Chapter 41

MANOLIS CLUTCHED AT his ribs, winced in pain. It especially hurt to climb stairs, which left him short of breath. But as the hospital lift was still stuck between floors, he had no choice.

With the local community keen for closure, Molly’s funeral had been planned for some time and able to happen swiftly. The church ceremony was sparsely attended; word had spread of what had happened. Principal Ian Searle delivered a short eulogy in the echoing nave of Saint Matthew’s, repeating almost verbatim his witness testimony to police. The pine coffin was painted a bright sunshiny yellow. Manolis was a pallbearer along with Searle and two detention centre guards, their imposing bulk finally put to good use. Onions didn’t attend, which Manolis noted. Joe Shrewsbury sat in the last pew and took regular swigs from a paper bag bottle of whisky.

Molly was buried in the family plot in the adjoining cemetery, next to her parents Graham, the war hero and alderman, and Edith, the housewife. It was less than a hundred metres from where her life had ended ten days prior. There were no roses – Molly hated those. Wearing a corn-yellow tie loaned to him, Lee Francis Cook tossed a red gerbera into the grave instead. The guards shovelled dirt on top, tiny rocks raining down on the coffin like hailstones.

Pushing through the heavy double doors, Manolis entered the intensive care unit. It looked more like an ordinary ward, such was the level of understaffing and lack of resources. Jaundiced yellow light pooled across the linoleum floor. Machines beeped mournfully, as if needing their own beeping machines. He’d tried to visit earlier but had not been allowed by staff due to the extent of the injuries.

He found a nurse, asked politely. She had a surgical mask around her neck held in place with rubber bands and wore smudged red lipstick. Coughing, she consulted the various scraps of paper in her pocket, and then pointed to a blue curtain hanging in the furthest corner.

Clutching the curtain’s rumpled edge, Manolis braced himself for what was on the other side. He flung it open with a single, decisive motion.

The constable lay in traction, swollen eyes closed tight. Sparrow breathed steadily, chest barely moving. A slow digital beeping echoed from a nearby machine. His neck was fixed in a medieval brace.

Manolis stood beside the bed, folded his hands respectfully in front of his waist, and exhaled heavily. He looked down on Sparrow like a loving parent would a sick child. Feeling a presence, the young Aboriginal man stirred, flicked his eyes open. A slow but reassuring smile crawled across his blue lips.

‘Serves you right for jumping from moving vehicles, Constable Smith,’ Manolis said.

‘Yair,’ Sparrow croaked. ‘But they were driving like bloody loonies. I felt safer taking my chances with the road instead of a tree or roo.’

Manolis wanted to tell him he was proven right. Instead, he suggested that Sparrow ‘go buy a lottery ticket’.

‘Prob’ly, good idea,’ he said. ‘Then I can retire early, and stop having all this bloody fun.’

‘What did the docs say?’

‘Just a few scratches. I’ll be fine.’

Manolis rolled his eyes. He conveyed mild amusement but felt grave concern.

‘I’ll be fine,’ Sparrow repeated.

Manolis touched Sparrow’s arm, transferred warmth into his cold skin.

‘I’m pleased, mate. Can I get you anything?’

Sparrow shook his head. ‘Thanks for not letting me cark it. Yer blood’s worth bottlin’.’

‘Be seeing you.’

Sparrow gave an unconvincing thumbs-up, closed his eyes and slept.

Following the unmissable sound of torturous coughing, Manolis relocated the nurse, made a second enquiry. This time, he had to show his badge. The patient, he was told, was on heavy morphine.

Behind another blue curtain, a pair of bloodshot eyes stared at a hole in the ceiling. Manolis stood at the foot of the bed, his face hard-boiled.

‘Rex, do you know where you are?’

The vacant red eyes drifted, met his gaze. Rex’s head was bandaged like a clumsy turban, his wounds crusty with yellow pus and dried blood. Mournful streaks of silver ran down his face. Given the lack of hospital hygiene, Manolis was more concerned about the risk of infection than he was for Rex’s injuries. Looking down, he noticed the hairless patch of skin on Rex’s arm that he’d seen the day he arrived in Cobb. Rex had claimed it was due to a burn as a child. Manolis now realised it was where he’d hung the gaffer tape during the stoning, before ripping it off.

‘Rex,’ Manolis repeated. ‘Where are you?’

Rex moistened dry lips, squinted. ‘Con… Is that you, mate?’

The bed’s side rails were up. Manolis leant in, cranked the handle and reluctantly raised Rex’s head with three firm jolts.

The detective was dismayed. Despite days of recovery, the old man’s brain was still scrambled. Manolis had prepared a list of charges including fraud, tampering with evidence, obstruction of justice, and interfering with a corpse. He thought it still possible that Molly’s death was murder, but decided not to pursue the charge because of the element of doubt. Not that there was any point placing Rex under arrest now. He would leave that to a later time, assuming Rex regained his faculties.

Manolis eyed the old man directly, searching for an approach. Molly’s phone records had revealed the nuisance calls were from Rex, probably harassing his wayward daughter-in-law for helping a desperate brown man with his visa application. For an exiled politician plotting a triumphant return to power, that was unthinkable.

‘Con? Is that you?’

Manolis was ready to turn, walk away. He was disappointed and dissatisfied. But then, he pulled up the plastic visitor’s chair and sat. And for no reason other than his own amusement, he decided to play along.

‘Yeah, yeah, mate. It’s me, it’s Con. Come to see how you’re going. How you feeling?’

Without warning, Rex started to become agitated. He rocked from side to side and turned his neck in every direction. Manolis wondered whether it was the medication and considered summoning the nurse to administer a sedative. But Rex soon calmed and began babbling under the cloud of concussion.

‘Have you killed him, Con? What have you done, have you killed Dingo?’

Manolis arched an interested eyebrow. Killed what? A dingo? Or did he mean… Jimmy Dingo?

Speaking with no teeth, Rex was hard to understand. But he continued.

‘Stabbed him in the thigh? Oh God, Con… no.’

Manolis felt pinned to his chair, restrained by the chains of history. When he finally tried to speak, his voice became a dry whisper in his throat.

‘Rex? The hell are you saying?’

The old proprietor swallowed painfully, his mind apparently disappearing into hazy, grey thought. After a moment, a slow, gradual headshake emerged that filled Manolis with dread.

‘No, mate, no. I don’t understand and don’t think I ever will. Even if your sister was pregnant, even if that’s what they do in your bloody village. You didn’t have to kill the poor bastard.’

Manolis stared at the floor in stunned silence. Over the past few days, Con had visited his son in increasingly more detailed dreams, appearing as a young chef, a dying invalid, a gaunt spectre. Manolis wanted them to end.

The nurse had told him that Rex remembered nothing of the moments after the accident, the memories having already atomised inside his mind. He’d hit his head hard and would be experiencing the effects of delayed concussion for some time. But Manolis had also heard of people who’d lost their short-term memory and yet regained incredible long-term.

Rex coughed, his lungs rattling. Manolis wanted to dismiss his words as gibberish, the output of a damaged brain. But terrible suspicions bloomed in his mind. And then the old man said something that Manolis couldn’t ignore.

‘Go, Con, go before first light. Take your family and go. Leave the knife. I’ll bury it where we said.’

‘Where? Rex, where?’

Rex didn’t respond. Manolis looked at him a long time, at pupils like drill bits.

What was he supposed to do now? He was haunted by people either dead or dying. Should he challenge his mum? It was futile; she would stay silent, out of respect for the dead. Was this the ‘other stoning’ from a long time ago that Ida had been referring to? It had to be. Could he still save this godforsaken town? How…?

Blinking, he stood abruptly, dragging his chair back across the lino with a grating drone. He leant in close to Rex’s face, tasted his morphine breath. They spoke a while longer in near whispers until Manolis swished the curtain.

‘Rest up, old friend,’ he said. ‘It was good to see you.’

Without another word, Rex watched him leave.

MANOLIS DROVE TO the station in Sparrow’s Ford sedan, the passenger seat still stained dark with Rex’s trauma blood. He found Kerr manning the front desk, looking bored, quietly writing reports. The sight of Manolis made her smile, adjust her ponytail. Approaching the counter, he was cautious, almost self-conscious.

‘They pick him up?’ he asked, referring to correctional officers and her former boss.

‘Yeah, the screws are transferring him now.’

‘Good.’ Manolis was satisfied. The thin blue line, while not entirely restored, had at least been outlined. Detective Inspector Porter had been very pleased to receive Manolis’s recent phone call, and with the final outcome of the case. Those higher up were less impressed; a mess now needed to be cleaned up.

‘What about Omari’s widow and daughter?’ Manolis asked.

‘They’re with a host family in a safe house.’ Kerr gave him the address. ‘Physically, they’re doing well, eating and drinking. But still overcome with grief. The social workers visit each day. Fortunately, there’s strong community support, they’re rallying behind them.’

Manolis’s eyes softened. ‘I’ll try to drop in on my way back to the city to check on them. And then do the same for Fyfe, deliver some flowers and chocolates.’

‘No flies on you, eh, sport,’ she said, folding her arms.

Manolis lifted his shoulders. ‘I have my job, my family. And you do too.’

‘But we need a new sergeant…’ Her words were earnest.

He came around the counter. She uncrossed her arms, let them fall by her sides. He extended his hand. She looked at it, at him, took it, shook. After a moment of awkwardness, they hugged. He smelt her shampoo, eucalyptus and tea-tree extract. He let go first. She held on a little longer.

He wanted to explain things. To talk about how returning home had made him fully appreciate his immigrant roots and wild refugee blood. To say how naïve he’d been in not imagining how this case would challenge his values and beliefs. He felt angry and ashamed at what he’d witnessed, as if he was unknowingly part of some perverse social experiment. He wanted to mention his son and wife and how much they meant to him.

But something stopped Manolis from saying anything, the words turning to dust in his throat.

‘I reckon you’ll do fine,’ he said instead. ‘You’re ready, and I’ll make sure that’s very clear in my report.’

The hint of a smile appeared on her lips, her eyes half-closing.

‘When this place wears you down,’ he added, ‘and it will, come visit.’

Kerr scanned his face for sincerity. He tried to make his eyes clear, calm, his forehead released of tension.

‘Same for the city,’ she replied, ‘and you.’

‘Don’t worry, I’m not finished here yet.’

THE DETENTION CENTRE was quiet; business as usual. Manolis summoned Onions from the front gate. He was again forced to sit and wait, watched like a bug under a magnifying glass by a trio of sunburnt guards who whispered and sneered. Deacon had a fresh black eye and mocked Manolis with his cut-down knife, holding it up and dangling it back and forth. The guards all had a good, hearty laugh. Manolis pitied them. These men were drunks, addicts, gamblers, perverts. They emerged from the fringes and ghettos, the slums and shadowlands. They’d been raised by television and befriended by Catholic priests. They spent hours in prison yards and before parole boards. And yet these were the same men who were now judging him. Manolis wanted to pulverise them with bare and bloodied fists, to string them up by their red and blue intestines.

He knew that Ahmed Omari’s memory would haunt him like those of so many others he’d been unable to save. They all became ghosts who hovered above his bed when he slept, who crawled into his ear and appeared in his dreams, his nightmares. He was often trying to save them there too, his conscience conspiring to somehow place them in further jeopardy. And when he failed them a second time, he woke breathless and gasping for air.

Onions arrived, black leather shoes polished to within an inch. He apologised for missing Molly’s funeral, explained that he’d had other important business to attend to.

‘It was unfortunate timing,’ he said.

Manolis approached the facility manager, stood in his personal space, their chests threatening to touch. The sum total of his message was three words, delivered with quiet and clinical precision.

‘Expect an investigation.’

Onions stared back coldly and breathed hot air from his nostrils.

MANOLIS RETURNED TO his car, reached into his pocket, and retrieved his tobacco and papers. He eyed them a moment, then screwed them into a tight ball and hurled them onto the floor.

Reaching into his other pocket, he found his phone. One bar of reception. It was enough.

‘Hello? Hello, Em…? Hi. Sorry it’s been a few weeks, and thanks for answering.’

They spoke a while. When Manolis finally hung up, he’d organised a weekend playdate at a suburban park, and had soft tears in his eyes.

Down the road, he stopped at the Cobb Friendly Grocer, helped himself to a shopping trolley with a wonky wheel. He traversed the aisles, bought bottles of tepid mineral water, expired blocks of dark chocolate, and a garden shovel from the same aisle as the rolls of gaffer tape. He paid an exorbitant outback sum and asked the pimple-faced attendant for directions.

Accelerating through town, Manolis passed groups of men swilling from bottles. Bins overflowed; loose newspapers blew, wandering the streets like stray dogs. He continued on through the settlement south of town, the one-room tenements, corrugated metal and wood scraps and earthen floors. He slowed at first but ultimately picked up speed when the locals showered his vehicle with cans, bottles and rocks.

Reaching his destination, first by car, then foot, Manolis cocked his elbow, drained half a water bottle with a sharp crack. The mineral belch that followed made the assembled kangaroos scatter in all directions. At least his ribs were pain free, for which he was grateful. Dark clouds were massing, the first Manolis had seen since leaving the city. In the middle distance, a cloudburst dumped precious rain onto the parched land.

Bending his back, he broke the earth in the scrub with his blade, and started digging.