by Dave Warner
‘I haven’t caught sight of him. He could have turned off.’
‘So what’s the plan?’
‘Let’s keep going, see if there’s any reports. If he sticks to the main road he’ll be stopped at Beagle Bay so we can head to there then work back south.’
If he were Bourke he would push his luck, head to Beagle Bay, then assuming there’d be a roadblock, turn off the main road down a track and try and get around it. He doubted he’d go east into the desert. If he got bogged there he’d be a sitting duck. So it would be towards the coast.
About twenty minutes in, the rain having slipped back another notch, he got a report via the station that an hour earlier emergency personnel had responded to a distress call and picked up some fishermen at a creek about ninety k south of Beagle Bay. As they went to turn back on the main road towards Beagle Bay a silver Rav4 passed them at top speed heading north. They swung out after it and a few clicks on a flat stretch of road just managed to spy the car turning west off the main road.
Clement took the coordinates where that had happened and compared his position. It was about twenty k north of him, a no-man’s land of mangroves and crocodiles.
57
When the big four-wheel drive had pulled out from the side track just after he passed, he presumed it was the police. A moment later during a gap in the torrent across his rear window he picked out Emergency Service stickers but it stood to reason they were acting as scouts for the cops. He had already decided he would have to turn off somewhere before Beagle Bay. There was an indigenous community around there and the police would almost certainly ask the locals to keep an eye out for him. He had to go now. He threw the vehicle off road into the low scrubby bush to the side of the highway, heading west to the water. The car dipped and bit into muddy ground. Like limbs smashed by artillery on a field of war, pieces of foliage, ripped by the gale, spun through the air lashing the windscreen. The tyres spun and slid, gripping and churning. He expected the bigger vehicle to follow but it didn’t, or at least so far as he could tell it hadn’t for he could see no dim headlights battering their way through the still sheeting rain. Perhaps it was simply an emergency vehicle on patrol?
There was no way this car was going to get him far in these conditions. You needed a big tank of a car up here. But this was where he had been led so he would make the best of it. He had his bow and a knife, water wasn’t a problem. Maybe he would find some fishermen, take their tinny. He wasn’t done yet. If it came down to killing the detective to secure his freedom, he wasn’t sure what he might do. His grandfather had been a policeman murdered in the line of duty and so he was on the cop’s side in a lot of ways. On the other hand, it had been a cop who had betrayed his grandfather. This detective had taken his little girl to dinner and that had touched Peter, that was how it could have, should have been with him and his father.
The car dropped, the suspension jolted, his insides were shoved up to his ribs. He’d hit a gully and he thought it was the end of the line, the little car grunting and digging into mud but then he was up and out of it again and suddenly in bush more dense and dangerous but also offering more coverage from any pursuer.
58
Once Clement left the road, driving became ridiculous. The steering wheel may as well have been an artefact stuck on for show, for control rested in the grooves and angles of ancient ruts. The tyres were a phrenologist’s fingers following suggested paths across the terrain’s skull by the lightest touch. All the time the water bucketed. This was only the edge of the cyclone which probably barely qualified as a two and he said his prayers it had been no stronger. His chances of finding Bourke were as remote as the location. He slithered and ground his way into denser bush only too aware that a branch could snap and crush the cab and his life. He endured this serpentine rough-ride trying to make radio contact with Earle but this time it seemed they were incommunicado. The last transmission he’d made was that he was turning off to follow Bourke west towards the mangroves but he could only guess whether this was the same track he’d been seen on. Even if it were, Bourke could have left it. In their last communication Earle had estimated he was twenty minutes behind Clement. He’d had his own dramas with a branch smashing the passenger window. Barely perceptibly the rain had eased, the instant of clarity on the windscreen now a fraction longer although Clement was constantly forced to lean out and rip loose foliage from the wiper blades.
It was dark in this denser part of the bush and that meant an orange light shining ahead at two o’clock was that much brighter and caught his attention instantly. He slowed to a crawl to see it better, a regular flashing pulse, a hazard light maybe.
It was more deeply forested here. Slim trees stood like toothpicks on an hors d’ouvres tray, so that he had to drive across, across, then down when a large enough gap presented. And then there it was. A silver Rav4 stopped at right angles, thirty to fifty metres away. Clement edged forward until he was about ten metres shy of it, rain and strips of leaf continued to whip through the air. He scanned intently but could see no movement. He killed his engine, checked his pistol and fought his way out of the vehicle, the wind having abated more than Clement had realised. From what he could see the front left fender had smashed into a low stump, probably locking up the wheel. Through the howling wind the hazard light continued to pulse. It was only when he was close enough to the vehicle to see nobody inside it that Clement remembered the trap laid for Arturo Lee. Instinctively he pushed to his left towards the closest cover. An arrow fizzed past him to his right but he saw the blur rather than hearing it over the rain.
‘Don’t do this, Peter,’ he yelled trying to locate where the shot came from. About three o’clock he thought, but all he could see was misting heavy rain and brush. He doubted Bourke would hear his words beneath the hiss of shaking leaves.
‘There’s no way out, Peter. We just want Osterlund, we know who he is and what he did.’
If there was any reply he did not hear it. Was Bourke still waiting or had he taken the opportunity to run? Clement was now in the position of waiting for Earle or pushing on. He should wait, but what if Bourke encountered somebody else with a car or a boat that he thought might win him freedom. Would he hesitate to kill another for the chance of escape?
59
Behind a thigh-high bush, squatting on one knee, Bourke had held the detective in his sights from the moment he had left the vehicle. The cop’s words were inaudible in the wind, so powerful it was impossible to hold the bow steady. Water was pouring into his eyes off his slicker, forcing him to blink constantly. He was aiming for the thigh but as he released the arrow the target suddenly moved left. The policeman took cover. The angle was tight in normal conditions let alone this tempest. The man yelled out again. Bourke thought he heard his name, Peter, but couldn’t be sure. He could guess the man was urging him to give up.
Peter was desperate to get away and live the life of which he had the briefest taste, yet how could he? The storm was backing off but even had he found a small dinghy it could not survive the ocean. They would be looking for him at every airport. He had no money, no false papers.
The policeman suddenly broke cover and ran towards him. This was not how it should be. He loosed an arrow and, though it could not actually be possible in the bedlam, he fancied he heard the thud as it struck its target. The policeman half-ran, half-staggered to a thicket before sprawling into ankle-deep water, where he lay still.
60
Fellow cops who had been shot told Clement it was like being punched by a ball of iron. That was all Clement had as a comparison for being shot by an arrow. And it did feel like a punch but more by a long iron finger than a ball. For the first few strides he was able to power on, aware that some foreign object was stuck inside him, the shaft and tail still protruding from his side, under his right arm near his ribcage he guessed, but no real impediment. But then the rhythm in his stride went wrong like a toddler trying to negotiate a downward slope for the first time, and he w
as stumbling, unable to straighten. He fell into the water without grace, this was no celebratory touchdown but the humiliation of a fall into muck. He was aware he wasn’t breathing so well, he started to feel faint and wondered if he was dying. Because of the arrow he lay slightly on his left, gasping, the water getting colder around him, still splashing with heavy droplets, the gods pissing on him. The leaves above shuffled like the beaters of a cheer squad, he indulged himself with a vision of himself as fallen hero, a generic tombstone and Phoebe and Marilyn sad-eyed in black. He was losing it now, the thought, all thought, it was a fog, he was nothing and nowhere.
61
Peter had not meant his shot to be lethal, but in this gale control was limited. The policeman was lying there slightly tilting up, inert. It was possible he was foxing. He still had the gun so a direct approach would leave Peter a sitting duck. He could not expect the cop to spare him now. The man was his salvation though. The police vehicle was intact. Perhaps he’d left the keys in the ignition. Bourke decided to circle left around to the car, keeping his bow ready. He stopped every few seconds and glanced back at the prone body. The cop hadn’t moved.
The police car was a godsend and he meant that literally. Dear Hilda mumbling in the dark room, liver-spotted narrow fingers sliding over her rosary, so long cut adrift by those to whom she prayed perhaps her devotion had been rewarded through this gift to him? The rain was easing but still potent, his feet squelching into pools. He had to travel all the way to the car and pull open the door. No keys. The cop must have them on him. He swung back but could not see the cop’s body now.
‘Give it up, Peter. You can’t get away.’
The cop was sitting on the ground behind him, his back propped against a thin tree, both hands pointing the gun at him, he looked pale and his breathing was laboured.
Clement was trying to make himself sound much stronger than he was. A minute before he’d felt water pinging off his cheek and blinked his eyes open again. He had sense of time having skipped a beat and supposed he must actually have passed out. He turned and caught sight of Bourke breaking for cover to the car and realised this was his one chance but dragging himself closer back towards his car had sapped all energy from him.
‘Come on Peter, don’t make me shoot you.’
‘You won’t shoot me because you want to know where Osterlund is.’
They were shouting but every word was audible at this close range.
‘Where is he?’
He caught it then, Bourke’s reflexive glance down. He’s buried him thought Clement. He was sure of it.
‘Where did you bury him?’
There it was, a momentary look of shock, then Bourke’s jaw set. ‘That animal cut my grandfather in pieces and chucked him in the river.’
‘Don’t ruin your life. Think of your grandmother.’
He screamed at Clement, ‘Who do you think I did this for?’
‘Consider her, Peter. Tell us where Osterlund is. People are on your side. They understand. You can rebuild your life.’
‘That’s bullshit.’
Clement tried to read him, it was difficult anyway but he was weakening again and he felt control slipping away. ‘So what, Peter, we kill one another? Your grandfather was a policeman. You think he’d approve of you killing me?’
‘It’s too late.’
‘Too late to get away, that’s all, not too late for another …’
He wanted to say ‘chance’ but it stalled like a pool ball stuck in the tray. Clement could hear his own shallow breathing, his words slurring.
‘Come on. Let’s both get back to our families.’
‘You will have to shoot me.’
Clement raised the gun, hoping to instil some urgency, but he could not keep it steady.
‘You buried him alive didn’t you? Otherwise you’d just kill him on the beach. Where?’
‘Sorry.’
His plan was to shoot Bourke in the leg but the gun was waving around. Even if he could just keep him talking a little …
He felt his eyes closing, he was terribly feeble now. He fought with all his strength to stay conscious and that sucked power from his limbs. His hand dropped to his thigh. Bourke walked forward and gently prised the gun from him the way a father prises a toy from a sleeping child. He could barely keep his eyes open. He felt Bourke’s fingers in his pocket and saw his keys dangling like a small fish. Bourke took a step back and regarded him he thought at first with contempt but then realised: no, it wasn’t that, it was pity.
62
The policeman had stopped talking and his head just lolled to one side. Peter remembered bringing ice-cream to the little girl who had sat with her father, recalled her face rippling with pleasure. He had not wanted to orphan her. Tears began to muster in his eyes but were they for the girl or himself? For so long he’d had to be strong, at school, managing to avoid the subject of his father with the deftness of a bomb technician disengaging the trigger mechanism. Later as he grew older the questions about his oma, the implicit query of what had happened to his parents, the delicious anticipation of young women wanting to mother him, their red lips circling the straw of a shared milkshake, the way he’d had to bite his tongue when they slagged off their own ‘helicopter’ parents, a cheap pejorative lingo coined by those who would farm out their children to friends or other relatives while they doused themselves in suntan lotion on a Spanish terrace scanning magazines rather than cramped over a Monopoly board with their children, telling themselves it was really for the kids’ benefit, it was making them independent. Well he was independent now. With his bow and axe he had slain the three-headed monster that had devoured his childhood. So what did it matter if he cried? Who was there to witness it?
The car had a quarter tank of fuel. He would drive till it ran out or something presented itself. He had no qualms abandoning his plans for Asia. In fact, he felt he belonged here. There were remote communities, indigenous people he could hang out with, learning their ways. They would have no reason to hand him in.
He drove north through bush cutting over rough ground. The two-way radio buzzed, another cop.
‘Clem, where are you?’
He kept on. The bush gave way onto a cleared track, wet and muddy. He decided to take it, hoping it would circumnavigate any roadblocks they had out for him, confident nobody else would be out in these conditions. It had been a long, long journey and he was all of a sudden unbelievably tired but there would be time to rest soon enough. The storm was lightening finally and with it, his mood. He had traversed darkness and had emerged washed by the waters, baptised anew, woken, healed.
63
The world softly faded in on him again. Rain splashing off the bridge of his nose, Graeme Earle looked down at him, distressed, as if he were already dead; Bourke, his gun, the car gone.
I’ve only got maybe half a dozen words left in me. The thought was surprisingly deliberate, like a thief moving fast but without haste, knowing what he wanted.
‘He buried him alive.’
‘Where?’
He could only shake his head. Graeme Earle was shouting at him but he was muted.
Black.
The ocean was pale blue, a very small gum tree hovering dead centre, and it struck him as odd but for the first few seconds he couldn’t fathom why. No, as his eyes focused he saw it wasn’t the ocean it was a wall and at its centre was a small watercolour in a cheap frame, no glass. It was the smell, that weird co-mingling of sickly pre-warmed meals and antiseptic that told Clement this was hospital.
‘About time, mate.’
Clement turned to his left and through a little fairy-forest of plastic tubes saw Shepherd, beaming, an apple poised half-eaten in his hand. Only then he realised he was wearing an oxygen mask. The clock on the wall indicated it was one ten.
‘It doesn’t work. It’s five thirty in the morning. Welcome, back.’
He tried to smile but wasn’t sure if he managed it, the white fell too quickly.
> Later, the mask off, breathing unaided but with difficulty, his right side aching with every breath, Clement sat alone in his hospital bed listening to faint sounds in the corridor, a trolley clanking, a raised voice, a fading laugh. He had the room to himself, privileged he supposed. Elevated on the pillow he stared directly ahead at the gum tree print. Who chose those paintings, one of the staff here? Or was it an actual job? Somebody in Perth buying prints for hospitals all over the state, matching thematically the region to the print: gold prospectors in Kalgoorlie, whales in Albany. What had been on the wall of his father’s hospital room? He tried to remember. It seemed an age ago. That single contemplation prised open a whole cupboard-full of responsibilities that tumbled out: calling his mother back, Phoebe, interviews about how he came to lose his gun and police vehicle. Marilyn had not visited. For that matter she hadn’t even called but Shepherd assured him Risely had notified her. His mother had rung a couple of hours ago. Tess was with her now. He’d managed to reassure them he was okay but had told his mum he was tired and would call her back, which was only half true. The fatigue had left him now, it was pure physical incapacitation confining him to bed but he did not reveal that to her, it would only have taken explanation. How he came to be lying in a hospital bed in Derby with a large dressing on his right side instead of the arrow shaft that had been there last time he’d looked, was relayed to him by Shepherd a couple of hours after that first brief phase of consciousness.