White Knuckle Ride

by Alan Carter

  I closed my eyes until I knew we were through Gloriana’s gates, and when I opened them there was an empty bitumen road, brown scrub, rainclouds on the horizon, and the backs of the constables’ heads. I wanted to drink in the world and know this time where I was going, but I also had to protect myself from the moment when the journey ended and the world was gone again. I tried to look at things as if I were peeking out of a blindfold, which worked while it was only the three of us and the sky and scrub, but then we turned in to a road with trucks and a flower stall and a sign that read strawberries ahead.

  ‘Are you cold?’ said Constable McDermott, turning on the heater.

  The traffic thickened and there were car colours I’d never seen before, burnt orange, peacock blue, a hurting green. As we waited at a set of traffic lights I tried to understand what I was feeling: there was something else I’d forgotten about the world that was more than just its small surprises. All around us drivers were behaving themselves, half an eye on the police car, looks of pretending.

  I remembered this long thin road, its four squashed, potholed lanes of traffic. Times had been good, even in prison you knew that, but only the cars gave any sign. I watched carefully, my mind seeking whatever it was about the world that was harder than a surprise to grasp. It had something to do with the mystifying clash of existences out here, how everything shared the same time and space, Elizabeth Fritzl in her dungeon, strawberries ahead, and nothing to explain the unfairness, nothing to help with the hurt.

  It was good to see the sad old motels and the different shapes of buildings now, all the new apartments had something geometric going on. But I was glad I was only taking a little sip of the world on my way to Dryandra. I wasn’t prepared for any of this, the way the world looked so sharp and decided, so sure of itself, and my mind, not certain of anything.

  I would do my best at Dryandra, in minimum security. I’d take everything it offered, learn what I could. I knew how ready I’d have to be when I was finally free in this world of no security at all.

  DAVE WARNER

  JASPER’S CREEK

  The report of shots fired came from some adventurous tourists who had foregone ceiling fans, sachets of hair conditioner, soft sheets and high priced grog to brave bush, crocs and mosquitoes and thereby experience the True Australia. If he’d ever had any idea what the True Australia was, Detective Inspector Daniel Clement had long since admitted defeat in capturing it. So far as he could tell True Australia was Maoris and Sri Lankans singing their lungs out on TV to impress a bunch of overseas judges to win a career singing American songs someplace other than here. True Australia definitely wasn’t the front bar of the Picador late on Saturday night. At least he hoped it wasn’t. Yet people had it in their heads that drunk losers breaking pool cues over one another’s heads was a link in a chain that stretched all the way back to Anzac Cove.

  ‘True Australia.’

  He gave a bitter grunt and pushed the accelerator flat. He wished the Net had never been invented. He longed for a return to the days of high-cost air-travel when only the wealthy could afford to see another country. Then these adventurous tourists from Tokyo or Oslo or Rio would never have had a clue about the Kimberley region in the north-west of the Great Southland and he wouldn’t have to worry about shots fired and the possibility somebody was illegally taking crocodiles, a job that should have been left to Fisheries or Parks and Wildlife but they were thin on the ground, the call had come to the station and the tourists were probably tweeting now about their ‘brush with death’. Somebody had to take the trouble to check it out. He could have left it till the uniforms were able to take a look but they were all run off their feet. Hagan and Lalor were still hours inland sorting out the tribal stoush, di Rivi and Restoff had their hands full processing a grand final party that had got out of hand. As for his fellow detectives, his sergeant Graeme Earle was off fishing and his junior, Josh Shepherd, tied up in court on the domestic violence case so, senior detective or not, he was left to do the dirty work.

  As well, his tooth continued to flare, and the bloke with the hammer had been at it again before six, none of which helped his disposition. He forced himself to take a deep breath. Phoebe had taken to referring to him as Mr Cranky though he had no doubt the words were her mother’s. Marilyn still hadn’t forgiven him for transferring here. ‘Chasing us’ had been the phrase she’d used. Marilyn was angry because she believed he’d made the kind of sacrifice for their daughter he never would have for her when they were together. She was probably right but he would always love her, part of him anyway, the part you couldn’t explain any more than the part that of him that wedged itself between them like a crowbar. And she wasn’t snow white, this wasn’t all at his feet. She hadn’t married that turkey, Brian, yet. Maybe Brian hadn’t asked or maybe she treated him the same way as she’d treated him, like he never quite measured up. If her old man had still been alive Clement would have had an ally. Nick might have died a rich pearl farmer but he started as a bloody boat mechanic. Geraldine was the problem, she always had been. She loved to play the Lady of the Manor and Clement had been the stablehand never good enough for her daughter. It had taken a dozen years, but Marilyn had eventually synched with her mother on that, though sometimes Clement toyed with the idea she might be having second thoughts, might have at least understood her role in their demise and that’s why she hadn’t walked down the aisle again.

  He had calmed now. This wasn’t so bad, getting out of the office and away from petty crap a rookie could handle. The low, dry scrub either side of the road reminded him of those baking hot days when, as a boy, he’d played at being a soldier sliding towards his imagined enemy. Experience had taught him the enemy was generally not where you thought or even who you thought. Marilyn was happy to overlook the fact he’d grown up here too. Sure his lineage was far less grand, no pearl farm, just a caravan park his mum and dad worked up from scratch but this had been his home for fifteen years. He had almost escaped it.

  Almost.

  The turn-off was up ahead. Australians signposted their roads in the same laconic style they spoke. For a hundred years nobody visited Australia except English cricket teams or Russian circus performers, and no circus performers or cricketers ever bothered to come to places like this. So signs were a waste of time. If you weren’t local you wouldn’t be here, simple as that. If you weren’t local and you were here, you shouldn’t be. You were a freak, not the kind of person desired and therefore not to be encouraged by signage.

  Many things might have changed but that attitude was buried so deep in the national psyche that it persisted. Unless you knew there was a track about to come up on your left that led down to the waterhole you’d eventually be in Darwin still looking for the non-existent sign that said Jasper’s Creek.

  But Clement knew.

  He braked and turned easily down the wide dirt track. A four-wheel drive was as necessary as insect repellent up here. Clement passed a bullet-riddled Parks and Wildlife sign showing a crocodile and the word DANGER. They couldn’t signpost a road but the odd spectacular death by croc had put the wind up the bureaucrats in the Tourism Department enough to get every little creek for five hundred k covered. He could see rust around the edges of the bullet holes so he knew they weren’t anything to do with the shots reported as coming from here in the early hours. Over the phone the tourists had given him a precise location for where they were when they heard the gunshots so Clement drove towards a waterhole he’d always known as Jasper’s. Who the hell Jasper was, nobody had been able to tell him. The waterhole wasn’t named on any map, it was too small down in mangrove territory. The bush was denser here, with paperbark, blackboy even a few big gums. Clement pulled up at the point where the car-trail narrowed.

  No matter how long you lived up here, you never got used to the dry blast of hot air that hit you the moment you stepped out of air conditioning. Clement felt it now: suffocating, morbid, unfriendly heat. He began walking through bush toward the cree
k bank. Flies greeted him like a lost king.

  Having read up thoroughly about the nocturnal habits of crocs, the tourists had slept on the roof of their campervan. It was a practice Clement didn’t recommend. Already since he’d transferred, he’d dealt with two incidents of people falling from their perch during the night and cracking bones in the dirt below. One bloke was pissed and had simply overbalanced. The other had woken up at dawn, forgotten where he was, and rolled straight off the roof. Better to simply scrunch up in your car or move further away from the water. Still, they’d been wise to be cautious. There’d recently been reports of a large croc in the area that had taken a pig-dog.

  It took only a few minutes to find the car tracks and the broken scrub from where the tourists had driven out. According to them, the shots had come from the west side of the creek but as it was night, they’d seen nothing and simply hightailed it out of there. Clement didn’t blame them. He suspected it was probably a couple of drunk hoons firing at the stars but it could have been some dickhead after a croc. Close to the creek the trees bent in and leaned over the dark water, boughs sprawled across the muddy bank like a party-goer who’d never made it home; the light was dappled, the smell of rotting weeds and dead wood that brought to mind dragonflies and mosquitoes. Here Clement was extremely careful. Coming out of the bright light into this shadowy grove, your eyes took time to adjust and you could literally trip over a big croc lazing in its muddy bed. He made sure the logs near the bank were logs, then advanced close enough to be able to look west to the other bank, a distance he estimated might be a swimming pool and a half, say eighty metres. His first scan registered nothing out of the ordinary but as he looked back the other way he sensed rather than saw something wasn’t right. His focus narrowed to a shag levitating above the water but without its wings extended. Closer inspection revealed it was sitting on something curved and silver, the bottom of an upturned tinny. It was in shallow water right near the edge of the opposite bank but, despite the proximity, there was no way Clement was swimming across. Foreboding thudded in Clement’s chest, not a salvo, not a flurry, just one solid thump. He started around to the other side of the creek.

  ‘Anybody there?’

  His words spun around the empty space and slapped him.

  No reply.

  The bush was thick and spikey through here. Sharp, stiff foliage poked into his neck and the backs of his legs, tangled branches scratched his arms. It was as if the bush were saying, keep away, leave me alone, I don’t want you here, like the absence of signage was its choice. Even pushing as quickly as he could it took him a good ten minutes to circumnavigate the creek and get to the opposite side from where he’d started. His position now was directly in line with the partly submerged tinny, about twenty-five metres away back in the bush. A gap in the foliage surrounding the creek at this point meant there were no trees obstructing his line of sight. He guessed this might be why you’d launch your tinny from here. No outboard motor was visible on the tinny and alarms bells sounded that fraction louder. Every tinny up here had some kind of motor. He called out again but heard only the ghost of his own voice. He continued on his arc, sideways rather than down to the water because he was after the vehicle that had carried the tinny, shoving his way through a tight screen of bush, sweating like a pig. About ten metres on, in a small clearing was an early model Pajero, the driver door open. A low hum turned him around. A one-man tent was pitched directly behind. It looked like somebody had poured a sack of tea over it: bush flies, thousands of them. Off the nearest tree, Clement snapped a small branch and waved its dead leaves around near the tent. The flies scattered long enough for him to recognise they’d been feasting on blood, quite a deal of it from the looks, tacky, not fresh but relatively recent, over the nylon tent and in the dark earth.

  Steeling himself, Clement flipped back the tent flap.

  Another dense army of flies. Fifty or so launched themselves at his eyes and nostrils, the rest remained undisturbed, clumped on what had once been a cooked chicken. Apart from a sleeping bag, and a couple of utensils and plastic drinking cup, nothing else was in the tent. No blood from what he could see. If the blood on the tent was from an animal killed on a hunt, there was so sign of the carcass. His guts tightened fractionally. Something bad had happened to somebody here.

  ‘Hello. Is there anybody here?’

  He yelled it as loud as he could but all tone was flattened by the vast emptiness around him. He yelled again. And again. There was no response. He turned his attention to the vehicle, put it at eight to ten years old, small dents in the body and paintwork, scratches spanning a few years. His guess: either bought secondhand in this condition cheap, or the owner was a drinker who preferred to save his money for grog. The roof bore racks for transporting the tinny. Through the back window he could see fishing rods and tackle, a bucket, esky, various crap, old towels and a tarp. Making sure to touch nothing he peered down at the back seat. A pair of wading boots, shoes, three empty cans of VB. He moved to the open driver door and was surprised to find the key in the ignition. Closer inspection showed the lights were switched to on but the car headlights weren’t illuminated. He carefully twisted the key in the ignition with as little grip as possible already aware fingerprints might be important.

  Not a kick, flat battery his diagnosis. The glove box was open and disturbed. In the crack where the hinges sat was a live cartridge, twenty-two by the looks. There was another on the floor where it might have spilled. No weapon though.

  It was looking more and more like a crime-scene. No blood in the car. No obvious sign of more than one person, no women’s clothing, anything like that. Clement slowly circumnavigated the vehicle. A bumper sticker extolled the virtues of Broome Anglers.

  Clement used his phone to take photos of the scene and record the car’s number plate and odometer setting. A phone burst into life somewhere close by. Generic ringtone. Clement tracked the sound to the dirt a few metres from the edge of the creek. Using his shirt over his fingers, Clement carefully picked up an older model smart phone. Number Withheld flashed on the screen. Clement answered.

  ‘Hello?’

  No answer but somebody was on the other end.

  ‘This is Detective Inspector Daniel Clement …’

  The line went dead. Clement stared at the phone. His police car was equipped with a computer that would enable him to trace the Pajero plates but to get back to it through the bush was going to take another twenty minutes slog. He scrolled through the phone’s last calls dialled. The most recent was identified as ‘Rudi’.

  He dialled, using his own phone.

  Voicemail. A man, foreign accent, something European. ‘I’m not available. Leave a message.’

  Clement left a brief message asking Rudi to call him. He scrolled to the next entry which was labelled ‘Club’. Clement had never been inside the Anglers Club but he’d passed it often enough, a small modern brick building at the industrial end of town, so indistinguishable it could as easily have been a public dunny or Scout headquarters. Broome was a small town and he doubted there would be more than fifty members of the Anglers. He gave it a try. The phone rang for some time. He was about to give up when a woman answered.

  ‘Anglers.’

  ‘This is Detective Inspector Daniel Clement.’ He ran through his spiel. He was at an abandoned vehicle he thought might belong to one of the members. After eliciting the woman’s name was Jill he described the car.

  ‘Just a sec,’ Jill said. He heard her calling to somebody in the background. She came back on. ‘Sounds like Dieter’s.’

  ‘Dieter who?’

  A further bout of offline consultation was followed by ‘Schaffer. Don’t ask me how you spell it. Is everything okay?’

  That was the question, wasn’t it?

  Apparently Dieter Schaffer was about sixty-five, retired and unmarried. He generally fished alone. The only number they had on him was the mobile. He lived way out on Cape Leveque Road somewhere. Jill didn’t
know who Rudi was. Clement got off the phone and considered his options. His gut said it was a probable crime scene but there could be many explanations for what he’d found. Schaffer could have accidentally shot or cut himself, then called Rudi or some other mate to come get him. Clement rang Derby Hospital, and got Karen, who had made it abundantly clear to him several times that there was always a bed ready for him there, with her in it. Karen was late forties and it showed in her face but she had the taut body of a woman half her age.

  ‘You finally asking me out?’

  Clement sidestepped. ‘You have a Dieter Schaffer there? Sixty-five, German accent, emergency admittance most likely?’

  ‘We got a twenty-something idiot who blew himself up with his barbecue gas bottle.’

  ‘Anybody admitted with any sort of gunshot or other wound the last twenty hours?’

  ‘No. And you still haven’t answered my first question.’

  ‘I’m not dating.’

  ‘I’m not asking for a date.’

  He had to extricate. ‘I’ll buy you a beer at The Banksia.’

  ‘She’s not coming back to you, Dan. Sooner you understand that the better off you’ll be.’

  ‘Thank you, Karen.’

  ‘My pleasure. I’ll call you if Mr Schaffer turns up here.’

  He’d never slept around on Marilyn. Once or twice he’d kissed women, a greeting or farewell, felt that jolt, knew that if he wanted it, anything was on the table but he always pulled back, no matter how bad it was with Marilyn at the time. He was never sure if this was any testament to his morality, he liked to think so, but maybe he just wanted the high ground. It was eighteen months since they’d split. It took him eight months before he slept with another woman and it was strange, not unpleasant, not earth shattering but like wearing new shoes. He slept with two other women in quick succession and knew he shouldn’t compare them to Marilyn but couldn’t help it. He resented this weakness in himself. She’s not coming back, even if she did it would be a mistake so you’re more the fool for protracting the inevitable, Karen is right, he thought, but she’s wrong too. Marilyn and he were a conundrum, a circular square, yet he was still unable to move on with his life. As a boy he’d been fascinated by the story of Scott of the Antarctic who must have known he was pushing on to his doom. Clement had not meant it to act as a template for his behaviour but sometimes he felt it did.