As we walked, I asked Starcy how long he’d known Nash and he ran a finger across his chin, thinking.
‘Must be twenty-five years,’ he replied.
I did a double take. Had I been mistaken about Nash’s age?
Starcy noticed my reaction. ‘First time I came across him he was only thirteen.’
I listened, intrigued, as he told me how he’d met Nash Rankin.
‘I was the sergeant-in-charge at Montgomery, down in the valley,’ he said. ‘Drove into the car park one morning and there’s this teenage boy hunched up on the front step. He was dark-haired, wild-eyed, wearing dirty jeans and a torn jacket.’
‘I’ve come to report a crime,’ were his first words to Starcy. ‘A company of criminals.’
‘Whoa there,’ Starcy had said. ‘Who are you and where are you from?’
He said his name was Nash Rankin and that he came from the Patmos Centre.
Starcy knew a bit about it. The Patmos Centre was a church-based organisation delivering drug rehabilitation programs in an old boarding school up along the Windmark River. They’d been there for five years, kept to themselves, never caused any trouble. The leader, Reverend John Patmos, had worked his way into a position of authority among the local clergy, despite what some thought of as an over-enthusiastic approach to religion. They did have occasional services at the centre, and the church’s hierarchy resided there, but their operational headquarters, and the ultimate source of their prosperity and power, was a vast mausoleum down in Greendale, to which as many as a thousand people were drawn by Patmos’s Sunday morning sermons.
When Starcy asked Nash what crime this ‘company of criminals’ had committed, the boy reported that the ‘Revelator’ had killed his sister.
I felt a pang of sympathy when Starcy reached this part of the story. His sister, Shiloh, was the only member of his family I’d heard Nash mention with affection. I remembered his story of how they’d sit up in the golden wattle and sing along with the birds. I instinctively reached into my pocket for the little pottery piece I’d retrieved from Lucy’s kiln, and held it in my fingers.
‘What the hell is a Revelator?’ Starcy had asked the teenage Nash. It was the first time he’d heard the word, though when the shit hit the windmill, it became the name by which the organisation was generally known.
‘It’s what we call the leader of our church,’ Nash had told him. ‘Reverend Patmos. He forces the young girls to have sex with him.’
A couple of weeks ago, the boy said, Patmos had subjected his fifteen-year-old sister to what the church elders called ‘purgative redemption’. It was rape. She’d fled the community, desperate, distraught, and had ended up sleeping rough on the streets of Melbourne. The night before, Nash had got word that Shiloh had hanged herself in a Preston park. That was what had driven him to the station that morning. He pleaded with Starcy to get up there and arrest them all, said the place was a nest of iniquity, its leaders a pack of dangerous animals.
When one of Starcy’s team, Constable Alice Hurley, arrived for work, he told her what was going on. They took the boy in, gave him hot food and drinks, called in a police family liaison officer to look after him.
Starcy reported the matter to his superiors in Greendale, who agreed to launch an immediate investigation, but he decided he’d go up to the property himself and have a pre-emptive look around.
Now, walking by the lake with me, he paused to contemplate a bustling ants nest for a moment then looked me in the eye.
‘Worst decision I ever made,’ he said.
I waited for him to continue.
‘Alice and I drove up the valley, but we were pulled up at the gate by some goon in a uniform. Bit over the top for a church, I thought. Still, maybe it was necessary, working with addicts and all that. We got sent up to the big house and were honoured with an audience with the man himself, John Patmos. A more silver-tongued prick you could never imagine. He was tall and broad-shouldered, with thick white hair and teeth. What you might call ruggedly handsome. His office was all polished marble and bevelled glass, fitted out with armchairs you could stable a horse in.’
Starcy took a swig from a flask in his pocket. I’m not much of a drinker, but I could have done with a swig myself, a thirst that only deepened as the story unfolded.
‘I began,’ Starcy continued, ‘by saying that we’d picked the boy up. Patmos said he was relieved to hear it. Nash’s mother, Rebecca, was one of the live-in staff. She was already shattered by the death of her daughter, had been worried sick about her son. It would be a relief for all concerned if we could return Nash to his family as soon as possible.’
Starcy slowed down, clearly troubled. The conversation was costing him. I sensed he’d survived as long as he had by sweeping things under the carpet, but you can only do that for so long. There comes a time when you have to bring in the industrial vacuum cleaners.
We came to the end of the track, then turned and made our way back to the shack. ‘By this stage,’ said Starcy, ‘I’m thinking this is outta my league. We should have waited for the Sex Crimes Squad or the Child Abuse team – somebody used to interrogating snakes – before we set foot in the place.’
He crunched his knuckles and stared at the gunmetal sky. ‘Then in she sweeps. Mrs Patmos. Guin. She’s even more charming and confident than he is: attractive, in a silicon sorta way, smooth as silk with buffed-up hair and flashy nails. She dishes up tea and cake on a silver tray, tells us about the work they do, how brilliant their results are, the lives they’ve saved, the crackheads they’ve pulled back from the brink. I’ve spent my life learning to detect bullshit, but even I’m entranced.’
He paused, then shuffled uncomfortably, his right knee obviously playing up. ‘But then I ask a question about Shiloh and something strange happens. Patmos looks grief-stricken, starts talking about the girl, the tragedy of it all. Then I glance at a mirror on the wall and catch a reflection of Guin behind me. Patmos is a big, beefy guy. Guin’s small, kind of scrawny, but just for a moment, she seemed to tower over him. Over us all. She’s warning him to shut his fucking mouth in case he blows it. I realise she’s been controlling every word of the conversation from the moment she entered the room.’
We reached the house and resumed our seats. Starcy stirred the fire with a heavy poker, turned over a log. Flames shot up as the ambient oxygen reacted with the carbon. He closed his eyes and let the warmth wash over him. Looked like he needed it.
‘John Patmos was the face of that organisation,’ Starcy continued. ‘He was the Revelator. He had the presence, the handshake, the name. He’s the one the press got their fangs into when it all came out. But Guin, my god – she was a force of nature. Something’s not right, I thought. I knew it in my bones. This woman’s a monster. Nothing she’s involved in could be in any way decent. Whatever she’s doing, it’s all about her. I asked if we could have a look around, but the atmosphere had changed. “I’m afraid not,” she said. She warned me there were some troubled young souls there, the sight of a police uniform could set them back months. I suggested maybe we could just have a look around the outside areas, not enter the residences or workshops, but her lips tightened. “Not without a warrant.” Then she smirked in a way that made me feel like she was pissing on me from a great height. My offsider, Alice, felt it as well. She said later she felt nauseated, just being in Guin’s presence. She also noted the woman had had more plastic surgery than a flock of reality television wannabes.’
Starcy and Alice left soon after that. Back at HQ, things were moving quickly. The investigators in Melbourne located a friend of Shiloh’s who confirmed the essential facts of Nash’s story, that the girl had been in a pit of despair and shame after being raped by Patmos. The police raided the Institute the next morning. They were packing warrants and battering rams, armed to the teeth with social workers, sniffer dogs and family liaison officers, but they were too late. The rats had scuttled. Maybe they got a tip-off, maybe Starcy’s visit put the wind up them. Whatever the reason, the Patmoses had skipped the country. They’d been preparing for an eventuality like this for years, fleecing some of their followers, blackmailing others, amassing a fortune, shoring up their fortresses. They had homes all over the world, millions of dollars squirrelled away on treasure islands or buried in bank vaults, all of it protected by a crew of cut-throat lawyers and tiger-eyed accountants. Eventually Interpol tracked the couple down to a luxury villa in the Caymans.
VicPol set up a task force and launched a major investigation into what rapidly took on all the god-awful attributes of a hardcore cult. Without the Patmoses there to eliminate dissent and stifle questions, the scales came off. Whistle-blowers and wounded acolytes came out of the woodwork and a more comprehensive picture of the organisation emerged. In Starcy’s words, what a maggoty shit-show it turned out to be. Nominally Christian, but with the usual carry bag of cults everywhere: a dash of apocalyptic gibberish, a pinch of Revelation and Eastern mysticism, lashings of traumatising narcissism and a vicious riptide of sex and death. All of it tax-free, much of it funded from the public purse.
The outer suburban church was the usual band of weak-minded happy-clappers, but it was in the more secluded confines of the rehab centre in the Windmarks that the real horrors were perpetrated. What the organisation called ‘addiction therapy’ was mostly Guin and her little coterie screaming at tormented teenagers to repent their sins and expel their demons. Anybody who stood up to her was thrown onto the street. Guin had an uncanny ability to separate the gullible from their money. She’d use doctors and nurses to sniff out well-heeled invalids on their deathbeds. She could alter wills by telekinesis. She could charm her followers into making ongoing donations for churches that were never built, missionary ventures that never happened.
For Patmos himself, salvation came at the point of his prick. He helped himself to the young women, subjecting them to his ‘purgative redemption’. That was bad enough, but what shocked Starcy to the core was the discovery, confirmed by numerous sources, that Guin was a voyeur. Of epic proportions. She’d get off watching her husband, or anybody else who was on heat or horny – the dog if there were no other options – perform. She had a cubbyhole adjoining the ‘master bedroom’ which was equipped with two-way mirrors, lights, thermal cameras and microphones.
I listened to Starcy’s tale, aghast, wondering how such a nightmare could have flourished so wildly then faded so swiftly from the community’s memory.
‘How did they get away with it?’ I asked, aghast.
‘The Patmoses had an army of experts – doctors, accountants, even coppers, rumour had it – who were ready to do their bidding: carry out autopsies, forge papers, bury the evidence and cover their tracks. Some of them were genuine followers. Others? The Patmoses had perfected the art of blackmail. They’d use young girls – or boys – to seduce some sucker they thought they could use and film the results – then they had ’em by the balls.’
I shook my head.
‘So, what happened to Nash when the cult was broken up?’ I asked. ‘He was still only a kid.’
‘He spent some time with his mother, but that didn’t work out. She was totally hooked on Patmos and the movement, one of their earliest converts. When it fell apart, so did she. She drifted back into the inner Melbourne drug scene, OD’d six months later.’
‘And his father?’
‘We never were able to find out who the father was. He was listed as “unknown” on the birth certificate. I did ask Rebecca once – all she’d say was he was the devil who got her on to the drugs in the first place. Nash was raised from then on by his grandfather. He left school early, spent most of his time on the land, in the bush. I kept in touch as best I could. Used to visit him and his grandpa, Matty.’ He smiled fleetingly. ‘They always gave me a box of apples.’
‘Did anybody else keep in touch?’
‘Not that I saw. They were a damaged lot, the Revelator refugees. That was Guin’s speciality: she’d drag the weak and the wounded out of the gutter, fleece them and leave them weaker and more wounded. Make them dependent on her and her husband. On the cult. I think Nash did catch up with some of the other kids from time to time, people he’d grown up with . . .’
‘Like Leon Glazier?’
‘Like Leon, yeah, Nash was a leader to them, especially early on. But they all had loads of baggage and layers of psychological scarring. Mostly Nash just lay low, found a peace of his own working with wildlife. Nobody was more surprised than I was when he asked if he could use me as a referee to join the police. Apparently he’d been thinking about the force as a career ever since that first morning on my doorstep. He was keen to help people in situations as desperate as the one he’d been in. He wanted to do something decent, he said, be a catcher in the rye. I tried to tell him the characters he’d be dealing with were more likely to be on the rye than in it, but he was determined. I had my doubts: he was isolated, fragile, maybe suffering from PTSD. Then I thought about it some more. Thought about the way he’d come down to the station that first morning and reported the leaders of the only home he’d ever known to the authorities. I’ve worked in law enforcement all my life, seen some real feats of courage, but that stands out for me as the bravest. I recommended him for the job unequivocally. And it worked well – until suddenly it didn’t.’
I sat there morbidly entranced as Starcy finished the tale.
John Patmos was eventually extradited back to Australia, but he never paid for his crimes. He died of an aneurysm while he was on remand.
‘And Guin?’ I asked.
‘She’s dead as well, thank Christ. Never saw the inside of a gaol, of course. The shithouse rats never do. She had a ring of attack lawyers around her, ready to bark and bite at her command. But even they couldn’t keep her going forever. She died of cancer five years ago. I was here at the shack when I heard the word. Came out and lit a bonfire to celebrate, burned a rag-doll effigy and raised a fuck-off toast to the old bitch.’
Fair enough, I thought. Another question sprang out of nowhere. ‘What happened to all the money?’
Starcy flipped his hands. ‘Better minds than mine have tried to unravel that one. There were various family members and a pack of desperate hangers-on and victims trying to suck what they could out of the corpse, but I gather it all sank into the quicksands of international justice. Our forensic accountants did what they could, but in the end they didn’t think there was much left, not after all the bribing and hiding and litigation – and plastic surgery – was paid for.’
He leaned forward and revved the fire a little more. I rose to my feet and walked down to the lake. The birds edged away through the silver water making tiny ripples. They were like delicate brushstrokes in a Chinese winter landscape.
By the time I got back to the house, Starcy was up and chopping wood. He placed a log on the block then turned and caught my eye. There was something dark in his gaze. Anger? Remorse? Impossible to say, but he muttered a single sentence.
‘You find out what happened, Jess. That boy’s been through enough.’
He raised the axe then swung it down and split the wood with an energy that generated sparks.