by Robert Gott
‘You have to suspend everything you think you know about both Arthur and Peter Topaz. I can’t tell you why they are doing these terrible things. I don’t even know whether Peter is covering for Arthur, or whether he’s actively involved, but believe me Adrian, they’re both in it. We don’t have time to stand here debating the facts. If Topaz has freed Arthur, they’re going to come looking for me and anyone else who might now know the truth.’
I could tell from the blank look on Adrian’s face that he had not believed a word I had said. In one of those frightening flashes of intuition that I had been experiencing lately, it occurred to me that the blankness of his features might not be a measure of his disbelief, but might be indicative of something far more sinister — prior knowledge. Was he involved in this, too? My God, who else? The whole troupe?
Adrian suddenly threw his hands in the air and said, ‘All right. That’s it. I have now officially had enough. Peter asked me to guard you to keep you out of trouble. Fine. I failed. I kneed some Neanderthal in the balls. That was fun. Now you’re standing there saying crazy things and, frankly, Will, I’ve done my bit and I’ve lost interest. I am very sorry that you have become mentally ill, but I’m going now, and if you try to stop me you’ll be adding crushed testicles to your injury list.’
He left the room, and I made no attempt to detain him. I felt that I had entered a bizarre dream world where I alone was innocent of unspeakable crimes, and where everyone I knew was engaged in a conspiracy to pin those crimes on me.
Mal Flint had recovered sufficiently to have begun shouting abuse from the cupboard, and he made ineffectual thumps against the door. I had no doubt that he would get out eventually, and I did not want to be there when he did. I didn’t linger to explore Topaz’s house, although I was sure that I would have found a photograph or some other piece of evidence to support my hunch about his relationship to Arthur. I might also have found something to link the accident that had disfigured Arthur to the Drummond family. I could not begin to imagine what this link might be, or why it would prompt such brutal vengeance, but I knew that the answers lay in Arthur’s and Topaz’s shared past.
It had stopped raining and the wind had died completely. The street had an exhausted appearance, as if it were cowering after a flogging. I looked back at Topaz’s house. It was not raised on disguised stilts like its neighbours, but sat on low stumps. Only a few steps led to the verandah. He was not interested in gardening. There were a few trees — a pawpaw and a bopple nut among them — and a few scruffy, battered shrubs. His red, iron roof, which had survived unscathed, could have done with a coat of paint.
I didn’t know what part of Maryborough I was in. The disarray in the street would have made even the familiar look unfamiliar, but I was sure that I had not been in this street before. A few houses down, a boy of about ten came out to inspect the damage. There was no one else around, and I was glad of it — I could find out where I was, without arousing suspicion. He whistled his surprise at my appearance.
‘What happened to you?’ he asked.
‘The storm,’ I said. ‘I was out helping.’
He seemed satisfied with that.
‘I seem to have got lost. Which way is town?’
He didn’t seem to think the question was in any way unusual. Perhaps he thought that people could be blown off course, like birds.
‘This is Ariadne Street,’ he said. ‘You go down that way to Walker Street, turn left, and just keep walking.’
I thanked him and set off. It was a long walk, and more and more people along the way had begun to emerge to see what the storm had done to their property and their neighbours’ properties. Here and there pieces of iron swung like loose teeth, or were peeled back as if the wind’s fingers had picked at them. A few houses sat shocked and exposed, their roofs completely gone. In one front yard a pawpaw tree lay uprooted, while nearby a straggly rose bush had maintained its grip on the earth. Nature’s awful logic did not extend to an equitable meting-out of destruction.
My appearance, my cuts, bruises, and filthy clothes, made a kind of sense among the scattered wreckage. I was no more remarkable than any other evidence of the wild and ruinous night. Indeed, men returning from the sandbagging of the Mary River looked worse than I did. They were muddied and exhausted, and took no interest in me at all.
I was in a terrible quandary. The person I most needed to talk to — Detective Sergeant Conroy — was also the person least likely to listen. My escape would have been discovered by now, and the entire Maryborough police force, most of whom would have been up all night, would be on full, if bleary, alert. I couldn’t join the troupe at the Royal. The police would be watching for me there. I thought about Wright’s Hall. Today was a Tuesday, so there would be no children there roller-skating. Given all that had happened since Charlotte’s fund-raiser yesterday — my God, was it really only yesterday? — I didn’t suppose that the troupe would go there for a rehearsal. They would have been questioned by now, though, and someone, Bill Henty probably, would have mentioned Wright’s Hall as a possible bolthole for me. I decided that my need for dry clothes was greater than my need for caution, and so I decided to risk going to the George Hotel. As well, I wanted a place in which to assess the damage done to my body. The uninterrupted walk towards the town centre had provided each of my hurts with the luxury of expressing itself freely. The worst of these was now my arm. The deep, dull ache that emanated from it indicated that it would have to be reset. I would have to endure another lecture from the matron about the shortage of plaster.
When I reached Queen’s Park it was obvious that the waters of the Mary River had receded quickly. Clearly, this had not been a major flood, but more like the river heaving its weight on to dry land to remind the people of Maryborough that if they thought the Japanese army was the most dangerous force around, they’d better think again. The smell of river mud hung in the air so thickly that it was as if each nostril had been plugged with it.
The George Hotel had not been swept away, but the river eddied about it still. It could be entered, though, as the water was now at knee level. There were no police that I could see, and I convinced myself that they would have taken one look at this partly submerged hotel and crossed it off their list of possible refuges. I went in through the front door, which had been pushed open by the force of the flood. It is a peculiar and disturbing sensation to walk into a flooded room. It creates an unsettling simmer of impotent outrage. Why should the river wish to poke about in every corner of every room and leave its putrid excreta behind it when it departs?
All the furniture in the bar and dining room had been overturned, and lay crowded against the walls. There was a strange and dismal silence, unrelieved by even a single drip. So much water, and not a sound. This, I thought, is what happens when a building drowns.
Before I could slip any further into the metaphysics of a flood, a crash of metal on metal in the kitchen brought me back to earth. There was someone in there. Cautiously, I made my way towards the door. The last time I had done this I had been covered in yabby bisque, with a roomful of people laughing at my back. Then I had been mortified. Now I was afraid. I listened for a moment, hoping to determine how many people were in there. There were further scrapings of metal and finally a voice, obviously speaking to itself, said, ‘What a bloody mess.’ It was Tibald Canty, come to inspect his precious kitchen. I pushed open the door in relief, forgetting in my haste that I had no reason to trust any of my troupe.
Tibald was standing by the Aga, a saucepan in one hand and a sauté dish in the other. The sound of the door swishing water before it as it opened made him turn.
‘You nearly killed Arthur, you stupid bastard,’ he said.
While I hadn’t expected him to embrace me with his huge, leg-of-mutton arms, I hadn’t expected this ill-informed invective either. No one seemed in the least bit interested in my welfare.
> ‘How do you know about Arthur?’ I asked.
‘He’s in the hospital. He’s still unconscious. They don’t know if he’ll ever come round.’
‘How do you know about Arthur?’ I repeated.
‘Peter Topaz took him to the hospital and came round to the Royal afterwards. He said you hit Arthur over the head.’
Tibald looked at me with ill-disguised loathing.
‘He said you tried to kill Arthur.’
The hand holding the saucepan drew attention to itself by rising and falling slightly.
‘And did he tell you why?’ I asked calmly.
‘Yes.’
‘Well?’
‘I’d give up the amateur detecting if I were you, and stick to acting. Better still, find something you’re good at.’
‘So Topaz has pulled the wool over your eyes.’
Tibald sniffed derisively and said, ‘Why don’t you just piss off, Will? You’re your own and everyone else’s worst enemy.’ He shook his head. ‘Poor bloody Arthur.’
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Poor bloody Arthur — only not quite so poor as the people he killed.’
‘The fact that you actually believe that is an indication of just how big a dickhead you are.’
‘I suppose Topaz gave you his side of the story, did he?’
‘His side? His side? He’s a copper. He doesn’t have a side. He investigates. He looks for evidence. He follows clues. You, on the other hand, are clueless.’
I nodded sagely, trying to create an impression of both condescension and patience. I would accept Tibald’s apology gracefully when the time was right, along with all the other apologies due to me.
I left Tibald to grieve over his extinguished Aga, and splashed my way to the stairs, climbed them, and approached my bedroom door on the third floor. I opened it to find Peter Topaz seated on a chair in the corner of the room. He was holding a gun, and it was pointed at me.
‘Gedday,’ he said.
I sat on the bed and waited for Topaz to speak. He was shaking his head slowly, and the muscles in his face were tense.
‘You think you’ve solved it, don’t you?’ he said. ‘You think you’ve worked it all out.’
‘I have worked it all out.’
‘OK. Why don’t you tell me all about it?’
He settled the gun into a comfortable firing position, indicating that he intended to pull the trigger whether I spoke or not. This was not the time for obfuscation.
‘I don’t know everything,’ I said. ‘I don’t know the why, only the who.’
‘Really?’ he said, raising his eyebrows in mock surprise.
‘I know that Arthur killed at least some of those people, maybe all. I also know that he’s your brother.’
His eyes widened.
‘Given,’ he said, ‘that Arthur might yet die as a result of your assault, it would be inappropriate to fall about laughing at this point. That, however, would be the natural response to what you have just said.’
‘If you’re planning to kill me anyway, why don’t you just tell me the truth, Peter? What does it matter?’
He sighed.
‘I’m not planning to kill you, Will. I’m planning to take you to the hospital to meet someone. If I have to shoot you somewhere painful to do it, I will. Otherwise you could just come quietly.’
‘Why would I want to do that? I don’t want to speak to Arthur.’
‘Arthur’s unconscious. It’s not him I want you to meet.’
He stood up and indicated that I should do the same.
‘There’s a car up the hill a bit,’ he said.
The car, the same one that had taken me to and from the courthouse, was driven by a constable whose face was familiar. Topaz and I sat in the back. I thought it a most extraordinary demonstration of gall that he would continue to use the resources of the police force even as his guilt stood in peril of exposure.
The car didn’t pull up at the front door of the Maryborough Base Hospital, but drew up round the back. We entered the building through a narrow service door and passed through the kitchen with its stale, unhealthy smell of unpalatable, overcooked, and probably poisonous food. Tibald’s kitchen most certainly did not smell like this. We passed through a ward, and I saw Arthur lying on a bed, his head bandaged, his scarred chest exposed above a sheet pulled only as high as his waist. We didn’t pause, but entered a room which, by its size, was never intended to function as a place where a patient might be put. It was the matron’s station. Her presence, seated behind a desk that had been relocated to a corner, attested to this. It had been moved to accommodate a bed. Lying on the bed, propped on pillows, and almost unrecognisable behind swollen eyes and facial bruising, was Joe Drummond. He seemed to be sleeping.
‘Mr Power,’ the matron said, ‘the circus left town a week ago. What are you doing here?’
I looked at Topaz. He obviously hadn’t told her that I was responsible for Arthur’s injuries. I had a sudden and sickening presentiment that my world was about to be turned upside down.
‘I’m not with the circus,’ I said dully.
‘Mr Drummond is quite able to speak with you,’ she said to Topaz. ‘But please, be brief.’
She left the room.
Joe’s eyes opened, but they were little more than slits, with the pulpy red of the whites just visible.
‘You’re getting stronger,’ Topaz said. ‘You’re going to be all right.’
‘Can’t believe I let him take me by surprise like that,’ he croaked.
Topaz nodded.
‘Insane people are much stronger than sane ones,’ Topaz said.
In an effort that clearly pained him, Joe moved his head slightly so that he could see me.
‘If you hadn’t come out of Flint’s house when you did, he would have finished me off,’ he said.
Did he mean Arthur? I remembered there was that brief period when I was in Flint’s bedroom and Arthur was, I thought, in the kitchen.
‘Who?’ I asked. ‘Who was it?
Joe looked at Topaz, who nodded.
‘You can tell him,’ he said. ‘He needs to know what a complete dickhead he’s been.’
‘It was that red-headed bloke from the hotel. Augie. Augie Kelly.’
This struck me as so ludicrous that, for a moment, my brain failed to put a face to the name.
Topaz was leaning against the police vehicle and I was standing with my free hand in the pocket of my trousers. My head was lowered, and I was trying to come to terms with what I had just heard.
‘I don’t understand,’ I said. ‘What is the connection between Augie and Arthur?’
Topaz pushed himself away from the car and grabbed my shirtfront.
‘Both their names start with A,’ he said, and pushed me backwards. I staggered, but kept my feet. He raised his hand to his face and rubbed at a spot between his eyebrows.
‘This is like trying to explain something to an elderly, demented aunt,’ he said. ‘There is no connection between Arthur and Augie. None. Have you got that? None. Now, I’ll try to keep this simple.’
I saw the constable in the driver’s seat smirk.
‘Arthur, your friend Arthur, who is lying in there unconscious, has got nothing to do with these crimes. He is not my brother. You are a fucking idiot. Is there anything so far you don’t understand? If there is, please tell me now, because if I have to go over this again, I think it would be simpler to shoot you.’
He paused. I said nothing, but was unpleasantly certain, with his real, rather than imagined, face before me, that he looked nothing at all like Arthur.
‘Good,’ he continued. ‘Augie Kelly is the perpetrator of every single one of these deaths — not including Fred Drummond’s, obviously.’
‘How long have you known about Augie?’ I ventured.
‘I’ve suspected for a while, but he’s a smart man and I couldn’t catch him out. I’ve known for sure only since yesterday when Joe was able to speak. I can’t guess at his motive. That’s a mystery.’
‘And Conroy?’
‘He knows. There are people out looking for Kelly. Naturally he’s disappointed, and not entirely convinced either. I need hardly remind you that escaping from custody is still a crime, so next time you see him I wouldn’t piss him off any further. Bashing Arthur over the head is also a crime, so don’t think for a minute that you’re off the hook.’
‘How did Joe get here? Why didn’t we find him?’
‘You were looking in the wrong place. Augie knew you were going to see Flint — I presume one of you told him, or he overheard you — and he got there ahead of you. He only had a few seconds to deal with Joe before you and Arthur went outside. He knocked him about and pushed him under the house at the side — there’s a space there. I don’t know whether he thought Joe was dead or not, but he took off into the bush before he could make sure. Maybe he was going to come back and finish the job.’
‘Why didn’t he?’
‘Because Mal Flint found him first. After you two goons had finished torturing him — also a crime you could be charged with — he heard Joe moaning, and discovered where Kelly had stowed him. He could see that Joe was in a bad way, so he got him to hospital.’
‘How?’
I was astonished to learn that Mal Flint was capable of Samaritan behaviour, and was even more astonished when Topaz said, ‘He carried him as far as the Granville Bridge, and an army truck took him the rest of the way. Flint didn’t go with him, but the driver recognised him and told me. Flint hasn’t been around since then, but I left him a note asking him to call on me. He saved Joe’s life, so without Flint it would have taken much longer to nail Kelly. In fact, you might have been given a life sentence before then, and the investigation might have been closed.’