Chapter 33

THEY STORED THE items in the evidence locker. As Manolis had anticipated, the seized gaffer tape was identical to the roll found at the scene. But as Sparrow had pointed out, the same brand of tape was available at the local supermarket, and otherwise ‘all over town’.

Manolis decided against leaving the phone in an evidence room of questionable security – the device’s contents were far too valuable. He kept it, along with Molly’s identification, safely inside his shirt pocket. He’d already placed a call to the phone company to chase up its records.

While Sparrow sat outside and smoked, Manolis made the most of the opportunity to pore over all the evidence with fresh eyes. He scrutinised the items under the annoying flicker of the fluorescent tube. The tape, the Bowie knife, the rocks, the shopping trolley with its jammed coin all still appeared as generic as they had the first time. Inroads had been made with evidence found at the victim’s home and in a suspect’s possession, but Manolis ideally wanted something at the crime scene to better link the investigation directly with the murderer. Because the scene had not been secured, the items recovered from the area behind the oval were his best bet. And it was the rocks that intrigued him most of all.

He acknowledged that they were a random selection, literally the garden variety. But he doubted the ability of any killer to have simply collected them at the scene without some prior scavenging and storage. He wondered whether a witness might step forward who had seen someone gathering rocks. At the time, such behaviour would not have aroused suspicion, but it would be of great relevance now. Surely there had been some preparation involved. Or had there? Manolis doubted himself. How hard would it be to gather rocks?

Sparrow appeared, leant against the doorframe, watched. Manolis’s other thought was of a landscape supply centre or nursery in town, if they had any record of sales or perhaps even stolen supplies. Sparrow laughed at the mere suggestion of such legitimate, worthwhile businesses in Cobb. According to the young constable, the only plants that thrived in town were ‘weeds and pot’.

‘C’mon,’ he said. ‘I’m hungry. Let’s get some tucker.’

Manolis exhaled, stood from the old banker’s chair. ‘Good idea. But first…’

REX AND VERA were sitting down for supper when Manolis arrived to apologise for the loss of their pickup truck. This time, there was no turning down their welcome and hospitality, particularly when a casserole dish overflowing with Ma’s famous lamb curry was presented as the centrepiece. Manolis thought the meal was a rather unnatural shade of orange. Adding to the sickening aspect was the wooden picnic table, which appeared a watery shade of green beneath the corrugated plastic pergola. Rex completed the dining setting with his home-brewed longnecks, to which Sparrow helped himself without invitation.

Rex took the news of his truck with indifference. ‘It was a bomb,’ he said. ‘Just glad you’re not hurt, Kojak, especially after what happened to your car. I’ll go collect the wreck sometime, maybe get some scrap money for it.’ He smiled.

Manolis was curious about this reaction, but at the same time unsurprised. The truck had been a heap.

After saying grace, Vera pushed hefty spoonfuls of goopy curry into Manolis’s bowl. He resisted and stocked up on fluffy white rice and emerald-green peas. ‘Mm,’ he hummed, ‘delicious, Mrs Boyd.’

She smiled contentedly, pleased to have again won him over with her honest country cooking. ‘It’s my own recipe, yep. The lamb’s from the abattoir, with my own secret blend of herbs and spices. One hundred per cent local, all natural tucker.’

Rex spoke with mouth full. ‘I reckon that’s why your dad’s food at the café was so tasty,’ he told Manolis. ‘Back then, he would’ve sourced only local ingredients.’

Manolis recalled his father’s cooking. Looking out across the barren land, he tried to picture a thriving vegetable garden. For a brief moment, he could taste the richness of a slow-cooked moussaka on his lips, only to be left with an aftertaste of nostalgia, sadness.

‘It’s been good to come back to Cobb, to see the place where I have so many memories,’ he said. ‘I can still remember kicking a football with Dad on the oval.’

Sparrow laughed sarcastically and wiped the corners of his mouth. He chugged his ale and, suitably refreshed, loosened his tongue.

‘Look, sorry. That just reminds me why I became a copper. Ya see, I never got to kick a footy with me old man, cos me old man was dead. Most of me family died young. And they didn’t just die – they were killed by whitefellas. Whitefellas who then got off scot-free. Like the bloke who stabbed Jimmy Dingo.’

The mention of Dingo’s name seemed to suck the air from the party.

Refilling his stein, Sparrow detailed the ritualistic, coldblooded killing of his kin in retribution for such transgressions as ‘bashing a whitefella’ or ‘sleeping with a white woman’ or ‘spearing a milking cow’ or simply ‘being Aboriginal’.

‘Coppers didn’t treat the deaths seriously,’ he said. ‘Bastards turned a blind eye. Dingo was the worst, though, cos the cops bloody blamed us. They wouldn’t listen when we said it wasn’t our tribal punishment.’

Rex scoffed. ‘What crap. I know the events you’re talking about, and they were a hundred and fifty years ago.’

‘No,’ said Sparrow firmly, angrily. ‘This was less than fifty years ago, one generation, especially Dingo.’

‘No it bloody wasn’t —’

‘So, Detective,’ said Vera, ‘there’s good news, I hear.’

Manolis sat forward with interest. ‘What’s that?’

Her lips formed a tight smile. ‘A likely arrest. One of those reffos up at the brown house. We’re so very, very relieved. Patrick would be too.’

The detective stiffened, feeling wary. ‘An arrest? Who told you that?’

There was a nervy pause as glances volleyed around the table. Manolis had reminded his deputies on several occasions that their work was confidential, that there was to be no gossip.

It was Rex’s soothing voice that finally restored calm. ‘Everyone in town knows,’ he said coolly. ‘It’s all anyone’s talking about. I just hope the bloke’s in a secure part of the complex in case a lynch mob turns up.’

‘Boat people who arrive without paperwork should be sent home without hesitation, end of story,’ Vera spat. ‘And particularly if they’re caught destroying documents. It looks as if they’ve got something to hide.’

Manolis coughed, cleared his throat. ‘I actually think you’ll find that many “irregular maritime arrivals” are threatened with death if they don’t hand their passports over.’

Rex extended an index finger. ‘Don’t tell me about the hard time you’ve had, sonny boy,’ he said to an invisible new arrival. ‘The first thing you’ve shown me is that you have no respect for the laws of this great land. Why should we let you in? End of story.’

Manolis said that people who suddenly fled their countries were likely unable to gather the means to establish their identities.

Holding up his wallet, Rex said, ‘What, they can’t pick up one of these before they leave the house?’

Sparrow moaned and drank more beer.

Vera gesticulated wildly, almost theatrically. ‘This country’s had droughts, fires, floods and cyclones, our kids are self-harming and suiciding, and where’s all our money going?’ she asked, before answering her own question. ‘To countries who wish to cause us harm, and to housing queue-jumping criminals.’

Clearing his throat again, Manolis said, ‘A lot of these asylum seekers are stateless.’

Rex shook his head. ‘I’m sorry, but that’s crap too. No one’s stateless, everybody comes from somewhere. Asylum seeking is organised crime. It’s a racket, worth hundreds of millions.’

‘A Royal Commission into Islam,’ Vera proclaimed. ‘That’s what we need, a bloody Royal Commission. Molly’s death can be the reason. Can you order that, Detective?’

Manolis gave her a long, ponderous stare. ‘Leave it with me.’ A blowfly circled his head sluggishly; he batted it away like a floating balloon.

‘Don’t get me wrong, Detective, I’m a strong believer in being compassionate, yep,’ Vera said. ‘But our compassion should end at our borders.’

He wanted to ask when compassion had become a geographical concept, and what was its precise latitude and longitude. Instead, he ate some peas.

‘If we take in these people, we encourage more to come,’ said Rex. ‘Cut off one head, another grows in its place.’

Manolis was loath to admit it, but the old man made practical sense. The global flow of human traffic was enormous, and criminals were exploiting and profiting with every rickety boatload.

‘But have you actually seen the detainees’ conditions?’ Manolis asked. ‘I’m not sure where you heard they have air conditioning and flat-screen TVs. I’ve just seen the exact opposite. In some respects, it’s more depressing than prison.’

Rex swallowed another mouthful of syrupy lamb. ‘I don’t believe anyone who says detention centres are harmful to a person’s mental state. What mental conditions did they have before they came here?’

The detective found himself nodding. For all Rex’s intolerance, at times he came across as rather informed.

‘In that respect, you’re right,’ Manolis said. ‘It’s likely that most experienced significant trauma before their flight – torture, imprisonment, separation, rape, kidnap, murder. And probably deprivation of food, water, homelessness. But to make it worse through housing them in cruel, inhumane conditions…’

Rex listened with reluctant ears, his brow tense. ‘Sorry, but I still think a lot of it is behavioural. They don’t get their own way so they act up. It’s the same with children.’

‘Hmm,’ said Manolis, remembering Onions’s insider assessment.

‘Pa’s right,’ Vera added. ‘When you stop the boats, you stop the deaths, yep.’ The words sounded like poison on her lips.

Sparrow sucked his teeth. ‘Dunno about that, Mrs Boyd. They still die. You just stop them dying at sea.’

She looked flustered, her face pink with defiance, anger.

‘Well a woman is dead,’ she said flatly, voice controlled. ‘And not just any woman – she was our lovely schoolteacher and daughter-in-law. Here, in our little town, stoned to her brutal death. And more will die. We’ve got a human bomb on our soil with this whatchamacallit, Sharia law. There’s absolutely nothin’ moderate about Islam; somebody needs to rewrite the Koran, write somethin’ more peaceful. Like the Bible.’

Sparrow laughed. ‘The Bible,’ he said, wiping his eyes, ‘as if. Fucking racists…’

The words had clearly been brewing in the young Aboriginal man’s throat for some time.

Rex turned, eyed him coldly. ‘Andrew,’ he said calmly, ‘criticism is not racism.’

The old man pushed away his empty plate and stood, turning his back on the dinner party and retreating into the confines of the office demountable, mumbling under his breath.

‘Pa’s right, yep,’ Vera said solemnly. ‘The word “racist” has lost its meaning nowadays. It’s just used to shut down free speech, you can’t say anything anymore without offending people.’

The table fell silent. Sparrow ignored their responses, turning sideways to stubbornly sip away at his beer and contemplate the vast nothingness of outback Australia. Vera watched him, unblinking, hateful. Manolis didn’t know where to look. On the one hand, his hosts had been hospitable and were entitled to their opinions, which at times made sense.

And on the other, young Sparrow had read his mind.

THE THREE OF them sat there for some time, listening to the sounds of early evening. In the near distance, a trash of currawongs cawed happily from the branches of a swaying gum. They fell comically from branch to branch, appearing inept, clumsy, even drunk, before something startled them and they shot into the air like tracer fire. Vera began clearing the table. Overhead, the bug zapper fizzed, claiming another victim in its deathly blue bulb.

Manolis prepared to excuse himself, the evening over, until Rex surprisingly reappeared in the doorway of the demountable. Sparrow, now smoking a slow cigarette, looked up languidly, then away again. Disregarding him, Rex approached the table and thrust an old photo into Manolis’s hand. ‘Your dad and me,’ he said. ‘At the migrant camp.’

Manolis raised his brows. ‘What migrant camp? You were with Dad at the camp here in Cobb?’

Rex looked surprised. ‘Thought you knew. I first met him there. We were all single men at the time, so the camp was it. Once you got married, you could leave. So when your mum arrived from Greece, your dad moved out, and they started the milk bar. The rest is history.’

Manolis looked at the photo. The black-and-white image was grainy and torn at one corner. It was actually of four men in shorts and sandals – three of them shirtless, one with a towel slung across his shoulders, one holding a broom – standing in front of what appeared to be an army barracks. Their faces were indistinct, in shadow, a sunny day, but their wide smiles were obvious, appearing proud and puckish. Rex pointed himself out – broad chest, hairy arms – and the man he identified as Manolis’s father. Manolis, who had seen photos of Con in younger days, instantly recognised him from his hawk nose and cleft chin.

‘Who are the other blokes?’ Manolis asked.

Rex re-examined the photo. ‘Can’t remember. Poles, Maltese, Slavs, could be anything. Everyone was from somewhere.’

Manolis paused to consider his immediate thought. ‘I didn’t realise you were from somewhere,’ he finally enquired.

Rex leant in close. ‘I’m Dutch,’ he said under his breath.

Sparrow’s cigarette glowed.

‘The camp was actually a pretty grim place,’ Rex added. ‘It was horrible to live in and with mostly bad people. Getting married was your ticket out.’

Vera, collecting the last of the beer-stained glasses, smiled broadly, her grin both exuberant and terrifying.

‘Too bloody right I was, yep,’ she said proudly. ‘Pa would be dead without me.’ They’d met at a bush dance one warm summer evening. ‘He was an excellent dancer,’ Vera added, gently pecking her husband on his sweaty bald head.

Sparrow groaned, clearly tired, bored, sickened. With one final cock of his elbow, he drained the dregs of his beer. He looked around to see if any more bottles were forthcoming. On seeing they weren’t, he seemed to decide he was weary of the conversation, and the evening.

‘I’ll come by in the mornin’,’ he told Manolis, standing, before turning to Rex and adding, ‘Thanks for the grub and grog.’

With the opportunity, Manolis also took his leave, asking if he could make a copy of the camp photo. Rex said he could have the original, that it was a time in his life he actually preferred to forget.

‘Ma’s right,’ he said. ‘She saved my life. And I am a bloody excellent dancer.’

Manolis thanked Rex for the photo, Vera for the meal, and Sparrow for the hard work and company. He took a few steps up the road before doubling back. Something had occurred to him.

‘I know there’s a Chinese laundry right next to my cabin, but I’d prefer to not have to mangle my clothes to get them clean. You wouldn’t happen to have a washing machine I could use?’

Rex chuckled, wiped a big finger across his top lip. He explained there was a small laundry room not far from the office, then showed Manolis the way. The room was locked overnight but would be open at first light. Clotheslines were out the back, pegs provided. Manolis thanked him. He said he had a week’s worth of sweaty shirts and was down to his last pair of clean jocks.

‘In this bloody heat, the first shirt you hang on the line will be dry by the time you hang the last,’ Rex said.

The brushtail possum was waiting for Manolis on his verandah, practically tapping its paw with impatience and hunger. Pleased to see his companion, he prepared another delicacy of stale crackers with peanut butter. Now familiar with the sweet and salty taste, the possum ate them heartily, even the tiny crumbs that fell around its paws. Manolis rolled his evening cigarette, smoked it as he watched. Above, the country sky at night began appearing, the stars and planets and moons.

‘You know, mate,’ Manolis said, ‘it’s actually not so bad out here, is it?’

The possum kept chewing.

Manolis looked again at the photo. How young his dad appeared, his brown face, bronzed torso, his whole body full of life and hope and vigour. How it would all fade to nothing.

Flicking his butt into the charred remains of his former car, Manolis sighed and went inside. He stripped, showered, and was in bed before he heard the first explosions announce the nightly narcotic shipment.

Closing his eyes, he let his mind wander, replaying the day’s events, the evidence, the conversations, things said, things left unsaid. He felt awful – a man he believed was innocent was being locked up and tortured by uniformed thugs, while the guilty party was free. Could it be Cook? A guard? Onions himself…? Manolis swore he was missing something, something significant; something didn’t fit. In the brief moments before he lost consciousness, as the darkness and silence closed in, he imagined his small sheriff’s office was the inside of a shipping container, and that his head was wrapped in a tight, suffocating hood.