Something Fishy

by Shane Maloney

  Back in Lorne, we found council workers erecting crowd-control barriers along the main drag, heat haze rising from the asphalt. Police buses were disgorging coppers from Melbourne, all aviator sunglasses and peaked caps, and a mobile command centre was parked at the kerb outside the Chinese take-away. An FM radio station was broadcasting from the foreshore, its studio in the shape of a giant boom box.

  I spent the rest of the day in a wilting torpor, the boys drifting in and out of frame. In due course, late afternoon, we set out for the Falls festival. The lads were tarted up for the festivities. Tark had gone for the romantic-consumptive look in a pleat-fronted dress shirt with a wing collar and no sleeves. Red’s hair was sculpted into the vertical with enough gel to grease a Clydeside slipway. Taking the Erskine Falls turn, we followed the shuttle-bus up a meandering road that climbed past the town tip and fern-shaded picnic grounds towards the divide at the top of the ranges. Somewhere to our right, invisible in the dense bush, was the Erskine River and its eponymous falls.

  For the last couple of kilometres, the traffic crawled, bumper to bumper. There was shade between the trees, but not a hint of breeze. The leaves hung motionless, limp, the light filtering through their drab greenery from a baked enamel sky. Then, at the top of a crest, they parted to reveal the festival site, a neat patch of grazing land that sat in the midst of the forest like a crop circle in a wheat field. A squarish circle, cyclone-fenced and sloping to an array of big-tops, canopied stages and food stalls, a bass thump washing up the hill to the main gate. A mini-Woodstock.

  Eight thousand were expected. Most were there already, the rest arriving by the minute, the tribes gathering. I parked in the designated drop-off zone and told the boys that I’d pick them up in exactly the same spot at exactly noon the next day. After extracting sworn assurances that they would enjoy themselves without doing anything health-threatening or egregiously illegal, I issued a small cash bounty and left them to find their friends in the milling mass at the main gate.

  On the way back down to Lorne, I passed a dark grey Landcruiser coming up the hill, Barbara Prentice at the wheel, a full load of teens. I gave her a beep and a wave but I couldn’t tell if she recognised me.

  By seven-thirty, I was back in town, replenishing my stock of grog at the pub drive-through. The show on the foreshore was firing up. Elements of the crowd were already well lubricated, and mounted police were patrolling the fringes on horses with clear plastic visors. I’d been giving some thought to my options for the evening and hanging with the headache crowd wasn’t one of them. I took my beer back to the house, stripped to my jocks, put Ry Cooder on the CD player, ripped the scab from a Coopers Pale Ale, sat in the shade on the deck and watched the sinking sun reach over the ranges and caress the molten sea. Fuck it was hot.

  One beer down, I was talking to myself out loud. ‘Nothing ventured,’ I said, far from convincingly.

  Two beers down, I was staring into the rickety wardrobe beside my rented bed, looking for the right kind of statement. The pre-faded Hawaiian, I decided, with the dark hibiscus motif. Khaki shorts and loafers. Laid-back but snazzy.

  I finished the third bottle under the shower, out-and-out Dutch courage, then dressed and drove to Gusto. It was nine, the sun was gone and a syrupy twilight was taking its place, the sea flat, the air motionless. Inbound traffic on the Great Ocean Road was backed up to the town limits, cops at a row of witches hats running random breath tests. I was safe, headed the other way, but I popped a mint anyway and summoned my sobriety. Chill, I ordered. Be cool.

  If I was serious about this, I’d have done some spadework. I’d have called Sandra, made exploratory noises, got the lowdown. Instead, I was playing an outside break sucking a peppermint, for Christ’s sake. All dicked up in my new-bought leisure-wear, hot to trot with a mother of two who probably wasn’t even in the market.

  By the time I took the turn at the adobe signpost, I was moving beyond second thoughts, entering cut-and-run territory. But there was nowhere to run. The sharply ascending strip of asphalt was squeezed by tea-trees and there was a car behind me, pushing me forward. At the first opening, three hundred metres up the slope, I was extruded into the restaurant carpark.

  I fed the Magna into the first available slot and sat there, engine idling, aircon blasting, fingers drumming on the steering wheel, sucking my mint.

  The carpark was a quadrangle of crushed gravel toppings, fifty or so spaces, filling fast. The car that had followed me up the road, a big old banger of a Merc, decanted a party of four. Thirtysomething couples, the men in high spirits, the women in high heels. Passing a dark grey Landcruiser with roof-racks and Ripcurl stickers, they bantered and crunched their way down steps flanked with enormous terracotta pots sprouting an exuberant arch of raspberry bougainvillea.

  Another carload arrived, then another, then another. This was getting ridiculous. Time to screw my courage to the designated place. But which one?

  It wasn’t rocket science. I had two choices. I could return to the house and get comfortably numb on self-pity, Coopers Pale Ale and B. B. King’s Greatest Hits.

  Or I could slip into the restaurant, ease my way into the evening’s joie de vivre, suss my prospects with Barbara Prentice and play it as it came.

  Go wild, I told myself, live dangerously. You’re on holidays after all.

  I turned off the motor, checked my charm in the rearview mirror and stepped out into the sticky night air. The twilight was thickening, thrumming with laughter and music, the sound of salsa. Gusto’s facade was an eclectic amalgam of peeling weatherboards, fibro sheeting and rust-hued corrugated iron. The effect was of a beachcomber’s shack slapped together by a castaway with an artist’s eye. Gilligan meets Georgia O’Keeffe. Or Barbara Prentice.

  A strip-door curtain of rope and crimped bottle caps marked the entrance. I parted the strips and found myself in a narrow, badly lit corridor. The sound and light and laughter lay ahead, drawing me forward. All part of the design, I realised. The customer as privileged insider, a mate of the owner. The cook’s cousin, granted backdoor access.

  A gaggle of diners milled at the edge of the light, pressing their credentials on the head waiter. One wall of the corridor became a plate-glass window, a view into the kitchen. Another design flourish. No miserly dribbles of truffle oil here, no pernickety plating of filleted fava beans. This was Gusto’s fiery forge, a seething engine-room of white-clad minions, flaming sauté pans and flashing knives. I watched a cook emerge from a back door, a heavy bucket in each hand, and pour a stream of glistening black mussels into a huge pot on the cooktop.

  Past the waiting customers, the lucky guests were roaring at each other across long tables covered with butcher’s paper, carafes of wine and Duralex tumblers. Some of the tables were outside, running around the edge of a broad patio. Party lights hung in droopy loops, illuminating the scene.

  At one end of the terrace a four-piece combo was doing a playful mucho maracas Carmen Miranda routine. Snack jockeys were circulating, aproned tweenies with nibbles on trays. Couples sat on the low adobe wall that surrounded the terrace, soaking up the view. All two-seventy degrees of it. A wedge of moon glowing through a thin gauze of clouds crept across the sky. The sea extended forever, eerily phosphorescent. And immediately below, the snaking lights of the cars on the Great Ocean Road.

  Hooley-dooley, I thought. Whacko the did. All the senses, all at once. Count me in.

  I scanned the moving bodies, peering into the muted, multicoloured light, searching for a slender woman with a talent for the casual chic, a mannish haircut and an elusively attractive way of carrying herself. The knot of supplicant customers dissolved, approved en masse by the head waiter. As I shuffled forward to plead for admission, Barbara emerged from a clump of conversation on the far side of the room.

  She was wearing a sheathy jade-green thing with shoestring straps. One of them slipped off her shoulder and as she turned her head to fix it, our eyes met. Hers were still grey.

  ‘Ay-
ay-ay-ay-ay I like you verrry much!’ warbled Carmen on the veranda.

  Barbara gave a little self-satisfied smile. I knew you’d come, it said. Let the games begin.

  I gave her a smile back, the hapless here-I-am one. I poked at my chest, then at the head waiter, shrugging. She nodded and began to make her way across the crowded room. Some enchanted evening, I murmured.

  The kitchen door flapped on its hinges and a big man came sailing out into the restaurant. He wore a loose cotton shirt, cuffs rolled to the forearm, and an air of proprietary bonhomie. It was Signor Gusto himself, Jake Martyn. He paused for a moment, cast an appraising eye over the proceedings, then advanced into the throng, arm raised in hearty salutation.

  A burst of flame drew my eye to the window into the kitchen. A flambé of prawns in Pernod, perhaps. Beyond the cooktops and the steaming molluscs, a man in a khaki work shirt and matching stubbies had also turned towards the sudden flash. He was glancing back over his shoulder from the semi-darkness of a doorway to the delivery bay. Stocky. Bushy beard. Ravaged baseball cap, the bill pulled down. A working man. Delivery driver, rubbish removal, hump and grunt.

  Head tilted sideways, eyes peering out, his expression exactly mirrored an image which I had seen many times before. A still photograph printed from a few seconds of video footage, then enlarged. A three-quarter profile of a handcuffed prisoner being bustled into a remand hearing, tossing a sideways glance in the direction of the television camera. A picture at which I had stared long and hard, simmering with impotent rage.

  A picture of Rodney Syce.

  And then he was gone.

  My stomach dropped away beneath me like an elevator in freefall.

  I stood rooted to the spot, mind spinning, staring into the empty space where the man had been. Was it really possible that I had just looked through a plate-glass window at Lyndal’s killer?

  Only one thing was certain. I could not ignore what I had seen. Try, and the doubt would drive me nuts, poison the promise of the evening. And beyond.

  I had to get another look at the man. Satisfy myself, one way or the other.

  Dashing back along the corridor, I squeezed past a phalanx of incoming guests and burst through the rope-and-bottle-cap curtain. An irregular hedge of tea-tree separated Gusto’s public entrance from its service area. I shouldered my way through the thicket and glimpsed a curved driveway leading from a loading bay at the back of the restaurant to the road above the guest carpark.

  A runabout tray-truck was parked half-way up the driveway, a well-used Hilux utility. Its driver’s-side door was open and the figure in khaki was hoisting himself aboard. He glanced back, not noticing me as I parted the shrubbery.

  I was thinking very fast. His general description fitted Syce. Height, shape, approximate age. The beard didn’t appear in the picture, but that proved nothing. Stood to reason that he’d attempt to disguise himself. More to the point, there was a nagging similarity between my snapshot and what I could see of the man’s face. The oval shape, the full lips, the sloping cheekbones.

  But still I couldn’t be sure. The light was murky and he was a good ten metres away.

  The door of the Hilux slammed shut and it started up. I began to run towards it, but its wheels were spinning, tyres spitting gravel, tail-lights glowing.

  I pulled up short. But only for a heartbeat. And then I was running again, sprinting back to the Magna, slamming the key into the ignition, backing out of the parking slot. Acting, not thinking, except to think that I couldn’t let him vanish into the night. That there was no way in the world the cops were going to believe me a fourth time.

  The Hilux had turned right, heading uphill. Fifty metres past the restaurant driveway, the road became graded gravel. It climbed through low scrub for a couple of minutes, crossed the hump of the hill and emerged into a residential area, cars at the kerbsides, lights in the houses, party time.

  But the utility was nowhere in sight. I arrived at a T-junction. Two lanes of asphalt, double yellow lines, cats-eye reflectors on white roadside markers. Deans Marsh Road, the back-door route across the ranges. Cars whizzed past, barrelling downhill, revellers heading into town. Which way had he gone? Downhill or up? Towards the activity or away from it?

  Go back to the restaurant, I told myself. Make enquiries. Find out if anybody knew him. By the look of it, he’d been making a delivery of some kind. So even if nobody knew him, they’d at least be able to tell me who sent him. What could be gained by chasing him?

  A better look at him, for a start. The chance to cross him off the list, mark him down as a false alarm. And without going through the rigmarole of interrogating the Gusto staff, parading my obsession. Without the risk of making a fool of myself in front of Barbara Prentice.

  Uphill, I decided, away from town. I swung the wheel and floored the pedal, spraying gravel as my front tyres gripped the bitumen. The road climbed steadily, joined at irregular intervals by smaller side roads and tracks. Had he taken one of those? I stuck with the main road, a theory taking shape in my mind, consistent with what I knew about Rodney Syce. As scenarios went, it made as much sense as anything the coppers had told me.

  On the lam, solo, Syce had gone to ground, grown some fungus. Stayed in Victoria, where he had no criminal connections, less chance of being fingered. Picked up jobs on the margins, cash-in-hand stuff, melded into the here-today-gone-tomorrow casual workforce. Maybe even built a new identity.

  The road twisted and turned, climbing continuously, its course hemmed by thickening bush. The traffic was all downhill, oncoming headlights at the frequent corners. It was almost nine-thirty, night coming down. If I didn’t spot the Hilux in the next few minutes, I told myself, I’d pack it in, turn around, contact the cops. Persuade them to make enquiries at Gusto. Let the appropriate authorities deal with it, like I’d been told.

  I checked my watch, stepped on the gas. Two minutes, that’s how much longer I’d give it. Dangerous Turn, read a yellow advisory sign.

  Then it was there, right in front of me as I rounded a bend, nothing between us. I dropped back, not showing my hand, waiting for an opportunity to overtake, study the driver as I passed. I tried to read the number plate, but it wasn’t lit.

  It was double lines all the way, not a chance to swing around him. We continued uphill, north-west into the ranges. At some point, twenty or thirty kilometres further along, the road would pop out of the hills and run through farmland to the Princes Highway. If he went that far, he could be headed anywhere in Australia. Literally. The Princes Highway circled the entire fucking continent.

  The road straightened and I moved closer, preparing to pass. But the Hilux slowed, indicated left and turned down a side road. I continued past for a hundred metres, then doubled back. The road was a single lane of asphalt, gravel-edged, tree-lined, a trench cut into the forest, well signposted. Mount Sabine Road. Never heard of it, or its mount. The ute’s tail-lights bobbed in the distance, beckoning.

  This is crazy, said the voice of reason. But since when has reason been reason for anything? I dipped my lights to low beam and kept going, deeper into the night.

  Rodney Syce was an experienced bushman. And what were the Otways if not the bush? Dense, virtually impenetrable bush, all just a few hours from Melbourne. A tall timber bolt-hole, exactly the sort of place where a wanted man could lie doggo, grow a beard, pass unremarked among the locals. Scruffy transients, back-to-nature hermits, hippy farmers, breast-feeding ferals, bush mechanics, timber cutters, sleep-rough surfers, mind-your-own-business truckies, law-leery bikers. The full panoply of tree-dwelling, kit-home, cud-chewing yokeldom. The only thing missing was a banjo-plunking soundtrack.

  I twiddled the dial of the radio, caught wavering snatches of pop music and the hiss of static, the signals baffled by the timbered folds of the hills. The road rose and fell with the signal, snaking around tight-coiled corners. The trees got bigger, closer together, the understorey more dense. My headlights swept the fronds of giant ferns, bare rock wa
lls, mossy clefts.

  Occasional chinks opened in the curtain of bush. The brutal gash of a firebreak. Obscure clearings stacked with saw-logs. Unmarked forestry tracks. Machinery sheds, hunched in the middle of nowhere. All the while, up ahead, the pickup’s tail-lights winked and blinked, luring me on.

  The road meandered, lost its paved surface, became a rutted blanket of beige dirt, forever changing direction. As it followed the twists and turns, the pickup vanished for minutes on end. Then, just when I thought I’d lost it, I caught the flicker of headlights amid the trees ahead, slatted radiance. Or the abrupt flare of brake lights at some sharp bend.

  Where was he going? A farm? That would explain the delivery to the restaurant. Strawberries? There were signs along the Great Ocean Road for pick-your-own berry farms. Kiwi fruit, maybe. Some sort of bush tucker, myrtle berries, gummy bears. Not very Jake Martyn, that sort of stuff.

  And why the late-night delivery? An unexpected shortage of canapé garnishes? If this guy was indeed Rodney Syce, he should be hunkered down in the native shrubbery, not gadding about the place, running taste treats into a town crawling with coppers.

  The road forked, then forked again, the Hilux nowhere in sight. I guessed, guessed again. Kept left, tightened my grip on the steering wheel, imagined it was Rodney Syce’s neck.

  The track kept getting narrower. Its surface was potholed and corrugated. It hammered my suspension, peppered my undercarriage with gravel, sent my tail slewing at the turns. A tight bend loomed and suddenly the track disappeared, replaced by a sheer drop into a scrub-choked gully. I stomped on the anchors, the steering juddered and the Magna went into a skid, wheels locked.

  I wrestled for control, steering wildly for the inside edge of the road. The Magna slid to a halt, then stalled, side-on to the direction of the road. My fingers were rigid around the wheel, my ears roaring with adrenalin.

  I killed the lights, got out and took stock. The car’s rear wheels were sunk to the rims in a pothole, its tail dangling over the edge. Another half a metre and I’d have joined the choir eternal. Or worse, been trapped in the wreckage, ruptured and bleeding, lingering in agony for days, waiting for help that never came. Situation like that, a body could remain undiscovered for decades, like some shot-down Mustang pilot in a New Guinea jungle, a bleached skeleton buckled into a rusting machine.