Pat Dougan knocked loudly at the front door. When no-one answered, he made his way around the side of the hotel and tapped insistently on Anna’s window. She jumped out of bed and threw on a robe. Pulling the curtains aside, she saw him standing there, dark rings under his red eyes. She opened the window. He leaned in, firing words at her so rapidly she could barely make out what he was saying.
‘Gone . . . night . . . disappeared.’
‘Slow down, Pat. What are you talking about?’
‘It’s Max Schmidt.’ He took a deep breath. ‘Been missing since last night. No-one can find him.’
Anna bit her lip. She spoke slowly, trying to sound calm. ‘I’ll just get dressed, Pat. Can you meet me out the front in a couple of minutes?’
She threw on some clothes, brushed her hair and rushed outside. Pat was standing beside Fergus, whose face was unshaven and ashen.
‘Now, tell me what’s happened,’ she said.
Fergus lived in the shack next door to Max Schmidt. He took a step closer to Anna and spoke in a soft but steady voice. ‘No-one really knows. He was due to leave for Newcastle Waters early today, being a Monday and all, you know, on his usual trip flogging his wares. Well, I saw him getting things ready yesterday early evening, loading up the truck.’
‘It was still there in the morning, later than usual,’ Pat said. ‘Fergus went to check why he hadn’t left yet. Couldn’t find him anywhere.’
‘It was like something gave ’im a huge fright and he just bolted. As if all these clouds approaching scared him off. Left everything where it was, even his dinner. Not that I love the bloke, or anything – don’t get me wrong – but that doesn’t mean I’d wish the old kraut dead.’ Fergus turned to Anna. ‘No offence to you.’
‘Let’s be honest, Fergus – between you and me,’ Pat chimed in, ‘it wouldn’t be such a tragedy to see the bugger go.’
‘I know, I know, he carries a lot of spleen, but no-one deserves to die out in the damn bush.’
‘How do you know he’s dead, Fergus?’ Anna asked.
Fergus coughed. ‘Well, I s’pose I don’t.’
Around noon Officer Strehlow came trudging down the road, the sky behind him a turbid haze. A pistol was strapped to his side.
‘Seems his dog’s vanished, too.’
The policeman had driven all the way down from Mataranka after receiving a telegram Pat Dougan had sent via Fergus. He waited for someone to say something. Tom O’Hara stood rooted to the spot, wearing tattered overalls and dusty boots. Eyes watery and red, he chewed on tobacco, his arms folded across his chest. Alter swatted mosquitoes from his face. Anna jingled the keys in her apron pocket, her hands trembling. When it was clear no-one was going to speak, the stout officer took the lead, ushering them all inside the hotel to the Lemon and Claret Room. Alter headed straight to the velvet armchair, while Anna sat beside the window, biting her nails. Tom leaned casually against the doorframe, the rest of them lining up along the wall like suspects in some tawdry detective novel.
Strehlow surveyed the room. ‘So, who saw him last then?’
Alter fiddled with his bow tie. Fergus didn’t open his mouth. Pat stared out the window.
Anna stole a glance at Tom, who was looking down at the rug. She hesitated before she spoke. ‘Well, I was planning to go speak to him last night – but I never got there.’
Alter shot a steely look at her that made her recoil.
The officer pounced. ‘Do go on, Miss Winter. I’m interested to hear what you have to say. What did you want to chat to him about? At this stage of the investigation, I’d welcome anything that might shed some light on your friend’s disappearance.’
‘Her friend?’ Tom piped up. ‘That man was nobody’s friend. There isn’t a bloke within two hundred miles who doesn’t harbour some motive for doing away with Max Schmidt.’
‘Hold on,’ Pat said. ‘Are you insinuating one of us killed the bloke?’
Officer Strehlow glanced at Pat. ‘Until I find a lead, you’re all suspects.’
‘Well then, I might add that I heard Max fighting with these two, not long before he disappeared.’ Pat shot a look at Alter.
‘That was what I was going to talk to Max about,’ Anna blurted out. ‘He insulted Mr Mayseh.’
‘Is that so?’ The policeman turned to Alter. ‘And what did you do about that, Mr Mayseh?’
Alter mumbled something.
‘Please speak up. None of us can hear you.’
Alter shifted uncomfortably in his chair and looked down at the carpet, quietly repeating what he had said. ‘Nothing.’
‘Pardon? I still can’t hear you.’
‘Nothing!’ he shouted. ‘I did nothing. The schmock didn’t deserve an answer.’
‘What did he say to you?’
‘He accused me of being a bloody Jew.’
‘And you are sure you didn’t respond, get riled up?’
Wasn’t that the oldest trick in the world? Frame the Jew as the aggressor to make Jew-hatred seem justified.
‘No,’ Alter replied.
Officer Strehlow coughed loudly. The Lemon and Claret Room became quiet, and though it was clear no-one was keen to volunteer any more information, he continued his line of questioning.
Strehlow strolled around the room and stopped in front of Anna. ‘Where were you at the time of his disappearance, madam? May I ask why you didn’t end up visiting your countryman?’
She felt herself blushing, but before she could come up with an answer Alter interjected. ‘Because she was with me,’ he said with an iron tongue.
All eyes fixed on Alter, who sat there with a smug grin on his face. They shifted their attention to Anna, slowly dissolving her with their stares.
Silence filled the room again. Alter’s words seemed to obliterate Officer Strehlow’s line of questioning, pushing him onto his next suspect.
‘And what about you, Mr O’Hara? I believe the two of you weren’t exactly on the best of terms either. In fact, I’ve heard you were bitter rivals.’
‘With all due respect, Officer Strehlow, you don’t murder a bloke just because he brews a few lousy hops.’
‘Hmm.’ The police officer strolled across the room and stood directly in front of Tom. ‘You know what? Life has taught me to be cautious.’ He turned to face the others, and looked around the room. ‘Over the years I’ve seen people knocked off for lesser things.’
He continued questioning the group until he was satisfied that he had extracted all the information he possibly could. He had spent the late morning prowling about, looking for any signs or clues to Schmidt’s disappearance. Some of the Yangman mob had been sent out to search for tracks, but they came back with no leads. There were many ways to go missing from the world, but the Australian outback excelled in mysterious disappearances. Within a mile radius it was possible to succumb to dingoes, wild pigs or marauding green ants. More often it was the very guts of Australia that simply swallowed people up, leaving missing bodies and unsolved mysteries in its wake. The land around Birdum was known by the local Yangman tribe as spirit country, dotted with gaping sinkholes that, according to legend, took revenge on those who would mistreat it. And there were plenty of white men who did that. There were places that warned you away before they claimed you, if you only took the time to listen.
The clouds began to look threatening. In a hurry to get away before any rains bore down, and knowing dinner was waiting for him at home, Officer Strehlow soon left Birdum and its unsolved mystery behind.
As night fell, now feeling agitated, Anna decided to sneak into Max Schmidt’s shack to search for some clue, missed by Officer Strehlow, that might explain the man’s sudden disappearance. Her silhouette followed her across the road, like the heavy presence of someone relentlessly watching her. What if all these years, Schmidt had been secretly spying on her? She knew it was a ridiculous, paranoid thought, that it overrode all logic – they had never spoken about what had brought each of them from Germany all the way to Birdum. She recalled one of their very rare conversations several months ago, in which he had voiced his support for recent events in Europe.
‘It’s not so bad they are cracking down on certain people back home. Some have gained way too much wealth and control,’ he had said. ‘And it’s not only the Jews that are a problem. The enormous burden on our Fatherland of the mentally ill, the blind and deaf; all those parasites ordinary Germans have had to support through their taxes. Hitler has a point when he speaks of Lebensunwertes Leben. These people’s lives are not worth living. They are useless eaters.’
What unseen evil was lurking? If he wasn’t a Nazi spy – if in fact, like her, he was in hiding, and they had found him out – then it seemed inevitable she would be next in line. Had they somehow snatched him away in the dead of night? She had thought that in coming to Birdum she would finally be free. But perhaps she was sentenced to a life in which she constantly feared someone lurking in the shadows, ready to pounce when she least expected.
It had taken five years to swallow up the person she had once been. But during the last year headlines screamed from crumpled newspapers abandoned on chairs on the veranda and lying around on the counter inside the pub: Hitler gathering momentum in Europe, all the while promising compromise. Her head sank as she walked, her shadow decapitated. Shivering as darkness crept over the town, she drew in her shoulders, glancing back, unable to shake the constant feeling that she was being watched. Fumbling in semi-darkness, she pushed the front door, which opened onto piles of empty hessian sacks and bottles stacked along the dusty walls.
She wondered where he could be. There was nowhere to hide in this town. She held up her lantern. The curtains were still drawn across his front window, his dinner grown cold on the table, a bottle of beer half empty. The dog’s kibble sat uneaten in its bowl. A newspaper lay strewn on the floor, headlines screaming about the Munich Agreement in which the British prime minister, Neville Chamberlain, was rumoured to be ready to agree to Hitler’s annexation of the Sudetenland. Tiptoeing down the narrow corridor towards the bedroom, Anna started rummaging through drawers, hunting in vain for some evidence – perhaps a letter in German, or something scribbled on the back of a postcard. A rough blanket was thrown back on the bed, Schmidt’s pyjamas tossed aside. She searched through the pockets of a jacket lying on the floor. How could he simply disappear without explanation? Surely he would have left a note somewhere. Her apprehension grew with each passing moment. She felt the urge to move fast, afraid to linger in case someone appeared in the doorway; in this small town, all eyes were watching. The silence was broken only by the staccato ticking of the clock as its hands crept forward. She found nothing.
The rains were rumoured to be particularly violent this year, hurling themselves at the land to announce the start of the wet season. The cruel sun had scorched the land for months on end. A few dry twisted trees seemed to reach out to the heavens, waiting for new life to erupt out of exhaustion. Slender wisps of grey smoke rose from the landscape, the air smouldering with residue. She imagined Schmidt lost out in the bush, dishevelled, ravenous, his body ravished by mites.
Anna walked back to the hotel, arms crossed, her head bowed. She hadn’t noticed Alter standing there on the veranda. He was about to step out of the shadows to greet her, but as she came closer he heard her muffled sobs. Her distress took him by surprise. She stood on the threshold, fiddling with the lock. Alter stayed hidden, breathing quietly, trapped between wanting to hold her and the fear that if he stepped forward he would scare her.
In an instant, all expression drained from her face as she froze like a wild animal sensing danger nearby. Slowly, she turned towards him.
‘I know you are there.’
He drew closer, stopping just in front of her. ‘Where have you been?’ He reached out his hand, but she opened the door and rushed straight towards her room.