Crucifixion Creek

by Barry Maitland

  When she reaches the surgery one of the girls recognises her and shows her to a chair. ‘We’re running twenty minutes behind,’ she murmurs. Jenny is content, listening to the sounds in the waiting room, the health tips on the TV, the chatter from the girls on reception, a mother arguing with her child.

  Then the doctor is at her side, taking her arm and guiding her through to her room. ‘So how have you been, Jenny?’ she asks, and Jenny tells her the abridged version. There is an examination, tests, a conversation. Then the result. ‘We’ll do all we can to help,’ the doctor says, and Jenny wipes a tear from her eye.

  She walks home in a bubble, oblivious to all the difficulties. They have waited so long, almost given up, and now at last. Of course it’s very early days, barely begun, but it has begun. She replays the doctor’s words over in her head. Yes, I’m quite sure.

  It is a kind of miracle. There has only been that one time, that night when Harry came back from the Gipps Tower, smelling of gunpowder. She thinks of Shiva, the destroyer and creator.

  She imagines with a shiver telling Harry when he comes home tonight.

  42

  Crucifixion Creek is a dark and forbidding hollow, the silhouette of its buildings barely touched by the dim glow of the surrounding street lights. There is no passing traffic, and as Harry walks down the service road towards Greg’s ruined site he sees that Rizzo’s shed, its perimeter draped with police tape, has been abandoned for the night.

  The bulky figure of Toby Wagstaff steps out of the shadows to greet him.

  ‘Thanks for coming, Harry. God…’ he nods towards the Rizzo place, ‘what an abomination. What monsters we are, eh? And they’ve found heaps more drug chemicals—precursors, reagents, solvents—a regular little industry. The drug squad have no idea where it’s all come from.

  ‘This place is the pits.’ Wagstaff turns and makes a sweeping gesture with his arm. ‘You know its history, do you, Harry? Lieutenant Perch’s expedition?’

  Harry doesn’t know it, and Wagstaff tells him.

  ‘So those blokes are about here where we’re standing now, up to their knees in the stinking bog, sweating like pigs in their worsted army redcoats in an Australian summer for God’s sake, long-suffering grunts like us,’ he cracks a rueful smile, ‘just trying to get a job done. And they look up there—there, the trees between those sheds—and see the Aborigines. And Perch gives the order, and they heave up their muskets, Brown Besses they would have been, five kilograms, six foot long, eighteen millimetre bore, and they blast away.’

  Harry shifts his weight on his feet, wondering when he’ll get to the point. Is he trying to draw some parallel with the bodies in the pit?

  ‘So, Harry,’ Wagstaff says, still staring up at the trees in the little park on the knoll, ‘did you find out who killed your mum and dad?’

  He says it as if it’s all part of the same story, and Harry has to blink and take a breath. What does he know?

  Wagstaff goes on, ‘You worked out that Bebchuk and his pals drove them off the road that night, and made sure they were dead. I guess they didn’t realise that your Jenny was lying injured in the well of the back seat.’

  Harry says, ‘Hang on. Where is this coming from?’

  ‘This is the Bob Marshall theory, Harry. So why’d they do it?’

  Harry hesitates, then says, ‘I know they were acting on orders from Oldfield.’

  Wagstaff nods.

  ‘But I don’t know why, and I don’t know who else wanted them dead.’

  ‘What makes you think there were others?’

  ‘Oldfield more or less told me as much.’

  ‘Did he now. No ideas?’

  ‘No, but I’ll keep looking.’

  ‘Course you will.’ Wagstaff turns to face him and now Harry sees the pistol in his right hand.

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Just have to get the job done, Harry. Nothing personal.’ And he pulls the trigger. Once. Twice. And watches Harry fall.

  Wagstaff moves in to the prone body, the gun trained on his head, when he feels something—Harry’s hand?—nudge against his leg. He tries to kick his foot free, but for some reason can’t. He crouches down and finds to his surprise that Harry has handcuffed himself to his ankle.

  ‘You bugger!’ Wagstaff mutters, almost admiring. ‘How did you manage that?’ He reaches to Harry’s throat and finds no pulse. Automatically reaches to his hip pocket where he keeps his own handcuffs, and the key, before remembering that he doesn’t have them with him today. Impatient now, he reaches down and starts groping through Harry’s pockets, turning them out, one after another. Nothing. There is no key.

  He straightens, forcing himself to slow down, to think. His car is up there on the perimeter road, maybe thirty metres away. In the glove box he has a notebook, a pen, a screwdriver, a torch and—a knife, with which he can cut off Harry’s hand.

  He pockets his gun and bends down to grip the body under the armpits and begins to drag it up the concrete driveway, watching the long dark trail of blood growing behind them. When he reaches the street he stops at his car and takes out his gun again so that he can get at the car keys in his pocket, and at that moment a patrol car swings around the corner and catches him in its headlights.

  The two officers see a man crouching over a body. They jump out of their car and see a gun in the man’s hand, and begin shouting together, ‘Police! Drop your weapon!’ The man swings upright, yells something, the gun still in his hand, and they both squeeze their triggers, three rounds each rapid fire, and the man falls.

  They run over to the two prone figures.

  ‘This one’s gone.’

  ‘This one too.’ The officer shines a light on Wagstaff’s face. ‘Jeez…he looks familiar.’

  43

  Jenny hears someone approach, then seat themselves in the chair at her side.

  ‘Mrs Belltree? I’m Detective Inspector Deb Velasco. I am…I was a colleague of Harry’s. I came here as soon as I heard. I’m so sorry.’

  ‘You worked with Harry in homicide?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Can you tell me what happened? No one seems to want to tell me.’

  ‘They’re not telling anybody. I’m sorry, I just don’t know. Apart from the fact that they found him at Crucifixion Creek.’

  The woman’s voice comes closer to Jenny’s ear and whispers, ‘Do you know what he was doing there?’

  ‘No. He didn’t tell me. I’d been expecting him home.’

  They fall silent, unable to find words. Then Deb says, ‘We all liked Harry. We all…admired his dedication.’ It’s as if she’s practising the phrases for a eulogy.

  Jenny says, ‘He’s done this before.’

  ‘What? How do you mean?’

  ‘In the army, in Afghanistan. Eighteen minutes that time.’

  ‘Yes…I…he…’ Deb sounds confused.

  ‘This time it took longer—thirty-eight minutes, as near as they can tell.’ She still feels the numbness that seized her when they told her Harry was dead. It made her close down somehow, and now she is finding her brain only accepts i
nformation a little drop at a time. ‘They call it Lazarus Syndrome, apparently.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ says Deb.

  ‘He was dead for thirty-eight minutes. Can you imagine that?’

  ‘What, they brought him back?’

  ‘They’re operating on him now.’

  ‘But…they think he’ll be all right?’

  ‘They don’t know. It may be weeks, months, before we know.’

  ‘My God.’

  ‘But he’d damn well better be all right. I’ve got something important to tell him.’

  AFTERWORD

  Clearly Harry Belltree is an entirely fictitious character, and his activities in no way represent the real behaviours of the New South Wales police. However I am indebted to a number of people who have helped me to breathe into him whatever life the reader may detect. In particular I should like to thank Detective Superintendent Matt Appleton APM, Alex Mitchell, Dr Tim Lyons, Lyn Tranter, Mandy Brett and especially my wife Margaret.