appearing like sinkholes to hell. But had they been cut with a blade or snapped by the force of the accident? The latter was certainly a possibility.

‘Only one way to find out,’ Manolis told himself.

He had to stretch his arm further and run a callused fingertip along the brake line’s exposed nerve endings to diagnose.

Feeling the smoothness of its edge, he smiled grimly.