Under the Cold Bright Lights

by Garry Disher

  A last faint flicker in Fanning’s eyes, a cessation of panic, an accommodation with fate.

  AUHL CHECKED AGAIN for cleaners and gardeners then left the house by the back door. From the trees on the upper slope he could see into the grounds of the mosque. The imam had called the police. Three faces stared across at the villa. Soon they would make a decision and knock on Fanning’s door. He slipped across the hillside and into a paddy field, and was skirting around it when he almost stepped on a woman.

  She was young, blonde, with braided hair, tie-dyed skirt and top, bangles, beads, rings, piercings, tatts. An amalgam of 1960s hippie and contemporary hipster, and he had no idea where she’d sprung from. Seated in the lotus position, her face tilted in communion with the rising sun, she didn’t stir when Auhl muttered, ‘Sorry,’ and hurried on. Potential witness, he thought, with a twist of panic.

  He walked head-down along the narrow earthen banks between paddy ponds thick with new rice shoots, making for the coast road below. Then he left the paddy behind and found himself in a familiar urbanscape of small houses behind crumbling walls, lean dogs and popping Honda motorbikes. A breeze wrapped a blue supermarket bag around his ankles, but that was the street: look inside someone’s yard and you’d not see a scrap of paper or plastic.

  He reached the main road. Early commercial traffic snarled by, bikes, tiny vans and taxis, all tooting as if Auhl might want to buy a ride. He was relieved to see two girls and a boy striding ahead of him, maple leaf flags stitched to their packs, their legs long and tanned. He felt old and weary and trudged along behind them in the mounting exhaust gases until he reached a bus stop outside a motor repair business. Engine parts, five-litre oilcans, a faded Shell sign on the back wall.

  The backpackers kept walking, but Auhl joined the people waiting for a bus. A couple of women in sarongs, others in knee-length office skirts, a handful of schoolgirls. Feeling absurdly large as he stood among them, Auhl thought of Louise; her warm lips kissing his scars.

  One of the women spoke sharply, shaking her fist at an old man astride a tiny Honda scooter. He was holding aloft a pair of goldfish in a clear Ziploc bag filled with water, urging the schoolgirls to buy. They were entranced. Another woman intervened, rebuking the girls this time, who withdrew, heads down, stifling giggles. Finally the old man gave up. Stowed the goldfish into a pannier and rode away, merging with the restless traffic. And to Auhl’s relief the Canadian backpackers returned, the bus arrived and everyone trooped on. He was no longer a memorable lone Westerner in the vicinity of a vandalised mosque and a suspicious death.

  AUHL RIDING A BUS, lulled into sleepiness, dreaming of Fanning’s flabbiness, Louise making love with a kind of welcome relief, bells tinkling on the hippie girl’s wrists. Realising as the bells dragged him awake that it was his phone ringing.

  An Australian number—his, in fact. His landline in Melbourne, where the time was now mid-morning.

  ‘Dad, where are you?’

  He had told his daughter he’d be in Port Fairy for a few days, an old hit-and-run rumoured to be a murder. ‘Still away,’ he said.

  ‘Okay. Look, I know it’s too soon, but this friend of mine and her boyfriend were housesitting and the owners came back unexpectedly and can they doss down with us for a while?’

  Auhl felt sad and relieved and half-mad. Around him the other passengers swayed and scratchy music leaked from the speaker above the driver’s head. He breathed in and out, deep breaths. ‘Of course, sweetheart.’

  ‘They can move in tomorrow.’

  ‘Not sure I’ll get back by then,’ Auhl said, thinking of the volcanic ash. The bus stopped. An old woman boarded with a rooster in a bamboo cage. The bus started again, trundling on.

  AUHL LEFT THE BUS in Kuta Beach and took a taxi across to his hotel, where he checked out, paying cash, and walked to the main terminal. The airport was in turmoil: all Virgin and Jetstar flights cancelled. Ash-cloud event, said the website.

  The cloud hovered between Denpasar and northern Australia. The skies to the north and west were clearer, but every Singapore and Kuala Lumpur flight was full. A waiting game now, Auhl thought.

  The place teemed with stranded passengers, so he slumped on the floor next to a couple of kids in surf gear. His back, slouched against the wall, belied body and mind, which seemed to thrum. Although depleted of energy he was tight as a bowstring, an edginess running through him.

  Not fear, he thought, or guilt, or dismay. He couldn’t get his head around what it was.

  Who he was.

  Most of the killers he’d arrested in his long life had been men, and most had simply stuffed up in some way. He eyed the male passengers and airport staff now, young and old and in-between. Grumpy and harried and bored. Tired and alert and dozing and canoodling. Maimed, unblemished.

  Seeing a tourist with his arm in a sling, Auhl thought of Claire Pascal’s hacked-about forearm and he touched his stomach unconsciously, the thin worm of stitched flesh so recently kissed by a beautiful woman. Scarred by the job. He thought, what about the scars that can’t be seen?

  A little Chinese girl was watching him. She stood hedged between the knees of her parents, who were intent on their phones. It often happened that Auhl locked eyes with a child in a crowd of people; a solemn, wordless communication would pass between them, unwitnessed by the throng. Now he did what he always did. Pulled on one earlobe to release his tongue tip, pulled on the other to retract it. Would she duck her head? Send the trick back to him? He waited. She continued to stare.

  Auhl looked away, not discomfited but wondering if the child had the savant eyes to see who he’d become and who he’d been. A man who’d plodded along, doing his best, righting a few wrongs—then suddenly righted two big ones. Stumbling in, initially; becoming decisive. Whether he was a better man, or one more resolute now, toned by recent sex and murder, Auhl didn’t know.

  But the energy was there in him and he stood. Waved to the child—who waved back with a transformative beam—and did business at one ticket counter after another, spending the last of his savings.

  Soon he was on the way home. It took a day and a half, his route across the Pacific a series of oblique advances north, east and south. Coming home the back way—but coming home.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  My grateful thanks to Renata Alexander and Chris Atmore, who assisted me enormously by reading manuscript drafts and answering my dumb courtroom and family law questions—any subsequent mistakes are my own. And to all at Text Publishing, especially my editor, Mandy Brett, who for years now has made each of my novels a great deal better.

  ALSO BY GARRY DISHER FROM TEXT PUBLISHING

  Bitter Wash Road

  The Peninsula Crimes series:

  The Dragon Man

  Kittyhawk Down

  Snapshot

  Chain of Evidence

  Blood Moon

  Whispering Death

  Signal Loss

  The Wyatt novels:

  The Wyatt Butterfly: Port Vila Blues / Fallout

  Wyatt

  The Heat

  GARRY DISHER has published almost fifty titles—fiction, children’s books, anthologies, textbooks, the Wyatt thrillers and the Peninsula Crimes series. He has won numerous awards, including the German Crime Prize (three times) and two Ned Kelly Best Crime Novel awards.

  garrydisher.com

  PRAISE FOR GARRY DISHER AND BITTER WASH ROAD

  ‘Bitter Wash Road is superb.’ Australian, ‘Hot reads for summer’

  ‘Easily one of the best Australian crime novels of the year.’ Canberra Times

  ‘Garry Disher hits the ground running with Bitter Wash Road… never letting up on pace.’ Guardian Australia

  ‘Peter Temple and Garry Disher will be identified as the crime writers who redefined Australian crime fiction in terms of its form, content and style.’ Age

  ‘Disher shows he’s a top-class writer.’ The Times

  ‘One of Australia’s most admired novelists…D
isher turns out to be a superb chronicler of macho cop culture.’ Sunday Times UK

  ‘Moves at a cracking pace.’ Launceston Examiner

  ‘Disher’s terse, spare prose never falters.’ Dominion Post

  ‘Disher at his brilliant, hard-edged best.’ Weekend Herald

  ‘The writing is sharp, with both wit and depth, and the story engages the reader from beginning to end.’ Otago Daily Times

  ‘A master class in how to write a tense, atmospheric crime thriller.’ The Crime Factory

  ‘Garry Disher has been giving us highly intelligent literary thrillers for decades and he gets better and better.’ Australian

  ‘A first class mystery, with writing of the highest calibre, neatly crafted and strongly evocative.’ Sunday Mail

  ‘The Australian Garry Disher deserves to be better-known in the UK, and Bitter Wash Road shows why.’ ‘Joan Smith picks her top thrillers’, Sunday Times UK

  ‘This is the complete crime novel. It’s alive with fully formed characters, vivid Australian scenery and a plot full of subtle twists and satisfying turns.’ Australian Women’s Weekly

  textpublishing.com.au

  The Text Publishing Company

  Swann House

  22 William Street

  Melbourne Victoria 3000

  Australia

  Copyright © 2017 by Garry Disher

  The moral right of Garry Disher to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted.

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright above, no part of this publication shall be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.

  First published in 2017 by The Text Publishing Company

  Cover design by Text

  Cover images by Yuko Hirao/Stocksy, iStock and Shutterstock

  Page design by Imogen Stubbs

  Typeset in Adobe Garamond Pro 12/16.5 by J & M Typesetting

  National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry (pbk)

  Creator: Disher, Garry,-author.

  Title: Under the Cold Bright Lights / by Garry Disher.

  ISBN: 9781925498882 (paperback)

  9781925626087 (ebook)

  Criminal investigation-Fiction.

  Suspense fiction.

  Dewey Number: A823.3