by Chris Hammer
And when the concrete slab ends after another thirty metres he knows what to look for: the gap in the canopy, the small track at the apex of the angle between this slab and the next one, a third concrete segment, slanting back across the slope at a similar angle to the first section. He hurries on, taking care not to slip, eager to reach the bottom. He can hear the surf clearly now: the track is leading down towards the sea.
He’s just starting the fourth slab, when the shrill snarl of the motorbike comes to life. It’s coming his way, up the slope. He scrambles off the track into the bush, sharp leaves scratching at his arms and clawing at his face. The bike reaches him in less than a minute, the rider revving down a gear as he slows for the next section of vegetation. And through the leaves, looking on from his vantage point, he sees her, visor up, her face tight with concentration: Lucy May.
Vern’s daughter. What is she doing here? The bike squeals away up the hill. Too late to ask her.
Martin moves out from his hiding place, careful to avoid more scratches. Not much more than four hours to deadline. What to do? But he’s come this far; he should check out what is at the bottom of the track. Another three sections and the land flattens. The sea is nearby: he can hear it and, when he looks for it, he can see it. Can you see the sea? Before him is a narrow path, dirt, its users no longer trying to disguise their route. To his right he can hear water tumbling through the bush: the stream flowing from the broken bridge has picked up speed and volume on the way down. He follows the track, the slope now only slight, even as the two sides of the small valley come together, the stream coming closer. And then he is out of the bush, emerging onto a pebble beach, no more than thirty metres long and five wide, the stream entering the sea just metres to his right. The beach is at the apex of a cove; there are pilings from a long-gone jetty. But that’s not what seizes his attention, for pulled up onto the pebble beach is an aluminium runabout, a tinnie, with its outboard tilted up.
‘What the fuck do you want?’
Martin swings around. It’s Levi, Vern’s son, and he’s wielding a knife. A filleting knife. A filleting knife with blood on it. He’s holding it like a weapon, pointing it at Martin. And in that moment, Martin feels as if he is Jasper Speight, Jasper in the seconds before the attack began, when the options were closing themselves off, with nowhere to run, no way of defending himself. Another flurry of thoughts: the knife that killed Jasper, dropped into the river from the wharf—or from a boat. A wave of horror runs through him, a sense of fate catching up, all his transgressions teaming together to come for him.
‘Martin?’ says Levi, his voice puzzled. ‘Martin? Are you all right?’ He lowers the knife.
Martin breathes again, but he’s far from relaxed. It’s still a filleting knife; it still has blood on it.
‘What are you doing here?’ asks Levi.
‘I followed Lucy May. I saw her bike.’ Martin’s eyes are still on the knife. ‘I was out walking. We’re moving to the old house up there on the point.’ He’s trying to keep his voice conversational.
‘Hartigan’s?’ says Levi, sounding impressed. ‘So I heard.’
‘Can you put that knife down?’
Levi looks at the blade as if he’s forgotten he’s holding it. He looks up at Martin, grins. ‘Shit. Relax, will you? I’m not about to stab you.’
‘Glad to hear it. What are you doing here?’
Levi frowns. ‘You don’t know?’
‘No.’ He can hear the sound of the motorbike again, descending the hill. ‘She’s coming back?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Why?’
But Levi shakes his head. ‘You’ll have to ask Vern. He won’t be long.’
Vern? ‘Okay. I will. But tell me, you come here quite often, don’t you?’
‘Not really.’
‘Have you ever seen Jasper Speight down here?’
Levi seems surprised by the question. ‘Yeah. Once. Him and another bloke. Wanted to know if it made sense to rebuild the old pier over there.’
‘What other bloke?’
‘Harry the Lad. You know, the guy from the backpackers.’
‘When was this?’
Levi shrugs. ‘Three weeks, maybe a month ago.’
The bike emerges from the bushes and putters along the track, coming to a stop next to them. Lucy May climbs off, lifting her helmet. ‘Martin?’
‘Lucy May.’
‘What are you doing here? Did Vern tell you?’
‘Tell me what?’
Lucy May looks at Levi, who shakes his head. ‘You’ll have to ask Vern.’
chapter twenty-eight
Martin arrives home to the settlement late, well past dinner time, closer to midnight. He’s a little drunk himself, drunk on goon juice. He’s been hanging out with Jasper and Scotty down in the dunes, smoking cigarettes with some girls. Jasper had been trying to chat them up with brazen banter and ham-fisted pick-up lines. They’d giggled at him, as if it was some glorious joke. And it was. But instead of taking it badly, Jasper had played up to their reaction, performing as if on a stage, a stand-up comedian, coming up with more and more ludicrous pick-up lines. ‘I have a yacht, you know. With a helicopter.’ And they’d all burst into laughter. ‘You reckon that could work?’ Jasper earnestly seeking the girls’ advice, provoking more hilarity.
But now Martin is home, the long walk from the beach to C Street helping him sober up. Not that he cares if he’s drunk; he knows his father won’t. Martin opens the door and the first thing he does is sniff, knowing there is a fair chance that his father will be a mess, comatose and soiled, spread out on his recliner like a dying whale. But there is no smell, nothing unusually offensive, just the background stench of poverty. And there is no snoring. Martin turns on the lights, but there is no light, no power. He looks back out the door, sees lights in one or two other houses, the electronic rainbow of a television through a window, knows that this is not a blackout, just another unpaid electricity bill. Again. Where the fuck is his father?
He edges through the darkened room, using his disposable lighter, shuffling his way to his room, fumbling in the dark, the drunkenness testing him, until he finds the torch lying beside his bed. From the last time this happened. He flicks it on, goes searching for his parent. Not in his bedroom, not passed out in the bathroom, not in the recliner. Somewhere in the distance he can hear a siren. He sweeps the torch around the lounge, picking up the usual detritus. A pizza box, week-old newspapers, empty packets of potato chips. And then he sees it, lying on its side, cork gone, empty. The champagne bottle, dark glass glittering in the torch light.
Martin sinks to the floor, disbelieving. The Veuve Clicquot, his talisman, the symbol of his future, the last remaining vestige of that day playing backyard cricket when the sun had shone and fate had smiled, the last vestige of his family as it had been.
And now the old fuck has drained it. Not even put it in the fridge, not even chilled it. Martin scans the room, finds what he’s looking for: a takeaway coffee cup. He examines it, a ring of coffee still evident; sniffs at it, can smell the champagne. The pathetic loser hadn’t even rustled up a glass. Warm champagne from a dirty paper cup. Martin wants to cry, but the tears won’t come; they won’t return, just as they’ve never returned, not since that day when he was eight, the day he crossed the border between before and after, the day he stopped being a child and started to become something else. He’s had no tears; he’s only had determination. And now he has to leave, leave immediately. Because this is worse, worse than his father’s squalor, worse than him pissing himself, worse than him shagging Hester the slapper. None of that compares to this, this desecration of the champagne, this pillaging of hope. Martin gets to his feet. He will pack now, he will leave. He should have done it months ago. His torch starts to flicker. He doesn’t care, he’ll pack in the dark if he has to. But before he can get back to his bedroom, the police arrive. It’s Clyde Mackie. The policeman has brought his uncle with him, his uncle Vern.
&n
bsp; Vern.
Martin opens his eyes. For a moment the fatigue had won; his eyes had closed and his mind drifted towards sleep and into memory, the past lurking beneath the surface of consciousness. He forces his eyelids wide, as if to flood his mind with light, like opening the blinds of a teenager’s room. He looks around. He’s back at the turning circle on the remnants of Ridge Road, surrounded by rainforest, sitting on a plastic bin of fish bits. Levi has gone, taking the boat back out to sea; Lucy May has gone, riding her bike back through the bush. He looks at his watch: three and a half hours to go. Where is Vern?
More minutes pass before he hears it: the sound of Vern’s tradesman’s truck. A few minutes more and it emerges from the trees and arrives at the turning circle.
‘Martin? What are you doing here?’
‘I’ve got your catch. The kids left it with me. It’s just there, behind the bushes.’
‘You know?’
‘No. Only that there’s fish in the tubs, but not why you’re landing it here instead of the harbour.’
‘Right,’ says Vern, sounding unperturbed. ‘Give us a hand, will you?’
The men lift the two tubs, one each, and place them on the ground behind the truck. They’re small; small enough to mount on the back of a dirt bike.
‘You want a gander?’ asks Vern.
‘I would.’
Vern removes the lid from the tubs. In the first are flaps of grey flesh of various sizes, bloody along one edge, sitting on a bed of ice, and in the other something grey and pink and slimy, also on ice.
‘They look like fins. Shark? And what’s that other thing?’
‘Yeah, shark fins. And a shark’s liver.’
Martin shakes his head. ‘I don’t get it. Why go to all this trouble? Shark fin isn’t illegal. I’ve had it in Chinatown.’
‘Not this shark fin,’ Vern says softly. ‘I’ll tell you on the way.’
Vern opens the back of the tray on the truck, pulls off a bundle of fish net and climbs up. He opens one of two large stainless-steel lockers that run the length of the tray, one on each side, a typical tradesman’s setup. ‘Pass ’em up,’ he says. Martin does, then watches as Vern lowers them into a purpose-built cavity and closes the locker. His uncle jumps down and they throw the fish nets back. ‘Let’s go. I’ll drop you at Hartigan’s.’
Vern has turned the truck around, got it bouncing along the track towards Bede Cromwell’s and Sergi’s, before he speaks. ‘The fins. A great white.’
‘A great white shark? Seriously? How do you even catch one of those?’
‘With difficulty.’
‘They’re protected, aren’t they?’
‘Highly. Wouldn’t want to get busted. Massive fine.’
‘There’s a market for that? Contraband shark fin?’
‘Yeah. Top dollar.’
‘Does it taste any different?’
‘Fucked if I know.’
Martin checks his watch. Just over three hours to go and his uncle is poaching great white sharks. ‘So you catch it out at sea, take the fins and whatever else you want, chuck the rest back in. Then, when you’re heading back, Levi runs it into the cove, just in case there are fisheries inspectors at the harbour.’
‘You got it.’
They get to the gate that separates Hartigan’s from Bede and Alexander’s. Vern gives him the key. Martin opens the gate and waits for the truck to pass through before relocking it, all the while thinking of the shark fins. It doesn’t seem to add up, not to Martin. All the effort, all the risk. And a great white? You could spend days trying to catch one of those; they’re not exactly common.
Back in the cabin, he quizzes his uncle. ‘What’s it for? The shark fins?’
‘It’s no big deal,’ says Vern. ‘We only do it now and then. Some extra cash. Handy now the commercial fishery has closed down. Especially in winter, when the tourists aren’t around.’
‘Where does it go?’
‘Sydney. Truck comes through Longton from up north. All arranged in advance.’
‘Just shark?
‘Shit no. We got lucky with that. All sorts of seafood, provided it’s illegal. That’s the rule: it’s gotta be prohibited. You know, protected species. The more endangered, the higher the price. You’d be surprised, we get all sorts of tropical fish coming down in the currents this time of year, flushed out of the Barrier Reef. Turtles too, some big ones.’
‘Shit, Vern. Turtles?’
‘Yeah. I don’t feel so good about that, but I could kill sharks all day long. I hate the buggers.’
‘So who buys it? Who eats it?’
‘Don’t know. Don’t want to know. It’s some gourmet thing. Rich dicks getting off on flouting the law. I’ve seen inside the back of the truck. They have all kinds of weird shit. Protected and endangered, mostly game. Crocs, that sort of thing, but only if they’re wild. I saw a couple of koalas once.’
‘They eat koalas?’ An image comes to Martin: a skinned koala turning on a spit, gumleaf still in its mouth. ‘And they order this stuff in advance?’
‘Yeah. I get a call, maybe a week’s notice. Say they’ve got something coming up, that they’ll be passing through on such and such a date. There’s kind of a wish list, a longstanding one. If we get anything on the list, they’ll take it.’
‘How often?’
‘Every month or two. If I get something in the nets in between times, I stick it in the freezer at home.’
‘Cripes. How long has this been going on?’
His uncle looks across at him, studying his face, before turning his eyes back to the road. He takes a deep breath. ‘Why do you think your dad was always driving up and down to Longton?’
They sit in silence after that as Vern negotiates his truck along Ridge Road. All those trips up the escarpment when he was a kid. Can you see the sea? Of course, there must have been some purpose to them; they can’t just have been joy riding. He’d never thought about it. So, all the time, his father was transporting an illegal catch up to Longton in his Morris van. And Martin? Did he take him for company, because he liked having him along, or was he part of the ruse? A cover? A father and his boy: who could suspect them of any wrongdoing? Sea the sea, get home free.
Vern has driven through Sergi’s farm and back into the bushland of Jay Jay’s block. They’re almost to the entry to the walking path, the one to the point or, alternatively, down past the swami’s retreat into Hummingbird. Three hours to deadline. ‘Jasper Speight knew about the poaching,’ says Martin, more of a statement than a question.
‘Jasper? Who told you that?’
‘Levi and Lucy May. Said Jasper and Harry Drake Junior were checking out your smuggler’s cove. Talking about rebuilding the jetty down there.’
‘Yeah, but they were interested in property, not fishing.’
Martin returns to his thoughts. Jasper Speight and Harry the Lad together, discussing the possibility of rebuilding the jetty at the cove. Jasper and Harry together. It seems an incongruous combination. He remembers what Susan Speight told him: Jasper was firmly under the thumb of his mother Denise. Harry, on the other hand, worked for Tyson St Clair, managing the Sperm Cove Backpackers and overseeing the sex-for-visa fraud. Denise Speight and Tyson St Clair are fierce rivals, yet here were their two lieutenants, Jasper and Harry, collaborating. On what? Rebuilding the jetty? But why? Jasper had plans to redevelop Ridge Road, subdivide the land up along the cliffs. Perhaps some sort of anchorage would be attractive to potential buyers.
But what could Harry the Lad offer? Martin remembers that Tyson St Clair thought Jasper’s subdivision was a good plan, but that Jasper lacked capital. If Jasper needed money, the small-time drug dealer was hardly likely to have the millions required. Maybe his father did, Harrold Drake Senior. Maybe the son was there as his representative, just as Jasper was a proxy for his mother. Maybe Denise had been misleading Martin when she spoke to him, just as she’d been unforthcoming about her interest in the swamp and the cheese factory. Maybe
Denise and Harrold Drake were in it together.
And that’s when he sees it, like a message from the heavens. Vern has reached the bottom of the hill, where Ridge Road meets the fork from Hummingbird. And there it is, the sign—a sign: DIVINE MEDITATION FOUNDATION, painted in brown with its mystic insignia, the circle containing dots. The sign. Harry the Lad and fish poaching is washed from his mind, flushed away by new thoughts, new connections, as facts collide and theories collude. The swami. Of course. Revelation. Revelation upon revelation. Vern turns onto Dunes Road and Martin lets out an involuntary whoop.
‘You all right?’ asks Vern.
‘Just maybe,’ says Martin, grinning. ‘Just maybe I am.’
The first thing he does after Vern drops him at Mandy’s car, up by the gate on Hartigan’s drive, is ring Nick Poulos. For once, his lawyer answers straight away. ‘Martin. I’ve been trying to get hold of you. Where are you?’
‘Near Hartigan’s. Why? What’s happened?’
‘They’re bringing Mandy back down to Port Silver. They want to take her back through the townhouse, later today or tomorrow, re-enact the day of the murder. They may want you to go through your arrival.’
‘Who told you that?’
‘Winifred.’
‘Fuck. Okay. Let’s meet at the police station.’
‘You got it.’
‘But first, Nick, can you check something out for me? Swami Hawananda ran something called the Divine Meditation Foundation. Can you find out if it has any sort of company structure?’
‘What are you looking for?’
‘Did the foundation die with him, or does it survive him? And who else is involved?’
‘Right. I’m on to it.’